PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
 

STARTS NOW ;<

2 minute statement
1:30 rebuttal
1 minute further discussion if Lehrer so decides.

I'm not expecting much

"remaining on the offensive and at the same time spreading liberty"

boink?

kerry's running down a list of military figures?
lehrer's making him get to the point of "colossal mistakes", which is good, because he hasnt before.

oh god, the inflated 200 billion dollar figure.

I'm sorry... Bush looks small. He looks less presidential here than Kerry. I'm watching this trying my best to think like the "average American voter," which means I got pretty drunk before 9pm.

Dubya just isn't coming off like the leader of the free world. He looks like someone that simply does not need to be in that position. Kerry is not doing what I'd call an incredibly impressive job of attacking the incumbent as much as the sitting President is looking like an incompetent.

As drunk as I am, it's pretty obvious George is repeating himself, regardless of whether or not my drunk ass heard him the first 3-19 times he said Kerry flip-flops. I'm wondering what his practice for this consisted of at this point...

"Miffed marlat... No, no... Morled merloge... wait... I'll get it this time... MIXED... yeah, that sounds right... MIXED marbles. No, that's not right. Mess. Mess- idge. MESS-IDGE. He's sending MIXED MESS-IDGE... Ok guys, let's wrap it up for tonight... Yeah... High Five.... High Five... Somebody bring some beer? Hey, is that a baggie of coke?"

Ok... Here comes the SPIN.

No matter what was said, this is what will decide the election.

MSNBC poll says that 69% of the pollers think Kerry won the poll (as of 9:40 central time)

Well the pollsters were right. He won that poll.

I think kerry did a better job then Bush thou on the debate. The format wasn't as terrible as I was expecting.

WHAT THE PRESIDENT IS SAYING IS WRONG IT'S WRONG THE PRESIDENT IS WRONG I WAS IN VIETNAM HE'S WRONG

ALSO BEING PRESIDENT IS HARD WORK IT TAKES HARD WORK GUYS IT'S HARD WORK BEING PRESIDENT WORK HARD BECAUSE IT'S TAKING A LOT OF HARD WORK

That's all I gathered. :(

I think you pretty much nailed it.

Kerry: 1
Bush: 0

Bush's made several mistakes here. He interrupted Kerry, he lost track of what he was talking about and towards the end the moderator actually had to coach him along.

PWNED

I gotta say, I was pretty frustrated with Bush's performance most of the way through, but I think he pulled it out at the end.

Personally, I call it a draw, because even in my inebriated state I can tell they both failed to fully engage any relevant topic sufficiently. However, as a slightly buzzed American, I can see where Bush probably said what was needed, in his own special way, to make this debate entirely irrelevant to the outcome of the election. In that respect, as he's obviously the verbally disadvantaged of the two, Bush won this debate. Kerry really should have smooshed Dubya. I've been pretty sure Kerry's abysmal campaign to this point was due to the Clintonites that have infiltrated his campaign from the beginning, but now I'm pretty much blaming Kerry's failures on him alone.

He should have easily won this, and there's a question as to whether he did that. That means he lost.

My local news is showing the local Bush supporters as cheering Bush's obvious victory. I'm sorry, but that's like cheering for a Special Olympics participant.

Now they've moved onto the Kerry partisans. They're just as pathetic.

Vote Badnarik, people. Hell, vote Nader or Cobb.

Please don't help stick us with one of these morons for the next four years. Please take this election seriously.

You're a schmuck. Kerry trounced Bush in every respect.

Bush stuttered and mumbled over everything. He also looked like a dope.

You're a Canadian.

Did Bush sucessfully label Kerry a flip-flopper? No. This would have been pretty easy to do, and Dubya failed.

Did Kerry successfully convince anyone that he'd do what Bush did but better? No. This would have been much harder to accomplish than the simple thing Bush needed to pull off, but that was the direction he chose in his own campaign. He failed in the job he needed to do.

Iran, North Korea and Africa were just wasted time. No points were made in anything other than the Iraq question, and Kerry failed to make that seem to be something other than an intregal part of the larger War on Terror. If the majority of Americans go to vote on November 2 believing Iraq to be part of the WOT, Bush wins, assuming Iraq is the decisive issue. I think it will be, and I think Kerry has thrown the election with his campaign of "What he said, but better."

Kerry stumbled several times also.

