I care about whether he can beat Trump.

Trump is an existential threat and he has to be gotten rid of or we're screwed. Quibbling over whether a candidate checks all the proper progressive boxes is nothing but narcissistic ideological navel-gazing right now, and it will be useless if not downright destructive. I will support the candidate who can pants Trump, steal his lunch money and stuff him in his locker. If that's Beto, great. If it's Harris or Warren or Biden or Sanders or Booker or... or... that's great, too. Fuck ideology. We can worry about that after we reclaim the White House.

So often these discussions of candidates' "faults" devolve into stupid arguments

about what somebody might have done or said or written forty years ago. Unless there's solid evidence that a candidate was the Zodiac Killer (allegedly Ted Cruz, lol), I don't give a rat's ass about what somebody might have done or said or written forty years ago. I want to know what they've done or said or written recently, relevant to currently important issues. I don't want to see thinly-veiled attempts at character assassination, backstabbing, or accusations without evidence that a candidate or their supporters are trolls, Republicans or Russian sympathizers. I do not want a replay of 2016 on DU. I want an understanding that all candidates have faults and none are perfect, but regardless of their imperfections they will be exponentially better than Trump, who is an existential threat and not just a bad president.

Most of all I want us to forgo the usual circular firing squad, evaluate the issues and candidates on their merits and not on their warts, and eventually unite behind someone who probably won't be ideologically pure enough for anybody but who can and will defeat Trump.

So I've got this wild-ass idea about Barr, and it's probably completely insane, but

what would be the best way to take down Trump from the inside of his administration? By becoming his Attorney General, that's how, and then you allow the Mueller report to become public and then disregard the previous OLC opinion that a sitting president can't be indicted.

But how do you get to be Trump's attorney general - a job that's been nothing but trouble for those who've had it, and at this point no sane, reputable lawyer would want? Say you're an old-line conservative who's been AG before and has held other high-level government jobs, and more recently has been making top dollar at a white-shoe law firm. You have perfect professional credentials but there are probably a lot of other, more reliable Trump-loving Matthew Whittaker-type stooges who'd take the job in a heartbeat. So what do you do?

What you do is, you write and send Trump a long, detailed, and completely unsolicited letter setting out your opinion that the Mueller investigation is legally invalid and the president has almost unlimited power over the executive branch. Given your exemplary professional credentials as well, which will make your Senate confirmation inevitable, Trump sees you as the perfect candidate. When he interviews you, you assure him that you would not recuse yourself like Sessions, convincing him that you'll protect him. At your confirmation hearing you come up with enough vague platitudes about following the law that even many Democrats vote for you.

And then the Mueller report comes out and it's full of bad shit about Trump and his family and other GOPers. Trump expects you to protect him, but being an old-fashioned institutionalist you don't. Instead, you make the report, except for a few classified bits, public. And then you decide that the DoJ won't be following the old OLC opinions, allowing Mueller to take Trump's case to a grand jury, which indicts him. In the meantime the House proceeds with his impeachment...

Yes, I know it's totally mad. But wouldn't it be awesome?

Donald Trump's Funeral: A Subdued Affair with Few Mourners - The Washington Poot, 12/23/2023

On a cold December day in Queens, a small group of people gathered in a shabby 50s-era funeral parlor to pay their last respects to a man who was once the so-called leader of the free world – Donald J. Trump. Presidents and ex-presidents are entitled to state funerals, but after Mr. Trump choked to death on a piece of overdone steak in his cell at the federal prison in Otisville, New York last week, his few remaining allies and supporters encountered many obstacles when trying to arrange for such an event. The National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., where services for many former presidents have been held, was unavailable; a representative of the church explained that the Archbishop had “serious theological concerns,” and expressed a strong desire that the funeral should be held at “an appropriate secular location.” Mar-a-Lago, which was once Mr. Trump’s Florida resort and residence, was also unavailable because it was taken in an asset-forfeiture along with most of the rest of his assets following his impeachment and criminal trials in 2020. Family members were unable to assist with final arrangements, since of his four adult children only daughter Tiffany remains unscathed and unincarcerated, and she suggested that “they should just double-bag him and put him out on the curb for next week’s trash pickup.” Ex-wife Melania and son Barron, 17, have sought asylum in Melania’s homeland, Slovenia, and could not be reached for comment.

