Quick take: Let us celebrate the death of presidential debates!

 The RNC has withdrawn from the Commission on Presidential Debates, based on reasons ranging from minor to disingenuous, and all I can say is... hip-hip-HURRAY.  Begone, Commission, I banish thee to the fiery pits of hell from whence thou came!  If this means I never have to suffer through another presidential debate, then every debate I have ever watched is nothing more than a bad memory of time wasted that could have been better spent counting strands of lint in my navel.  Not removing those strands, but merely counting them.  Even counting those lint strands would still be time better spent than watching any presidential debate ever.  So let us all take a moment to thank... Donald Trump for his constant lying, belligerence, and over-the-top assholery, as demonstrated in 2020, when he walked into the debate stage, contagious with COVID-19, lying about his status, and yelling so much that he finally got the Commission to introduce a mute button to shut him the fuck up.  All of which led to temper tantrums so epic that the Republican Party is now withdrawing from the Commission, and hopefully ending these intolerable spectacles of uselessness.

Remember the core problem with debates.  An election is a hiring mechanism.  Hey, I wrote a book about this!  Hiring & Firing Public Officials: Rethinking the Purpose of Elections.  Debates are a part of the interview process.  A magnificently silly part.  How silly?  Imagine you are interviewing for a job at a law firm, and during the interview, someone hands you a violin and demands that you play the Brandenburg Concertos.  That's how stupid, because there is no part of the job of being president that resembles the task of "debating," to the degree that we can even call it that, particularly when Donald Trump is on stage scream-lying his head off, and never shutting the fuck up.

I've been slogging through these shitshows for decades.  OK, I will now recount for you the things that I have learned, in all of the presidential debates that I have watched.

1)  Rick Perry cannot remember the names of the cabinet departments he wants to eliminate.

2)  Admiral Stockdale was an existential philosopher.

3)  Dan Quayle walks right into sick burns, even when he is warned about them.

4)  It's really annoying when there are a lot of people on a debate stage.  The only thing that's more annoying is when....

5)  Donald Trump is on the debate stage.

There.  That's what I have learned.  I have watched more debates than any IRB would permit forcing a subject to watch (yeah, yeah, not a human subject, "cruelty to animals," whatever).  What have I learned?  I have learned that debates suck.  But, Donald Trump has given us a gift.  By being the biggest asshole in the history of the species, and then throwing a temper tantrum when we collectively pressed the mute button on his fucking pie hole, we may never have to suffer through another one of those shitshows again.

And so I say something that I didn't think I'd ever say, and probably won't ever say again.  Thank you, Mr. Trump, sir.  Thank you for your assholery, thank you for your douchebaggery, thank you for your constant lying, shouting, interruptions,* and general shitheadedness.  In short, sir, think you for being you.

Now go bother some other country.

And since it's Friday, here's some jazz.  John Scofield, "Deadzy," from A GoGo.

*Remember 2016?  Remember when all the wokestirs counted Trump's Clinton-interruptions and blamed it on sexism while doing no such thing for the interruptions in the VP debates?  Trump was worse in that first Biden debate.  This is a thing called "empiricism," which is prohibited by woke-ism.  Is Trump a misogynist?  Yes, but that does not mean one can automatically attribute any particular action to misogyny.  He is also what we call, in technical terms, the biggest asshole in the history of the universe, and he treats men badly.  He treats everyone badly.  That's what it is to be the biggest asshole in the history of the universe.