[stockpirate]

I think Bush saw him pull out the notes, and then when he realized that Kerry had the answers to the questions already, well George is not stupid.

[freeperfromnj]

That whole weird handshake thing could have been a diversion. It was only seconds after that Kerry reached into his pocket. It appears that after he got that piece of paper settled onto the podium, he was looking down at it as though he were reading something and then started writing. The debate hadn't even started yet - what notes could he possibly have been writing?