Don McGhan is appealing the decision of a federal judge that he has to testify.

The judge was pretty clear cut on the decision.

Well, see, that’s not a reason.  Trump does not think he’s a king. He thinks he’s a Bond villain. And that is the basis for their appeal.

Or, there might be another reason …

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson

Really, three reasons – (1) she has ta-tas, (2) she is black, (3) she was appointed by Barack Obama.

She also has a cum laude undergraduate degree from Harvard and a cum laude law degree from there, too. She was editor of the law review.

This case simply must be reviewed by the I Like Beer guy.

The Republican Party of Texas announced they are hiring Karl Rove to run their 2020 campaign to keep Texas red.

They sent out copies of their strategy to retake 12 seats in the Texas House so that they can be totally in charge of the 2020 redistricting. It’s kinda hard to tell if this is the plan they did by themselves or the new Rove one.  One way or another, they’ve got it floored in neutral.

Bless their hearts, they also included in that email the 12 Democrats who are targeted in their plan.  Seriously.

The document identifies 12 statehouse districts the Texas GOP plans to target in 2020 as well as plans to center candidates who can push back on a “narrative driven by Democrats” about the GOP’s lack of diversity.

“Starting after the Primary, the RPT will generate microsites for negative hits against the Democrat candidates in our twelve target race—we expect each microsite to be roughly $500,” the document reads. “We will then begin rolling out these websites, prioritizing the races that were within 4% in the 2018 election.”

They’re gonna make a video with brown and black people in it and then they’re gonna sling mud.

If you are a minority, there’s a Republican in Texas who wants to hire you for a photoshoot. Then they want you to leave.

What’s a microsite?

A microsite is a branded content site that lives outside of the company homepage and/or brand URL.

That’s it, really. What differentiates a microsite from a company blog or newsletter or any other branded platform is that it has its own independent URL—likely one that doesn’t include the name of the company sponsoring the site. If you have to register a new domain name, you’ve got yourself a microsite.

In useful language, it can be a site created by the Republican Party, but it doesn’t have to say that. It can say it’s done by Wonderful Sheep Herders of Texas or Magic Get Rich Plan or People Who Love Their Mothers.  And they can use that microsite to sling mud.  And then place ads for it on Facebook, Google, or your favorite weather site.

I’m pretty damn sure the Russians taught them how to do that.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

Oh Dannenbaum, Oh Dannenbaum,
How loyal are your donations!
You’re green not only at election time,
No, also in summer when we need cash.
Oh Dannenbaum, Oh Dannenbaum,
How loyal are your donations!

Dannenbaum Engineering Corporation (DEC), based in Houston, has agreed to pay a $1.6 million criminal fine for its involvement in a multi-year conduit political contribution scheme.  With federal campaign donation limits holding back the tons of money Dannenbaum wants to donate to congressional and presidential candidates, they devised a scheme where they asked employees to donate the limit to the company’s favorite candidates and then they reimbursed the employees.

“DEC engaged in a criminal scheme that undermined the fairness and transparency of our nation’s campaign finance laws in a misguided effort to increase its own power and prestige,” said Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “Today’s resolution demonstrates the Department’s resolve to aggressively pursue those who seek to corrupt our democratic process.”

They have been active in Texas for a couple of decades.  In Texas, county commissioners award non bid contracts for professional services to the tune of millions of dollars.  Not surprisingly, they generally award it to the service that donates the most to their campaign.  If you are curious, check the political contributions to your county commissioners and the county judge and more likely than not, especially is fast growing counties, you’ll find Dannenbaum’s name.  A bunch of times.

From 2015 to 2017, Dannenbaum made $232,300 in illegal contributions to specific congressional candidates and the Republican National Campaign Committee.  We have reason to suspect that Dannenbaum was trying to buy a piece of the wall.  A wall has to have lotsa engineering and apparently Trump was willing to spend big as long as he made some money, too.  So dealing with other greedy crooks is his forte.

James Dannenbaum resigned today.  He’s a former UT Regent, a position which you buy from the Governor.

Dannenbaum donated more than $420,000 to Rick Perry’s political campaigns. Perry named him a UT Regent in 2007, and Dannenbaum’s firm received multiple engineering contracts from the state during Perry’s governorship.

He’s 80 years old so I doubt there will be any criminal prosecution.

This is not isolated …

Sen. John Cornyn, whose campaign committees received $30,000 from Dannenbaum and his wife in February 2017, has vowed to cooperate with the Justice Department and return the donation money to the U.S. Treasury as mandated by law, a spokesperson said.

Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack said he would consider returning donations, which amount to at least $45,000 over the years. His fellow commissioners did not respond to a request for comment.

Two county commissioners in South Texas have been found guilty of corruption charges for their dealings with Dannenbaum Engineering. They will be sentenced this month.

Thanks to Alfredo for the heads up.

Bless his heart, Rick Perry is trying to get a pardon from the man who is going to be in prison before he is.

Rick went all Old Testament over Donald Trump this weekend and slobbered some of the most prayerful pile of poop seen anywhere since the last time Rick Perry needed divine intervention to fix some mess he got involved in while trying to play way above his IQ level.

Trump has been described as the “chosen one” by his secretary of energy, Rick Perry.

In the preview of an interview shown on Fox News on Sunday night, the adviser, who has drawn scrutiny for his role in the Ukraine scandal, also compared the US president to a number of biblical kings.

“God’s used imperfect people all through history,” Mr Perry told the broadcaster. “King David wasn’t perfect, Saul wasn’t perfect, Solomon wasn’t perfect.”

Well, yeah, nobody’s perfect but I don’t think any of them paid off a hooker.  And Saul had the good grace to fall on his sword.

Here’s the part you’re gonna love —

He revealed that he gave Mr Trump “a little one-pager on those Old Testament kings about a month ago”.

So now you have to ponder if Perry gave Trump a one-pager because Trump is too dumb to understand anything bigger than that or because that’s all Rick’s crayola would write.

Thanks to everybody for the heads up.

The Republican Party of Texas has hired a political consultant to form their plan for keeping Texas red.

It’s Karl Rove.

I didn’t even know he was still alive.  I thought he died of a bad case of mean as hell.

Well, I’m girding up my loins and getting ready to beat Karl Rove. It’ll be fun!