The latest campaign finance reports this week are showing that Elon Musk spent a quarter of a BILLION DOLLARS to get Trump elected, including $40 million into his “lottery” getting people to sign a petition to “protect the Constitution” and $20 million to fund the ironically named RBGPac that attempted to equate Trump’s bragging about ending Roe v. Wade with RBG’s position (hint: that’s a lie).  He also cut $75 million in checks to his America Pac.  In all, Musk spent $277 million in the 2024 election.  He’s also threatening to pay for primary challenges to any Republican who doesn’t bend the knee to Trump.  By spending this kind of money, and his continuous presence at Mar a Lago since the election, Musk has become the walking, talking reason to overturn Citizens United, the idiotic 2010 ruling where a 5 to 4 Republican majority claimed that money is speech and the laughable assertion that the presence of massive amounts of money would not corrupt our elections.

Normal people knew that the logical result of this ridiculous decision would be massive corruption, and that is exactly what has happened in the years since, with Musk bringing that corruption out of the shadows into plain sight.  AND, the problem was magnified this year as he piled into the election too late for those amounts of money to be reported until AFTER the election was over and the damage was done.

I am not laboring under any illusion that the Fuckheads in Congress will do a goddam thing about it, but there it is, in plain sight for us all to see.

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.

News item: Biden Pardons His Son. In another timeline, this news would cause a universal gnashing of teeth as yet another outgoing president abuses the power of the pardon as he passes them out like party favors in the waning days of his term. It’s what lame ducks do, and we’ve all come to expect it.

Remember Marc Rich?

But all I can say, upon reading the headlines on Sunday, that Joe Biden gave his sole surviving son a sweeping pardon for his crimes is “Good for you, Joe.”

This comes after a long drawn-out sideshow of Hunter Biden’s trials, aborted plea deals, stolen laptops, and President Biden’s repeated assurances that pardoning his son was a non-starter. Not since Billy Carter was derided and defiled simply because he was a presidential family member that took advantage of that fact, has a relative been drawn-and-quartered and given public whippings by the Righteous Right.

The abuse had to stop, and we finally got to see Biden eke out a win after all this time, even if it was (literally) by his own hand.

The timing of the announcement couldn’t have been more perfect, coming as it did after Don the Con promoted a former heroin addict to the Department of Health and Human Services, and named a scheming and disgusting former felon to Ambassador to France. What a massive F-You to Americans and the entire world over just these two actions. Given the smelly s–t sandwich that Bronzer Boy just served up to us, the sackcloth and ashes being worn by right wingers over Hunter’s reprieve is laughable by half.

In his way, I think, President Biden simply realized the truth of what was first noted by French philosopher Michel de Montaigne when he considered the negative blowback he would receive over his son’s pardon.

A man who fears suffering is already suffering from what he fears.

It has been a while since the last time we had a president-elect Trumpelstiltskin. I can still remember the sick feelings of loss and disgust when he won the first time by a gnat’s eyelash. But the post-election malaise that is setting in right now is unprecedented as is every other damned thing this time.

I bear witness to the fear and loathing taking place from Lubec, Maine to Lebec, California, as we await the second term of His Shartfulness with two observations.

First, what is with the dipping viewership of broadband cable news channels MSNBC and CNN? I don’t recall that from before. Is the whole Left in such a state of loathing and disgust that watching it unfold again and again on TV is too much to bear? Yes. I can understand the spectacular crash and burn of Joe and Mika’s once-popular morning show on MSNBC (more on that later), but the whole liberal news genre seems to have to scrounge for a vanished audience. Yes, it’s hard to watch, but it’s time to wake up and taste the bitter dregs. America really screwed the pooch this time, but we still need to pay attention, more so because this time we really dug ourselves a hole by electing an a-hole.

The other thing that seems to be new is the desire to be fair and impartial, especially after being treated to such over-the-top rhetoric before 11/5. Joe and Mika went to Mar-A-Lago to make nice with the president-elect, and they lost 31% of their audience almost immediately. Could it be that, as Jon Stewart posited the week after their pilgrimage, they said he was Hitler?

But it didn’t stop there. Whoopi Goldberg is willing to “wait and see.”

Quoting her: “I’m not going to waste a lot of time on what he might do. I’m gonna wait because I need to see what he will do so that I know what I’m gonna do.”

Are you kidding me? Whoopi has the distinction of being compared to Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler’s filmographer, by an anti-abortion ad that was aired during a commercial break on The View. That really happened.

At least they didn’t call her Hitler.

Even Ana Navarro (who I remember as an evil Republican back in the good old days) said, “I spent weeks telling people he was apocalyptic. I’m not going to change now because it’s still the same man! I think that’s when we lose credibility.”

Ya think?

You can’t spend months proclaiming from the mountaintops that the apocalypse is nigh if Captain Bone Spurs gets elected, and then adopt a reasonable “can’t we all get along?” approach when it actually happens. That’s lazy. That’s disingenuous.

And it just isn’t who we are.