The first election debate

Today, the first election debate will be broadcast by ITV, from the north-west of England. The moderator will be ITV newsreader Alastair Stewart and the selected topic will be domestic policies.

Watch the debate online at itv.com, or at the ITV1 YouTube channel. It all starts at 08:30 pm.

For more information check out this page.

Voting on Health Care

The House is voting on the much anticipated health care reform bill. Watch it now!:

http://www.cnn.com/video/flashLive/live.html?on.cnn=2&stream=stream2

TV Debates

In Great Britain, almost every household owns a TV. The TV is therefore a suitable medium to broadcast the debates in the upcoming election. However, a prime minister In Great Britain have never been in a live TV debate, and debated against the two main opposition parties. There is therefore a moment in political history when the prime minister and leader of the Labor party Gordon Brown, have agreed to take part in a TV Debate against the leader of the Liberal Democrats Nick Clegg, and the leader of the Conservative Party David Cameron.

During this historical event the politicians get an opportunity to express their view on politics in front of millions of viewers. The party leaders are also taking a huge risk when they participate in the debate. They may increase their support after the debate, but they may also lose votes if they deliver bad figure during the debate. It is therefore substantial for the political parties, that their leader delivers a good performance during the debates.

In order to make the debate as fair as possible the political parties have together with the TV companies BBC, ITV and Sky news (who will podcast the debates) agreed on 76 strict rules for the debate. The audience will not be allowed to respond to leaders' answers and applause will be restricted to the beginning and end of the debates. Every debate will be 90 minutes long. The debates will start to debate a selected topic, and then the studio audiences will be able to ask direct questions on any subject, with viewers doing the same via e-mail.

The first debate will be broadcast by ITV from the north-west of England. The moderator will be ITV newsreader Alastair Stewart and the selected topic will be domestic policies. The second debate will focus on global issues. The moderator will be Sky's political editor Adam Boulton and the debate will take place in south-west England. The third debate will be hosted by David Dimbleby and the BBC in the Midlands. The theme will be economy.

In contrast to Great Britain, there have been arranged TV debates between presidential candidates in the United States for decades. That also includes debates between the sitting president and new candidates. The first general presidential debate was arranged as early as in 1960. Since then there have been many arranged many more, and some of them have been described as crucial for the outcome of the presidential election. In 1980, the sitting president Jimmy Carter had a narrow lead over Ronald Reagan in a race considered "too close to call." However, Reagan, with years of experience in front of a camera as an actor, came across better than Carter and was judged by voters to have won the debate by a wide margin. Because this particular event, the election went from being a close race, to become a landslide victory for Regan. You can see the full video from the debate here. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8YxFc_1b_0)Do you find Regan upbeat and positive? Does Carter seem comfortable, how often does he smile?

Remember, because of one debate, the politics in the worlds most powerful country was pushed in an entirely different direction. If the candidate’s wants to have only one good day at work, then they should have it one the day of the TV debate.

P.S, Jimmy carter was a very experienced politician. From 1966 to 1970 when he promoted his candidature for the governor position in Georgia he held over 1 800 speeches (!) And when he debated against Regan in 1980, he had been president for tree years. Had carter only a bad day when he debated against Regan, ore was he a bad speaker? Take a look at his “Crisis of Confidence" Speech and decide for your self.

UK Politics- Question time in the parliament Wednesday 24 February

Mathias åker Solstad and I worked together at school today. He wrote this article about Question time in the parliament on Wednesday the 24 of February. I did the next article, which you can read over. Click here too watch the Question time and click here if you want to read more about what Question time is. To see the debate between Gordon Brown and David Cameron wind on to 28 minutes.

Question time is a happening at the parliament where the members of the parliament ask questions of Ministers of Government. This also includes the Prime Minister, and the little tweak is that the Ministers are obligated to answer. The actual time differs from day to day, but it is always for an hour. The Prime Minister answers questions in the Commons every Wednesday.

Gordon Brown appeared as a very eccentric man, as he frequently gesticulates to add to his arguments. He did it in a very controlled way however, and he did show a great sense of humor. That really added to his argumentation, and I also have to say that I was really surprised by how informal they are inside the Commons. It also seemed like he was on the defensive end rather than attacking people, and he backed up his arguments by telling the MPs statistics.

All the questions did get answered, but I don't think they were all answered properly. A thing we often saw was that the MPs and Ministers just tried to push the question in another direction, or just to try to change the topic.

David Cameron seemed rather un-prepared, as he frequently focused on personal attacks rather than making a statement based on the politics of his party. To me it feels dumb to try to trample on the Prime Minister when the next election is "right around the corner."

The debate in itself was rather heated, but it really depended on the topics under discussion. The reason for that is that there are bigger differences between the parties on different topics, which means that there will be more heated debates when discussing for example the wages of the Scottish MPs. Also, I would like to add that The Speaker did a great job at interrupting the MPs when things got out of control,

I think the election will end in favor of the Conservatives, as both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown has been failures, so I think that the British people wants to see a change in government.

Another tragedy in Afghanistan

Unfortunately, my Senior Project topic has become more relevant because of the recent death of a young boy from Norway.

The Norwegian soldier Claes Joachim Olsson (22) was the driver on board in a CV9030. A CV9030 is a light tank, which is faster than a normal tank, but with less armor. Olsson was killed yesterday when his tank ran over a road bomb. Luckily, the two other soldiers who also were in the same tank survived with only light injuries. Earlier, there has been a debate about whether Norway should or shouldn’t use armored tanks in these areas. Probably, the two other soldiers would not have survived if the vehicle wasn’t a tank.

Olsson is the fifth Norwegian soldier who has died during service in Afghanistan. He was popular among his fellow soldiers. Olsson was devoted to his duty and a good human being and soldier. Read more about the sad story here .

Nutcases and psychopaths, ore real Americans?

In 2008 during the presidential election journalist and documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi made a HBO documentary called Right America: Felling wronged -- Some Voices From the Campaign Trail. In the documentary Pelosi follows the John McCain campaign and interviews mostly conservatives who didn’t wanted to have Barack Obama as there president. Many of the statements in the documentary are hateful and racist. The documentary shows how ignorance and religion can encourage these hateful and racist statements.

For instance There is a young guy who carries a T-shirt where he have written “No to Socilism," When Pelosi tells him he's misspelled socialism and asks him to define it, the boy says "basically, it's like the views of Hitler. It's between like communism and -- I don't know what the other word is."

There is one clip from a church where the priest takes a political stand, and encourages the congregation to vote for the Republican Party.

If you are interest in religions role in American check out this the documentary also made by HBO and Pelosi.

After watching both documentaries I think that Pelosi has a very peculiar way to make documentaries. She almost only films short interviews with people, where they come with some short statements. Pelosi does not take us viewers too these peoples’ homes, or show us why these people think what they think. I find Pelosi’s documentaries quite superficial and I wish that she had gone more “in depth” during her work with the documentary.

However Pelosi raises many interesting issues, and she manages too show us the fact that America is a diverse country with many different citizens. And let us not forget, there are over 50 million people in America who don’t want Obama as their president. Some of them are right-wing extremists, who have meanings that are hateful and racist. An issue that I find quite scary is those right-wing extremists get more and more support here in Europe. There have never been as many right-wing extremist in the European Parliament as now. And the same politicians get more and more support in countries all over Europe.

By the way, Alexandra Pelosi is Nancy Pelosi’s daughter. Nancy Pelosi is the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives.