I’ve been watching Liz Cheney’s MSNBC book tour of late. She’s been on Rachel Maddow, she’s sat down with Ari Melber, FFS Nicolle Wallace came back from maternity leave for a day to interview her. In case you live under a boulder, Cheney has written a book called “I Was Completely Wrong to Vote With Preznit Carnage 98 Percent of the Time and To Vote For Him when I did, Sorry About That, America: A Memoir.”

Sorry, I misspelled that. The actual title of the book is “Oath and Honor: A Memoir and a Warning.” And, the fact is, many liberals/progressives/LGBTQ allies/regular Americans like myself are watching Liz Cheney’s (my personal stylebook has to call her that on second and subsequent references because her father, DICK, was once vice president and a loutish war criminal) are kind of pumping our fist, I think, but not without some internal conflict. I mean, Rachel Maddow spent 30 minutes with a powerful and wisely-delivered disclaimer before her interview with Liz Cheney detailing how polar are her and Liz Cheney’s views, and she somehow did so without mentioning that she, Rachel Maddow, is an out gay person, and that Liz Cheney has in the past opposed equality for gay people. Her point, though, was that this is where we’re at. Liz Cheney is sitting at my table rather than sequestering herself at Fox “News” because they won’t have her anymore, so Liz Cheney is promoting her book at the House that Keith Olbermann built.

I have to admit, I had qualms about reading Liz Cheney’s new book, but there it is on my Kindle nonetheless, awaiting my eyes. I think her book is that important. I think her voice is that important, despite her 100 percent rating by the National “Right To Life” Committee, despite her endorsements from the NRA, despite her support for repealing the Affordable Care Act, despite her state support for building a wall at our southern border, despite everything she thinks and everything she does aside from standing up for our constitutionally limited representative democratic republic. I personally think that to save the country, the Republican Party needs to be saved and that the person who can do that and should do that is Dick Cheney’s daughter, who happens to be chatting it up this week on your favorite cable news network that only covers the same two stories an hour.

But. She’ll write a book. She’ll go on TV. And she says she’ll do anything, anything at all to stop Preznit Carnage from becoming Preznit again, anything anything at all. Anything but the only thing that might actually affect that outcome.

She won’t endorse Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. for President.

On the subject of where she stands concretely, Liz Cheney kind of stuffs her bare foot into the slush. She won’t rule out running third party (which would only strip votes from President Biden). She won’t endorse, saying that she doesn’t want to hurt any of those losers who debated on News News Mouse or whatever it’s called tonight. And, in her interview with Ari Melber tonight, she was taking about how, in order to evade this pending catastrophe, all American citizens need to work across the aisle, put our differences aside for now, and lead.

How about you, dear?

You wrote a book. You’re on television, dummy. Now’s the time, here’s the reality. Leap in with your glasses on and endorse Biden/Harris. Go on the campaign trail as every liberal’s favorite Republican and speak against every fascist evil you espouse against in your book and on MSNBC’s signature television programs. Let Thom Hartmann interview you and, why not, go on Howard Stern. You don’t have to change your registration. But you are currently an American who is in a position to reach across the aisle with the biggest bang.

Get on Team Biden/Harris. Now. Stop dicking around.

So, Thom Hartmann on his fine radio program today uttered a thought that’s a little unsettling.

As you know, Sen. Tommy Tuberville, erstwhile coach of college gridiron football, has been blocking senior military nominations, for the reason, he says, of protesting the military’s practice of offering resources to women/pregnant people who are stationed in anti-choice areas of the world so they might travel to receive care.

But, Hartmann wondered today, what if that’s not the reason?

What if Tuberville is holding those spots open hoping that Preznit Carnage, twice-impeached, thrice indicted of the Orange, will be able to one day soon fill those spots with lunatics who, shall we say, don’t really respect posse comitatus?

Sleep tight.

I’m so fucking tired of Donald Trump.

I’m tired of seeing him on my TV all the time. I’m tired of him, living rent free in our brains. I’m tired of seeing his ugly, conceited, swelled-up orange face everywhere. I’m tired of hearing the audio of him shaking down Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger for 11,780 votes. I’m tired of seeing new tell-all books coming out about Donald Trump from authors who should have told what they knew back when it would have made a difference. I’m tired of a Republican Party that could, any day they wanted to, excise themselves of this cancer just by having 20 to 50 of their members start getting in front of a camera and telling the truth. I’m tired of it. I’m sick to death of it. Just tell me when he’s been arrested. Otherwise, Joy Reid, otherwise, Chris Hayes, otherwise, Nicolle Wallace, talk to the hand. I’m done with your speculation and your Claire McCaskill and former part-of-the-problem Michael Steele and your giving Donald Trump more oxygen than he deserves. Done with it. Call me when he’s in jail. Otherwise, fuck all ya’ll.

Seriously. Knock it off.

