Thank God Labor Day has come and gone. After such a sleepy summer, maybe we'll finally have some political news to cover in this boring, routine presidential race.
The two sentences above are examples of what we ultra-professional writers call "facetious humor."
In truth, the first furlong of the race has been INSANE. As in: SECRET GEFILTE FISH EMAIL! FEEL THE "BERN!" HE'S BIDEN HIS TIME. AN APOCALYPTIC NEUROSURGEON. A CEO WHO NEARLY SANK BOTH HEWLETT AND PACKARD. AND OF COURSE: DONALD TRUMP! DONALD TRUMP! DONALD TRUMP, TRUMP, TRUMP!
Now we enter an inescapable garden maze of televised debates, starting with CNN's Republican one on Wednesday of next week at the Reagan Library in California. They'll have a panel of media inquisitors. But why wait? And why them? HuffPost First to Last has its own questions for each of the top 10 candidates.
(If you have more, dear readers, serious or not quite, email them to us at openreporting@huffingtonpost.com. We'll run some of them in a separate piece. Gefilte fish news also welcome.)
Here's a start:
| RANK | CANDIDATE | |
|---|---|---|
 | DONALD TRUMP“You got a great photo-op out of the pledge you signed. But given your golf exploits, and your pride at having stiffed past business partners, why should anyone believe you when you say you've signed a pledge?” | |
 | BEN CARSON“You recently told Fox News that you’ve 'learned how to phrase things in a way that people actually hear what [you’re] saying.' Does that mean you were wrong when you compared Obamacare to slavery?” | |
 | JEB BUSH“You signed a pledge vowing to support the eventual GOP nominee. You also recently put out an ad describing your party’s frontrunner, Donald Trump, as being insincere in his conservatism. How do you resolve this contradiction?” | |
 | TED CRUZ“Why are you palling around with Donald Trump? Are his coattails that luxurious?” | |
 | MARCO RUBIO“You came into this race as the young, fresh optimist. How exactly are you going to survive this bitter slugfest you’ve gotten yourself sucked into?” | |
 | MIKE HUCKABEE“With Ben Carson carting off such a huge chunk of your evangelical base, what’s your path in Iowa?” | |
 | CARLY FIORINA“You’ve styled yourself as a candidate who’s come from outside the world of politics. But is a mediocre business career really better than a successful electoral career? If so, explain how.” | |
 | SCOTT WALKER“Are you starting to feel that a presidential race is maybe a level of difficulty higher than you thought it would be?” | |
 | JOHN KASICH“You've been a career politician and you’ve worked for Lehman Brothers -- which one is the bigger albatross around your neck right now?” | |
 | RAND PAUL “What happened, dude?” |