No, Coke is Not Supporting the Creationism Clown Show Museum

Generally, it's pretty on the ball, but in this case, PZ Meyers is wrong. There is no corporate sponsorship of the Creation clown show Museum, there is a merchandising deal which means that, in exchange for selling only Coca Cola^® at their clown show Museum.

That's what the clown show Museum's bold claim of corporate partnership means.

It's kind of like the controversy with the Smithsonian "hosting" an "Intelligent Design" some years back. It turned out that the group rented the space from them.

Priceless

The Michigan state legislature, chock full of wingnuts, after losing an initiative on creating emergency managers for localities, promptly repassed the law with an attached appropriation to make it unchallengable.

And now they have appointed an emergency manager for Detroit, who has tax liens on his home in Maryland:

The man charged with fixing Detroit's faltering finances has been hit with four liens in four years from the state of Maryland for unpaid taxes, records show.

State records show Kevyn D. Orr, who was appointed emergency manager on Thursday, has two outstanding liens on his $1 million home in Chevy Chase, Md., for $16,000 in unemployment taxes in 2010 and 2011. Two other liens of more than $16,000 in unemployment and income taxes were satisfied in 2010 and 2011, records show.

Orr said he didn't know anything about the liens when shown records of them Friday morning by The Detroit News.

"I don't know what they are," Orr said, as his new boss, Gov. Rick Snyder, sat next to him in The News' offices. "That's surprising to me, to be honest."

Late afternoon, a spokeswoman for Snyder — who appointed Orr to the $275,000 per year post Thursday — said Orr spent the day researching the issue and would pay "in full ASAP." The Washington, D.C., bankruptcy attorney blamed the problems on an outside accountant hired to file his tax returns, said Sara Wurfel, a Snyder spokeswoman.

He had 4 liens filed on his home, and did not know about it. Yeah ……… right.

The emergency management process is a clown show for a reason, and it's no accident that over half of the black voters in Michigan will be under emergency managers.

First they cut state aid to troubled municipalities, and then effectively abolish .

The motivation for this is two fold:

• Modern movement (teabagger) conservatives visceral opposition to majority minority communities having meaningful self rule.
• By eliminating self rule, they eliminate electoral possibilities for less senior politicians.
• Basically, they are hoping to eliminate the "farm system" for a generation of politicians for political advantage.

That is why we are seeing this clown show.

They don't care about governance, they just care about power. Everything is subverted to to that.

Why John Sidney McCain Didn't Talk to the Exorcist

I mentioned that the sick old man was going to Louisiana to talk with Bobby "The Exorcist" Jindal, and the scuttlebutt was that he was sizing him up as a VP running mate.

Well, he also intended to fly to an oil rig, to talk about the safety of oil rigs, and to falsely state that there was not a single oil spill post Katrina:

Dennis Knizley looks out on an oil rig beached just off of Dauphin Island, Ala., Tuesday afternoon, Aug. 30, 2005, a day after Hurricane Katrina destroyed much of the island and brought the enormous structure a few hundred yards from shore. (AP Photo/Birmingham Post-Herald, Jan-Michael Stump)

In fact, there were somewhere between 146 and 595 oil spills, depending on whose numbers you use, that spewed 9 million gallons of oil.

In any case, the McCain campaign canceled the flight to the oil rig, claiming that the "weather" was to blame, though the weather was actually pretty good, it further south, on the Tex-Mex border where Dolly was hitting.

More likely what stopped him from giving the speech was the fact that there was a barge accident on the Mississippi that day, which spilled 419,000 gallons of oil, and it would have made the campaign stop look like a clown show.

Come to think of it, the entire campaign is starting to look like a clown show, and I'm beginning to wonder if God hates the John McCain campaign.

Fred Thompson, Not a Clown Show This Time

Fred Thompson had to pull the plug on his daughter after she overdosed on prescription drugs, and he takes a VERY dim view of how the Republicans acted on the Terri Sciavo matter (here and here):

"I had to make those decisions with the rest of my family," said Thompson. "And I will assure you one thing: No matter which decision you make, you will never know whether or not you made exactly the right decision."

Talking to a reporter in Florida, Thompson was harshly critical of the political decisions made in the case, saying that there should not be a role for any level of government beyond the judiciary's authority to adjudicate disputes.

