1. Will the omicron variant cause a new wave of COVID lockdowns in the U.S.?
2. How can the Biden administration convince Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema to vote for the Build Back Better Act?
3. What explains the decline of college enrollment in the U.S.?
4. Are equity policies doing greater harm or good to the groups they are intending to help?
5. Does the U.S. still have a role to play in Afghanistan?
6. Has the Biden administration done enough to help organized labor?
7. Will the release of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve lower gasoline prices over the long-term?
8. How can California cities best prevent “smash-and-grab” thefts?
9. Does the U.S. need to do more to weaken kleptocracies across Latin America?
10. How can Glenn Youngkin position himself for higher office after his term ends in 2025?
Month: November 2021 Page 1 of 2
1. Does China have too much influence over the WHO?
2. Are travel restrictions an effective tool in the fight against COVID variants?
3. Will cryptocurrency mining harm global efforts to mitigate climate change?
4. Should France grant autonomy to Guadeloupe?
5. Are the energy goals for Germany set by the Green Party unrealistic?
6. Should OPEC increase oil production?
7. Is the threat of a coup growing in Burkina Faso?
8. How can the Mexican government get criminal cartels under control?
9. Should Spain make changes to its Citizens Security Law?
10. Are Western efforts to ban arms sales to Myanmar’s military counterproductive?
Today’s R&D is brought to you by Prepd (pronounced “prepped”). Prepd is building debate technology that helps extempers and congressional debaters research, practice, and compete. Visit www.prepd.in to learn more.
This week’s R&D covers the Chilean presidential election. Last Sunday the country voted in the first round of its presidential poll and right-wing candidate Jose Antonio Kast and left-wing candidate Gabriel Boric advanced to a runoff as neither won more than 50% of the vote. The runoff will take place on December 19 and, as noted in this week’s quiz, the winner will inherit a messy social and economic situation as Chile is still reeling from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Chile’s conservative presidential candidate Jose Antonio Kast introduced a team of economic advisers, describing recovery and fiscal balance as central to his program https://t.co/ZgjSsRkeYF
— Bloomberg (@business) November 25, 2021
New in Opinion from @oppenheimera: The conventional wisdom is that Chile has committed political suicide after the victory of 2 extremists in the Nov. 21 first-round elections.
But there are reasons why they’ll have to make a sharp turn to the center. https://t.co/KIVYFC5oaf
— Miami Herald (@MiamiHerald) November 24, 2021
The centrists guided Chile to stability and prosperity but came to be seen as unresponsive to citizens’ demands. José Antonio Kast and Gabriel Boric are heirs of this decade of discontent https://t.co/YXmRyV70Kp
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) November 25, 2021
Montgomery Bell Academy Extemp Round Robin tournament director Adam Johnson would like to inform the extemp community that the dates for the 2022 Montgomery Bell Extemp Round Robin have changed.
The original tournament was scheduled for January 8-10, but has now been changed to March 4-6 in order to have more planning time. The tournament will take place in person this year and will not be done virtually or in a hybrid setup.
Johnson has informed us that invites for the tournament will go out soon, so the selection process will not be altered by the later date.
Updated standings for the 2021-2022 Extemp Central National Points Race have been posted! You can find them by clicking on the “National Points Race” tab at the top of the page or by clicking here.
The new standings reflect the results of the Glenbrooks, the season’s first third tier event. Next week will feature two National Points Race competitions, the last of the first semester. These will be the George Mason Patriot Games and the University of Texas Longhorn Classic. George Mason will be an asynchronous event and a third tier tournament while the Longhorn Classic will be a fourth tier event occurring in person.
Here is this week’s Extemp Central news quiz. Good luck!
Daniel Kind of Lake Highland Preparatory School (FL) continued his recent run of success at the forty-second edition of the Glenbrooks Speech and Debate Tournament, which took place virtually last weekend due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Kind vanquished three other competitors who were in the top ten of the National Points Race in the final round to win his second straight National Points Race event and third of the season. However, Kind did not runaway with the tournament as he defeated Dev Ahuja of Solon High School (OH) by one rank in the final round.
Mukta Dharmapurikar of Durham Academy (NC), who won last year’s NSDA International Extemp final round, reached her first National Points Race tournament final of the year and finished third, five ranks behind Kind. That finish will put her into the top ten of the new National Points Race standings, which will be released on Thanksgiving Day.
Peter Alisky of Smoky Hill High School (CO) and Cameron Roberts of Jack C. Hays High School (TX) both reached the final round of a National Points Race event for the third time, finishing fourth and fifth respectively. Like Dharmapurikar, their finishes will help improve their national ranking.
Gabriel Frank-McPheter of Gabrielino High School (CA) rounded out the final round in sixth place. Frank-McPheter could have easily placed higher as one rank separated competitors placing third through sixth.
Other notable finishes beyond the final round included a quarter-final placing for Yale winner McKinley Paltzik of Phoenix Country Day School (AZ). Also, Marc Zavarro of Western High School (FL) and Vikram Sundaram of Solon High School, who are in the top ten of the National Points Race, dropped in semi-finals. And Blue Key finalists Kyle Letterer of Plano West Senior High School (TX) and Michelle Jin of the Harker School (CA) were eliminated in quarter-finals.
Although it did not have any finalists, Bellarmine College Preparatory (CA) had an impressive showing as four of its extempers reached elimination rounds, the most of any other school in attendance.
There were 116 entries at the Glenbrooks, so all competitors who reached the semi-final round will receive a bid to the University of Kentucky Tournament of Champions (TOC) in April. All competitors who reached the quarter-final round will receive a bid to the Extemp TOC at Northwestern University in May. And all of the competitors that reached elimination rounds will earn points in the National Points Race.
