Lively Debate

James Robertson blogs about Enterprise and Farscape: The PeaceKeeper Wars.

The Peace Keeper wars does seem to tie up the FarScape series. I've just finished Tivoing the whole series. I can now say i've seen them all. I really enjoyed the show as a whole. I think that it had outstanding writing, characterization, and creativity. I thought the capping mini-serious was a little too fast and tried to cover too much ground. Its like they took their outline for an entire season and condensed it into 4 episodes. I think it would have been an incredible season. Some things that they didn't quite pull off in the mini-series (Rigel's temporary pregnancy) would have worked in a more extended format.

I watched the first few episodes of Enterprise, but that series has just never caught my attention. I have always been a trek fan, but the show is just boring. They need to bring in a new creative team. The series jumped the shark to corporate franchise dull.

I've also been Tivoing the Angel series. I am a huge Buffy fan. However, last nights episode stunk.

Well, I went to the bar last night and watched part of the baseball game, but through the magic of the PVR, I watched the debate this morning and here are my comments. As before, I have seen no third party analysis.

One thing that I noticed was that Kerry's standby topic, the one he used when he wanted to avoid a question or to use up time was health care. Bush's standby topic was education.

I think Bush did poorly addressing the issues of job loss and minimum wage. He mostly avoided them by going to his standby education answer. I think Kerry scored some points here, although I really dislike the idea of a manufacturing jobs tax credit. The last thing we need is another industry specific government subsidy.

I think Bush did a really good job of answering the question about why health care costs are so high: lack of accountability, lawsuits, and inefficiency. Kerry had a couple good points on the cost side too, namely drug re-importation and more preventive medicine.

Both candidates left one out. We are simply buying more health care. For example, if you got AIDS 20 years ago, you just died quickly. Now, you can live much longer, but with expensive treatment. There is more health care available to buy and we are eager purchasers.

The problems with healthcare costs need to be solved my reducing the costs, not simply re-distributing them.

One thing I noticed about Kerry is that he has a political poker tell. Whenever he disagrees with someone, instead of saying that, he says "I respect your views." Maybe I am simply stating the obvious. I've been accused of that before. A good example was in the religion question where Kerry says "I respect everything that the president just said." What he really means is "I disagree with everything the president just said." He uses that phrasing on the abortion issue, too.

Bush introduced the gay marriage amendment. I'm not sure, but I think this may be a politically better position for Bush. However, I do not think that the Constitution is the appropriate place to resolve this issue.

The debate was supposed to be about domestic affairs, but Bush had the opportunity to bring up Kerry's terrorism nuisance comments. Bush also brought up the fact that Kerry voted against Gulf War I, raising the question of just how many allies did Kerry think was necessary to go to war. I thought it was a good point and one that hadn't occurred to me before. Bush also tried to label Kerry's iraq policy as retreat and defeat. I think we will hear more of this phrase for the rest of the election.

One thing I noticed over the three debates is that Kerry seemed very well prepared for all three, while Bush did not seem prepared for the first one. I think I can understand why. Kerry's position of Iraq really was unclear and inconsistent. To Kerry's credit, he seemed to be able to forge a consistent message about Iraq about a week before the first debate. I don't think the Bush campaign was prepared for the possibility that Kerry might do that. The first debate was characterized by Bush's failure to rebut Kerry's new iraq message. He spent the next two debates in some way catching up for this original failure.

Overall, it was a great series of debates about real issues. I have to say that I think this election has been one of the more important with more real difference in opinion than any of the others that I have voted in.

Well, I watched the debate again tonight. Unfortunately, I missed the VP debate because I forgot to record it.

I thought this was a good debate with real discussion over the issues.

The first part about Iraq was a little more refined than the first debate. Kerry avoided talking about his summit idea. Bush had to bring it up himself. If you strip away the hindsight and recriminations and look at plans for the future, Kerry's plan for iraq seems to reduce to get more allies. However, he doesn't say who these allies would be and what they would do and why they would join him and not Bush. I think the Iraq point goes to Bush. It is good for Kerry that Iraq will be off limits in the last debate.

Kerry's best moment was the Canadian Drug reimportation issue. Its a good idea, Bush should have done it like he said he would.

I think Bush also has a point with medical malpractice and the real cost being the practice of defensive medicine. I've blogged about tort reform before.

Kerry's response on the abortion question was terrible and meandering.

During the Patriot Act question, Bush was almost going to quote the constitution and then stopped himself. I think if he hadn't that would probably been the quote of the day tomorrow.

I think this format was a little better for Bush. He was able to show a little personal warmth and make a couple of jokes.

I was wrong about the last debate, apparently, but I think Bush came out a little bit ahead in this one. As before, These are my impressions before I have seen any third party commentary.