Bush laughed and made faces to hide the fact that he had no idea what the hell Kerry was talking about. I thought that his podium would fall over if he leaned on it any longer.

Hi, Ronnie. :)

Guaranteed, if this election were happening in Canada, Kerry would have won right there, regardless of how close the two candidates were beforehand.

I agree that he looked small. Apparently they were trying to make him look taller by lining up the tops of their heads in splitscreen, but that just made Bush seem more dwarfish. The lecturn came halfway up his side of the screen. It almost looked like he was supporting himself with his elbows and his legs would be dangling off the floor about a foot.


No offense intended. I've just accepted the futility of arguing with Canadians. I've never, not even once, changed a Canadian's mind to the slightest degree. I know I'll never convince you of anything, because you're Canadian, so I'll not try.

That's because you're full of fluff and you don't wear a toque.

I find your culture relevant and intriguing. I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter. Please also send me any brochures you might have.

My Dad was so determined not to watch the debate he took my family out to dinner.

So I think I can now truthfully state that if the election were between my Dad buying me dinner and watching the debates, free food is the clear victor.

Debate
 

Max is the clear winner!

man, even fox gave it to kerry.

We talked about this in gov over summer. Apparently in the american 2 party system 3rd parties are only there to take away votes from other cantidates or emphasize an issue that people think is important. So technically third parties don't run to get elected just not to get other parties elected, from what I gathered. I was too lazy to try to find examples in history to cantradict it so I'm gonna stick with the idea that a 3rd party won't get elected :(

it kinda seamed like the mod dude was coaching bush a little bit...
:/

:lol - In a two party race Kerry would probably win with well over 80% of the national vote with Bush winning maybe a couple of seats in fucktard Alberta.

:) - I wear a toque during the winter months and I like fluffy snow.

I laughed at the 30 seconds of Bush just standing there like a jackass with his mouth agape.

Holy hell. How can you tell someone to vote for a third-party candidate and in the same post mention taking the election seriously? If there was going to be a landslide victory for one of these candidates I'd advocate voting third-party so someone could get their 5%, but that's simply not the case. This year, we do need to choose between two evils, like it or not. We've to got to get this half-assed puppet of a war criminal out of office, and take a nap for four years. I don't see Kerry being a very influential leader at all, the guy's going to be the "Yeah, I guess so..." president, but he's not Bush and that's really what matters at this point.

We've got no choice but to choose "one of these morons," Preechr, and I hope we get the right moron.

Is there a transcript, or better yet, a video of this debate available? I didn't know it was happening tonight.

:( - CLICK HERE.

I get a distinct feeling that Bush was made to sound a lot smarter in that transcript than he actually did during the debate. I'm downloading a video from eMule to make sure.

Of course it makes him sound smarter. They can't get all of the drawn-out pauses and stutters in a transcript.

okay so far all i've gotten from emule is a video of a gov. bush vs president bush debate shown on the daily show where he argues against himself on foreign policy ;<

dude the video's all over the news websites, just go go cnn.com or sumping

Okay, I just went to cnn.com and didn't see shit.

I thought that Kerry won the debate, but not by a landslide.

Bush could have done so much better than say mixed message repeatedly. For example, when Kerry said that he'd never let our troops down, Bush could have easily countered by pointing out that Kerry voted against an increase in funding for military equipment.

I caught a Bush campaign ad on a news show just now, trying to paint Kerry as a choking hazard for the ages-3-and-up-mentality American, and one of the points of criticism was that Kerry tried to get certain weapons banned that are now used in the war on terror. I couldn't help but think "what weapons were those, exactly?" cause I imagine several of them were probably either banned by international law or plain cruel / inaccurate.

As for the debate, I thought Bush was totally unconvincing, clinging to Kerry's 'indecisiveness' like a life preserver. Kerry less so, but still not great. Then again, with all the pussy-whipping that had to precede this I guess you couldn't expect much. It would be nice if people cared about the fact that a president is so reluctant to have an honest debate.