Here are the results of the 2021 Glenbrooks (Click here for tab sheet):
1. Is the reinstatement of Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok a victory for the nation’s democratic forces?
2. Should European governments worry about growing protests against COVID-19 restrictions?
3. Does Israel need term limits for future prime ministers?
4. Will Russia’s anti-satellite test cause more countries to test similar weapons over the next several years?
5. Who is likely to win the Chilean presidential runoff?
6. Are pro-democracy forces in Cuba weakening?
7. Will recent bombings cause Uganda to violate the sovereignty of the Democratic Republic of Congo?
8. Do subsidy policies hurt the Indian economy?
9. Should Germany’s incoming government stop the nation’s involvement in NATO’s “nuclear sharing” agreement?
10. Is a “Cold War” with the United States in China’s best interest?
1. Have the Biden administration’s energy policies made gas prices higher?
2. Will the recently passed infrastructure bill make Pete Buttigieg a more powerful player in Democratic circles than Vice President Kamala Harris?
3. Did prosecutors botch the Rittenhouse case?
4. Has corporate consolidation made America’s inflation woes worse?
5. Should the U.S. abolish the TSA?
6. What steps can the U.S. take to strengthen democratic governments in Africa?
7. Would passage of President Biden’s social infrastructure bill help or hinder Democratic chances in the 2022 midterms?
8. What role, if any, should the Federal Reserve take in the fight against climate change?
9. Is a U.S. diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics an empty gesture?
10. Are electric vehicles the future of American transport?
Today’s R&D is brought to you by Prepd (pronounced “prepped”). Prepd is building debate technology that helps extempers and congressional debaters research, practice, and compete. Visit www.prepd.in to learn more.
This week’s R&D covers recent Russian provocations. Over the past week, Russia has added to global anxieties by testing an anti-satellite weapon – causing the crew of the International Space Station (ISS) to seek cover from space debris – and massing troops on its border with Ukraine. France and Germany warned Russia earlier this week that harming Ukraine’s territorial integrity would met be met with “serious consequences.”
Earlier this week, Russia tested a direct-ascent anti-satellite (ASAT) missile against a satellite target, scattering thousands of pieces of orbital debris and heightening the risk of collisions between objects in space.@nktpnd explains what happened: https://t.co/AWeT1fMl3C
— Carnegie Endowment (@CarnegieEndow) November 18, 2021
Ukraine says Russia is massing as many as 114,000 troops to the north, east, and south of the Donbass, a mostly Russian-speaking region where Russian-backed separatists have fought government forces since a pro-western revolution in Kyiv in 2014 https://t.co/fmDQ8RduBL pic.twitter.com/vk064wbSHB
— Financial Times (@FinancialTimes) November 16, 2021
Russia poses a significant geopolitical threat to Ukraine, not only in terms of the energy sector but across the political, economic, and security spectrums, writes Eugene Chausovsky.https://t.co/xnaBpYqtYn
— Foreign Policy (@ForeignPolicy) November 18, 2021
Here is this week’s Extemp Central news quiz. Good luck!
1. Will the Supreme Court eventually find that the Biden administration’s vaccine requirement is constitutional?
2. Should all U.S. schools adopt a “mask optional” policy?
3. What can Democrats do to stop a “red wave” in 2022?
4. Will the recently passed infrastructure bill help the U.S. economy?
5. Is Chris Christie a “dark horse” presidential candidate?
6. If Russia invades Ukraine, how should the U.S. respond?
7. What should the Biden administration to do reduce migrant flows at the Mexican border?
8. Should the U.S. invest more in nuclear power?
9. Will the embrace of equity policies by schools further increase the achievement gap?
10. How would the rise of a “metaverse” affect American society?
1. Should governments abandon lockdowns as part of their COVID mitigation policies?
2. Will Seif al-Islam win Libya’s presidential election?
3. Why is Germany having a hard time stopping a new surge in COVID cases?
4. Will the EU win its showdown with Lukashenko?
5. Should the UN impose any conditions on future food aid to Afghanistan?
6. Would it be wise for Russia to avoid a larger military conflict in Ukraine?
7. Should the “right to die” become a global human right?
8. What can cure Latin America’s “democratic recession”?
9. Was Nicaragua’s recent presidential election fair?
10. What does India need to do to win its long-term rivalry with China?
Today’s R&D is brought to you by Prepd (pronounced “prepped”). Prepd is building debate technology that helps extempers and congressional debaters research, practice, and compete. Visit www.prepd.in to learn more.
This week’s R&D covers inflation in the U.S. economy. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported this week that consumer prices rose by 6.2% in October and inflation is standing at its fastest increase since 1991. Shortages of consumer goods due to supply chain issues, all of which exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, are making the problem worse and are wiping out some recent wage gains made by American workers. The inflation issue is also becoming a political problem for President Joe Biden, who is seeing his approval ratings crash near the end of his first year in office.
The stock market is soaring. Company and household bottom lines look strong. Yet corporate executives across the U.S. are obsessing over inflation — and some think the White House isn’t grasping the extent of the problem.https://t.co/arDenKCvub
— POLITICO (@politico) November 10, 2021
U.S. inflation rose at the fastest pace in three decades in October. These charts show how prices increased more in some parts of the country than in others. https://t.co/yltFUkAzT7
— The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 11, 2021
With the @federalreserve confronting many hard questions, from inflation to climate change, the current chair, Jerome Powell, is decidedly not the man for the moment, @JosephEStiglitz contends. https://t.co/VyQFwjTBN9 pic.twitter.com/wfMwa1pq8v
— Project Syndicate (@ProSyn) November 10, 2021
Here is this week’s Extemp Central news quiz. Good luck!