E. Jean Carroll’s first defamation case against TFG – where a jury awarded her $5 million – has just gotten an appeals court date for oral arguments: Friday, September 6th, 2024.

That’s this Friday.

That’s the day after tomorrow.

Apparently, Don Von drew a terrible panel of three appellate judges. Terrible for him, that is.

The three judges to hear oral arguments this Friday are:

Denny Chin, appointed by Bill Clinton to the New York Southern District Court in 1994, then by Barack Obama to the 2nd Circuit in 2009.

Susan Carney, appointed by Barack Obama to the 2nd Circuit in 2010

Myrna Perez, appointed to the 2nd Circuit by Joseph R. Biden in 2021.

That’s a good panel.

And, oh by the way, recall that Lewis Kaplan, the judge in Carroll’s original case, has clarified that TFG committed rape.

That was rape. He raped her.

The jig is up, folks. They found us out. While everyone in the media was chasing after TFG’s flip-flops on legislating women’s health issues, JD’s abysmal reception at a Boston Firefighter’s Union convention, and The Don’s frolic in a National Cemetery, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell slowly and carefully revealed the secret Democratic plan for taking over the government in 2025, when Kamala Harris takes the oath of office on January 20, 2025.

Let’s call it Project Alternative 2025, along the lines of the proverbial alternative universe.

It was all laid out one week ago to journalists seated at a luncheon hosted by the Greater Owensboro Chamber of Commerce in, you know, Owensboro, Kentucky. McConnell laid out our plans with the precision of a neurosurgeon.

From The Owensboro Times:

“McConnell said he’s afraid if the Democratic Party controls the Senate they will try to get rid of the filibuster, which requires a higher vote of 60 percent than the typical 51 needed to pass legislation”.

Also known as “The nuclear option,” this deeply guarded secret would effectively transform McConnell’s Senate from its present dystopian nightmare into a working legislative body.

But to what end? Why would we Democrats want to upend this time-honored tradition of protecting our nation from such things as adopting harmful civil rights legislation that could change The Southern Lifestyle forever?

And by God, he had the answer to that, too.

If Democrats get rid of the filibuster, “they’ll admit the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico as two new states — that’s four Democratic senators in perpetuity — and then they’ll go after the Supreme Court. That’s how Democrats are these days…”.

Republicans may have released their “Project 2025” tome as a fanciful lark, but Democrats were holding their 2025 hand so close you couldn’t see light between their cards and their vests.

Now it’s out dammit.

Someone over on the D side has noticed that D.C. has a population of 689,545, and that Puerto Rico has 3,241,028, both of which eclipse Wyoming’s 581,381 and Vermont’s 647,464.

If WY and VT  rate two US Senators each, Democrats reason, why not DC and PR? Full statehood for both seems to be a no-brainer.

But before you can go around making new states, you need to lower the filibuster hurdle in the Senate because DC and PR are areas known to have non-Republican majorities.

They’d elect liberal senators, as McConnell says, “in perpetuity.”

McConnell must be sweating bullets.

And then we’ll “go after the Supreme Court.” This means they realized that Democrats, with no filibuster and a Democratic majority, will pass laws that will force the Supreme Court Justices to behave in an ethical manner.

Or maybe even expand the number of Supreme Court Justices by the right amount so as to further our plans. Clever. I don’t think we even considered that. That could work, too.

What Democrats plan to do in the dark of night dwarfs what MAGA Republicans have in mind as revealed in their 922-page bound volume displayed in broad daylight.

It was all a secret. But no more. That Mitch McConnell is one smooth operator.

(Postscript. For those with truly inquiring minds, here are two links that reveal our long-concealed planned alternatives to reconfigure the American flag with 52 stars – I really like the modified Betsy Ross)

I saw these rules posted somewhere and decided to share them with customers of Juanita Jean’s salon as a reminder of what we were all taught by example in Kindergarten.

I do this to suggest an alternative to the US Constitution’s Preamble, which definitely needs replacement. These are basic rules of living ethically that should preface a document that lays out the design of our government.

Rules of Kindergarten

Share everything.
Play fair.
Don’t hit people.
Put things back where you found them.
Clean up your own mess.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
Wash your hands before you eat.
Flush.
Warm cookies and milk are good for you.
Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
Take a nap every afternoon.
When you go out, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
Be aware of wonder.

I’ve been saving this up for a day just like today: Saturday of the Labor Day holiday weekend in a presidential election year. OK, I lied about the last part, but you’ll see; it fits.

Time to laugh now because with all the upcoming campaigning between court dates these are going to be times that try a man’s – or a woman’s – soul.

[Hat tip to Juanita Jean who knows a good blues tune or two].

Rules of the Blues

1. Most Blues begin, “Woke up this morning…”

There are stories that just keep getting better and better every time you add more layers. This has definitely been the case with the so-called Trump Cemeterygate. Thank goodness for the Watergate Hotel. Now, we can attach gate to every single so-called scandal. There are big scandals and stupid ones. This one falls somewhere near the later.

Everything started out innocently enough. It was a simple story about a man lacking empathy. These stories are not unique. We see them all the time when teenagers and young adults take selfies at Auschwitz with a big smile on their face. I had a moment when I was much younger at Pearl Harbor. I was whacked on the back of my head and told that you never ever do that. It was the last time I did.

Only a jackass would take a political photo op in this moment with a stupid thumb’s up sign. Yet, a jackass is what we have. This story wouldn’t be worth mentioning otherwise, but the jackassery doesn’t end there. Apparently, an Arlington Cemetery employee tried to prevent them from going into the restricted area and was pushed aside in the same kind of thuggish way that Trump pushed aside the leader of Montenegro.

Yet, it doesn’t end there. The story coming out of the Trump camp is not that they broke any rules or violated any policies about the restricted area. They did mention the incident but simply said that “an employee had an apparent mental health episode.” Sure. All of these pesky public servants expecting you to follow rules about a solemn space. Surely, they are deranged.

The cherry on top of this douchebag sundae came when vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance told a rally crowd that Kamala Harris could “go to hell” for her negative comments on the situation. Harris would certainly be well within her rights to comment on this, but she hasn’t. So, this leaves one very important question for one of the biggest jackasses of our time. Are you saying that she did say something when she clearly didn’t or are you suggesting she should go to hell for not defending your future boss’s right to flout the rules and act like a jackass?

I am choosing to think these two are the highest performing performance artists of our time. Borat has nothing on these assclowns. If your goal is to see who can be the biggest asshole then we have a tight race between both of the guys on top of the GOP ticket.

Anyone supporting these duchebags are either addled-brained or diving head first into nihilism. It doesn’t help when we get more performance art like this. For those that don’t want to go down the rabbit hole, it is a New York Times editorial saying that Trump should run on character. I don’t pay to get behind the NYT paywall. Please tell me this is a joke.

Maybe it is all a joke. Maybe we are all the butt of a huge extended psychology experiment to see just how long it would take for decent people to lose their ever-loving mind. The layers of stupidity in this story are just staggering. We are being punked. Ashton Kutcher is just around the corner laughing his ass off.

I’m still on the road, but here are a few I managed to scare up for this week! A few should have been on last week but I was having technical difficulties.