My call is Kerry 48, Bush 45 for last night's debate.

I agree with neoconservative eminence William Kristol (co-founder of the Project for the New American Century and son of right-wing icon Irving Kristol) on a Fox News panel immediately after the debate: Bush did better than in Miami but Kerry won.

Mort Kondracke (Roll Call) agreed with Kristol, Fred Barnes (Weekly Standard) disagreed but seemed a bit subdued about it.

While Bush improved, his forcefulness seemed the insistence of a loser who knows he's a loser so starts shouting to make his points.

The biggest Bush error was claiming that 75% of Al Qaeda has already been captured. The script read, and he meant to say, "75% of the Al Qaeda leadership has been captured."

Note that even the corrected statement is misleading propaganda: 75% of the leadership amounts to about 18 people, while Al Qaeda is generally estimated to have about 18,000 members.

But, hey, he used a number.

Kerry keeps claiming "1.6 million jobs lost" but that's only in the private sector. If you factor in the bigger government Bush is creating, the job loss is 800,000. Note that this does not count the 6 million or so who have entered the job market since Bush took office, and the real picture is that there are now about 14 million who want work but can't find it (about 10% real unemployment).

Bush keeps claiming that Kerry's rollback of the tax cut for those making $200,000 or more will hurt small businesses, but the truth is that it will affect only about 4% of them (471,000 not the 900,000 Bush claimed).

It will have no effect on 95% of small businesses, and the "job creation engine of small business" will continue creating jobs.

But I hope they do a better job than they have so far - the general consensus of economists is that Bush tax cuts, because of their distribution to those with high incomes, at best may have boosted economic growth by one-tenth of one percent (clearly those who got the money invested in companies off-shoring jobs - China and India are booming).