Before I turn my attention to Eternal Verities

Tomorrow is the first night of passover and in keeping with my generally iconoclastic view of things my menu this year is practically a lesson in what not to do. OK, I'm not actually serving pig or shrimp (or pig with shrimp, or octopus, or anything too cross categorical) but having read one more essay on how ashkenazic jews won't touch seeds, and sephardic jews will cook rice, I decided that the jews in my house were going to mix milk, meat, and seeds with abandon. I'll go back to some kind of orthodoxy when its more appetizing.

But what I really wanted to post is can anyone, anywhere, explain to me why the Democrats don't/didn't hold their own debate with their own moderators and questions and dare the media *not to film it?* I mean, a gabillion people watched it. Are you telling me that all those eyeballs to advertisers would have gone untapped if the DNC had held a " no holds barred--the debate you've always wanted" style Chatauqua barn burning and sold the advertising itself? Can anyone explain why MoveOn doesn't do this next round? Because I'd LITERALLY PAY MONEY to have a good debate, on the issues, with some slanging of John McCain at the same time. See, our questions would look like this:

Senator John McCain, President Bush, and Dick Cheney are all agreed that we should stay in Iraq for one hundred years or so. They won't get specific but they are all really sure that someone else will be able to fix their little wagon for them after they've shuffled off the public stage. Now, as the probable next president of the United States, with the actual job of trying to save our bacon, what would *you* do. Senator Clinton, I'll give you fifteen minutes. Then Senator Obama will have fifteen minutes. After that we'll insult Senator McCain some more and allow each of you a follow up.

aimai