The brief ceremony on December 20 included a eulogy by Roger Stone, delivered via Skype from an undisclosed location in Argentina, and a brief homily by Franklin Graham in which he compared Mr. Trump to Jesus Christ and warned that he would rise again from the dead to judge and punish his persecutors. A bystander, later identified as Michael Cohen, commented loudly that it although it has been three days Mr. Trump remains dead, Mr. Graham appeared not to have heard the remark. When asked why he was attending the funeral, Mr. Cohen, who was recently released from prison upon completing his sentence for election finance offenses, replied that he “wanted to be sure the fucker was really dead.” Others at the sparsely-attended event included former New York Mayor and Mr. Trump’s television lawyer Rudy Giuliani, Fox host Sean Hannity, former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and former Senator Lindsey Graham, who was observed sobbing quietly on the shoulder of washed-up rocker Ted Nugent.

No presidents or vice-presidents, former or current, were in attendance. President Pelosi was in Brussels, Belgium at a NATO conference, and Vice-President Beto O’Rourke was opening a new federal center in El Paso, Texas, to welcome refugees from Central America. Former President Obama was entertaining children at a holiday party at a D.C. hospital, and 99-year-old former President Jimmy Carter was busy nailing shingles to a Habitat for Humanity house in Georgia. Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had just left for Africa to open three new AIDS clinics on behalf of the Clinton Foundation. Former President George W. Bush, reached at his home in Dallas, remarked that he’d “rather eat a bag o’ bees” than attend the funeral, and provided a photo of a recent painting he had done of Mr. Trump, which unfortunately is not suitable for publication in a family newspaper. Mr. Trump's vice-president, Mike Pence, was also unable to attend; prison officials declined to give him a day pass for the ceremony.

Pallbearers included Corey Lewandowski, former Congressman Devin Nunes, who appeared to be wearing an ankle monitor, and four unidentified men in red MAGA caps. It was later determined that the men had been hired through a Craigslist advertisement; each was paid $50 in cash. Mr. Trump’s final resting place has not been determined.

How embarrassing.

"OK, Mr. President, here's how it works. See this card? This is Jimmy. Jimmy lives in America and he builds cars. This card here is a picture of the cars Jimmy builds. Jimmy would like to sell more cars, but some mean people in Germany send their hoity-toity cars, like the BMW on this next card, to America and sometimes people buy them instead of Jimmy's cars. Isn't that terrible?

So what you do, Mr. President, to make Jimmy happy, is put a tariff on those nasty German cars when those nasty Germans send them to America! Do you know what a tariff is? It's a kind of a tax that makes those cars more expensive, and then people would buy Jimmy's cars instead. Isn't that nice? Here's a picture of Angela Merkel. She looks sad because those tariffs make Americans buy fewer German cars.

What is mean, sad Angela going to do? Why, she gets together with her friends at the EU and they do tariffs on things they import from America! Here's a picture of a soybean. And here's a picture of natural gas. There's nothing on the card because you can't see natural gas. But now, because of these tariffs, America's soy beans and natural gas are more expensive and the Europe people won't buy them. Farmers in America - here is a picture of a farmer - will be sad even though Jimmy the car maker is happy."

"What are you going to do now? Here is a quiz. You have 10 minutes to answer the questions."

1. If there are more farmers than car manufacturers in America, will you lift the car tariffs? What if there are more car manufacturers than farmers?

2. If the car tariffs make Angela Merkel sad, will you keep them even if Ivanka wants to buy an Audi?

3. Do you think Russian cars should be included in the tariffs? Why or why not?

4. Would you consider funding technology that would make it possible to make cars out of soy beans?

5. Beans cause gas. Should soy beans be used to make natural gas?


"Time's up... Oh, didn't you answer any of them? Would you like to look at the cards again?"