I have on a number of occasions made light of his campaign, my recurring "clown show" heds come to mind, but what we have here is a candidate with experience on a matter saying what he thinks.

It is interesting that it appears that he had been dodging this question for some time, though I get the sense that this is because it is painful, and not out of political expediency.

OK, Maybe I'll Console My Self With the Rudolph Clown Show

The Siena New York Poll has him behind John McCain by 12 points in New York State.

The Freddie Thompson Clown Show may be on its way out, but Rudy is doing a good job to pick up the pathetic humor in the presidential campaign.

After all, Rudy showed up to a NASCAR race, and begged to be allowed to drive the pace car, after making a circuit in his bus, but wasn't allowed.

He's a good substitute source of my minimum RDA of Schadenfreude.

Oh, This is Prize.

Freddie Dalton Thompson, whose 2008 presidential campaign debacle I called the "Fred Thompson Clown Show," has endorsed narcissistic sociopath Newt Gingrich for president:

Former Sen. Fred Thompson, the real life lawyer perhaps best known for playing one on television, announced his endorsement of Newt Gingrich Monday evening.

"I have come to the growing realization that Newt Gingrich is the guy who can articulate what America is all about," Thompson said of the former House speaker on Fox News.

This is kind of a clown show two-fer.

Schadenfreude, the Fredddie Thompson Clown Show Edition

It appears that Sean Hackbarth, "Co-eCampaign Director, Friends of Fred Thompson, Inc." is begging for work.

He has a resume up, and his day jobs appear to have been pretty meager, and he did not graduate college (it just says "education", not degree).

I will say that given that he is around 33, perhaps the infantry would be a good idea.

Not sure if I'm just posting because I didn't want another chance to write, "Fredddie Thompson Clown Show".

The Fred Thompson Clown Show Continues

This time, our good Freddie Dalton Thompson^* is calling for oil drilling in the Everglades.

In response to a question about drilling there, he said, "Gosh, no one has told me there is any major reserves in the Everglades," and "No one prefers to drill at all anywhere".

Way to go Freddie. The clown show continues.

That being said, this is in the tradition of Ronald Reagan, who spent an awful lot of time claiming that trees cause pollution.

^*Yes, his birth certificate says "Freddie", not Fred or Fredrick".

HaHa!

It appears that Ron DeSantis' Presidential campaign is running out of cash. 

I guess spending like a drunken sailor, picking fights with Disney*, establishing his own secret police, extremism, and having the personality of a turnip† have put off his former big dollar donors.

Batsh%$ insane scares off donors:

Ron DeSantis' 2024 presidential campaign continues to be met with financial difficulties, with the Florida Governor forced to rely on a relatively small sum for the remainder of the primary season.

DeSantis, who is trailing GOP primary frontrunner Donald Trump in the polls by massive margins, brought in $15 million in the third quarter fundraising period between his campaign committee and leadership PAC.

However, only $5 million of DeSantis's fundraising attempt is available as cash for the remainder of the primary season. In comparison, Trump's campaign raised more than $45.5 million in the third quarter, with around $36 million of the total cash on hand designated purely for the primary.

The $15 million raised by DeSantis' PACs in the third quarter is also down from $20 million in the first six weeks of the Florida governor's presidential run. A number of key fundraising and campaigning efforts have also been taken over by the pro-DeSantis Super PAC Never Back Down, including pumping millions in advertising and hosting events. 

………

The difficulties for DeSantis' campaign finances could also be seen in the decision to move around a third of its staff out of Florida to Iowa, with the Republican seemingly banking on a positive result from the first-in-the-nation primary caucus in January to kickstart his floundering White House bid.

………

The move to relocate staff to Iowa arrives after some 38 staff members—around one-third of the team—were let go in July as part of drastic cost-cutting measures just two months after DeSantis launched his presidential campaign.

It's fun watching the DeSantis campaign devolve into the clown show.  It's almost as fun as the Freddie Lynn Dalton Clown Show in 2008. but it might end up better.

^*One of the rules that I live by is Do Not F%$# With the Mouse. I also have a rule not to f%$# with corvids, but Disney is a close second. 

^†I apoligize to turnips everywhere, and I also apologize to Baldrick, for this analogy.

