Woke up ridiculously early this morning 
and made the mistake of checking out the Strib where I ran across an op-ed from a Stribber whose name I didn’t recognize. No biggie but she namedropped a new “conservative blog in Apple Valley and after checking it out (see image on right), I decided I needed to know more about Jill Burcom.
Well, there wasn’t much online, but I did find this gem from City Page’s Kevin Hoffman from last summer. The comments are, shall we say, rather priceless. As the media world crumbles, the catfights are getting more and more interesting. [Romenesko, btw, says only 6% of laid off newspaper folks get another newspaper job.]
I still don’t know anything about Burcom, but I can think of no legit reason for a Strib staffer written op-ed to mention such a hyperpartisan blog as Regular*Folks*United (which has celebrated the free Strib PR with a front page petition in support of Rush Limbaugh and Talk Radio), other than at editor D.J. Tice’s insistence.
That or Burcom is yet another Kerstenite, deeply embedded into the Strib’s survivors’ bunker where he said/she said hackery flourishes and wingnuttery is never out of fashion.
Either way the Regular*Folks*United dude isn’t who most journalists would quote when writing about Michelle Obama and the Beanie Baby bullshit. In fact, I can’t think of any reason why any local blogger’s take on this flap would be relevant. Blog fodder yes, worth a link from a daily newspaper? No way.
Regular*Folks*United just got a big wet sloppy kiss from the Strib despite peddling content that makes Michael Brodkorb’s Minnesota Democrats Exposed site look nonpartisan. More on the blogger responsible here, and here. He also helped found something called the Uhuru Policy Group. I’ll cut him some slack and will assume that he speaks Swahili, and that he didn’t name the group after a Star Trek character. (I’m almost positive he’s not a fan of Black Uhuru, but who knows?)
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Bushian driftwood:
Garrison Keillor on the transition
[picture via a tweet from Dusty Trice]
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Not only is Norm Coleman winning no love with his unending bid to hang onto to his Senate seat, but his witnesses are sinking whatever case he may have had.
One of the voters was Douglas Thompson, who admitted under oath that his girlfriend filled out his absentee ballot application for him, signing his name with her own hand and purporting to be himself. His ballot was rejected because the signature on his ballot envelope (his own) did not match the signature on the application (his girlfriend’s). The Coleman team’s argument appears to be that he is still a legal voter in Minnesota, as the signature on the ballot was his own, even if admitted dishonesty was involved in getting the ballot.
Keep in mind: Thompson’s story came up during the direct examination by Coleman lawyer James Langdon. So the Coleman camp fully knew this information and decided to make him into a witness.
Another one of the voters, an older man named Wesley Briest, initially responded that he voted at the polls — not by absentee. Then Coleman attorney James Langdon showed him his absentee ballot envelope, reminding him that he did not go to the polls, too. Upon cross-examination by Franken lawyer Kevin Hamilton, Briest admitted that his wife, who served as the witness on his ballot, did not fully complete the witness section of the absentee ballot.
— Eric Kleefeld, TPM
I don’t think it’s unfair for me to point out that if the situation was reversed, Coleman’s hack lawyers would be calling for these “voters” to be arrested.
It can’t be said any too often: even Power Line has written Coleman off.
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For the life of me I can’t figure out why the NYTimes 
would not see any Dickensian qualities in the names Nicholas Cosmo, George L. Theodule, J.V. Huffman, or James G. Ossie. Especially not when there are plaintiffs with names like Nerline Horace-Manasse.
Granted, these swindlers and victims’ names aren’t in the same class as Sweedlepipe, Harold Skimpole, Honeythunder or Pecksniff, but they measure up well enough against Scrooge, Micawber, Nickleby, Copperfield, etc.
Mostly I’m just glad that the major media are again reminding folks about swindlers and con artists after two decades of pounding out news stories in support of irrational exuberance.
The money is all gone. Which is not to say it’s missing, just moved to new pockets that, for one vile reason or another, are beyond the reach of law enforcement. For going on 200 years the left has been talking about the vast Ponzi scam that is Wall Street, and over the past few months some of the smaller operations have been exposed.
Still at large, however, are the thieves who ran/are running our major brokerage houses and lending institutions. Friend of Bernie Madoff, each and every one of them.
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Patrick Ruffini thinks Mark Steyn, Rush Limbaugh or James Lileks should be the top contenders for Bill Kristol’s NY Times columnist gig.
I’m not sure who should be most embarrassed: Ruffini for making such an idiotic list, or Lileks for finding himself on it.
