Okay, one more Trump link today: Frank Rich reveals the one thing than can stop The Donald: Republican voters voting for someone else. At first, that doesn't sound promising when you consider how unappealing most of those "someone elses" are…but I think Trump will manage to drive his voters to others. Just give him more microphones and more time.

And I think Rich is right when he says that the Republican candidates shrieking that Obama's not doing enough to destroy ISIS are not really proposing to do anything he's not already doing except to sound tougher about it when they address the American people. I wish more people could differentiate between talking tough and actually doing things that are tough. But Mr. Rich disappoints me though when he wades into the area of Obama's decision to deliver his Oval Office Address standing at a lectern instead of seated at a desk. It reminds me of all those pundits in 2000 whose election analysis had a lot to do with the colors of Al Gore's suits and ties.

I may try to limit this site to one Donald Trump post per day. Here's Matt Taibbi talking about how Trump is the ideal candidate for voters who think everything in the world is as simple, cut and dried as it is on most TV shows.

Lots of folks like playing songs by Stephen Sondheim. How many of them like doing crossword puzzles by Stephen Sondheim?

Almost every week around this time, I tell you about some great guest my friend Stu Shostak has on his Internet radio program, Stu's Show. And often throughout the week, I recommend you go listen to a great guest on the podcast of my friend Paul Harris, who is heard on radio station KTRS in St. Louis and sometimes elsewhere. Well, this week I get to combine these two recommendations because Stu's great guest on Stu's Show is Paul Harris.

Paul is a friend I made via computer years ago on CompuServe. We were on a forum there and he struck me as one of the brightest, cleverest guys on it. Then I heard his radio shows, most of which consist of him interviewing interesting folks…and doing it as well as any interviewer I've ever heard. Folks ask me how I learned how to interview folks on comic book convention panels. A very real answer is that I listened to Paul Harris. He's a hero of Stu's, too. Tomorrow (Wednesday), he and Stu will be discussing what's become of radio, what he's learned interviewing important celebrities and politicians, and the fascinating career Paul has had. He and I spent most of Sunday evening swapping anecdotes and he's really one of the finest storytellers I've ever encountered. Tune in and hear some of those swell stories and maybe you'll pick up some pointers.

Stu's Show can be heard live (almost) every Wednesday at the Stu's Show website and you can listen for free there. Webcasts start at 4 PM Pacific Time, 7 PM Eastern and other times in other climes. They run a minimum of two hours and sometimes go to three or beyond.  Shortly after a show ends, it's available for downloading from the Archives on that site. Downloads are a paltry 99 cents each and you can get four for the price of three.  Plus, check out Stu's new V.I.P. Listener program for a way to get more Stu into your life.

Audra McDonald (one of the my favorite singers) singing one of my favorite songs…

Centuries ago in August of 2015, the first Republican debate for the current presidential clusteryou-know-what started with one of those questions where the moderator asks the candidates on stage to answer with a show of hands. He asked them if they would all pledge to support the nominee of their party and to not mount a third-party campaign. Only Donald Trump declined, though he later took that pledge and — who knows? — might still even intend to honor it.

I wonder what would happen if they started the next debate with this request: "Raise your hand if there's anyone on this stage you might be hesitant to fully support if that person was the nominee of the Republican party."

If I was a candidate and still wanted to beat Trump, my hand would shoot up. First off, how do you beat Trump if you're saying he's an acceptable candidate? That trivializes all the issues you want to raise to assert that you'd be so much better.

Secondly, several candidates are distancing themselves from that "ban all Muslims" suggestion of his. Again, you can't run away from that and pledge to work for the guy's election at the same time.

And lastly, even if you're fine with that, what about what he's going to say tomorrow? Or the next day? Or the next time some poll suggests his lead might be slipping away? What's he going to say to fire up his base if it looks like he might do poorly in Iowa or New Hampshire? Or if he does?

Seems obvious to me what What Trump Says has little to no connection to What Trump Would Do. He says what gets cheers from his audiences (as long as they're not Jewish non-negotiators) and doesn't give a thought to what he'd do if he won and someone expected him actually do some or all of those things. He'll build a giant wall but he really has no idea how he'd build that giant wall. He'll deport all the illegal aliens but he really has no idea how he'd deport all the illegal aliens. He'll keep Muslims out of the country but he really has no idea how he'd keep Muslims out of the country…or deal with the fact that it's almost certainly unconstitutional.