I remember in 2015, when I was working one of the shittiest jobs I’ve ever worked, but at least I got 45 minutes for lunch, so I would get in my car and drive it to a remote part of the parking lot and eat a sandwich and listen to Chris Matthews on MSNBC on Sirius/XM. And he would cover Trump rallies gavel to gavel, and this was held over from the previous hour. They didn’t cover shit about what President Obama was doing, nor did they cover the other candidates like that. Nope. Just Trump. Trump Trump Trump Trump. And now, they’re doing it again.

Well, shove it up your ass, MSNBC.

And let’s get back to a point I glossed over earlier: The “Republican Party” could excise this zit off of its bum any time they want to. Any time. It would take maybe a dozen of them to just get in front of the camera and talk some sense. Like, Joe Biden won the election and is the real preznit. Like, maybe an outgoing preznit shouldn’t lead an insurrection. Maybe that’s bad. Like, maybe theories about my political opponents lusting for the blood of children is something we should discourage. Maybe. Just maybe.

Even just a scintilla of truth from a dozen of these assholes could send Donald Trump into the trash heap of obsolescence that he deserves. But they won’t do it because they are chicken-shit pussies. Or, they’re not and they’re just Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a golem made of corn chips. Regardless.

I often find myself thinking, with as much hope as I can muster, with as much hope I sometimes have that a banana split will magically appear before me with a spoon, I find myself thinking, well, he has to die sometime. He’s 77, he’s fat, and he’s stupid enough to flush himself down a toilet. He has. To die. Sometime.

But I think it’s too late. Trump is the center of Trumpism, but he’s not the spring from which it flows. Trump would die and become a weird martyr rumored to have special superpowers like Jesus. Did you know Trump can turn a single quarter pounder into hundreds of double cheeseburgers just by farting through his bellybutton? Did you know that Trump could declassify classified documents just by thinking about it? Did you know that Trump was secretly The Buraq and while Muhammed rode his steely back to Mecca, Trump told him lots of funny jokes about Mexicans?

This country is fucked, people. Get out and vote for Biden/Harris in 2024. Meanwhile, put on an Erroll Garner album and chill. Let Joy Reid talk to herself for a bit.

Let’s see if I can get into writer mode tonight. Let’s see if I can. I find it increasingly difficult these days. I find it difficult because I’ve been blogging about the politics since the early 2000s and have had a mind full of it since I was a toddler and the United States of America was threatening to send my 20-something year old father off to Viet Nam to fight, and he and my 20-something mom would watch David Brinkley every night like it was life and death to them because it was. And as I’ve been blogging about this for so many years, one would think pointing out this stuff to people online for so many years would have had some sort of effect. But no, it hasn’t. The poop has just continued to run downhill, worse, smellier, and in bigger and bigger piles ever since. Holy moly, it’s as if nobody has been listening to a thing I’ve written ever in my life. And it makes me frustrated.

So let’s see if I get this correct, as I get ready to flip over to side two of Thomas Dolby’s The Flat Earth, which I particularly recommend listening to on vinyl, and hoping that those reading this remember Highlights magazine: Goofus steals a thousand pounds of classified, top-secret documents and takes them to Florida with him, and when they are requested to be returned to the American people, he lies about their existence at his place, then he acknowledges they are there but insinuates they were planted, then he flouts subpoenas, then returns some but not all of the documents, then he gets his place searched with a legal search warrant after like two years of this stupid tug of war, then he announces this search to the world when those who searched him would have been content to have done it quietly, then wonders why the world falls down on him regarding this.

Gallant discovers a dozen classified documents and calls the Department of Justice and reports it.

One of these things is not like the other. And yet, so much of it is being reported as a BUT-WHAT-ABOUT insanity. Holy Starbucks, can we stop pretending that both sides should be treated equally when it’s so clear that once side is throwing shit on the wall while the other side is desperately trying to fold a fitted sheet?

Hey. I think I just got into writer mode. Need to go put on side two and see what else we can dredge up. BRB.

So, how about this George Santos character, huh?

If only I had in my professional life puffed up my CV to a fifth of how this asshole inflated his, I would have been Bill Gates by now. Hi, I’m George Santos. I went to big fancy schools, blah blah blah. My auntie died in the Holocaust and my mommy died on 9/11, and by the way, I had a brain tumor and I’m Jewish and I’m a financial genius and I can shoot lasers out of my eyes and I used to be Menachem Mendel Schneerson and here’s maybe a white power hand signal on the floor of the Congress.

What the f87k?

And the new Sporker of the Haus is okay with this? The guy who only got his position after an internecine conflict that only happened previously the same year Ted Knight was born? Yeah. He thinks that’s dandy. Because “Santos’” (and I think anything to do with him from now on should be treated with scare quotes, let’s make that AP Style) provides him with a vote. McCarthy isn’t going to do jack-fart about Santos’ fraud. Because power.

