I so agree with your comments about the debate. It is so cool that you have a strawbale! I live in Austin, and we have a few here. I went on the tour once--lovely! Occasionally I get out my straw bale book and dream about building one on my off-the-grid Taos land.

Ours is off grid; we lived in it for a little less than a year. My student loans went into repayment, I couldn't find a job, and here I am finishing another degree so that I can get a job and pay the govt back its money.

We recently bought 25 more acres in WV to build strawbale and cordword houses (for my family and my sister's family). But there isn't much in the way of work, so it might be a retirement settlement. I just hope we're not too old to heft the bales.

It's fun, thoroughly fulfilling work. I'd recommend it for anyone. There's nothing like building your own shelter.

"Normally I don't bother watching them, simply because I'm hyperaware of how staged and inauthentic these debates are, and I end up feeling physical pain when I think about how people actually give credence to what is actually said. They seem entirely insubstantive."

Thank you, Academom, for crystalizing that ill feeling I get by watching even the tiny clips of the debates that are shown in news broadcasts (even the clip in the nightly BBC World makes me flinch).

I envy you your Democratic mother. I live in a southern state where the culture is very much like you describe Webster County, WV. Unfortunately, my mother invariably falls for the "three G's" plan while I can only watch.

"I guess that really wasn't a question."

That's good, bc I don't really have an answer. I forced myself to not watch the final debate--like you, I think the whole process is too cynical now to be of much value. And I just have such a strong, negative, visceral reaction every time W opens his mouth that it just makes me angry.

From your description, though, that move sounds either shrewd or cynical. Shrewd would be if W actually recognized, at the moment, that he was about to shoot himself in the foot, and stopped. Honestly, I think that the mainstream media has a stake in keeping the race close (better stories that way), and the only way to do that is to give W more credit than I think he deserves. Maybe he recognized that he was sawing off the limb that he was sitting on. (Could I mix more metaphors in here?)

The cynical version is that it was scripted by Rove or whomever, and was one of those improper lines you see in courtrooms which are then withdrawn after the other side objects. iow, you make your point, withdraw it, but it still registers with the jury (or the voters). "The jury will disregard blah blah blah," but of course they can't. Much like the FAUX news "manicure" story after the first debate, you can retract the comment without retracting the sense of the comment.

Okay, now take this analysis, multiply it by the other 89 minutes of the debate, and you'll see why it just doesn't make sense for me to watch...sigh ;-)

Though I didn't watch the debate, I'm with Collin's "Rove" theory. I put nothing past that guy. And an administration whose staffers suggest people who are underemployed simply need Prozac clearly have the gloves off.

I scoffed at the part when Sen. Kerry said we were going to kill, then capture the terrorists. We are going to kill, then capture? Gee, kill, then ask questions later? That sounds like a Bush idea (and I am supporting Kerry, so go figure!).