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2004 Presidential Debates Analysis – Debate 1 – short version

I thought it might be handy to go through the debates, carefully listen to what each question was, and make note of whether each candidate responded at all to the question and in the event that they responded to the question, what they said. I have just spent over three hours on the first debate alone, so don’t expect the other three to come soon. I’ve got another ….. what, 18 days until the election? Fine. So here you have it. The relevant parts of the questions (ie: the questions themselves) and the most relevant parts of the answers (and in cases where nothing they said was in response to the question being asked, notation thereof).

Pretty straightforward. I basically assumed you’ve seen or heard the debates here. If you haven’t, you should go to audible.com or iTunes and download the debates for FREE. Double-check that I understood and conveyed the intentions of the messages of the candidates if you like (or if you suspect I have distorted) by getting the actual debate recording and comparing their actual words to what I wrote down. If you want to argue with my analysis, I will expect a time notation in the relevant audio file so we can all go see what was actually said.

I have not tried to make any notation as to whether either candidate’s statements are true or false, just to repeat what they said. If they said some lies and I repeated them here, feel free to comment – though I fully expect you to link to trustable sources that agree with you if you do.

I’ve made sure that every time either candidate was given the opportunity to respond, their name appears here on a separate line. This means that you’ll see a lot of “NO RELEVANT RESPONSE”, as their extended discussions often were not relevant to the question being asked. I am also posting a much longer version of this that includes some less-relevant but still somewhat-relevant responses. It is less clear, I think, but it’s there if you’re interested. So, here we go:

Presidential Debate #1, 9/30/2004

Question 1: Do you [Senator Kerry] believe you could do a better job than President Bush in preventing another terrorist attack on the United states?

KERRY: Yes I do.
BUSH: NO RELEVANT RESPONSE

Question 2: Do you believe the election of Senator Kerry on November 2nd would increase the chances of the US being hit by another 9/11-type terrorist attack?

BUSH: NO RELEVANT RESPONSE
KERRY: NO RELEVANT RESPONSE

Question 3: What colossal misjudgments, in your opinion, has President Bush made in these areas?

KERRY: He said to America that he would build a true alliance, exhaust UN remedies, and go to war as a last resort, but did not do those things. He moved the focus of the war on terror away from Afghanistan and onto Iraq.
BUSH: NO RELEVANT RESPONSE

Question 4: What about Senator Kerry

Too tired to post

I’m so tired.

I started writing a long-ish post while I was at work, today. Something real low, real depressing. I thought I’d emailed it to myself at home so I could keep working on it tonight and post it.

But it isn’t here.

And I’m too tired to write a long post from scratch now.

So.

I suppose this is all you get for now, eh?

You should play Second Life.

I have been playing a lot of Second Life lately. I recommend it. It’s free for 7 days, so you can see if you’ll like it before you spend any money. You can get a basic membership which costs $9.95 for life. All you have to do to maintain it is to log in at least once a month. I have a Premium membership, which gives me a few more options, but I played basic for a while and there isn’t much you can’t do.

If you do decide to try it out, I only ask two things; one: use me as your referrer, I’m ‘Your Sunshine’ in SecondLife, and two, find me and say hi.

Oh, and it probably wouldn’t hurt to ask me about how Linden Labs (the company who makes/runs SL) will pay you to play SL, effectively paying you more the more you play. I’ll explain it in-game, but here’s a glimpse of how some people are doing it:

If you are a property owner (requires a Premium account), the amount of time people spend on your land is measured and called ‘dwell’ – the people with the most dwell (as measured in a couple of different ways) get paid actual cash money. (As opposed to many ways they pay you in-game currency, Linden bucks or L$, which is easily exchanged for cash.) So if you build a dance club and get people to come dance by having contests or theme nights or just good music, you get paid for hanging out online in a virtual world with your friends and new friends.

Yay!

Patented under one or more of the following US patents

I don’t think I’ll be doing new ME24s.

Supposed to be writing a novel, soon. Maybe I’ll post it as a serial, or … something.

I have a feeling no one will want to read it, though. Not after they start reading it, that is. Some subject matter may not be suitable for human minds. If I write what I have in mind, people will start to say I’ve been influenced by Clive Barker. Not a bad influence, I suppose, even if it isn’t really where the ideas come from.

Supposed to be working on screenplays, too. Maybe I will. Productionable ideas are hard for me to develop, it seems.

This, by the way, is me not posting about what’s really on my mind.