Is the bracelet thing a problem? It didn’t sound problematic to me but honest. Giving a bracelet is not uncommon. I didn’t find it funny. If anything it seemed almost to me as if Obama was calling out McCain on his obvious showmanship by telling a pointless tear wrenching story rather than sticking to the significant issues at hand. Those kinds of silly stories are what ruin debates honestly. I wish both candidates had left their damn bracelets at home.

Both candidates bickered a lot, that’s absolutely true. This is largely because both candidates lied and misrepresented the truth as you can see from any fact checking website. From what I could tell though McCain was looser with the facts then again that might just be my bias speaking since I’m more familiar with the truth of positions Obama has held whereas I haven’t studied McCain as much. If I am correct though, that would explain why Obama seemed to be more argumentative. He definitely seemed to want to correct every little thing McCain said. I think that’s a good thing though. I’d rather the debates were setup though in such a way that a neutral entity could correct the candidates on their facts in real time and challenge them. That’d make a much more interesting debate.

The name thing the quote was: “Tom — or John mentioned me being wildly liberal.
Mostly that’s just me opposing George Bush’s wrong headed policies
since I’ve been in Congress but I think it is that it is also
important to recognize I work with Tom Coburn, the most conservative,”

This is a fairly standard debating mistake. His mind started to formulate the thought about Tom Coburn and he accidentally said “Tom” first. A simple slip of the tongue that anyone could have done and that anyone who has followed debates has seen dozens of times. It also happens in interviews fairly frequently. It doesn’t mean anything except that Obama is not as experienced at debating as McCain yet. Then again that’s hardly surprising given their difference in ages. It’s certainly NOT an attempt at slander.

I don’t know about the Pat incident. It wasn’t in the transcript of this debate so I assume you are referring to another incident in the news that I must have missed.

McCain outright lied on two of his strongest points during the debate. One was his assertion of earmarks going out of control saying that they tripled. Here’s factcheck.org: “special appropriation “earmarks.” He said they had “tripled in the last five years,” when in fact they have decreased sharply.”

The other he repeated over and over again as he asserted that Obama’s plan for immediate withdraw was hated by the generals and would lead to disaster and all that nonsense. But of course Obama never has had a plan ofr immediate withdraw and none of the generals have asserted anything of the kind with regards to *Obama’s* plan. However, they do say that immediate withdraw would be a disaster. No surprise since they are military people and they are talking about their pet projects. If Obama HAD supported immediate withdraw I would be much more enthusiastic about voting for him actually. But alas since he doesn’t I think he’s just the best of two mediocre options.

That said both candidates acquitted themselves well even though the debate format was stupid and silly and I’d be far more confident having either of them as president than the nightmare presidency we are currently living through. Their vice presidential candidates however are another matter altogether. I don’t like either of them AT ALL which is scary since if comedic programs and rumors are to be believed the chances of McCain dying in office or Obama being assassinated are pretty damned high.