I don't have the answers yet, but I have learned enough to be dangerous, and ask better questions..

I couldn't tell, really.

I felt like Kerry definitely fired off a couple of zingers that hit the mark, but I still felt like he held back when he should have really let the arrows fly. Bush opened a four-laned highway (as my good friend Jim Schweizer put it) on the issue of the environment that begged to be driven with the throttle set to Screaming Jesus Speed. This president has done the worst job on the environment ever. I lived in Texas for the duration of his governorship, and that state could throw up an entire shopping center inside one afternoon. Environmental protection? What environmental protection? How can you have an energy policy dictated by energy companies, shut out the environmentalists, and then insist with a straight face that you care about the environment?

Well you probably do care...about exploiting it, that is.

And Kerry chose to avoid jumping on any of this, but rather backtracked to an earlier attack Bush made so he could defend himself.

And the W? Well, he is still not terribly articulate, but he is passionate, and that is going to appeal to some folks who are not relying on their intellects to make this decision. My mom loves him because she sees him as a hero. Rhetoric and intellectual discussions on facts are not what moves her. Loyalty, passion, and perceived heroism are her hot buttons. And her vote weighs as much as mine, in the end.

I felt Bush's focus on Kerry's perceived flip-flopping was a diversionary tactic to throw your attention off what I believe is terribly pertinent here: the war on terrorism is a war for oil shrink-wrapped in a cloud of fear to assure its passage and continuance. By focusing on terror, and even naming it this way, in its negative form, Bush keeps it in the public's mind as The Huge Possibility of Imminent Attack At Any Moment. But Kerry is right - the real task is builing coalitions that will hold so as not to create more terrorist breeding grounds in the lands of our supposed allies.

I was impressed with Kerry's command of an array of facts, particularly those regarding Missouri. He apparently knows how to hone in when it counts. It's clear the man can assess the relevant details of a situation, and address them. So far so good. It's also clear that he understands a thing or two about building coalitions. I think Bush has done the US a terrible disservice in taking an attitude of "You're with me now, or you're not, and if not, to Hell with ya'". He's hot-headed when it comes to his agenda, and if you don't agree, he throws you to the side like yesterday's trash. But then when he needs the world community to come in and clean up the messes we've left in Iraq and Afghanistan, and they say no, then he's created his own reality, hasn't he? You don't piss on your "friends" and then come back to them and say, look now, how about helping me clean up this mess I've made?

I LOVE the focus on the deficit. Finally at last, here are the real issues coming forward for examination, and it's stuff no one wants you to look at with a critical eye because doing so will make John Q Public quite angry. The stripping of environmental protections, the huge deficit run up on a war that is proving more fatuous by the second, the mandated yet unfunded No Child Left Behind, the ridiculous state of healthcare in what is supposed to be the most advanced country in the world, the sheer silliness of our neighbor country to the north being able to successfully cap prices on US-produced drugs and our resistance to doing the same so drug companies can make bigger profits - THESE are the issues that need to get out there.

Neither man has a stellar record on any of these issues, and therein lies the crux, doesn't it? That's why the focus on flip-flopping. The other stuff is too scary to look at in detail.

Last, they closed with abortion, tip-toeing up to it carefully under the guise of the stem cell research hopes, but finally getting into it. This issue annoys me more than any other. First of all, it's really only relevant to women of child-bearing age, in the end. Second, the real issue is why, with 8 kajillion ways to prevent pregnancy, do we still have abortion in abundance? What is going on in the area of the American psyche dealing with sexuality that keeps this condition prevalent? You can say parents, and you can say lax morals, but at the end of the day, a lot of excessive abortion is irresponsible sexuality, and if we are so advanced and enlightened that we think we need to lead the free world, why can't we be so on this subject as well?

Well, there's one more debate to go, and then an election. What to do, what to do? I know I can't vote for W. But gosh, is Kerry so much the better?

And the country is split in two....no bloody wonder.