I think a lot of Bush's pauses were an attempt to look thoughtful. That and he looke dlike he was getting a little pissed with some of Kerry's barbs. Although, he should have seen them coming.

LMAO... Andrew Sullivan: "No president who has presided over Abu Ghraib should ever say he wants to put anyone on a leash."

Kerry won by comparison. Bush seemed like some pitiable little guy who just didn't quit drinking soon enough to avoid the unfortunate brain damage.

I think kerry won because this was the moment he struck down the flip flopping crap, made himself look better for not calling bush a liar, and exposed himself to an american public that didn't know who he was before and what his positions were. but I picked up alot of it from ABC and NBC afterwords :/

Kerry's Iraq position was a little muddled, and Bush attempted to harp on it with the "mixed message" theme. Kerry successfully evaded, though, and never broke stride. I'd say it was a clear victory for him.

Bush got pulverized in every regard. It became painfully obvious that he didn't know what the fuck he was talking about, and he looked confused, disoriented, childish, and agitated.

Both of them failed to engage a relevant topic sufficiently? No shit. It's not like they had a real conversation about the issues at hand. It was parallel campaign speeches on both sides. That's what happens when you have a 32 page document to decide on the rules.

Kerry did come out on top, though, and easily. He spoke more eloquently, had better body language and didn't get lost in the dregs of his own material like Bush did. And the only times he repeated himself was to rebut what Bush continued to repeat. Bush was also desperate to have the last word. Bush could do nothing but attack Kerry, while Kerry, for once in the campaign, came out and clearly and concisely stated his position.

blehg. that was the most crapass crap i've ever seen :/ it only leads me to pray for a viable 3rd party

some funny things:


jim: "what colossal misjudgements do you believe the president has made?"
kerry: "where do you want me to begin? :lol" (face and everything kind of)


everytime bush would say something against kerry but kerry knew was true kerry would nod his head, agreeing that was true.


everytime kerry would say something against bush bush would just sit there. god he looked like he was completely pissed.


everytime bush said something kerry knew was wrong and/or if bush stuttered or mumbled, kerry kind of laughed to himself and wrote something down.


oh yes, and bush was laughing a lot, and i actually think he made a joke in the beginning and the crowd was kind of laughing.

Kerry: " But after the advisement of his administrators, this president 'changed his mind'. I think his campaign has a word for that." :lol

Kerry Burned Bush and pissed on his ashes in that debate.

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.

ROFL...

Just posted to my board:

sorry, but shit shitty shit like that is why I don't read your board anymore. :/

I really need to get a photo of me clearing brush or something, that way, I can still be a complete jackass, yet be "in touch with mainstream America."

What a load of poop.

You are not alone. The vast majority of people do not read my board, and most of those for less considered reasons than yours.

We will miss your uninterested glances. ;)

I'll probably hang out here long enough to make sure you don't miss much.

Wait wait wait wait wait... your board was taken down?

No, no...
It's still there.

I dunno, same with the newsfilter board, I guess. You have so many folks who talk about "liberal media bias," and there's a lot of good talk about "looking at things objectively, on the issues."

And then you see anti-Kerry arguments that look as if they were plagarized off of GOP press advisories. I have nothing personally invested in John Kerry the man. He's disconnected from real people, he's arrogant, he's a true blue blood. With that said, the arguments AGAINST him have only pushed me closer to his camp.

I'm not an ABB guy. I actually like certain things about the Kerry platform, which I've come to terms with on my own, not via the Fox News equivolents.

Yet you aren't so interested in pounding your point of view into the skulls of those that differ with you. You don't roam the internet picking fights with partisans...

I just don't get that...

Missed me by 4 years. :)

According to Newsweek Kerry is now ahead at 49% with the Moron at 46% and the Los Angeles Times is also has Kerry at 49% with the Moron at 47%.

The Debates, Real and Predicted

by Anthony Gregory

In my most recent article, "An Honest Debate Between Bush and Kerry," I tried to go quickly through all the issues, laying out how the two candidates would speak if they were more up front about why they were saying what they were saying. From the looks of the national security "debate" last night, the two candidates read my article and drew much from it, though they changed a few words around a bit to keep from being too honest. Here are some excerpts of what they really said, and what I predicted they might.

