Nobody has the ability to become known, insofar as you can be known, in this format. Everybody was predictably predictable. And yes, the host does have his priorities. If I hear that damned hypthotetical: "You discovered Osama. Or you have the A-bomb on the Iranian launching pad. You have twenty minutes to fire a missile. There's no political or humanitarian reason not to do it. Would you say anything less that the Clint Eastwood, "Make my day"? Can America trust you do be enough of a murderous brute so we feel safe? Or are you some kind of pussy?" Is this the agenda of Blitzer, an Israeli hawk, or just yellow journalism in a question?

Anyway, I suggest that a pool of networks present "Sunday Survivor," one Republican and one Demoratic, and they struggle with one issue each Sunday for three or four hours. The whole day is a long conversation, with a part TV, part Internet format. Stations play their recent news reports, and ask politicians to respond. The ratings are totaled up. People vote on this or that issue, and the public response makes a winner and loser. No electoral power, you understand. But a year-long soap opera, in which we get to know each character in the tale. Oh, last idea: Jon Stewart hosts.

In other words, we get out of these frickin' boring "debates." I'm all for reason, but must this be so much of an encounter with the smartest kids in high school?

Devote a day, commercial free, to all the Democrat's positions on the Environment. Or Iraq. Or Cultural Issues. You let people talk. You seriously show a story on candidate X or this issue or that, then ask them what they thought of the story and of the issue. In other words, structure it like an episode of Survivor. No scanty clothes on the desert, but intimate talking, not this blather behind the podium. (By the way, Obama sucked tonight. He acts like he's not comfortable there. Nobody is. Wolf Blitzer is interviewing them all, together, and they have to jump to his beat.

Debates, where each candidate argues with his opponent, is done pretty well in the fall campaign, with the final contestants. What we need here from TV is a series of pre-debates. On the Sunday Survivor, they face our rites of passage before we vote.

This debate format just sucks when you have 9 or 15 or however many people out there, struggling to get noticed.

Or the Holocaust, or Jews, or anything like that. What we need to do is to be even-handed in that region. For far too many years, US foreign policy has allowed or encouraged Israel's preemptive wars, and see what happens? We do one for ourself. How has that Iraq business, our "three-week" war, played out, anyway? We have pushed other regimes around as if they were irrelevant, and laid our thumb on the scales over and over. See what it gets you? We've had the wonderful experience of Iran's blowback, and Afghanistan's, and Islamic revolts replacing the left nationalism of Nasser with al-Qaeda. The answer really isn't aggressive war, but neutral standards of human rights which we apply to all nations. The worst danger we have is turning into a decadent, belligerent empire. We're a republic.

I had to keep on pinching myself to make me realize how nuts they are. No evolution, no God but God, no queers, God is War, God is Fear -- the parade of disgusting, creepy-crawly ideas just never stops. And Rudy is the Chief Nut.

Forget Ron Paul, folks. Sure, he looks like your elfin grandpa, and he speaks common sense on Iraq, but he wants to abolish Social Security. He's close to the Texas secessionists and the income tax is evil people. He's never coming within sight of a victory in a Republican primary. He's an artifact, an echo of the party 40 years ago.

Radicals, lefties, independents, if you don't want the war in Iraq to go on for the next 50 years, you're going to have to get the Democrats in. I know, I know. But this is your alternative. This Republican party is going to have to be forced to reformulate itself.

There's your problem right there. There's no difference between Jethro Tull recorded in iTunes Plus and on a wire recorder, circa 1942.

And I predict that someone will write an iTunes ID editor in a second or two.

Really, dude, you do have a reality problem.

Sure, it's mostly hot air. But the Internet is dangerous for kids, and for young teens, and for people finding dates and buying on eBay and doing banking and--

These are serious issues, all of them. Who is it hurting, Farhad? I think a real legislator would be holding back the ninnies who want to wipe all porn from the Net, but he'd have to be thinking about a secure alternative. Do you have a kid? Do you buy things on the net?

Or is it just hicks who are concerned about this stuff?

Not tragedy. The only tragic consequence of any consequence is this: we're spending an unbelievable amount of time worrried about the emotional life of an annoying, unattractive multimillionaire heiress.

The tragedy is our society, hooked on the trashy musings of unscrupulous press giants about how hot celebrities are, but how evil they become, and how we have to treat them as the Greek gods treated humanity.

I hope she can come to emotional maturity and find something useful to do with her life. And she does have to find her sobriety. Other than that, get lost.