There's no denying that we're in thrall to the purveyors of low-hanging fruit; to overcome our intertwined ignorance, we must ask hard questions about man-tiger conflict.

There is no denying that for some middle-class Americans, the past few years have indeed been a struggle. What is missing from Mr Obama's speeches is any hint that this is not the whole story: that globalisation brings down prices and increases consumer choice; that unemployment is low by historical standards; that American companies are still the world's most dynamic and creative; and that Americans still, on the whole, live lives of astonishing affluence.

Above all, he says: "Don't be afraid to ask hard questions when you find something funny."

There is no denying that the security situation has deteriorated in the past year.

In a New York Times/CBS News telephone poll conducted Feb. 20-24 and released Tuesday, nearly half of those respondents who described themselves as voters in Democratic primaries or caucuses said the news media had been “harder” on Mrs. Clinton than other candidates. (Only about 1 in 10 suggested the news media had been harder on Mr. Obama.)

There is no denying that it is arguably the most attractive notebook computer currently in the market and there is also no denying that appearance is incredibly important to a large portion of the buying audience.

I fill the gaps by fulminating about French movies. When I finally stop, the second-most-beautiful woman in the room reveals she is French and asks me awfully hard questions.

There is no denying that the South African fashion industry is gaining in strength.

As efforts are made to reduce man-tiger conflict, another threat is looming over the horizon, the threat of global warming.

Like Mrs Clinton (who calls for a “time-out” on trade deals, whatever that may mean), he is maddeningly vague.

The man-tiger conflict continued with raucous villagers trying to drive the tigress away into the forest area.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations committee, has already distanced himself from the idea, agreeing with Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) that "some modicum of due process" is required before even foreigners are imprisoned for life. Yet with details still maddeningly vague at this stage, nobody seems entirely sure yet just what makes a modicum.

There is a lot of swearing, a little nudity, a modicum of sex and an eternity of staring at your watch.

At fruit stands and small produce stores, you might see bunches of bananas hanging.

The low-hanging fruit in trade liberalization has been picked; what remains are the hard issues.

Being powerful and rich, but weak militarily means all your eggs are in the U.N. basket, and such multilateral associations are as corrupt as they are weak -- rusty chains that reflect the vulnerability of their autocratic weak links. So you offer low-hanging, enticing overripe fruit to anyone who chooses to pick it -- whether radical Islam, Iran, Putin’s Russia, or China.

Consumers, in thrall to use-by dates and lured by supermarket multi-buy offers, are the biggest culprits, throwing away one-third of everything they buy.

Our nation, as Susan Jacoby writes in her new critique of contemporary culture, The Age of American Unreason, is “ill with a powerful mutant strain of intertwined ignorance,” peopled by a public who derive opinions from “soundbites and blogs,” and are in thrall to “the fruit of the tree of infotainment.”

Then something interesting happened. Every time somebody asked a question, the SVP put something in his mouth. Easy questions got a quick sip of cola while harder questions corresponded to progressively larger bites of his turkey sandwich.

Perhaps we all can learn something from this disaster. Don't be afraid to ask the hard questions. Demand that your supermarket no longer sell you meat from factories that condone cruelty.

I recognize that as much as we try to balance our process of mitigating and minimizing risk, there will always be some cost. And therefore we have to ask ourselves, are we prepared to suffer some reasonable degree of inconvenience, and pay some reasonable amount of money in order to draw down that risk and prevent the possibility of another attack or another catastrophic attack? And I see this struggle about whether we’re prepared to pay the price played out in a number of different arenas.

There's no denying that she called that one pretty well.

"Everywhere I go I find audiences asking incredibly intelligent and hard questions."