Thoughts on what you saw now that it's over? Fact-checks? Media spin you catch in the analysis? Who won and who lost? If anyone?

I'll share my thoughts here in Comments. Please share yours as they hitcha!

Okay, please join us in COMMENTS for Play-by-Play Open Thread throughout the V.P. Debate tonight! Starting now! Come on in, and share your on-the-fly two cents!

Let's hear from ya!

When I heard the story of Bremer's speech to DePauw University late last night, I realized that we hadn't thought about him, seen him, or heard from him since the day he hightailed it outta Baghdad when "sovereignty" was handed back to the Iraqis.

He's been nowhere to be found. Oddly enough, he wasn't even pulled out of mothballs to appear at the Republican Convention Fear-Fest. He was a likeable character and projected some sense of confidence to the American people. So it was strange that they didn't exploit him the way they exploited Rudy, McCain, Arnold and the others.

Perhaps now we know why. Here's part of the statement he made:

Ah...not a "friendly". Might go all "Dick Clarke" on 'em I suppose the Bushies feared.

And now, as Atrios reports, the Bushies are going all "Dick Clarke" on him! Apparently calling Bremer a liar, claiming that he never asked for more troops.

Atrios set the record straight, with this July 2003 report from Mercury News:

Enough. Enough lying. Enough dissembling. Enough character assassination. Enough saving their own ass, and not giving a damn about America's ass. We can and must do so much better. It's time for them to go.

UPDATE: John Aravosis points out, in regards to this story, that the folks at the Dept. of Defense who are lying now about Paul Bremer, would be from the same Pentagon also currently telling us that no draft will be necessary. Fool me once?

Stop on by during tonight's V.P. Debate! We'll be having another Open Thread where you can toss in your play-by-play two cents as it happens! We had much fun last week during the first Presidential Debate, and tonight should be even nastier --- So please stop on by during the big show. I'll open up the thread about 30 minutes or so prior to show time! See ya then!

"The orders have come down - Be as fair as you possibly can." --- Bill O'Reilly, on tonight's O'Reilly Factor

Apparently the orders did not "come down" far enough. O'Reilly tonight opened his All-Spin All-The-Time Zone this evening on how close the race now is. (I differ with that opinion, but that's fine and not the point of this item.)

He assured his viewers in his "Talking Points" segment that, with the race this tight, it's only going to get still nastier, and thus, he will be there to help viewers to sort out what's really going on in the race. He will help sort out the "spin" of the two candidates by examining their ads to expose who's telling the truth and who isn't.

To help us get started, he then showed two of the latest Video Ads from the campaign. He showed this one for Bush, and immediately followed it with this reponse ad from Kerry.

Here's the voice-over of the Bush ad (read carefully...emphasis added for text that also appears on screen during the spot):

Here's the voice-over from the Kerry ad (emphasis added again for text that also appears on screen as it's read):

Now the Bush ad is demonstrably misleading and/or downright false. The ad referred to this statement that Kerry made during the debate:

And there is not a single incorrect fact, statement or even word in the Kerry ad.

So how did O'Reilly help us "sort out the spin"? He had an entire segment, with an expert who --- surprise! --- agreed with O'Reilly's analysis that Kerry's ad crossed the line because he used the word "lying" in it!

Yes, that's right. Not a single word about the demonstrably misleading and/or false substance in the Bush ad. Not one.

Does it really matter that Fox is so unfair and so unbalanced? Is that news to anyone? Perhaps not. But the fact that they are the number one most watched news channel --- clearly for their pure entertainment value --- and so flagrantly do everything possible to support Bush and while telling tells folks they are "fair and balanced" is simply outrageous.

I'm still waiting for any real conservative (other than our friend and frequent BRAD BLOG commenter Teddy here) to speak up and denounce the appalling and flagrant bias of Fox News. I'm waiting for those same conservative wingnuts who are still bashing Rather and CBS, who actually made a lazy mistake versus out and out partisanship over the airwaves, to speak out against Fox.

Sidenote: Fox News Watch, the weekend show on Fox that claims to "cover the coverage" spent 3 of their 4 segments on various CBS related "controversies". They spent exactly zero segments covering any of this week's many Fox News, um, "digressions". And so it goes.

(If you're new here, read this and this and this and this for an idea of just a few of the outright lies and anti-Kerry bias that Fox News has sold America in just the past few days alone!)

While Rush brewed up a fresh pitcher this morning for his Kool-aid drinkers, predictably turning on the "Liberal" Media because their polls now show a come-back for Kerry in the face of Bush's disastrous performance last week. To swallow that notion, one would need to ignore all the media's previous polls that showed Bush winning, ignore the poll of WaPo --- one of the favorite "Liberal" media whipping boys --- which still shows Bush leading, ignore the past three and a half years of demonstrably pro-Bush work by the entire Mainstream Media, and a whole bunch of Kool-aid to wash it all down. But Rush has nothing else to rally his supporters with for the moment, so every line old becomes new again.

In the wake of it all, those of us who know the real reason why Bush is heading back to Crawford have had some time to ponder it all.

Here's four enlightening items I think you'll enjoy. All of them very powerful. I suggest you look at each of them. Including the last link with one the best pieces I've seen explaining where we are right now and why the truth about George W. Bush is finally making it through the cracks in the armor.

My buddy, Fin of "What-We-Know", has put together a terrific little video that hits the nail right on the head. He gets it. Most of you already do as well. But this puts a lot in perspective. Check out his "Lone Wolf" video. Especially you Rightwingers.