Any of these three men would prove to be — dare I say it — even worse than Bill Kristol. Idiots are idiots, but idiots who think they have a sense of humor are the worst of all. Just ask some of my readers.
Btw, I am absolutely certain that Ruffini could have put some women on that list who would have been just as evil and banal as the men listed. In fact I’ll go so far as to say that women are capable of being evil incarnate, and that there is no sin committed by men that women can’t and don’t commit (thanks to strap-ons). And the fact that most assholes, rapists, war criminals and war profiteers are men is strictly coincidental, women being so absolutely jam-packed full of evility. When it comes to evil, gender is neutral and testosterone is utterly irrelevant. [see yesterday's comments for the WTF? and yes, I am equating wealth with evil (and always have).]
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FAIR on the consumate bullshit that is 61.
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The peanut butter with salmonella issues is all from a plant in Lynchburg, Virginia, where Jerry Falwell built his university. This was the 12th time in two years that Peanut Corporation of America knowingly shipped out tainted peanut butter.
Somehow I suspect these two things are not at all unrelated and that before this is all over there will be at least one USDA inspector in prison.
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2,000 posts: congratulations!
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Erminegate: unelected hereditary/appointed “Lords” are utterly corrupt.
Who would have ever guessed? I realize that the U.S. Senate is a pretty tory place, but the UK’s House of Lords has always creeped me out bigtime.
From Sickipedia:
“Imagine being 85. A comfortable seat in very pleasant surroundings where you can sit surrounded by people your own age and mumbling nonsense all day. Imagine being attended by nice smiling people and genuinly thinking you are still important, whilst living very nicely at the expense of the taxpayer. Well, that’s not for everyone of course. Some of us aren’t fortunate enough to get a seat in the House of Lords.”
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So what happened to all those Bush pardons for wrongdoers in his administration?
President George W. Bush, on his last full day in office, formally struck down the petitions for clemency of some high-profile politicians and businessmen, including convicted lawmakers Randall “Duke” Cunningham, Edwin Edwards and Mario Biaggi and “junk bond” financier Michael Milken, the Justice Department said Tuesday….
The Justice Department said Bush also denied petitions for clemency for two men who became highly polarizing symbols of their eras. One of them was John Walker Lindh, the young American serving 20 years in prison for aiding the Taliban in Afghanistan when it was fighting U.S. military forces just after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Bush also denied one of the longest-standing petitions for clemency, for Leonard Peltier, a Native American activist sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the murder of two FBI agents during a 1975 shoot-out on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation….
Bush, who has not spoken publicly about the denials, did not make formal rulings on some other well-known figures, leaving their petitions alive. That long list includes former Illinois Gov. George Ryan, then-Vice President Dick Cheney‘s chief of staff I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, U.S. Navy spy for Israel Jonathan Pollard, media mogul Conrad Black and telecommunications executives Bernard Ebbers and John Rigas.
Bush also denied clemency on Dec. 23 for Justin Volpe, the New York City police officer convicted of sodomizing Haitian immigrant Abner Louima with a broomstick, Justice Department spokeswoman Laura Sweeney said Tuesday.
Josh Meyer, Chicago Tribune
The incurious sociopaths rarely demonstrate much in the way of mercy. Remember that before applying to work for the next evil administration to come along.
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A dude in Chicago decided to keep all his credit card offers for one year. Before you click, take a guess at how many applications he got, and much they weighed.
Then write your Congressman and demand that credit card company executives be arrested and shipped to Gitmo.
And ask yourself, how many American jobs involve harassing other Americans for absolutely no good reason?
End junk mail rates. Charge everyone first class rates so we can put an end to mailboxes jammed with unsolicited crap that goes straight into the wastebasket.
Really, it just doesn’t seem as important as it used to be. Especially locally where this picture of Norm was the only thing interesting in the Strib, unless, of course, you want to read 
Accident outside just now so I grabbed my Xmas camera and grabbed some snaps. Either this pick up hit the mini-schoolbus below, or vice versa. I thought I’d have more crash photos by now, but this is only the second fender bender I’ve caught this year. 
There are only a few North-South routes connecting the northern burbs to St. Paul, and I live on the westernmost route, Raymond Avenue. Energy Park Drive is my cross street, and it’s more or less a commercial high speed parallel version of University Avenue. Granted, 40 mph isn’t very fast, but it’s fast enough that red light runners make loud noises when they hit the north/south-bound traffic.
