Unless you live under a rock, you're likely aware that tonight at 9PM Eastern (6PM in God's country) the two major candidates for the office of President of the United States will hold their first of three televised debates.

These "debates" are heavily scripted affairs...appearing to me to be based more on theatre now than substance. And the Republican noise machine is working very, very hard to make it look like Kerry is a brilliant debator..while Bush is simply going to win if he shows up. Interestingly, the GOP has gone on and on about how Kerry did nothing while in the Senate...but now apparently he was the top debator in the Senate. Go figure.

Arthur Schlessinger has a list of questions he'd like to ask Bush.

The Kerry campaign has set up their rapid response to work on call ins to talk shows, pundits, blogs and papers..to debunk rightwing spin on the debate. As we saw in 2000..even if you win the debate (many pundits and others said Gore won the first debate...but later started bashing him after the rightwing spin machine got moving) in an effort to keep the post-debate discussion more centrist or even tilt a bit to the left.

Their efforts haven't gone unnoticed by the Freepers who appear to be planning to counter the rapid responsers.

Me? I'm going to help my kids with homework, take my daughter to soccer practice, make dinner and do the dishes. I'll have the debate on TV but I've already made my decision.