President Bush & Senator Kerry in St. Louis Town Hall

Watched the town hall meeting last night with Jill on C-Span. They’re replaying it at 10 am Saturday morning and perhaps at other times today.

President Bush answered effectively on issues such as abortion. Kerry does a better job holding forth on issues overall, in my opinion. President Bush has difficulty thinking on his feet and expressing, for instance, what the Constitution says and applying it. I would have the same difficulty, but I’m not runnning for president.

Keith Olberman compares the debate with a boxing match, and you get a good “blow-by-blow” of details and behind the scenes fact-checking from this format on his blog style piece.

Here’s an example:

The Scorer’s Table, having taken two hours to let the Blogosphere complete its due diligence (and to permit the scorer to retreat to a corner of the room, don cold compresses, and moan quietly), can now quote the truth from “Factcheck.Org”: “President Bush himself would have qualified as a ‘small business owner’ under the Republican definition, based on his 2001 federal income tax returns. He reported $84 of business income from his part ownership of a timber-growing enterprise.” Brooks Jackson’s marvelous site noted that the timber interest was listed under “royalties” in his 2002 and 2003 returns, indicating The Texas Thunderbolt still has an interest in said concern.

The point awarded to Mr. Bush in the thirteenth round is hereby withdrawn and awarded to Mr. Kerry, for the latter’s enterprising hoisting of his opponent on said opponent’s own petard.

Mr. Bush is also penalized three points for a truth foul.
Mr. Bush is further penalized two points for getting snarky while in the act of being factually incorrect.

Gotta go. A Jehovah’s Witness named Theta Word is coming by to have a “Bible Discussion.” This type of discussion is new for me in that I approach them differently than ever before. I’m not interested in “proving her wrong” as much as engaging her with Christ living in me and praying that by the Spirit she might understand the witness of Scripture of Jesus as the Son of God and be able to seek the community that is modeled for us in the Trinity: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.