Meanwhile, there’s the bill that acts like Kermit Gosnell is an everyday occurrence like the throw on your sofa. They call it the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act.” And now for a change I put on that Apollonia 6 album I’ve been thinking about lately. Do you know why there are three chicks in the band but it’s called Apollonia 6? Because of they have six tits between them. That Prince was a genius.

There is audio somewhere I heard today, sorry, I am getting sloppy with my attribution but it is almost 2 a.m., of Rep. Steve Scalise, who was once shot in the ass at a basketball game, claiming with all his heart and soul that babies are routinely being born in this country and then, I dunno, what, the doctors then bash their little heads against the wall? That’s basically what he said. This is the narrative being expressed by one half of the mainstream political infrastructure of this country, that doctors are routinely killing babies just for shits and giggles.

Let me counter. This country is more women than men, more potentially pregnant people than there are sperm donors. Those of them who take on the physical burden of pregnancy should be respected and honored. They should enjoy our trust and our support, unconditionally. We should not assume the worst from more than half of us, that any of them would carry a fetus to term and then would just willy-nilly change their minds. This is purely mysogynistic drivel and should be pooped out and flushed.

I want a country that trusts women, unconditionally. I want a country that does not assume the worst of our women, our potentially pregnant people, our people. I want a country that stops assigning a particular agenda to the label “pro-life” because this halts legitimate conversation about anything completely (which it is meant to do, by the way). I want sanity in my little neck of the woods.

But I doubt that’s ever gonna happen.

I am not often in the business of advising Republican politicians. However, I really hate to see Columbus North High School’s most prestigious fella pass up such a smart opportunity.

Former Vice-President Mike Pence has let a few impressions leak that seem to me to be trial balloons regarding his recent invitation to testify before the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Via the New York Times:

In recent weeks, Mr. Pence is said by people familiar with his thinking to have grown increasingly disillusioned with the idea of voluntary cooperation. He has told aides that the committee has taken a sharp partisan turn by openly considering the potential for criminal referrals to the Justice Department about Mr. Trump and others. Such referrals, in Mr. Pence’s view, appear designed to hurt Republican chances of winning control of Congress in November.

The problem is that Pence, who presumably has designs on the presidency himself, is in a rather difficult spot. He seems concerned that capitulation to the Select Committee would lose him sway among the mighty Trump base. But didn’t he already lose that precious anointing when he refused to throw out the generally accepted election result on 1/6/2021? Or when he’s seen on video being quickly evacuated from the legislative floor?

This why I suspect we are reading such speculation in the great NYT. He needs to test his standing with the MAGATs. With the Qanons. With the true believers. With those who await the necromancing of JFK Jr., the ones who think Wayfair furniture is built out of human remains. Pence is sticking a wet phalange into the wind. And I don’t think the results are gonna be all that great for him.

That’s got to be quite a kick in the gut for a guy who spent four years staring into the back of Preznit Carnage’s head with a look on his face like when Itchy the Wookie is watching Diahann Carroll sing “This Minute Now” in the Star Wars Holiday Special. This is Mr. “I Am Deeply Humbled to Be Your Vice President,” after all. His repayment? HANG MIKE PENCE. HANG MIKE PENCE HANG MIKE PENCE.

So why is he even pondering this when there’s a much better, albeit more risky, way forward?

Hey. Mike. Get to marching in Liz Cheney’s parade.

Do I think Liz Cheney is doing what she’s doing because she wants what’s best for the country and she believes the Big Lie is a Big Lie and that the Insurrection of January 6 was ungood? I guess. But on the other hand, I think Liz Cheney sees a BIG FAT LONGSHOT PATH TO BECOME LA PREZNIT OF DEEZ UNTIED STATES OF AMERICA.

After all, what happens when or if the unexplainable shine wears off of der cheeterhosen? Criminal charges. Lawsuits. Sexual assault charges. Civil suits leaving him hemorrhaging money. His recent vaccine endorsements are already throwing off his most loyal unwashed. Who’s going to be there if and when the Republican Party tosses Former Preznit Disgraceful Carnage out on his ass in his fat golf khakis? Liz Cheney is so far the only one betting the long game that it’s going to be she. (Okay, yes, Adam Kinzinger, blah blah blah. Dude is really kind of an afterthought on all this, methinks.)

Cheney has begun to forge a path that might could behoove the former Vice-Preznit to embark upon. It could start with his straightforward, unredacted public testimony to the Select Committee, followed by public calls to his own party to purge itself of this enormous, treacherous lie, to respect the fair and correct result of the 2020 election, and to get back to the business of working for true conservative values.

Mr. Former Vice President, heed my call: You sir, are in need of a reinvention. And I would argue that the Congresswoman from Wyoming is showing you the way. Show up. Testify. Cooperate. Throw your former boss, who I remind you tried to have you assassinated, way deep and far under the bus. It will be good for the country. It will make you seem to be presidential.

Heck. It might even make you presidential.