Presidential debate drinking party at our place, and the soft bigotry of low expectations

Tonight, we're inviting some folks over to our apartment to drink with us as we watch the first presidential debate. It's going to be a depressing experience overall, as it's going to have the atmosphere of buzzwords and fanfare and paragraphs carefully pre-prepared. No excitement in that. And the media will undoubtedly repeat their awful behavior in the 2000 presidential elections, with their fond amazement of Bush (example: "look, he was able to finish a sentence!"). Here's part of the article I was going to write, inspired by Bush's remarks at the RNC when he mentioned that our public school system has a soft bigotry of low expectations. For some reason, after the speech I was more incensed by those remarks of his than his stupid remarks about liberating Iraq, maybe because his "leave no child behind" crap is full of bigotry, AND because he's been treated with soft bigotry of low expectations by the media for his whole life.

Anyway, since we've been busy, we haven't had time to create our own rules for the drinking games, but thanks to wonderful bloggers and writers, we've got some handy. When the guests arrive, we'll vote on a set of rules. Should be fun! Though, we may be passed out by9:30 with these rules. And for the 5 regular readers of this blog, if you'd like some good drinking games, here are a few:

Wonkette's debate drinking game
Jonathan Boeke's debate drinking game (nice chart format ready for printing)
David Martin's official 2004 drinking game, from the Chicago Tribune

And...a new site I came across -- Drinking Liberally.

Lastly -- some fun presidential debate humor (more here):
"Everyone is talking about the debate ground rules. Kerry wants his podium to be tall enough so he can rest his hands. And President Bush wants it to be wide enough to hide Dick Cheney." --Conan O'Brien

"The first debate will actually take place in Miami, Florida. Boy, first all those hurricanes, now Bush and Kerry ... Haven't these people suffered enough?" --Jay Leno

"Both candidates now are trying to lower expectations for how they'll do on the debates. For example, Kerry tried to lower expectations for himself by saying Bush has never lost a debate and that he is a formidable opponent. Then Bush lowered expectations for himself when he said, 'Hey, what does "formable" mean?'" --Jay Leno

Update: Just saw this -- the 5 step Bush response to questions -- linked from the blog An Old Soul. Hilarious...