Capitol Steps and Presidential Debate

Here are my opinions on the two other events that occured last week that was worth mentioning. And they come two days late

Capitol Steps:
Featured frequently on NPR, this political satire musical group is consisted of former Capitol Hill aids to senators and representatives. They mostly poke fun at popular and political figures and happenings in the world and in the US. The Capitol Steps were at CWRU for the Alumni Weekend events, and I somehow was able to get tickets to watch them. To put it shortly, they're good. At times, they're risque and dumb, other times, they're very smart with plenty of innuendo. The whole auditorium (about 550 people) was laughing along with the troupe actors who sometimes couldn't stop laughing themselves. No target was left unsoiled. They went from Saddam Hussein, to George W Bush and George HM Bush, to John Kerry, to Martha Stewart, and the list goes on and on and on. At the end, and over the smoking dead bodies of their targets, we gave them a standing ovation for their performance. It was a $10 well spent.

Presidential Debate:
Unfortunately, the Capitol Steps caused me to miss about half of the second rount of debates for the Presidency. Basically, I missed the foreign policy portion of the debate, drove home during the second third of the debate on the economy. As the result, I could not draw up an effective running blog on the debate.

However, from the rest of the debate I was able to catch, it seemed that that Bush and Kerry were pretty even -- Bush was actually able to make complete sentences. On domestic issues, Kerry seemed to have an edge with substance on the economy, the deficit, and several morality issues, especially with stem cell research. Unfortunately, neither had an edge on health care -- both plans were bad. Bush, on the other hand, had an edge on his demeanor that he had towards the crowd that was gathered in the room, even though he seemed whiny at times. In my opinion, Kerry had to field much more difficult questions compared to Bush, and neither of the two candidates really laid out any 'plans' for the future in running the country. It seems that we're going to have to vote for two black boxes. Overall, the debate was effectively a tie. If I had to choose one winner, Kerry would have won by a slim margin based on substance.

All there is to look forward to, now, is the third round of debates on Wednesday night. The topic: domestic policy. Hopefully, we'll get more and better answers in that debate, though it would be nice if we just had Kerry and Bush go at a free-for-all for two or three hours in a cage.

Until then,