"It's Hard Work!" ~President George W. Bush

Well, the first debate is over and the janitors are probably sweeping the floor right now. What did I hear? Apparently George W. Bush wants us all to know what a difficult job it is being President of the United States of America. I started counting the number of times he said it and then lost interest because he said it so many times.

I agree, I think it is a hard job and I think we should give poor George a nice long rest. How about we schedule it to start in January 2005? After all, speech therapy every day to try and learn how to properly pronounce N-U-C-L-E-A-R is exhausting. Not to mention having to remember all the talking points (I swear, if he would have talked about Kerry's "mixed messages" one more time, I might have hurled the TV out the window).

One of the things I noticed was that Bush didn't say anything. He didn't offer any clear plan for cleaning up the MessOPotamia (thanks Jon!). In fact, he isn't even able to admit to any of the obvious mistakes that were made in this whole mess. He just kept rambling on about how Kerry had voted for the war and now he was changing his mind about it. Or how could Kerry possibly lead the war on terror if he thinks the war on Iraq is the "wrong war at the wrong time." "How do you think that makes the troops feel," he asked (multiple times I might add).

Well, George, maybe it makes them feel like someone is finally paying attention? Like someone might have realized that invading Iraq in the way we did was a "colossal mistake." Especially since Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks on the US. And now we have a complete cluster fuck because we've destabilized the whole area so badly that no one seems to be able to get a handle on it. More soldiers are dying every month, more insurgents are pouring into Iraq, more violence in general is taking place. It's a complete fucking disaster. Yet the President stands there an smiles as if everything is just fine and it's all a raging success because we caught Saddam Hussein.

And where is Osama bin Laden. He's like the fucking "Where's Waldo" of terrorism. I also noticed that the President didn't say a damn word in response to Kerry's assertion that the oil buildings were the only buildings being guarded at the beginning (not the chemical plants). Nor did he respond to the Halliburton comment. Silence is always very telling.

I think my favorite moment was when Kerry reminded everyone of the President saying in one of his responses that the war in Iraq was in response to their attack on the US; when in actuality, Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. And also when Kerry brought up exactly what Papa Bush had said years ago about not going into Baghdad. It was an excellent point, one I'm hoping Democratic commentators bring up often.

In general, Bush seemed mostly on the defensive. He never seemed to say anything about what his plan was for anything. He kept throwing out those talking points and that was about all he said. BTW, North Korea is our next utter disaster. Bush blew it by blowing them off and now we may be fucked. I do hope I'm wrong.

We will never truly resolve this global situation (and it IS a GLOBAL situation) without a lot of help from our friends - we cannot possibly do it alone. One of the dangers of being a bully is that if the people you've been bullying ever realize they're not as powerless as they think they are, you're screwed. Because you can't fight everyone at once, no matter how big you are. So here we are, the biggest bully on the block and we're nearly spent just trying to manage the quagmire in Iraq. We are clearly vulnerable and since we've been such bullying assholes, there are several people in line to shove a little humility down our throat. We need to increase our street cred or it will be our undoing. I don't believe the countries of the world will ever accept or believe George W. Bush and as long as he is President, we will be generally on our own (no disrespect to the good people of Palau but they're not exactly in our league when it comes to miltary force).

Of course a Bush supporter probably thinks Bush did an excellent job. That's the way of things I guess. I wonder what people who were truly undecided got out of the debate. They may be the only ones able to be truly objective because they haven't bought the line on either side. In truth, those are the people who will decide this election. I think John Kerry helped himself tonight. I do hope I'm right about that.