Kerry (real): I'll never give a veto to any country over our security. But I also know how to lead those alliances. This president has left them in shatters across the globe, and we're now 90 percent of the casualties in Iraq and 90 percent of the costs.

Kerry (predicted): Do we want to recklessly go to war, without international coalitions and diplomatic tact? Or do we want a president who knows how to get the French and the Germans in on the killing? More than one thousand Americans have died in the Iraq war. I would have made sure that at least five hundred of them were foreigners instead.

Bush (real): September the 11th changed how America must look at the world. And since that day, our nation has been on a multi-pronged strategy to keep our country safer.

Bush (predicted): America was attacked on September 11, 2001, and we must not forget how we felt on that day, when we decided it was time to unite behind me. The very security of my job depends on it. In response to September the 11th, I enacted strong laws that the federal government wanted to impose but never before had an excuse to. I took us to war in the Middle East.

Kerry (Real): Two-thirds of the country was a no-fly zone when we started this war. We would have had sanctions. We would have had the U.N. inspectors. Saddam Hussein would have been continually weakening. If the president had shown the patience to go through another round of resolution, to sit down with those leaders, say, "What do you need, what do you need now, how much more will it take to get you to join us?" we'd be in a stronger place today.

Kerry (predicted): I want to return to the old-fashioned ways of American empire, before Mr. Cowboy here ruined it all by waging war without a UN seal of approval. The UN was designed to make global hegemony more palatable to the world’s peoples. I say we use it.

Bush (Real): That's why it's essential that we make sure that we keep weapons of mass destruction out of the hands of people like Al Qaida.

Bush (Predicted): I took us to war in the Middle East, invading two countries and killing thousands of people who got in the way, including terrorists. Terrorists like al Qaeda.

Kerry (Real): The president always has the right, and always has had the right, for preemptive strike. That was a great doctrine throughout the Cold War. And it was always one of the things we argued about with respect to arms control. No president, through all of American history, has ever ceded, and nor would I, the right to preempt in any way necessary to protect the United States of America. But if and when you do it, Jim, you have to do it in a way that passes the test, that passes the global test where your countrymen, your people understand fully why you're doing what you're doing and you can prove to the world that you did it for legitimate reasons. Here we have our own secretary of state who has had to apologize to the world for the presentation he made to the United Nations. I mean, we can remember when President Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis sent his secretary of state to Paris to meet with DeGaulle. And in the middle of the discussion, to tell them about the missiles in Cuba, he said, "Here, let me show you the photos." And DeGaulle waved them off and said, "No, no, no, no. The word of the president of the United States is good enough for me."

Kerry (Predicted): I wholeheartedly endorse Bush’s usurpation of power in the office of the presidency – I admire that office, and want it myself. But we’ve already done Iraq. Let’s go to Africa, I say! The real implication of the president’s mismanagement of Iraq is that it will be harder to conquer more countries now, especially with him in charge. We’ve lost our credibility to conquer. Elect me, and I can convince the world that American imperium is back the way it used to be in the good old days, under Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Bill Clinton.


Bush (Real): But to say that there's only one focus on the war on terror doesn't really understand the nature of the war on terror. Of course we're after Saddam Hussein -- I mean bin Laden. He's isolated. Seventy-five percent of his people have been brought to justice. The killer -- the mastermind of the September 11th attacks, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, is in prison.

Bush (Predicted): And let us not forget 9/11. When you’re thinking that Iraq is a little harder than we all expected, and good Americans are gallantly giving their lives up there everyday, just remember that Saddam Hussein was a dictator, and 9/11 was the worst day in America’s history. Saddam and 9/11. Remember those two. xxxx tells me that if Americans put those two together, they’ll conclude that I’m the man to vote for.

Kerry (real): I have no intention of wilting. I've never wilted in my life. And I've never wavered in my life. I know exactly what we need to do in Iraq, and my position has been consistent: Saddam Hussein is a threat. He needed to be disarmed. We needed to go to the U.N. The president needed the authority to use force in order to be able to get him to do something, because he never did it without the threat of force.

Kerry (predicted): I think this man has done everything wrong in Iraq. He didn’t get the coalition he needed to wage the war in a more politically popular manner. He didn’t reach across the negotiation table, and reach out to other countries. He should have sought diplomatic solutions, and the reason I voted for the resolution was because it was ambiguously worded and I knew I could weasel my way out of it.

