Classroom Publication

The third and last Presidential Debate was October 15th at Hofstra University.  While tuning in with my parents and my friend Gus Fucci I asked each of them to write down all of their thoughts on the debate.
It was very interesting to see how each person conducted themselves during the debate.  My dad, Gary Nielsen, sat quietly, writing something down every 15 minutes or so, only asking me how to spell certain words.  My mom, Elizabeth Nielsen, would shout out things she didn’t like or agree with and I would have to say “Stop talking about it and write it down.”  Gus made a chart writing down key points and made little noise or commotion.  Although when Charter Schools were mentioned he piped up because he is a teacher.
My mom and dad are both Republicans and Gus is an Independent.  Although I did not find that anyone went towards one specific candidate as much as I expected.  Everyone had good and bad things to say about how each candidate addressed the issues and questions.
According to my dad, by trying to spread the wealth around Obama is bringing us closer to socialism.  Obama is trying to create an equal society by taking the main control of capital away from a small group of people and evenly distributing it among America, which is the exact meaning of socialism.  Mr. Nielsen does not believe that both candidates addressed the issue but only they were wasting the point of the debate.  He questions Obama’s judgment because of his ties and relationships with Bill Aires and Reverend Wright.  These relationships were a huge issue in Obama’s campaign and one my dad as well as millions of voters have questioned at one time or another.  Mr. Nielsen also states that both candidates do not seem to have a good plan for health care. 
Mrs. Nielsen had great questions on each candidates proposals. 
“How will McCain increase home values?”
“Obama says people in crisis will be able to access their IRA’s and without tax, but what determines a crisis?”
These are two questions which could have been asked at the actual debate.  Mrs. Nielsen believes McCain is trying to achieve a short term fix.  She also mentions that both candidates support the financial plan, but is interested that Obama said capital gains tax won’t go up under his plan.
For reducing the deficit Mrs. Nielsen noted that Obama wants to eliminate programs that don’t work, while McCain wants an across the board spending freeze. 
“It does not sound to me that McCain is following Bush, I think he is trying to change the policies, said Mrs. Nielsen.”  Towards the end of her comments on the debate she seemed to be leaning towards McCain.  Her following comments support this conclusion.  McCain repudiated bad things said about Obama, while Obama did not do the same.  Obama is getting way to into the actual issues of health insurance rather than just saying what needs to be done directly.  Obama is saying bogus things about health insurance.  The only good thing Obama said all night was to get the younger generation involved.  Mrs. Nielsen gave a website at the end of her comments where she got information on the candidates and all the debates.
Fucci noted McCain started off topic and did not answer the question about Roe VS. Wade.  Fucci believes that Obama does not have a realistic time frame of ten years to eliminate our oil dependency.  Fucci agreed with Mrs. Nielsen about Obama wanting youth involved and thought it was an excellent point he made that parents need to be held accountable.  Fucci responded to McCain not believing in the success of charter schools by giving his own opinion on them as a teacher.  Fucci says the reason why charter schools work is because parents are interested in their children’s education and want to get away from a school where not all parents care about their student’s education, and are not able to or choose not to check on their childs progress.
The three candidates I interviewed all thought the debate delivered short of its needed expectations.  They felt the candidates talked about what they were about to talk about but never answered the questions on important issues or did not go into enough detail.  Fucci noticed that Obama would avoid questions and refer back to the economic crisis each time.  Overall they felt the last debate did not clear up the things they had concerns or questions about.

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