Second debate

[avram]

Saw the second debate last night at feiran’s and trinityvixen’s debate party. Rowdiness! Drunkenness! Dancing! Partisan shrillness! Use of the Internets!

Both the cellphone and the gMail account are turning out useful. Who knew? Now if only my phone would stop flirting with mnemex’s Sidekick.

I thought Kerry cleaned Bush’s clock. Every time the camera pointed at Kerry for a reaction shot, he looked confident. Every time it pointed at Bush, he looked worried, or distracted, or insane. And it can’t help Bush to have shouted at the moderator. That may play well with his base, but it probably turned off the undecideds.

Oh, and that claim Bush made about having lowered non-defense discretionary spending? It’s total bullshit.

Comments

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Several online bloggers and other pundits are suspicioning that last night's performance was particularly bad for Bush's standing with women. Not only did the shouting and hectoring make Bush come off sounding like a bully, but his brushing aside of women's very lives in answering the abortion question is not going to sit well, especially after Kerry's direct and moderate follow-up that he's not going to make a pregnant 17-year-old who's been raped by her father notify that father about her abortion.

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

Oh, and that claim Bush made about having lowered non-defense discretionary spending? It's total bullshit.

Note: He referred to "non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending." I have no idea what the fuck is in this category (foreign aid?), so it may be technically true while outrageously misleading and thus, still bullshit. The wingers will make an issue of it, though.

[redaxe.livejournal.com]

That would be the aid to foreign family-planning clinics, of course. They weren't supporting the ones that so much as mentioned abortion (even if the funding for its support came from elsewhere); I seem to recall that there was a push to do the same for the ones that distributed or discussed condoms, too. (After all, that would encourage sex and discourage abstinence.) I can't find the reference for it now, though, so I could be conflating this with some other idiocy propounded by the Administration.