At 11:00 pm EDT, we say goodbye to Jon Stewart.  End of an era really.  The Will Rogers of the modern era.  There are and will be others in the political comedy arena, but none as astute as Stewart.

I won’t indulge in a Stewart retrospective.  Others are doing that, and much better than I could.  I’ll just showcase two great Stewart moments.  The first is when Steve Carrell, who started on the Daily Show, came back in 2005 to plug his movie “The 40 Year Old Virgin”.  He and Stewart were in sync, and what happened was comedy magic:

And then here’s Stewart in 2008, doing what he does best — pitting Republican talking heads against themselves:

And for more comedy, the Fox News GOP debates.  The first official GOP presidential debate here at 9:00 PM EDT with the top ten tier of GOP candidates. But there is also the kiddie table forum at 5:00 EDT with the remaining seven.

Sadly, I was hoping to liveblog one if not both of the debates, but I will be busy.  I recommend you follow the live tweets of Patton Oswalt or, for more serious analysis, the folks at Political Animal

And here’s some tie-based data from 2012 — make of it what you will.