The thing is, I honestly agree with most of what you are saying. I'd be voting for an alternative party myself if I didn't think voting for the only person besides Bush who has a chance (regardless of how conservative or useless he might be) was more important.

I don't care much who you vote for. I'm not going to hold it against you, obviously, that would be stupid. But still, to me it's more important to put my vote towards making sure Kerry wins.

I do however think it's funny that I'm having essentially the same debate in two different threads.

I bet the next topic of debate will be homeland security, since they barely talked about it in this last one. And then it'll be "Coke vs. Pepsi."

That picture of Bush toting lumber with the caption "All that is MAN" is hilarious

Bush should make that his new campaign slogan, and use that picture too.

he would win by a 10% margin for sure.

Can we have the Chevy jingle, "Like a Rock" playing in the background? That would rule.

Perfect!

Why hasnt the bush campaign hired us yet? >:

BUSH HAD A LITTLE HELP IN THE DEBATE

http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/10/1697371.php


found the transcript on c-span. was the part of the debate i missed on tv. someone needs to watch the debate again and make sure for me that this isn't bull shit...



:/

They've got videos and audio files of the "now let me finish" part... I didn't see that part of the debate, but it does seem kinda strange to me. Bush might just be crazy, or he could have been using an earpiece.

they have the video at the c-span site, but websatan wont let me download any video or mp3's or anything. and my comp at home has no sound, so i cant check it at all...
:(

wasnt he just talking to the moderator, who may have been waving him to stop or something... ?

:/ - I did watch the whole debate and I then thought he was speaking to the moderator because he was looking towards the camera and him. That said, though there was plenty of time left and no one spoke before, the moderator may have signalled that he's ready to move on to another damning question.

:/ - I have seen someone using an earpiece live on stage and they're forced to pause frequently unlike the Moron who spoke at a steady pace pretty much throughout. I figure if he was using an earpiece it was being used only when Kerry was speaking (eg. hard work, wrong war, wrong place, wrong time, bad! and don't pick your nose!!!).

I agree... Bush can't even keep his own thoughts straight enough to make it through an entire sentence without flubbing something. Having to deal with third-party voices in there among the echoes would have probably locked him up completely.

It would have been too big a risk to take.

Now, if somebody wants to suggest that the thing we saw up there was actually an android being remotely controlled by Karl Rove, I might buy that...

Bush had a VERY important thing to say...

"Wrong war, wrong place, wrong time"

...over and over and over again.

It's interesting that he's so hung up on mixed messages when he said during his senate term "Yeah, I'm not so sure it's the role of the United States to go around the world and say 'this is the way it's gotta be'," "If we're an arrogant nation, they'll resent us. I think one way for us to end up being viewed as the 'ugly American' is for us to go around the world saying 'we do it this way, so should you'," and "I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called 'Nation Building.'" It's somewhat baffling to me that Kerry & Co. aren't bringing this up as a direct response to Bush's claims.

NEXT DEBATE SOON MAN

On the 'let me finish' part, I have the video of the debate. He says it after a long pause, so the moderator probably thought he was done or something.

LOL. Bush must have had to just reboot the ol' brain.

i saw on another message board that there is some sort of stop light thing at the bottom of there mics that let them know when to talk or not, and i guess that his turned red right before he said "let me finnish". damn. something like this would have shut him down for good. ...
:/

No, he had plenty of time, but he stopped speaking for a bit, so the moderator probably looked like he was ready to move on.

Now, tonight, he cut the moderator off on at least two seperate occasions and generally made a complete ass of himself, even saying 'Yeah, I hear about those reports. On the internets.' Which had us in tears for a while ;<

Kerry actually made me proud to vote for him tonight with his responses to abortion and religious/moral values.

Hopefully, some enterprising young internets person will come up with a blooper reel for the debates...

If they can do this, they could pull that off...

FACILE.

Kerry was dead-on when he told that anti-abortion lady about how you can't legislate your religious beliefs (same for the embryonic stem cell research lady). You could tell that wasn't the answer she was looking for and they both would have started crying if Kerry had talked for any longer. :lol

What annoyed me the most was Bush's statement about importing drugs from Canada: "I want to make sure they cure you not kill you."

WTF? He's making it sound like Canadian drugs are dangerous, when they are the exact same pills that are sold in the U.S. Canada either a) imports the drugs from the U.S. to begin with or b) they are made by Canadian factories controlled by the drug company that owns the patent on the drug in question.

