Order of Hasson

Even though I revile him, I thought Kerry turned in a great performance in the debate. He admittedly seemed presidential even when he was talking out of his ass.

The nugget that went without comment from Bush:
Kerry said North Korea -has- 4 to 7 nuclear weapons. Not the potential. Has.
When he bothers to show up for work, he does sit on the Senate Intelligence committee so he may know for sure.

If true, fuck.

I don't know that I agree with Kerry's foreign policies. Unfortunately I do not agree with a lot of Bush's policies, but nevertheless I do not see myself voting for Kerry under any circumstances...I will decide for sure after the next debate.

Really, why does it matter if North Korea has 1 nuke or 50 nukes? Its a problem either way, but what really can we do about it? We need to stop trying to push diplomacy on the rest of the world. I do agree with the prevention of nuclear proliferation, but I do not want to do something that will build agression with another country that has nukes. How can we expect to convince the rest of the world to not having nukes when we have them ourselves? It's not our job to solely police the globe...all that does is build american hate.

I'm not going to be able to watch the next two debates unless someone tells that idiot the word isnt pronounced nukeyoular.

Kerry wins, even if you thought Bush won the debate. An hour of Kerry getting to talk about real issues and not get his message sidetracked by swiftboats. The precieous "undecieded" got to see a presidential, commanding Kerry talking about real issues. The exchanges got pretty brutal but I think both of them did a good job avoiding alot of the crap the media has focused on lately, and there where surprisingly few cheap shots.

I thought Bush was wholly unprepared. I know he has a real job to do while Kerry can just skip out on his votes but damnit. Kerry won because Bush let him get away with everything.

When Kerry says Bush spent NO money on police officers and fireman (our "first line of defense") but billions training Iraqi police, Bush should have hammered home that we want to take the war over there not fight it here. He briefly mentioned "we have to be right 100% of the time and they only have to be right once" but he really needed to harp on this to bolster opinion of his foreign policy. I would have much rather heard him repeat that over and over again than Kerry's flip-flopping being unsuitable for Commander-in-Chief.

When Kerry said that Osama was in Afghanistan but Bush has the war in Iraq which is "nowhere near the center of the war on terror", Bush didn't even have a response. I can understand not being prepared for blindsides like "his father never entered baghdad because he said there was no exit strategy", but other stuff Bush should have had canned responses for.

Overall, Bush at least managed not to self-destruct. There were no really good sound bites to play that would kill him (a la Dean: "Graaaaaaaggghh!!") and his statements on paper were decent. I just thought that foreign policy was his chance to stick it to Kerry. Kerry had a lot of his past to answer for and even his current stances on the war in Iraq.

Bush's notes he left on the podium.