ah. . super . .. we're talking about the nuances of the debate here.

Well ya. Bush coulda hammered Kerry too. Lots of missed opportunities there for Bush too.

The thing is, the smart money is on the guy who can pull-off "Presidential" (not Prom-King Master-debater)

This is funny:) I guess it's nice to see you guys outta the dumps for a while, but this was NOT earth moving. In fact I guarantee some VERY nice commercials for Bush will come out of this. Kerry won the debate on "points" from an academic scoring standpoint, given. However, a small portion of the public are undecided and I doubt they were holding mod cards and a sharpie. Wait till the next few days polls come out and you'll see what really happened.

Just to add, Bush improved his lead in Vegas today vs yesterday. It's a crazy world huh.

Uh, right you are, Island. Yep, Bush clearly out-messaged Kerry. Just about every last viewer seems to have seen the same debate, and gotten the same impression. Except Fox News of course, and some of its viewers.;)

Points?
Academic scoring standpoint????

Whaaa?
Huhh?
Did we watch the same debate?

He looked like a President.
He spoke like a President.
And he danced logical circles around Shrub

Like I said, enjoy the moment. You're not looking at this from the correct vantage point. Kerry made you(extreme left) happy last night. In fact many a highfive took place in dope-smoke clouded studio apartments throught the country. Problem is that's not whom these guys were after. Think about it.

you do realize that they now have grounds to call you unreasonable. ;)

In my opinion the two biggest hits with the undecidedes were as follows.

Pro Kerry- Didn't look like a tool, actually sounded good and appeared to have some focus. This is a good step forward for Kerry.

Pro Bush- Showed that Kerry is being negative in the face of our troops and allies. I.E. "I don't know how you can tell our troops they are in the wrong war at the arong place at the wrong time and yet exect to lead them." This kind of thing really hits home with people.

Well.....he DID dance!

Ya gotta be *****tin me, right?

LEHRER: We'll come back to Iraq in a moment. But I want to come back to where I began, on homeland security. This is a two-minute new question, Senator Kerry.
As president, what would you do, specifically, in addition to or differently to increase the homeland security of the United States than what President Bush is doing?

KERRY: Jim, let me tell you exactly what I'll do. And there are a long list of thing. First of all, what kind of mixed message does it send when you have $500 million going over to Iraq to put police officers in the streets of Iraq, and the president is cutting the COPS program in America?
What kind of message does it send to be sending money to open firehouses in Iraq, but we're shutting firehouses who are the first- responders here in America.
The president hasn't put one nickel, not one nickel into the effort to fix some of our tunnels and bridges and most exposed subway systems. That's why they had to close down the subway in New York when the Republican Convention was there. We hadn't done the work that ought to be done.
The president -- 95 percent of the containers that come into the ports, right here in Florida, are not inspected. Civilians get onto aircraft, and their luggage is X-rayed, but the cargo hold is not X- rayed.
Does that make you feel safer in America?
This president thought it was more important to give the wealthiest people in America a tax cut rather than invest in homeland security. Those aren't my values. I believe in protecting America first.
And long before President Bush and I get a tax cut -- and that's who gets it -- long before we do, I'm going to invest in homeland security and I'm going to make sure we're not cutting COPS programs in America and we're fully staffed in our firehouses and that we protect the nuclear and chemical plants.
The president also unfortunately gave in to the chemical industry, which didn't want to do some of the things necessary to strengthen our chemical plant exposure.
And there's an enormous undone job to protect the loose nuclear materials in the world that are able to get to terrorists. That's a whole other subject, but I see we still have a little bit more time.
Let me just quickly say, at the current pace, the president will not secure the loose material in the Soviet Union -- former Soviet Union for 13 years. I'm going to do it in four years. And we're going to keep it out of the hands of terrorists.

Help me out, will you? Show me where the "specifics" are again.

Randy

i am glad high school debate team coaches are not picking our president. but it would be nice for W. to work at this and improve his performance for next time. as i posted in another thread, good thing cheney is debating next week. watch him sort out bush's miscommunications, stomp on kerry and ignore edwards.

I think the specifics are as follows..