At the bottom of his damned and blasted soul he must be miserable

because he spends all his time and energy trying to make himself feel good. He doesn't seem to enjoy anything except maybe golf, and the reason he likes golf is probably because he owns the golf courses and can get away with cheating and driving on the greens when nobody else can. He doesn't have any other hobbies; he doesn't go to concerts or plays or art galleries or museums or sports events; he doesn't swim or hunt or fish or sail or hike or dance or sing or play an instrument or paint or garden or play with his son or grandkids or read for fun or just sit outside and look at the flowers and the clouds. He doesn't have fun. He doesn't have a pet. He doesn't seem to love anybody. His whole life is about trying to better than everybody else in all ways so as to impress the rest of the world. Because that's impossible he'll always be unhappy. I'd feel sorry for him if he weren't such a vicious, destructive asshole.

They want to resist and obstruct your treason, you maggot.

I don't understand why you guys keep arguing about this stuff.

Religions and religious organizations are human creations that are only as good or as bad as the people comprising them. There have been obnoxious and destructive fundamentalist religious leaders like Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell, but there were and are leaders like Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. The black churches, led by MLK and other pastors, were enormous forces in the civil rights movement. Desmond Tutu was instrumental in furthering the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa. The Dalai Lama has been working for autonomy for Tibet since the '50s. Religions, which are far from a single monolithic belief system, can be a force for good or a force for evil; they can be very liberal or very conservative. Most importantly, we are all free to believe of not to believe. For my part, I'm an agnostic. I don't know whether there's a god and it doesn't bother me that I don't know. I care not at all what others believe (and therefore see little value in arguing whether there is or is not a supreme being, or whether people who believe in one are stupid and superstitious, or whether people who do not believe in one are arrogant and supercilious). I care only that it is not made the basis for legislation in our intentionally secular democracy, and that it is not used to justify hurting people. Beyond that, believe what you want, or not. It's just that nobody is ever going to convince or convert anybody by grumbling on an internet message board. That includes me, both as grumbler and grumblee.

Any or all of the above, or some combination, would work for me.

My favorite fate-of-Trump fantasy has him dead broke and living alone in a run-down double-wide in a seedy trailer park somewhere in, say, Nebraska, where it gets very hot in the summer, cold in the winter, and is susceptible to tornadoes. He spends his days sitting on the steps of his humble home drinking diet Pepsi, eating KFC and railing about the injustices done to him. He has become dangerously obese; his old clothes no longer fit so most of the time he wears XXX-L sweat pants and a stained wife-beater undershirt adorned with a six-foot-long red polyester necktie. Because he is no longer able to manage his hairdo, his fringe of stringy, now-gray hair hangs almost to his shoulders, revealing his shiny, blotchy scalp. His neck wattles obscure his actual neck almost entirely.

He is living off proceeds from the sale of some items of personal property that Melania missed when she cleaned out the New York apartment and took off for Slovenia; these included several sets of monogrammed gold cufflinks and a roomful of dictator-Baroque gilded chairs. He kept the throniest-looking chair to sit in at night while he watches Fox News on a small, very old tv with a coat hanger for an antenna, hoping Sean Hannity will mention him. He never does. Don Jr. sometimes writes to him from prison but the rest of his family is in Brazil, which does not have an extradition treaty with the U.S., and he hasn't heard from them in months.

He wonders what he will do when he has sold the last set of cufflinks. The pawn shop owner is not very generous, and the only collectors who might be interested are those unemployed neckbeards who live in their parents' basements and collect knockoff Nazi memorabilia.

Sometimes he waddles over to the neighbors' trash bins and pokes around in them with a stick, never with his little hands, hoping to find a copy of the New York Times or the Washington Post that might have an article about him. He wonders if Maggie Haberman still writes about him. Since his neighbors do not subscribe to these newspapers, he is able to imagine that his name still appears in them from time to time. Sometimes he finds uneaten French fries in the bins, which is a nice bonus when it happens, but most of the time the neighbors chase him away.

The worst thing of all is that Vladimir Putin no longer takes his calls.

