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It’s great! Watched both hours in 1 go last night, staying past 1AM (and I’ve been trying to get more sleep) to see the Democrats. The premise is simple: submit a question you have in general or for specific candidates. CNN will screen them and set a lineup for the candidates to answer.

http://www.youtube.com/debates

As an aside, Anderson Cooper is HOT. And he’s good. Having him host these things is definitely a great choice in bringing in new, younger viewers.

I wonder if CNN hates me because I downloaded it off BitTorrent. (But I don’t have CNN! I think. Maybe I have the BBC.) I’m going to watch the Republican one that’s being held September 17th as well. I think all the presidential debates in the future should be held this way.

Obama vs. the Rest:

I am going for Obama, and unless something crazy gets unveiled about him, like he’s a member of the KKK or he raped someone in high school, I’ll be voting for him. I think he’s solid on the things I care about, but it’s more that I think he can bring a real change to the mindset of politics. I used to think that stances on issues or experience mattered more than race/sex, but I now think that having a real change just in the type of person you have can do more things. Having a minority or female president is a tremendous move for the United States as a people.

People talk about experience as being so important. This isn’t something I can argue. But Americans have been electing experienced people for decades, and we still seem to have big problems that everyone also at the same time believes should have been fixed by now. I remember when Gore ran (yes, I voted for him) and he mentioned he had a long legacy of family in politics. My issue with that is, if over that period of time, we think politics sucked, electing you just means more of the same. All the issues, sure, on most issues people generally agree. That means the failure in politics over the last 20-30 years is more than just about what you believe or what you will try to do. It’s about who you are and what your status as an icon for the rest of the world tells them about the United States.

Someone who’s not a white man as president, or better yet president + other high offices, signals to everyone out there that the US is capable of change and is worth talking to.

Hillary Clinton is a woman, and it would be great to see a woman be president. On the other hand, she feels too much like a politician- what I mean by this is those negative connotations that we all have of politics, people trying to create soundbytes, reacting to what the people want so you can get 15 more minutes, etc. I want people who fight for what they feel is right, even if no one agrees, just because that is their responsibility when elected. Sure, people want an agent for their needs, but the politician’s job is to find ways to meet those needs rather than have the people dictate the ways. Those are two different things.

It’s no different from the workplace, from when people say they want or need X, Y, Z. The manager’s job is to see the best way to fulfill these things, and even determine if they really do need X, Y, Z or on a deeper level, they need A. The politician is supposed to be smarter than the general consensus because he is not caught up in mass behavior.

If it was all about what people thought they wanted, we would just have voting every month.

I think Obama will be the right guy to make sure that things do not keep leading into war, or ways that make people hate us, continuing the downward spiral that America has been traveling on for decades. He’s fresh, and that’s what we need. Keep in mind that I’m not for him because he’s black, I’m for him because he’s as good or better than everyone else and he’s black.

Baskin Robbins in Hanoi:

Mike Gravel was asked about an earlier statement (before this debate) where he said something similar to US soldiers died in vain in the Vietnam-American War. Instead of skirting the issue, he said “Hell yeah, they did, and the same thing is happening in Iraq.” (ok, you can get a more accurate quote here)

Then he mentioned that you can go to Hanoi now and get Baskin Robbins to underlie his point. (The first thing that hit my mind was, really? WHERE? Are they open right now?)

I actually didn’t understand what this meant. There is no Baskin Robbins here that I know of, by the way. Maybe Julie knows. A brief Google suggests there is one, or least was one in the past.

Regardless, if there is ice cream in Hanoi, does that mean the communists won? Does that mean if people have money to buy ice cream and enjoy, they are flaunting it back in the supposedly more democratic US’ faces?

What about the fact that Vietnam was in absolute poverty for 20 years after the war and the US refused to help out, or even admit things like the effects of Agent Orange? Japan and Germany seem to have done a lot better after wars with the US, so maybe it’s if VN has been in absolutely poverty for 50 years, then you can say, yup, our soldiers did not die in vain, because we may have lost, but we made sure they didn’t “win” in terms of development for 50 years.

And what does that mean for me? I am an American-born Vietnamese who currently lives in Hanoi. I mention American-born only because to “solidify” my American-ness, in case for some stupid reason, I need to.

When Gravel says we sent our soldiers in vain, do I get to say that too? I am American, and I should be part of that “we” but maybe I am the enemy, and plus now I enjoy ice cream occasionally with Jimmy near Ho Hoan Kiem.

I just don’t get it.

YouTube + People + Debates = Good TV.

This was stimulating television.

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