Donald Trump has two main strengths and they've served him well throughout his career. One is that he's really, really good at self-promotion. Look how much he was in the news and how often you heard his name even before he was actually running for Chief Exec. There are richer people we never hear much about. There are developers who do bigger projects and we never see them on TV. But we all know Trump. He is his main product and he promotes it well.

And then his second strength is that he doesn't care if a majority of people think he's a flaming a-hole as long as he gets the deal he wants from the minority. Which is why I don't think he'll be the nominee, let alone the winner. You can make great business deals if most people hate you but you can't become the President of the United States.

This is not obvious yet because as Nate Silver notes time and again, most voters still aren't paying that much attention to this race…nor do they have to. There's plenty of time to get serious about a candidate…plenty of time to pick from whoever's still in the race a few months from now. People are taking this way too seriously, panicking that Trump might win the Iowa Caucuses. That means forgetting that the last two winners of the Iowa Caucuses were Mike Huckabee and Rick Santorum, neither of whom got anywhere near their party's nomination.

Jeb Bush and Chris Christie and whoever else still might think they have a shot must know they can't beat Trump when it comes to being Trump. They might be able to beat him by convincing voters that Trump would be a disaster for the party and even the nation. Pledging to support him would be a great way to not be able to do that. It also puts a candidate in an awkward position when Trump, worried he's not sufficiently dominating the news cycle, says something even more outrageous. Which, of course, he will.

Jonathan Chait believes that Donald Trump has "won" in the sense that he's redefined the Republican party on his terms. Even those who oppose him cannot oppose him that much.

Jon Stewart guests on The Daily Show tonight.

There's a tiny place out in Altadena called the Coffee Gallery Backstage and before this month is out, it will feature two different musical groups that we like a lot on this blog…

Monday, December 14 at 8 PM, it's Will Ryan and the Cactus County Cowboys. Will is a good pal of mine, an expert cartoon voice actor and a gifted performer who's become America's Greatest Singing Cowboy, if only by default. His troupe plays clever and fun western tunes you never heard before and for this Christmas engagement, he and his band will be joined by the Saguaro Sisters…the Sweetest Singing West of the Great Divide! I've seen Will and his boys and they always put on a fine show.

Here's a quick clip from a past show of theirs. Will's the guy on the guitar playing what was probably the only song in that performance he didn't write. He's accompanying two guest stars who I don't imagine will be in the 12/14 show, though he'll have other surprises. It's Tony Anselmo, who's the current voice of Donald Duck, and Bill Farmer, who's the current voice of Goofy. (Will himself has been heard in many Disney cartoons including The Little Mermaid and Mickey's Christmas Carol)…

Okay, that's them. Then on Sunday, December 20 at 7 PM, the Coffee Gallery Backstage will welcome a wonderful musical group called Big Daddy. Basically, what these guys do is to take some current hit song — or even an older one not rendered in the style of the fifties — and rearrange it so it's in the style of the fifties. That usually makes it very funny but in an amazing percentage of the time, it also makes it a much better song. The gents who make up Big Daddy are superior musicians and their records, which were expertly arranged and produced, are wonderful.

For a long time, they were inactive but not long ago, aided by a lot of crowdfunding from readers of this site, they produced their first album in fifteen years — Smashing Songs of Screen and Stage. We liked it a lot and recommend it. This will be their first live gig since the mid-nineties! I have no idea what they'll be doing on that stage except that it'll be funny and wonderful and I hope to be there to hear it. Here's a little sample of what they do…

The Coffee Gallery Backstage is located at 2029 N. Lake, Altadena, CA. 91001. Reservations are only available by phone so call (626) 798-6236 between 10 AM and 10 PM and you don't need to give them a credit card number. In fact, they don't take credit cards at all so bring cash…but it won't cost you much of it to go, have some coffee or a snack and hear some fine, silly music. More info is available here.

If I were to make up a list of catastrophes that I most worry about affecting me — and it's not my style to do so — I suspect being killed by a terrorist of any kind would be way, way down the list, down around perishing in a cattle stampede. I'm not trivializing any death by terrorism — they're all horrible — but let's not obsess about that as if it's a likely fate. Andrew Shaver explains why it isn't.