It's not like Bush is just now whipping out this constant repetition thing, but that he's doing it more now is because unlike those of us that watch 90 minute political debates, his message is meant for the 4-9 people left in this country that didn't make up their mind about voting last year. Those guys were going to take a piss and get beers during the debate IF they even had it on. If they heard Bush say "mixed messages" just once, Bush got lucky. Repeating it over and over also made it more likely that it'd get picked up for a soundbite.

Kerry's message may have been appealing for those of us actually familiar with the race and actively watching the debate with interest, but was any of us swayed in either direction? The winner of this debate is the one that had the best polling numbers afterward. Is Kerry ahead now? No? Then he failed. He lost.

Will more of the undecideds watch the next two debates? Doubtful. The only hope Kerry has left, barring some monumental event happening in the next month that "changes everything," is that so-called "independents" tend to vote liberal. I still don't think that's enough.

..and Davin, you and I just differ on what voting means.

It's very possible that Kerry is MORE likely to be overly aggressive in continuing Bush's War on Terror. Bush could definitely get out of it easier at any point, that's for sure. At every move, a President Kerry would be even more second-guessed than Bush ever has. His entire four years would be spun by the Republicans as typical for those damn Democrats when it comes to taking security seriously. As long as America has an enemy, any non-Republican would have a harder time of getting a vote.

Are you really happy voting for someone that's selling himself as just like Bush, but somehow better? Kerry simply will not win. His campaign has been terrible and is only getting worse. Thank the Clintons. Bush's campaign has been exemplary, as is evidenced by a LACK of any negative public reaction to such a God-Awful debate performance. The GOP could replace Dubya with an actual Chimpanzee and Kerry would still lose.

By so unexpectedly supporting Dean, the left's base clearly signaled their willingness to back "anybody but Bush." They gave you Kerry, which fits that description, but ran him on the permise that while he's actually NOT Bush, making the base happy, he'd pretty much do everything Bush would do, but better, which attracted voters that weren't already part of the base. The GOP lie that Kerry and Edwards are liberals actually helped you guys believe he'd be a president you'd support, but he has done nothing to prove that to you.

From a third person POV, this seems very clear to me. I'm confident that if every voter in America actually read about all the candidates available this year, disregarding two-party politics, we'd be wondering whether Badnarik, Cobb or Nader would be winning the election. Kerry and Bush wouldn't even be in the picture. I say vote third party because I'm not buying into the misconception that my vote only counts if I vote Blue or Red. I vote for whomever I wish was leading our country. They would have me believe that doing so is throwing my vote away.

Can't you see how backward that is?

Preechr, I do completely agree with you that this is no form of respectable democracy. You'd never catch me saying that the way things are is the way they should be -- but honestly, it's still the way they are, and by not voting blue or red, you're not supporting the side you'd prefer. One of these two sides is going to win the election -- that's plain to see -- but which one is (I hope) still up in the air.

I wish our system was more diverse. I wish we had four, six, eight smaller parties each with candidates with diverse opinions and strong, unpaidfor points of view. I wish our system was flawless.
Unfortunately, it's not, and the only thing we can hope to do for the time being is operate within it until change is realistic.

I promise you that Kerry plans to be EXACTLY as inept as Bush. This whole election is just one big false dichotomy, to use your own words. We are being led to choose between the same thing, the same way, or the same thing, a little bit different way.

All I'm saying is that there's more choices than that.

Being a third party person, it was a long time ago that I realized that I'd never be happy working from within either party in hopes of changing it to make it what I wanted. I realized that both parties were exactly as they intended to be, and that they wouldn't change to suit my desires.

There are many libertarians and Greens in both parties, but they haven't yet realized how futile their efforts to change the major parties from within are yet. My major problem with the LP is that it's made up of those that have rejected the idea that that kind of change could happen, but they have yet to realize that as long as they treat the two-party system as an acceptable status quo, they are just pissing up a pine tree.

The third parties have yet to realize just how much of a threat they are to the big Two, and they haven't yet begun to act as if they are under the kind of organized attack that they really are.

You have been led to believe as you do about voting, and your words used in defense of the status quo are exactly what both the Republicans and the Democrats want you to be saying to every person that might ever vote for a better way than what serves their purposes.

I'm sorry to be sitting here calling you a tool, but that's what you are being. I like you, so I hope that doesn't piss you off.