The First Presidential Debate. ZZZZZ.

Yeah,  it was boring, as performance art goes, and that's the way the debates are rated, I understand.  Like horse races or ballet or figure skating, and the journalists and talking heads are the judges.

Out of the trio on stage, Mitt Romney was the most awake, even hyper, and Jim Lehrer (the moderator)  perhaps the least awake.  Barack Obama seemed tired and only got going towards the end of the game.

That's enough of my scoring style points.   Fox News found Romney's performance beautiful:

Mitt Romney energized his campaign for president Wednesday night, charging out of his first debate having by most accounts from both sides of the political spectrum dominated President Obama in a stand-off for which he was evidently well-prepared.
The Republican nominee was quick on his feet, polished and feisty as he repeatedly cut off the moderator and challenged his opponent on the facts. His central argument -- that Obama's economic policies have consigned the middle class to an eroding "status quo."

Some voters might find cutting off the moderator disrespectful.  And of course one might wonder what Romney has in mind for the middle class, given the increasing income inequality in this country and his party's willingness to continue that trend.


What about the factual contents of the debate?  Those Romney challenges on Obama's facts, for instance?

Luckily, fact checks are getting pretty common among the mainstream media, though, sadly, that seems to mean that some of them end up a bit biased themselves.  Never mind.  Here are a bunch of sites you might want to look at.

The consensus appears to be fairly strong:  Romney won the debate and he also lied the most. 

I could also spot the usual Tweedledum-and-Tweedledee phenomenon:  The attempt of presidential candidates to place themselves in the middle, back-to-back, in order to catch that elusive Snark undecided voter.  Heh.

There was nothing in the debates about who should have the padlock-and-key to the American vaginas.  Jim Lehrer picked the questions himself, he tells us, so I guess he's not interested in women's reproductive rights and such.  Perhaps that will be the topic in one of the remaining two debates?

Was that too snarky?  My apologies.  I still much prefer Obama's policies to Romney's policies.