My other buddy, Jesse, over at the DCCC, has put together a terrific video compendium called "Miserable Failure" detailing Bush's gaffes, lies, misleads, or whatever you want to call them from the first debate. Corrections to Bush's, uh, "misstatements" are provided, along with some great Springsteen music to boot. Check it out. Especially you Rightwingers.

A group calling themselves "Real Voices" puts out an extraordinarily emotional indictment of George W. Bush's war. It's called "A Mother's Tears" and features testimony from the mother of an American soldier killed in Iraq - for no apparent reason. It packs a wallop. Please check it out. Especially you Rightwingers.

Finally, Digby puts into perspective precisely why George W. Bush now finds himself exposed and in trouble in a piece called "Two Faces. One Public, One Private. One Phony, One Real." It beautifully sums up the last four years of the Bush scam to a tee and why America may finally be starting to "get it". I can't recommend enough that you give this piece a quick read. (Thanks Bryan for the tip!) You may as well learn the truth now rather than waiting until after the election and wondering what happened. Particularly you Rightwingers!

Despite Bush's invocation of Poland twice at last week's debate, only once correctly, it looks like they've had enough of both Bush and Iraq according to this just in from AFP:

In the first Presidential Debate, Bush had attempted to correct a statement by Kerry...

Well, actually...he didn't Mr. "President". Poland was not there when you rushed in to find no Weapons of Mass Destruction with no plans on how to win your war. Poland didn't add troops to the effort until after Baghdad fell. (After the "Mission" was "Accomplished").

Poland, who's President told reporters last March, "[T]hey deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride," now becomes the 10th country (if my count is accurate...it's hard to really tell who was ever in or out) to pull out of Bush's "Miscalculation".

(Thanks AMERICABlog and Counterspin Central for staying on this one!...As silly as it all is.)

I give up. Just saw Condi on This Week. The blog item it would take to detail the number of lies she told in a single interview would crash my server.

Not only can I not believe that woman is still National Security Advisor, I can't believe she's still employed. At all. Anywhere. Couldn't find a transcript for you, but here's a short article on the appearance that covers the tiniest fraction of her utter and complete soulless continuation of misleading America. Apparently not enough bandwidth over at ABC to cover all her nonsense either.

If I have a stomach for it, I'll try to hit some specifics in the morning via comments. Otherwise, see my previous item on her CNN appearance this morning, and Aravosis' detail of just one of her This Week lies this morning. If you have the stomach for it.

And if Gallup says it's tied...[fill in own thoughts here].

...according to Gallup anyway. And we all know that Gallup [fill in own thoughts here].

(Tip of the hat to Fin at "What We Know")

This morning on CNN's Late Edition Condi Rice was asked about her September 2002 statement to CNN, during the buildup to the War on Iraq, when she told America about Iraq's attempts to procure "high-quality aluminum tubes that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs." (That was the same day she'd also said "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.")

Her reply to being confronted today about that statement two years ago was, of course, to obfuscate the issue by saying "Well, at that time, when I came on your show, I knew there was some debate out there. But I tell you, I did not know the nature of the debate."

Never mind that The New York Times reports today that for a year prior to her initial statement on CNN her office had been told otherwise:

There is a ton of information out there (just search the Whitehouse's website for "tubes" and you'll find the tip of the iceberg) on how they were selling the whole "Saddam/Nuclear Weapons" business to the American people in TV appearances, briefings, speeches and even to the U.N. in addresses by both Powell and Bush. They seemed to always leave the part out about how it was the idea of one junior analyst and was at odds with their Senior nuclear scientists. This White House has never much cared for scientists.

As I'm researching all of this, since Rice seemed to be lying yet again today, I come across this statement at the Whitehouse website. Rice is being interviewed on July 30, 2003 by Jim Lehrer after the end of "major hostilities" in Iraq when no WMD's were showing up. He asks her about Saddam's supposed nuclear weapons programs and the now infamous tubes that helped sell the American people on the war. At the end of what we now know was just more obfuscation and nonsense from her, she says to him:

Isn't that funny? Look what George W. Bush said in his now infamous speech to the U.N. back on September 12, 2002 (just days after Condi's initial lie about the tubes on CNN):

Can anybody explain to me why this woman wasn't fired years ago?! Why they let her out of her cage to continue misleading people on CNN even today? (Both rhetorical questions, we all know the answers by now...if they'd fired everybody they should have for the debacles of these past four years, there would be no Republicans left to run the government.) Unbelievable.

Anyway, we'd expect nothing less from the woman who also said on today's interview, in regards to Bush's debate performance last week: "[He did] a fine job of showing the American people why he is the leader he is and why he is the leader to carry us through."

On that we sort of agree, Condi. He did a fine job indeed.

Four more weeks! Four more weeks! Four more weeks!

If you've missed the latest buzz, the wingnuts, having gone frame-by-frame over last week's debate searching for Bush's credibility, have now decided that Kerry cheated by pulling "something that appears to be white and appears to have a straight edge" from his pocket at the top of the debate in violation of the agreed upon debate rules.

Never mind that Dubya was the only one to clearly break the rules the other night (by talking directly to Kerry), but now thanks to Yelladog who seems to have been able to use some advance technology to zoom in with great detail on the video, the mystery is now over about what Kerry actually pulled out of his pocket.