1) Money for COPS program
2) Stop closing firehouse in America
3) Fund crumbling infrastructure
4) Increase the amount of ship container and airliner cargos x-rays and searches
5) Invest the wealthy mans tax cut in homeland security
6) Better protect nuclear and chemical plants
7) Secure loose nuclear materials around the world

Sure he doesn't specifically say "how" he's going approach each initiative, but you only got a minute or two to answer the question.

You could boil Bush's idea's down to renewing the patriot act and dropping bombs. But hey, we know what he believes - and it's scary.

I think the one substantive issue Kerry espouses is that of securing the former Soviets nuclear arsenal. It's amazing that of all the weapons produced during the cold war era, that none have fallen into the hands of some terrorist despot, yet. This as he has stated has been an active and paramont issue for him and I for one applaud him for that. But as Bush said, this issue is part of the overall anti terrorist package.

As far as funding the crumbling domestic infrastructure, I think this is a result of the overall economic downturn that Bush inherited combined with the economic fallout of 9/11. Since 9/11 businesses have felt the pinch in generation revenues and thereby erroding the tax base that supports government infrastructures. I know that post 9/11 my own small business saw a marked and dramatic decrease in revenue. The last thing I can afford is more taxes to support an increased infrastructure. To set up a defensive infrastructure, such as increased policing of our harbors and borders, look at say, Long Beach Harbor and the flow of goods and the enormity of the task to comb through every vessle. The cost would be taken up by both the tax payer and the prices of these commodities would skyrocket. Secondly, given the volume of goods and the expanse of our borders I think this would be physically impossible. By contrast the present offensive plan would seem like a bargain.

To say that Bushes solution is dropping bombs is grossly over simplifying. Ironically, I believe the reason he's in this present quandary is because he hadn't decisively dealt with the likes of Sadre and the insurgents. Instead of militarily solving the problem of dealing with this rat, he did what all the world and liberals want him to do, he negotiated. Everytime we had this guy cornered he outsmarted us only to return and keep the cause of the insurgency alive. Make no mistake, they are now fighting and indiscriminantly killing to influence the out come of our election, only to make our president sqirm and be backed into a corner in the debate. Kerry is shrewd enough to grasp this opportunity.

Doesn't it make a little more sense that that nuclear proliferation is the most important issue we still have.

Think about it, a terrorist with some C-4 can take out a building, or a stadium, or a train station.

A TERRORIST WITH A NUCLEAR DEVICE CAN TAKE OUT A STATE!!!

The terrorists’ goal is to make Bush feel uneasy in a debate, causing him to lose the election???

Bizarre logic. Is this a guarantee that after November 2nd attacks, casualties and kidnappings in Iraq will cease, or drop dramatically??? If their motivation is to influence the election, then this would be the case no matter who wins.

Maybe so, Jason. But a dead terrorist buried in the sand over in Iraq, far, far away from here isn't even thinking about getting his hands on nuke-yoo-ler weapons. (Not with all those virgins running around. ;) )

And taking the fight to their backyard is a pretty good strategy, if you ask me.

Kerry alluded to Alawi's statement about "terrorists rushing over the border into Iraq". I think that's awesome for us. Saves us the hassle of having to hunt them down over here.

Randy

Bush clrearly won the first half hour. He was scoring early and often. Then Kerry came on strong in the next hour and Bush seemed to tire and lose focus Then W rallied and salvaged something with his closing statement.

Overall, Kerry kept himself in the election. The Dems have to be happy about last night and the GOP disappointed, because Kerry was teed up for W to end it right there.

I think W will do very well on the domestic issues. He's been answering foriegn policy questions for three years now and is tired of saying the same thing over and over. I like his chances in the domestic debates.

Kerry is worthless.

Good point, but isn't a terrorists biggest asset the ability to strike fear? Fear divides individuals. The use of a nuclear device would replace fear with rage. No one could possible support the terrorist cause after the use of nuclear weapons. IF a nuke took out an American city, the gloves would be off.
just another way to seeing things.
jurgen

Bizzare logic? Look what happened with Spains' election. Following the bombings of the train the conservative party was ousted in favor of the socialists whose platform included pulling their troops from Iraq, which they did. No, their objective is not to make Bush perform bad in the debate, that's icing on the cake, their objective is to make Bush's war look futile.