Debates III: The Final Showdown

I caught the final debate last night. I thought Bush held himself much better this time around... substantively it still made bile rise into my mouth... but stylistically he seemed less stupid, unprepared, and unconnected.

Here are my questions and observations:
- Is Bob Scheiffer (the moderator) the picture of the "grandfather of America"? Every time he asked a question, I kept picturing him smoking a pipe in a cardigan sweater.
- What was that crud in the corner of Bush's mouth? - I might have been the only one to notice it, but it looked like he had just eaten a sandwich with mayo. I could just picture Karl Rove freaking out backstage screaming "Wipe your damn mouth puppet!"
- What is Bush's obsession with sending people to community college? - he mentioned it a lot. If I just lost my high paying IT job to some guy in Bombay who was willing to do it for $0.96 per day, I don't community college is the answer.
- Did anyone else catch Bush giving an insult to CBS news... which the moderator was from? Don't bite the hand that feeds you the questions.
- What was Bush so happy about? He kept smiling the whole time... and not an inviting smile, but a creepy "Hey kids, I've got some candy in my car" smile.
- How can either candidate get away will such bald faced lies? - Bush mentioned at least twice Kerry's "global test" which is complete bulls**t. Kerry never said he would use a global test... just the opposite in fact. Kerry only mentioned that passing the scrutiny of world leaders is important when you want to build a coalition. Seems like a good point to me... seems like it would be hard to get anyone but Poland¹ on board when what you are doing makes the other countries of the world go "Whoa! I can't believe that freak is trying to pull THIS off!"
And Kerry has said over, and over, and over that the country has lost 1.6 million jobs. Really, it's only private sector jobs that are down by 1.6 million, but if you include government jobs, we're only down about 850,000² (according to FactCheck.org).

On this last point, I'm glad Kerry didn't focus as much the 1.6 million number, and focused more on the fact that although we have been gaining jobs in the past half year or so, the jobs we are gaining are worse then the ones we are losing. We're losing well paying manufacturing jobs and IT jobs, and we're gaining positions at the Sizzler.

---

¹Sorry, I couldn't resist one last Poland joke.
²Wouldn't that mean there are 750,000 more government jobs now than when Bush took office. I thought Bush was for smaller and cheaper government... No? that was all BS? I guess Bush's record doesn't match his rhetoric.