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I was channel surfing and saw Smit and Alda in a "Live" debate. I had no idea what it was about. I watched for 5 minutes. The issue was illegal immigration.

The Alan Alda "GOP" solution was simply to build a wall (no discussion of holding employers accountable). Then the Smits Dem position was allowed to rant and rave about how this is a poverty problem while the "GOP" side just blubbered.

It was idiotic.

Of course other fine (sarc) viewing choices included Category 7 and The Revisionist Crusades on the History channel.

So I went to bed early. I won.

On the Illegal Immigration question - Vinick: "...my Guest Worker Program. We have to face the fact that we have at least ten million people who have illegally entered this country but are now putting in an honest day's work and are mostly doing jobs Americans do not want to do." Vinick said he'd double the Border Patrol (nothing about a wall). Santos asked why not triple it, correctly pointing out that the Border Patrol has already been tripled in the last decade with almost no effect at all on the invasion. The point was too little resources for a massive problem will always be just that: too little.

Santos "won" the Illegal Immigration part by noting how Mexico will always be a place people flee from as long as it limits opportunities for it's citizens.

While I suspect that this unique (and very good) episode was probably a tune-up exercise designed for Hillary by her obeisant Hollywood thralls it was a surprisingly fair synopsis of some ongoing issues performed by top-notch actors. The only real fantasy here was that illegal immigration was addressed at all. I believe HMOs are a scam (that helped Frist and Tennessee Governor Bredesen(D) rake it in) while medicine is already half-socialized in its present form, ANWR should be drilled (the caribou love sheltering under the current Alaskan pipeline) though energy companies are only paying lip service to alternatives and pharmaceutical companies fail us by NOT distributing the costs of R&D throughout the global market.

Boners: Vinick claiming nuclear energy is completely safe (as a lead in to the true statement that the real market is a better guide than government) and Santos' weak argument that Liberals have stood for most positive policies while Conservatives "always" opposed them. Vinick garbled CAFTA, Santos screwed up education...as I said before - this was all about preparing Hillary for her coming debates. Despite that it was still worth watching.