how to classify? ("I don't want to beat it with a dead horse.")

[Cohen, Gerald Leonard]

    In a sort of mental blender, the speaker made a jumble of three phrases, although only two are clear to me: (1) "I don't want to beat a dead horse," and  (2) "I don't want to beat it to death."
 For the third phrase (to account for "with") a possibility would be something like: "I don't want to deal with this topic anymore."
But that's just a guess.

Gerald Cohen

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Message from James A. Landau,  Fri 6/18/2010 7:15 AM:

Heard in the lab:

"I don't want to beat it with a dead horse"

How do we classify this?

<snip>

     - Jim Landau

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