We all remember Oprah Winfrey shouting “You get a car and you get a car!” right?  Well, we need her again, except this time we need her to shout “You get a pardon and you get a pardon!”  This strategy has been suggested by some customers of the salon and a few pundits on the teevee.  I like it, especially as it would be a big Fuck You to Trump.  It goes something like this:

On January 18, 2025, Biden issues blanket federal pardons for all acts committed by the listed people between the dates of January 20, 2017 through January 20, 2025.  Those on the list will include all US officials who were ever involved in investigations or prosecutions of Trump, his family, friends, associates, and all of those who prosecuted the January 6th insurrectionists.  It would also include all federal personnel in the various departments of the government who have been involved in any program that Trump opposes.  At the top of the list would be past and present Joint Chiefs, especially Mark Milley, and the entire officer corps of all 5 branches of the military.  The pardons would also go to Biden’s family and staff, Kamala Harris, her entire family and staff, as well as all Biden Whitehouse staff.

Also on the list would be all all Democrats and the few Republicans who spoke out against Trump during that period as well as journalists who factually reported on Trump’s corruption between those dates and all of the staff of those new organizations.  Jeff Bezos would not make the list.

Then, on January 19, 2025, Biden would resign the presidency and Ketanji Brown Jackson would swear Kamala Harris in as 47th president of the US.  (Just think of all the Trump 47 merch that would be unsaleable after that!)  Kamala would then issue a blanket pardon to Biden covering the period from January 20, 2009 to January 20, 2025.

Biden and Harris would then issue a joint statement of explanation stating that these extraordinary pardons had become necessary because of the clear and present danger Trump poses to these thousands of people who would be otherwise unprotected.  The explanation would include citing the continuous stream of public threats made by Trump and his nominated cabinet members specifically stating that they will use a weaponized DOJ to exact retribution against anyone who has even TALKED ABOUT Trump’s criminality and corruption.  Hunter would be included in that group.

This would be the first salvo in the flame thrower war that the Dems and Biden must wage to protect everything they can from Trump’s infestation of the Whitehouse beginning on January 20th.  Trump must be frustrated at every turn.  This must be a continuous effort on everyone’s part if we stand any chance of actually saving the country from the dictatorship Trump and his goons are planning.  Basically, we’re turning McConnell’s strategy against Obama and Biden against Trump with flamethrowers added for effect.

Let flamewar commence!

To all you pearl-clutchers, just stop it.  The election is over, and Kamala lost.  BIG TIME.  She lost because of Biden’s own poor judgement by staying in the race, his relentless institutionalism, Chuck Schumer’s maddening dawdling and insistence of following calcified rules, and the Democrats obsession with nose counting and identity politics.  Well bucko, THAT DIDN’T WORK.  AGAIN.  For fuck’s sake, people, STOP IT.

Half of the American electorate just voted for a convicted felon who ran on one thing – destroying what’s left of our society.  He’s poking decent people in the eye with his picks for top government jobs, intentionally trying to piss people off by nominating drunks, perverts, weirdos, rapists, criminals, and assholes to critical leadership roles.  He’s thumbed his nose, AGAIN, at every norm and law that presidents have followed for over 240 years. He doesn’t give a flying fuck about rules, the law, country or you. Period.  He’s in it for himself, and with the foot dragging of law enforcement, the Congress, and now the courts, he’s doing what he wants, when he wants.  He’s in the process of weaponizing the DOJ to turn us into 1933 Nazi Germany, and what are you doing?  Handwringing over Biden’s pardon of Hunter.

To be clear, Hunter is a broken, morally bankrupt person whose own personal life provided Trump a gigantic target for him and his goons, but you know what?  I don’t give a shit.  Trump actually got Republicans to mount an unrelenting attack on Hunter for the last 7 years to the point of Merrick Garland bending to political pressure and allowing a prosecution over crimes he had already confessed to and prosecuting him for a violation that is NEVER enforced.  It was nothing short of weaponizing a federal agency against a political enemy, ironically the EXACT thing Trump is howling about that supposedly happened to him after he tried to overthrow the US government, steal a national election, and violate a literal legion of federal and state laws.  He did all that while fucking Mitch McConnell twiddled his thumbs and miserably failed at his number one job of protecting the Constitution.

It’s time for handwringing progressives and Democrats to fucking stop it.  Getting pissed off about Biden’s pardon of Hunter is like an HOA going after someone who hasn’t mowed their lawn while ignoring a serial arsonist setting fire to the house across the street.  I’m sorry, but fretting over your pronouns and nose counting doesn’t help a goddam bit when the winning side is in the process of actually destroying what’s left of our society.  It’s time to get out the fucking flame thrower and start fighting fire with fire.  The reason that vulnerable members of our society are even at risk is that the bad guys are in control, and in the case of Texas, have been in control for 30 fucking years.  They’ve been in control for 30 fucking years because the leadership of the TDP are incompetent and/or bogged down in reams of silly rules and traditions instead of fighting for Texans.

The only way you fight an out of control fire is with fire.  It’s time to get out the flamethrowers, and fight dirty.  You can’t follow arcane rules and maintain decorum when your political opponent wants you in jail, or worse, dead.  Wake the fuck up, and put your pearls away.  Pick up the flamethrower and light it up.

After 9 years of incendiary rhetoric, inciting actual violence, and personally threatening dozens of perceived enemies, TFG has certainly demonstrated that he can dish it out, but sure can’t take it.  He has spent years vilifiying everyone from Haitian immigrants to Dems to Taylor Swift, but when someone starts shooting at him, he’s shocked and appalled when the tables are turned.

