A 90-minute "rumble" between the Daily Show's Jon Stewart and the O'Reilly Factor's Bill O'Reilly inside an air-conditioned auditorium inside George Washington University brought the two disparate pillars of news talk no closer to consensus — but none of the attendees (who paid as much as $1395 to see black debate white) seemed to mind.

After spending five years watching a diffident political compromiser campaign for and occupy the White House, Democrats were still shocked that Wednesday's debate didn't reveal Barack Obama: Political Nut-Cutter.

Twitter is the future: of politics, of media, of elections, of discourse. And of really stupid things. You can go anywhere else for the "funniest" or "best" tweets from last night. Here, we give you the worst:

Poor Jim Lehrer could not keep up with the pace of the presidential debate last night. Here he is, stuttering is way through his moderating gig.

So amid the barrage of very, very substantive numbers and equations we heard last night was this: Mitt Romney wants to cut marginal tax rates by 20% across the board. Most people agree that this action, taken on its own, would reduce federal receipts by $4.8 trillion over ten years. But! Romney says he will make up for that lost revenue by eliminating loopholes to the tune of $4.8 trillion over the next decade, so there won't really be a tax cut. Which raises the question: Why the fuck are you cutting taxes, then?

By far the most viral sound bite produced during last night's presidential debate was Mitt Romney's line about cutting federal support for PBS, which was accompanied by the laugh-to-keep-from-crying line "I like PBS, I like Big Bird."

To nonpartisan senses, neither candidate came off looking particularly presidential during last night's first-of-three presidential debates.

By every last account, President Obama did not do well against Mitt Romney in last night's presidential debate.

With the first of three presidential debates still a few days away, Mitt Romney's campaign is already calling a winner: President Obama.

Jon Stewart and Bill O'Reilly have announced plans to put the presidential debates to shame with their very own battle of wits.

Rush Limbaugh is a distended gout-ridden white supremacist who ruined his hearing with illegal prescription pain-killers. He said a bad word. Everyone is mad at him. On the internet, they call this trolling. It must stop.

Last night, CNN teamed up with the Tea Party Express for yet another debate between the remaining 2012 Republican presidential candidates. But before the debate audience could get to cheering for the death of uninsured Americans, Wolf Blitzer spent way too much time on introductory pomp and circumstance. So just like he did the last time CNN hosted a debate, Jon Stewart mocked the network's focus on style over substance on tonight's Daily Show.

Michele Bachmann finally found an attack line to wrest ultraconservative support from Rick Perry last night: That he mandated vaccinations against HPV for "innocent little girls," by executive order, to help his campaign contributors. Good for Michele!...??? But it's the anecdote about the vaccine leaving one girl mentally retarded that really makes this somethin' else.

Wolf Blitzer is "watching very closely" in Tampa, Florida tonight as he moderates a CNN/Tea Party debate between the remaining Republican presidential candidates. On the topic of healthcare, Blitzer asked Congressman Ron Paul what he'd do if an otherwise healthy 30-year-old man without health insurance needed six months of intensive care to survive: "Are you saying that society should just let him die?"

If you weren't in front of a TV this evening—or you just couldn't bear to watch Republicans bicker for two hours straight—and you'd like to catch up on what went down during tonight's GOP presidential debate on Fox News, here's a clip that will fill you in on the highlights/lowlights. The 2012 campaign season sure is shaping up to be lots of fun, huh? [TPM]

Last night, CNN's John King moderated the first Republican primary debate of the 2012 election season. High on theatrics, like King's stupid "This or That" questions for each candidate, the debate had many critics. And as you'll see in the above clip from tonight's Daily Show, Jon Stewart wasn't all that impressed either.

Tonight in New Hampshire, seven Republican candidates for president in 2012—including Michele Bachmann who just announced her candidacy—shared the stage for the primary season's first debate. The showdown was moderated by CNN's John King, who asked tough questions like "American Idol or Dancing with the Stars?"

After receiving an invitation from Bill O'Reilly to appear on his show and debate whether or not the rapper Common should have been invited to a poetry reading at the White House, Jon Stewart showed up tonight as promised and attempted to interject some logic into the controversy. And because we would never expect you to suffer through an entire episode of the Factor yourself, here are the best four minutes of O'Reilly and Stewart's debate.

Yesterday, the Republican National Committee held a debate between its prospective future chairpersons. As we pointed out, things didn't go too well! Tonight, Jon Stewart took the plethora of schadenfreude-filled content form the debacle and had at it. Watch inside.

We told you that tonight's New York gubernatorial debate—with seven participants!—would be crazy, but we could have never anticipated this level of it: watch as Jimmy McMillan, of the "Rent Is Too Damn High" party, uh... introduces himself.