Master's in Industrial Labor Relations/Human Resources - Cornell University
Master's in Education - English and Spanish Trenton State College
Sample article:
Jim Lehrer: A Pathetic Performance
Our country, sharply divided between Obama and Romney, found unity in evaluating the performance of last night's debate moderator Jim Lehrer. A veteran journalist for PBS, moderating his 12th presidential debate, Lehrer abdicated his role of Captain of the S.S. Presidential Debate, leaving his two-man crew floating rudderless in choppy waters.
Lehrer is respected by the country in general and especially by the left, but since last night's performance he has been soundly, and justly, criticized by all sides of the political spectrum. Before the debate was even over, filmmaker and left-wing icon Michael Moore tweeted that Clint Eastwood's empty chair would have done better in the moderator's role. Obama's camp blasted him for not holding Romney to the agreed-upon debate time constraints. They also complained that Lehrer, in the face to face portion of the debate, ostensibly interrupted Obama when he still had five seconds left to make his point. The press called Lehrer 'road kill' and predicted this would be the last presidential debate he would moderate.
However, there wasn't nearly enough attention paid to the single most deadly flaw in Lehrer's pathetic performance as a so-called moderator. In the U.S., we expect our debate moderators to be aggressive, to control not only the minutiae of minutes and seconds, but the topics and type of answers expected and accepted. Lehrer's ineffectiveness did not lie simply in his inability to control answer times. The country as a whole, and especially the left, was looking to him to be the person who would once and for all, finally, hold Mitt Romney accountable for actual facts and figures, after months of his consistent evasiveness and vague allusions to programs and ideas. Both press and public were sorely disappointed that Lehrer did not ask pointed and specific questions, and failed to press for and demand the details and real numbers of Romney's plans for medicare, tax cuts and exemptions, healthcare, and social security. Instead, the only policy detail Lehrer extracted in the debate was that Romney liked Big Bird and Lehrer himself but would still cut PBS funding.
sample translation:
Venezuela. Dos países distintos
La suerte está echada. El presidente Hugo Chávez y el opositor Henrique Capriles cerraron sus campañas con actos multitudinarios. El mandatario se guardó Caracas para el último mitin; el líder de la coalición opositora, en tanto, juntó a decenas de miles en el interior. Los sondeos le dan la victoria a Chávez. Pero los opositores sostienen que ganarán por un millón de votos y citan sondeos que aún no han sido difundidos -según precisaron fuentes de la campaña de Capriles ayer a El País-. El futuro de Venezuela se juega mañana y las opciones son bien distintas.
Venezuela. Two different countries.
Their fate is sealed. President Hugo Chavez and his opponent Henrique Capriles closed their campaigns with major events. The leader saved the last rally for Caracas, the opposition leader, meanwhile, attracted tens of thousands to the interior of the country. The polls signal victory for Chávez. But the opposition party insists it will win by a million votes and cites polls than still haven't been published, according to what Capriles campaign sources stated in the newspaper EL País. The future of Venezuela is in play and the options available are very different.