Jonathan Chait on Marco Rubio's odd position on "No-Fly Lists." It's perfectly fine to use them to restrict someone's right to get on an airplane but not to restrict someone's right to buy automatic weapons and explosives with which to commit mass murder.

If you live anywhere near Los Angeles, you have a chance this Saturday night to see the best damned improv comedy troupe I've ever seen. Every so often — not often enough to suit me — they get together and put on an Instaplay, which is their name for an entire musical comedy created on the spot, based on a suggestion from someone in the audience — maybe even you! Yes, they have a live audience — unlike some one-performance musical comedies we could mention! They are also funny and brilliant.

It's Saturday night at the Fanatic Salon Theater in Culver City and tickets are only $11.50 plus a small service fee. The director is Bill Steinkellner. The cast is George McGrath, Deanna Oliver, Jonathan Stark, Phyllis Katz and Navaris Darson with Mari Falcone at the keyboard. The theater is small and intimate (and about as non-fancy as any place you'll ever see brilliant comedy) but tickets are still available for what will probably be a great Christmas story. Here's the link you want to click on. If my knee can handle it, I may see you there.

Just watch it. Just watch it.

Fred Kaplan watched President Obama's speech to the nation and has this to say about it. My gut tells me Obama is taking the sane approach to the situation and that the Donald Trumps don't have a clue what they'd do; only what sounds good in their speeches. By the time we get to the Iowa Caucuses, I expect Trump will be vowing to strangle every Muslim in the world to death with his own bare hands. And then force them to build a wall around Syria at their expense.

While I was digging out those panels from The Wiz comic book to scan the other day, I found a mis-filed file folder in my filing cabinet. It was full of rough sketches I did in the early seventies for covers of Gold Key comic books I was writing. I did mine tighter and more like finished art than the other folks who were designing these, even though I had no thought that they might ever ask me to draw the final covers…and indeed, they did not. Here are two examples with my pencil rough on the left and the finished comic on the right.

On the Daffy Duck one, I committed what was then considered a mortal sin: I merged Daffy's eyes together. This was the early seventies and there was no active Warner Brothers Cartoon Department. The folks who decided what those characters looked like — whether they were drawn properly — were in some sort of Licensing Division at the Warner company and they were furious if Daffy's eyes merged. There had to be black between them.

Fortunately, they never saw my rough or I might have been forbidden to ever draw (or even imagine) Daffy ever again. They didn't approve roughs; just the finished art which in this case was done by Joe Messerli.

My editor there, Chase Craig, told me horror stories of having to deal with those folks. Many of the artists he employed were former Warner Brothers animators. Tom McKimson was drawing the Bugs Bunny comic books I and others were writing. Phil DeLara was drawing Porky Pig or sometimes, it was Pete Alvarado. These were all guys who didn't take well to having someone tell them they were getting the characters wrong. At one point, someone at Warner's reportedly complained that Tom McKimson's Bugs didn't look right and they sent over some Xeroxes of old drawings that they wanted him to study to see the proper way to draw the wabbit.  Tom replied, "Tell those idiots that I did those old drawings!"

At one point, Chase informed me the company had decided to revive the old Looney Tunes comic book, though they wanted to retitle it Looney Toons. Warner okayed the new title, then changed their minds at the last minute, forcing it to be pulled off the presses so it could be changed to Looney Tunes.  Something about trademarks.

I wrote the first issue and worked up the cover sketch. Before I did, I asked Chase who was going to design the title logo for the new book. He said — with some annoyance because there had apparently been problems over this recently — that his company had recently hired an "overpaid graphics designer" (that was the term he used) to do all their logos. He thought this person, who worked for their New York office, was not very good.

Chase had been fighting to get them to not redesign a lot of the logos on his books that he thought were in no need of improvement. He told me, "It doesn't matter what you do. This fellow will come up with something we'll all dislike." So when I did my cover rough, I didn't even try to suggest a logo idea. I just wrote "Looney Toons" on it in block letters without much thought.

Chase okayed the sketch but decided to add other characters' heads onto the cover so he had the final artists do a little rearranging. (I believe the final art was penciled by Pete Alvarado and I think that was Larry Mayer's inking.) My rough and Chase's amended rough accompanied the finished art when it was sent back to New York…

…where the "Overpaid Graphics Designer" followed what I'd penciled in. If I'd known he was going to do that, I would have tried to come up with an actual idea. And that, folks, is how creative decisions have often been made in the comic book industry.