No Runny Eggs

Please welcome Rick’s Shark and Shepherd to the blogroll. Yeah, Rick’s an attorney and an adjunct professor over at Marquette, but don’t hold that against him. He’s the 1% of both groups defiled by the other 99%.

From the Blogger status page –

We’ll be taking Blogger down on Wednesday the 25th at 4pm PST to fix a bit of a switch that’s gone wonky on us. The outage should last about 15 minutes. Blogger.com and Blog*Spot blogs will be inaccessible during this time.

This repair will fix the problem that caused the brief outage last Friday night. We’re also using this down time as an opportunity to tune our databases for more efficient spam catching and deletion.

So, don’t be surprised when your favorite BlogSpot blog is out of commission for a while right around the end of Mark Belling’s show. Hopefully it will be just the 15 minutes they predict (any bets on that? :-)

(H/T – Patrick)

WISN-AM afternoon host Mark Belling decided that, because nobody else had asked the Republican candidates for governor how they would vote on AB15, the bad-gas bill, he would. Before revealing exactly how Mark Green and Scott Walker answered the question, he ran a little quiz with 10 callers. He told the callers that one candidate opposed AB15 because he opposes mandates and the other candidate opposes AB15 in its current form but would support it if an amendment calling for a study that would determine whether Wisconsin would be subject to stricter environmental laws because of the mandate were included, then asked the callers who said what. All 10 callers correctly identified Scott Walker with the first position and Mark Green with the second.

Patrick has a good start to the English Translation to Green’s position, but it does need to be added to – Mark Green would vote to force everyone in Wisconsin to use an inferior fuel that will decrease the MPG, increase pollution and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in added fuel cost…and waste millions of tax dollars to come up with a bogus study to ‘justify’ the mandate (never mind that there are studies out there that say just the opposite).

(Picture courtesy JSOnline.com)

Where to begin? Outgoing Milwaukee County DA E. Michael “McCan’t” McCann blasted the Legislature for its cash-for-action system yesterday, a month after blasting Jim “Craps” Doyle (WEAC-Potawatomi-For Sale) for the same thing. Of course, this is the same McCan’t that endorsed cutting a deal in the Milwaukee 5 trial after the first hint of trouble, cut a deal in his prosecution of former State Senate Democratic leader Chuck Chvala that dropped ALL the pay-to-play charges, plea-bargained almost all the election fraud charges against the African-American Coalition for Empowerment (which committed fraud on behalf of Milwaukee County Chair Lee Holloway), and is taking every last penny of the discredited pension enhancements with him when he lets the hot cocoa go cold in retirement at the end of the year (the only elected official to so so).

At the invitation of the Departments of Defense and State, Jim Doyle joined a few other governors in a trip to Iraq to visit National Guard units from their states. Unlike some of my blogging brethern, I will not criticize Doyle for doing this; rather, I cautiously congratulate him. He is, after all, the commander-in-chief of the Wisconsin National Guard and Wisconsin Air National Guard. Quoting Doyle, “It’s an honor to have the opportunity to visit with our troops and see the work they are doing firsthand. I want them to know how incredibly proud we are of them in Wisconsin, and we look forward to welcoming them home as soon as possible.”

Georgia Thompson, a Department of Administration official, has been charged with 2 federal felonies in connection with a contract awarded to Jim “Craps” Doyle (WEAC/Potawatomi-For Sale) contributor Adelman Travel: causing misapplication of funds, and participating in a scheme to defraud the state of Wisconsin of the right to honest services. As part of the indictment (starts on page 3 of the link to WisPolitics.com; H/T – Fred), there’s an interesting section titled “Misuse of Position”:

13. During the time period described herein, Thompson misused her position by using “political considerations” to:
(a) intentionally inflate her scores for Adelman during the oral presentation portion of the Partner contract selection;
(b) state to other evaluators that she had intentionally inflated her scores for another travel agency during the oral presentation portion of the Athletics contract and to do so in order to use that score as a negotiating tool in favor of Adelman in dealings with other members of the committee on the Partner contract;
(c) prevent the otherwise unanimous determination of the other committee members that the Partner contract be awarded to a recipient other than Adelman; and
(d) suggest committee members change the scores evaluating the Partner contract.

Also, the following are listed as part of the second charge (the deprivation of honest services):

3. Thompson intended her actions to cause political advantage for her supervisors.
4. The actions of Thompson also helped and were intended to help her job security.

I don’t think that Doyle’s out of the woods. He’s the only person above Thompson that could have a “political advantage” from her actions; and her belief that the actions were necessary for job security shows just how corrupt his entire administration is.

One side note from Mark Belling; this case is headed to the Western District of Wisconsin because Adelman Travel president and CEO Craig Adelman is the brother of Eastern District of Wisconsin Judge Lynn Adelman.

Homer nod – I erred in asserting the point when Georgia Thompson joined the Department of Administration. My apologies.

Revisions/extensions (6:32 pm 1/24) – reaction (as opposed to simple notation) from others in the Cheddarsphere: Fred (previously linked above), Patrick, and Kevin so far (guess everybody else got caught at dinner :-)
Part 2 (6:37 pm 1/24) – Add Elliot to the react list.
Continuing the reacts (6:45 pm 1/24), the Capo di tutti capi wonders, among other things, how Xoff’s going to spin this. My money’s on the ‘Rat playbook (delay, deny, and obfuscate).
Revenge of the reacts (8:32 pm 1/24) – the RPW, Mark Green and Scott Walker all take candy-jarring whacks at the Adelgate pinata (H/Ts – Charlie, Kevin and Patrick). Also, Ragnar diagnoses the Craps Cancer. Meanwhile, Doylie (nice name for them, Charlie) hack Xoff still is silent; guess his fax machine ran out of paper :-).
And the reacts keep rolling in (9:20 pm 1/24) – Owen weighs in on the indictment.
I lost track on which revision/extension this one is (10:06 pm 1/24) – Xoff finally got his fax, and I forgot the “attack” chapters in the ‘Rat playbook. Meanwhile, the consigliere checks in with the media react (or lack thereof), and points out that people only flip up (paging Xoff, there isn’t a lot of “up” between Thompson and Craps)