Anticipation of the two Republican presidential candidate debates later today flutters in my stomach.  I plan to watch the Big Ten, led by the great Trump, featuring also Trump's self-described friend, Governor Chris Christie, who just squeezed onto the exclusive stage in Cleveland.  Poll numbers determined the debate's complement, but Fox News decision-makers chose to ignore the most recent poll, which would have benefitted the rejected Rick Perry.  Perry gets to participate in the so-called Happy Hour debate broadcasted before the main event.  It will take place during a bar's traditional Happy Hour, but the candidates, including Rick Santorum, Carly Fiorina, Bobby Jindal, and three other losers who will never be elected president, will not be served drinks, except bottled water.
     Trump and Jeb Bush will be center stage.  Will there be fireworks?  Will Trump violate Reagan's Eleventh Commandment to not speak ill of other Republicans?  He's already done so; I think we can expect him to explode his verbal diarrhea all over the other candidates.  His wet oral flatulence will be the main story for journalists tomorrow when they speak about the debate.
     Debates usually hinge on a candidate successfully delivering zingers, as when Walter Mondale said to Reagan, quoting a then-popular TV ad, "Where's the beef?"  Reagan zinged Mondale with "There you go again."  In the long run, does it matter how well a candidate zinged an opponent?
     Debate gaffes, too, get airtime years after they occurred.  Mitt Romney's offer of a $10,000 bet with Rick Perry, his never-worked-a-day-in-his-life right hand extended, unshaken, towards the Governor of Texas, made Romney look like the reckless cad he is.
     Someone at least, out of the two debates, will fuck up to the extent their mistake gets played in a loop for years, but I don't think Donald Trump will be the one.  He's been playing with the news media since the 1980s, a skilled bullshitter who will never need a course on how to spin lines of simple rhetoric.  Competing with such a wizard of his own image makes the nine others he will face this evening seem doomed to follow in the master's unwholesome sparkle.
     Ted Cruz, who just released a campaign video showing him wrapping bacon around an automatic rifle's barrel and cooking it during target practice, can be relied on to say bizarre, mentally unstable things.  I'm counting on Cruz to deflect some attention from Trump.
     Chris Christie, one of the nation's most contemptible loudmouths, might say a thing or two to get noticed, but this points to the key problem for anyone putting their faith in such grotesque politicians: Is it important for a possible future president of the United States to be able to smoothly say meaningless bullshit during a popularity contest debate put on fifteen months before the election by a news network run by Republican propagandists?
     I will buy some Guinness today so I can be drunk while I watch the worst the political scene in America has to offer.

                                                                               Vic Neptune