Let’s be clear – violence is NEVER appropriate in any instance, political or otherwise.  But this monster of escalating violence has been wholy created by TFG and his sycophants repeating his vicious lies about everything from “the deep state”, to immigrants, and to anyone who happens to disagree with him.  He’s even inciting violence against schoolkids in Springfield, Ohio, FFS.  His social media accounts drip with hate, authoritarian declarations, threats, and lies against millions of people and entire classes of society, fabricated from whole cloth.  He even incited thousands of knuckleheads to attack the US Capitol in an attempt to overthrow the US government.

I find it pretty rich that TFG and Vance are now denouncing the very violence they’ve been inciting, but only because that violence has been turned on him.  If they want a reduction in violence they need to start that at home and turn down the heat, but I’m not expecting any of that.  A little self-awareness would be useful right now.

NBC pulled a fast one this weekend, hiring Trumpist liar Ronna McDaniel, former RNC chair liar and insurrectionist, as a paid political “analyst”.  She debuted on Meet the Press yesterday and it was a Shit Show with McDaniel lying while tripping over her lies while Kristen Welker did her best to hold her feet to the fire.  McDaniel’s performance was typical just repeating herself while pretending to be the slightest bit credible.  The real star of the show, though, as Chuck Todd took a flamethrower to not just McDaniel, but NBC itself.  He told Welker that the bosses of NBC owed her an apology for making her interview such a prolific liar.  Have a look:

It gets better, though.  Joe Scarborough launched this morning condemning NBC and Nicole Wallace followed suit.  The blowback is so bad the MSNBC has told parent company NBC that they won’t give McDaniel airtime on any show.  Boom.

Keep in mind that McDaniel chaired the RNC up until TFG’s daughter in law took over 2 weeks ago.  She led the way on The Big Lie, played a key role in the fake elector scam and tried to get Michigan to not certify the 2020 election.  She’s essentially an unindicted co-conspirator in the insurrection; rather than being on NBC, she should be on bail for federal felony charges.  She’s the worst of the worst, and Todd was right – you can’t trust a word out of her mouth.  NBC has made a huge mistake and I predict a short tenure for Ms. McDaniel at the network.

I’ve never been much of a Twitter user, primarily finding it occasionally useful to follow breaking stories.  When Elon took over the platform, though, I decided to follow him and others to see the effects on the platform itself as he consolidated power in the company.  My conclusions, as you can imagine, are not good.  First, just an observation, and it’s no secret – Twitter is already an open sewer of nonsense, misinformation, and dumbasses who don’t know how many hours are in a day, those who can’t do simple arithmetic, and those who have very low reading comprehension.

Then Elon took over, and it’s gotten worse.  A lot worse.  First, Musk is as impulsive and immature as a high school freshman complete with erratic behavior and childish judgment.  Add that to the fact that he has no guardrails to guide him, and being the richest man in the world there’s no one around him to keep him from acting out his worst tendencies.  After the takeover on Thursday, he fired the senior management team including those in charge of moderation of the platform, and has been hinting at massive layoffs of other employees.  He’s also on record of being opposed to blocking racists, insurrectionists, domestic terrorists, anti-semites, and outright weirdos.  He’s more than hinted that he’ll let TFG and Kanye West back on the platform.  Use of the N-word on Twitter  is up over 500% since he took over.  Worse, he’s participating in misinformation himself retweeting, then later deleting an idiotic homophobic conspiracy theory that Paul Pelosi’s attacker was actually a male prostitute that Pelosi had brought to the house. His deleted retweet was directed at…wait for it…Hillary Clinton.  That’s right, the “Chief Twit” showed such poor judgment that he amplified this idiocy to his 112 MILLION followers.

Elon’s control of Twitter has a LOT more downside than upside for not only him financially, but for simple common decency.  Twitter is highly influential over global society and it’s critical that it gets it right between balancing free speech principles against threatening language and intentional disinformation.  He’s demonstrated that he has no qualifications to not just manage this issue, but even to recognize it exists.

I am not hopeful for any good coming from this takeover, and can only hope that twitter goes the way of MySpace and Lotus 123.

This is how you do it.  Katie Hopkins, sort of the UK’s version of Tucker Carlson, is very much a controversial personality, first gaining attention as a contestant on the UK version of The Apprentice about 14 years ago.  Since then, she’s been carrying the water for the extreme right in Europe writing columns and talking on radio and television.

As part of a new program to improve the economy by allowing television and movie crews into the country, Hopkins was granted a special visa into Australia to participate in the Australian version of the television show, Big Brother.  Under Australian quarantine rules, she was required to quarantine in a hotel for 14 days.  Under these rules she was to stay in her room and food would be brought to her.  Also under those rules, she was to wait 30 seconds after a door knock and then answer the door wearing a mask to retrieve the food brought to her.  She thought it would be really funny to not do that, but to immediately answer the door sans not only a mask, but also clothing.  AND she videoed herself doing that and then posted the video on social media.  She was trying to attract attention and draw a reprimand so she could then publicize government tyranny.

Well, she drew more than attention and a reprimand.  Officials from New South Wales arrested her, fined her $1,000 Australian dollars, and promptly put her on a plane back to the UK.  Australia is having none of the anti-science, anti-vax nonsense, and is actively working to protect its citizens, especially from idiots like Hopkins.  Oh, and here’s the best part – Big Brother Australia fired her from the show.

Boom.