This week the first and probably only televised debate between convicted-felon and former-President Donald Trump and Vice-President Kamala Harris will take place in Philadelphia on the ABC television network.

The first great part about it, is that it is taking place on the Disney network. No hard news here, only stories of dogs being rescued and storms in the Mid-Atlantic Region. Could there be a more light-weight network news anchor than David Muir. Lester Holt at NBC must chuckle every time he thinks about Muir and Trump on the same stage.

The current format calls for the microphones to be turned-off except when each candidate is called upon to speak and for a specified time. The is the format that was used during the Trump-Biden debate... and it worked well for Trump. His campaign staff is largely in favor of continuing this format. Harris's staff wants open microphones, as do both candidates.

It will be interesting to see if the two candidates can convince ABC-Disney to turn the mikes on.

Trump has magically endorsed several pie-in-the sky ideas in recent weeks eg. rounding up and deporting all illegal immigrants, letting Elon Musk reek havok with government employees, and universal and high import tariffs. IMHO, none of these ideas could actually be implemented. I, especially, will be anxious for Harris to try to pin him down about how he actually plans to implement these

Especially, reforming government and making it more efficient is a real impossibility. Congress has designed it the way it is for maximum benefit to each individual Congressional District. Any changes (eg toward benefiting the nation as a whole rather than each individual district) will be met with steep resistance by all 435 voting members of the House of Representitives.

Trump should be pinning down Harris, not on border security (a waste of time), but on national defense. After years of having the military serving in minor skirmishes all over the world (during both Democrat and Republican administrations), and now pouring billions of dollars of aid into Israel and Ukraine... we don't have much left to defend the good 'ol USA.

ABC... let them go at each other in a hand-to-hand, no holds barred, barn burner of a debate. None of this microphones turned off crap so that they will be polite and not interupt each other. We need more interuptions and more back and forth debating.