When you walk into any pharmacy here, you see jars with big brand name labels on them, not a bunch of non-descript containers with no-name stickers on them.

Yeah, but how can we be SURE we can trust you shafty Canadians? :conspiracy

Neither guy seemed to be able to truthfully say why they opposed/ supported about half the positions questioned.

If Dubya has actually held off for 3.8 years on importing Canadian drugs because he's worried that they might turn out to be made in Thailand instead, I can whistle "O Canada" out of my ass.

The argument he attempted he screwed up. If he wanted to scare folks off the idea he could have said that half the drugs circulating in the third world are blackmarket fakes, many useless but benign but a scary amount stuff like drain cleaner labeled as AIDS meds. If he could have drawn the line between that and reimportation, he might have gained some points, albeit on a lie... but he got halfway there and quit. That just made him look stupid. ER.

Reimportation does nothing to solve the high COST of drugs. Canadian drugs are the same damn drugs we have here. You guys refuse to pay full price, like many countries with nationalized healthcare, which drives the price up down here. Enterprising folks already mail-order their prescriptions from Canada. The debate here is whether the Government will re-import. That's just retarded. If we want to fix the price of drugs for Americans, we can do that just like any other country.

Do we have candidates that can explain this? No. I'm not even sure if they understand the very basics of what they're debating half the time.

Factcheck.org says he does indeed own part of a timber company, and he made exactly the 80 some odd dollars off it Kerry said he did.

Kerry should have batted the environment question out of the park. I was really disapointed by that.

He also should have nailed W every single time he slipped back into saying terrorists could have gotten WMD and forced him to say 'we thought...' each time, becaue they couldn't have.

I did however like the way Kerry talked right to W on several occasions.

And he should have nailed W that he wouldn't admit to ANY mistakes let alone the three the questioner asked for. He should have said "You can honestly look at the state Iraq is in right now and not think of a single error in judgement that you as commander in chief want to take responsibility for?" THAT's immaturity, it's a character flaw dangerous in a head of state.

Well, he hinted at his regret for hiring his Secretary of Treasury... Probably Wes Clark as well...

All those doubting Thomii, y'know...

I agree. Kerry should have date-raped Dubya. Instead, he left himself open for more attacks from the many men behind the curtain. If he'd have taken advantage of the opportunity he had to verbally beat Bush's ass live on TV in front of everyone, he wouldn't have had to worry about the spin.

If I'm running for President, I think I could dedicate enough time to winning to make that happen. Practice makes perfect.

Perfect is obviously not the goal here...

:lol - The only reason you're saying this, Chimp is that you know damn well that Manitoba is Canada's capital for online pharmacies. It's time for a reality check, who's really going to trust their healthcare needs to a bunch of Eskimos and lumberjacks?

[center:3697434e76]- States of Illinois & Wisconsin's I-SaveRx.net -[/center:3697434e76]

I loved the last question for Bush: Give three examples of mistakes you've made during your presidency.

He wouldn't give an example.

its good to know that a future president could believe in science.

Guys, we do have to make sure Canadian drugs are safe - Them crazy canucks'll take anything!

Like coating pills with thick mollasses so it stick to our throats.

Fuck, did somebody save that ebay auction :<

Yeah. He should have nailed Bush several times but didn't. He should have nailed him on Supreme Court Justice picks and what type of judges Bush would pick given four more years and how that would dramatically change the balance of the Supreme Court, which is a much larger issue than is getting played in my opinon. He touched it, but didn't explain it or elaborate why this issue is important, which the majority of voters know little about. He should have nailed him on the Senate votes that Bush likes to use against him. Maybe explain why Bush threatened to veto the "87 billion dollars" proposal that Bush claims was all about supporting the troops, if 1.3 billion of additional funding went to provide medical benefits. Or how the 98 or whatever votes to raise taxes that Bush accuses, how a majority of those would actually NOT have increased taxes and others would have only increased the taxes ont he upper class. He should have nailed him for avoiding the question at the end where he was asked to admit a mistake. So many other times myself or some one else in the pub was ready to throw a drink at the TV when Bush got away with saying something we knew could be better defended. But that's the problem with the debates. They are just 90 minutes of attempts to get off the best sound-bite or reactionary facial expression so the media can replay that to the public over and over and out of context and undefended.

