How can I miss them when they won't go away?

 The other day I was thinking fondly of Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker.  They lost their elections, they conceded, they went home to their own states and nobody has heard about them since.  At least I haven't.  This is the way it used to be -- no lawsuits, no conspiracy theories, no riots.  Oz didn't even snipe at John Fetterman when he was hospitalized for depression.  Maybe at some level he's still a real doctor.

The graceful exit is vanishing, replaced by the demented loser and the forever candidate.  Sometimes, as with Trump, it's purely a source of revenue; Trump knows he lost but the MAGAts still respond to his pleas for just another million dollars for legal challenges and he wouldn't be much of a grifter if he didn't take advantage of them.  (He despises them as much as the Fox crew despises him.  As they risked lives and future freedom to storm the Capitol, he complained that they were dressed like "bums.")  The saddest ones are the Norma Desmond types:  Kari Lake was asked about being Trump's running mate and her "legal team" responded, "The Constitution won't allow for her to serve as governor and VP at the same time."  Doug Mastriano, shellacked last year for governor of Pennsylvania, has convinced himself that he has a "movement" of 2.2 million voters yearning for him to replace Bob Casey in the Senate.  Now all he needs is to convince the other seven million potential voters that he's not a Christofascist fruitcake.  And Joe Lieberman -- Joe Lieberman -- is organizing a non-party called No Labels to solve problems, which sounds just a bit vague.  It's based on the House Problem Solvers Caucus (remember them?  nor me) which solved such problems as...where to eat lunch?  He's lining up powerhouses like Michael Bloomberg, Larry Hogan and Kyrsten Sinema who think Joe Biden is too Marxist-Leninist.  

Then there's the lawsuit brigade, thinking of new ways to clog America's civil courts.  Remember this completely sane guy?

Yes, it's Michael Flynn, one of the first through the revolving door of the Trump White House.  He already sued to quash a subpoena from the House Select Committee (denied) and now he would like "accountability and damages" in the amount of $50 million for all the business opportunities he lost when he advocated overthrowing the elected government and was "maliciously prosecuted" and branded a traitor.  The Trump pardon wasn't enough, and neither was the very generous pension he continues to draw from the Department of Defense.  Not much of a soldier but a hell of a litigant.  

Twenty-eight states currently have "sore loser" laws which prohibit candidates who lose their party's primaries from running as independents, and it seems the Republicans hope this will save them from another Trump disaster.  As if their creature has ever respected laws.  Electorally he couldn't win but he could bring "retribution" to the party he believes betrayed him even while challenging every such law in court.  And the Trumpanzees will respond with money and violence.  You built it, you own it, party of Lincoln.

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Today is International Women's Day and women's rights are under siege from Kansas City to Kabul.  So it's cheering to know about this guy:

In Iran that's downright insurrectionary.