Tupperware Goddess

High On Nyquil
Peel My Tangerines
I Love You But You Make Me Itch
Locked In The Basement With You
Don't Lick My Turtle Any More
Feel Me, Grandma

From the album "Total Nose" by Elmo and the Polyps

Tupperware Goddess

Goddess holding moldy meat
Plastic, slippery, cold and neat
Sturdy lids that tightly seat
Tupperware is her name

She's got the stuff I'll never eat
The casseroles that smell like feet
Dishes I shall not repeat
Tupperware is her name

Tupper, Tupper, Tupperware
I shall find her everywhere
She's my goddess, Tupperware
Tupper, Tupper, Tupperware
Tup, tup, tup, tup, Tupperware!

High on Nyquil

Little red bottle
Or maybe it's green
It's sticky and sweet
In the little plastic cup
And I get high, high, high
High on Nyquil

Cheaper than booze
My little green bottle
Or maybe it's red
I don't have to smoke it
And I get high, high, high
High on Nyquil

High on Nyquil
Nothing better
Drink from the little red bottle
Or maybe it's green
And I get high, high, high
High on Nyquil

Peel My Tangerines

Peel! Peel! Peel my tangerines.
Peel! Peel! Peel!
My tangerines, all orange and shiny!
Peel! Peel! Peel!
My tangerines are never tiny!
Peel! Peel! Peel!

Unwrap them, lap them, peel them bare
Peel them, feel them everywhere
Tangerines are large and round
Orange and slippery by the pound!
Love my lovely citrus sweeties
Love them on my face and feeties!

Peel! Peel! Peel my tangerines.
Peel! Peel! Peel!
My tangerines, all fat and orange!
Peel! Peel! Peel!
Nothing ever rhymes with orange!
Peel! Peel! Peel!

I Love You But You Make Me Itch

Touch me, touch me, fondle me
Make me feel your love
But because you make me itch
You have to wear your gloves.

Cover me with calamine
After that I'll make you mine
When I'm with you I feel so rich
But wear your gloves, you make me itch.

I get a rash and hives and bumps
And welts and wens and warts and lumps.
You make me flaky, red and crusty
Hot and itchy, hot and lusty.

Cover me with calamine
After that I'll make you mine
When I'm with you I feel so rich
But now you know: you make me itch.

Locked In The Basement With You

I don't know how I got here
Down in the basement with spiders and dust
And I can't get out, the door is locked
And it's dark.
But here you are
I'm locked in the basement with you
And I don't know why
But I like it
I like it in the dark with the spiders and dust
I like being locked in the basement with you.

I don't know how long we will be here
Down in the basement with spiders and dust
They won't let us out, the door is locked
And it's dark.
But we're both here
We're locked in the basement together
We'll never know why
We'll be here together forever
In the dark with the spiders and dust
But I like it.
I like it in the dark with the spiders and dust
I like being locked in the basement with you.

Don't Lick My Turtle Any More

I saw you licking my turtle.
You took him out of his bowl
With the little plastic palm tree.
He hid in his shell
But you licked him anyhow.
Don't lick my turtle any more.

I saw you licking my dog.
You saw him sleeping on the couch
Where he isn't supposed to be.
He growled at you
But you licked him anyhow.
Don't lick my dog any more.

I saw you licking my cat.
You found her sitting at the window
Chattering at the birds.
She hissed at you
But you licked her anyhow.
Don't lick my cat any more.

You licked my dog
You licked my cat
But the worst thing you did was
You licked my turtle.
Turtles carry salmonella.
You won't lick my turtle any more.

Feel Me, Grandma

Feel me, Grandma
Sit me in your rocking chair and feel me.
Feel me, Grandma
Beat me with your cane and then feel me.

You're ancient and wrinkly and gray
You pour Geritol on your prunes
You play bingo at the church every day
You watch Lawrence Welk reruns
But I love it when you feel me.

Feel me, Grandma
Stomp me with your walker and feel me.
Feel me, Grandma
Beat me with your cane and then feel me.