I think Kerry wants to run off Bush's popularity too much. Like when you hang around the cool guys in hopes that people will see you the same way. it's the same thing Gore did, hoping that he can be close enough to Bush that people will say "well, he's a lot like Bush and I like that...but he seems smarter so I'll vote for him." It's a bad strategy but it's the way he ran too much of his campaign and until these debates has seemed to me to be unable to tell the public, and most importantly his base, why he is diametrically opposed to Bush.

One more to go. I really think Kerry needs another landslide victory in this one like he had in the first, where he opened the door and caught Bush off guard, in order to pull it off.

William Saleton, from Slate and a big Kerry fan, says Kerry blew it. I agree.

I keep getting in trouble for weighting these debates to favor Bush/ Cheney, but the way I see it, Kerry/ Edwards has to do much more than appear to be a little bit better than the incumbents. They will have to destroy Bush in order to prevail in this election. Even though I've said this was going to go to Bush months ago, I still believe Bush could be beaten. Not by John Kerry's CAMPAIGN. John Kerry as a candidate probably could've pulled it off, but his campaign has consistently done the exact wrong thing at nearly every turn.

These debates are just more of the same for Kerry. Yes, he's clearly better at saying stuff than Bush. It's the stuff he's saying that's failing him. To put the finest point possible on it, I'd wager that Hillary would win this election handily had she ran. I bet she knows this and is kicking herself. America is this{ }close to handing over the WOT to Kerry, the anti-war activist, and Edwards, the pretty noob. With a properly run campaign, a hot-fudge sundae with a margarita as a running mate could beat Bush.

You think I'm exaggerating, but imagine the last question of the debate without Kerry...

"Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it."

"...the big question about whether we should have removed somebody in Iraq, I'll stand by those decisions, because I think they're right," Bush says. "On the tax cut, it's a big decision. I did the right decision..."

Eventually, Bush sits down without admitting one damn mistake. Charlie Gibson turns to the opposition candidate, a hot-fudge sundae that's about half melted now from the harsh lighting. Taking a minute to compose his thoughts, the hot-fudge sundae squints at Bush incredulously. The look on the hot-fudge sundae's face says it all: "You CAN'T admit you did anything wrong!"

The view goes split screen. On the left, is Bush, looking less and less self-satisfied and smug by the second as the hot-fudge sundae leaves Bush's amazing self-inflicted injury to hang there, answered with nothing more than a hard, knowing glare. Bush begins to sweat. The hot-fudge sundae casually drips a little melted whipped cream on the cushion...

Bush looks down, suddenly realizing what he's done. He places his head in his hands. Charlie Gibson shakes his head slowly. "Ladies and Gentlemen," he says softly, "It seems the challenger has no response... has no need to offer any response, as the president's words are more damning than anything anyone could say in rebuttal... it seems appropriate now to call this debate over, and to thank you all for watching and participating in what has been an inarguably historic moment in American politics..."

They should use Haliburton more. Use social class. Accuse Cheney and his peers of blood profit.

[quote="conus"]You do realize that the Old Left is all but dead, right?

What does that mean? And what does it have to do with the Vice President of the United States being a war profiteer? I do understand that Eugene Debs is dead, but doesn't change the facts. Isaac Newton is dead too, but the laws of gravity still apply.

That's not necessarily true... The OLD left is alive and well. They're called Neo-Conservatives. Clinton & Compassionate Conservativism has pretty much ripped the guts out of what was left of the Democratic Party, which was the 60's hangers on to the unrealistic idea that government programs solve problems efficiently. What was left of the dignity of the idealistic party is now decorated with a heaping pile of shit, courtesy of John Kerry's campaign for POTUS in which he's run as a Republican.

I think the two parties have, in many ways, switched places on the left-right scale, at least temporarily. I don't see us being too far away from something similar to the UK's three-party, Labour dominated system. 4 more years of Bush will cause a split in the Republican party, and the Dems, taking a cue from Kerry's defeat and the likely loss of even more power in the Legislative as well as Judicial branches, will swing back left and take a more activist (and HONEST) stance.

This may be wishful thinking, but I predict a nice little boost to the LP ranks from the soon to be completely disenfranchised fiscally conservative right, and a re-formed DNC that actually supports it's Screamin' Deans, Kachooniks and Darth Naders.