Well, right off, the two debaters had a friendly-appearing greeting, which was nice.  Unlike Kerry vs Bush where Kerry attempted to make Bush look even smaller in stature than he actually is.

Obama’s opening statement repeated one of the mantra’s he’s been repeating over and over, namely that Romney’s plan is to give taxation preferences to the rich.  Tax cuts to the rich, blah blah blah.  In the face of the fact that Romney has said over and over again that he won’t raise taxes on the middle class, and will reform the tax code to make sure the rich folks do pay some taxes.

Obama also makes some wind/solar energy obligatory nods, where of course none of this has been particularly successful so far.

Both guys are speaking well, so far.

Romney makes the point that the areas of the economy which have improved have improved in spite of Obama’s policies not because of them.

Obama responds about taxes that his policies have provided $3600 of tax relief to the middle class.  Where is it?  I certainly haven’t seen it, and I am definitely middle class.  And here goes with the analysis of insisting that Romney will have to raise middle class taxes in order to pay for his tax cuts.  Whereupon Romney shuts the door on him.  Good.  But Obama insists that what HE has been saying about Romneys’s tax plan is correct, and Romney is wrong.

I think the problem is that Obama’s team only sees that there is a zero-sum game.  The whole idea is that a smaller slice of a larger pie is actually larger than a large slice of a small pie.  If the economy grows, the slice for the government goes UP not down.  And hence pays for the tax cut.  But Obama and his people don’t believe it.

Obama insists on 5 trillion tax cuts, when Romney keeps saying he’s not going to cut 5 trillion.  Talk about broken records.  And now he is talking AGAIN about what happened during Bush’s term, without mentioning Bush directly.

Well, that’s the first 15 minutes.  And some extra.