The End of the Rudy Clown Show

If anyone out there knows of a source, or sources, of the metaphysical nutrient Schadenfreude sufficient to replace the Rudy clown show, please tell me.

He's dropping out and endorsing the sick, old man.

This is Going to be an Amusing Campaign Season

As a result of the train wreck that is Newt Gingrich, his entire campaign staff resigned.

The proximate cause was his decision to go on a cruise ship vacation while everyone else in the race is hitting places like Iowa and New Hampshire.

I'm beginning to think that this is all just a variation of his "Gingrich, Inc." scam which Rachel Maddow had detailed, and he's doing this because his little money making operation pretty much demands that he eventually run.

It raises a kind of a meta-media question: The standard narrative for the Washington Press whores corps about Gingrich is that he an intellectual colossus of the conservative movement, a meme which the beltway bozos continue to push, but we are seeing increasing evidence that he's just a self serving clown.

In any case, I find the clown show, and the contortions of his fans in the media, an amusing show.

David Paterson May Not Be the Chief Clown in the New York State Politics Clown Show

In fact, he may not even be number 2...or number 3, or even number 31, or for that matter, he may not even be number 62

You see, the New York Senate Democrats have locked themselves in the Senate chambers to prevent the Republicans from holding their own special session, which they did anyway, and claimed to have passed everything by 62-0, and that the session is over.

Of course with 31 people on each side, there is no quorum, so neither side of the aisle is acting with anything resembling sanity.

Only there was nothing to pass, because David Paterson had not bothered to finish the bills and send them to the legislature for the emergency session called by one David Paterson.

That being said, I think that NY State Senator Pedro Espada is the chief clown.

It appears now that he's trying to extort money from the Democratic caucus, asking for $2 million for his "not-for-profit" health clinic chainwhen jumped to the other side over not getting $75 thousand for his little scam.

What's more after weeks of claiming that thieves had broken into his "second" home in tony Mamaronack, he represents the Bronx, and stolen only those papers, the documents have turned up:

Sen. Pedro Espada Jr. now says thieves didn't get the key documents he suggested might have been swiped during a reported burglary at his "second home" in Westchester County.

Espada, under investigation for living outside his Bronx district, raised eyebrows last week when he said that whoever broke into his Mamaroneck home stole files and documents - but no other valuables.

(emphasis mine)

How the hell this guy stays out of jail, I'll never know.

Additionally, he had to be threatened with criminal charges before he was willing turn over his campaign donation information to state campaign finance authorities, though it appears that he still hasn't paid the fines.

Meanwhile, a grand jury has been convened, and is investigating whether Espada committed fraud by misstating his true residence, and the Bronx DA is now going back further, looking at his earlier campaigns.

You know, relative to this crap, I live in a good government state, and I live in Maryland.

I never ever thought that I would put the phrase "good government" and "Maryland" in the same sentence.

The Clown Show Abides

The scary kind of clown, of course.


opHthalmologist


Edutation


These people are German stock images


It appears that only one Jew supports Rand Paul

Yesterday, Ron Paul announced that he was running for president.

The roll-out did not go smoothly:

It is hard to words good on the internet! You have to measure twice and cut once, which in internet-land, is better described as reading the thing three times to make sure you didn’t accidentally paste a thing telling people to “shop Aldi for 39 cent Fine Feline Entrée cat food” right in the middle of writing about how you are Mad About A Thing. Rand Paul’s peeps did not do that, oops. In the product description for the eye chart in Paul’s sexy funtimes lingerie shop and online falafel cart, it originally explained that “Rand Paul is an opthalmologist.” Yes, that is a hard word, and Paul may not know how to spell it (“opHthalmologist”) since he might not even be one, but c’mon, guys.

………

We could forgive that spelling error, if it weren’t for this other one, where his website informed us that Paul “opposes a one-size-fits-all approach to eductation.” Apparently he likes a more creative solution, one that encourages Teaching The Controversy over whether correct spelling is even a thing. (In actuality, the HuffPost points out that Paul wants to get rid of the Department Of Education entirely, which would probably level the playing field for his staffers and website writers.)

………

Both of the problems have been fixed, presumably because tacky mean liberals on the internet pointed them out.

………

When running for president, it’s a good idea to give folks the impression that there is already a horde of people just clamoring to pick you as their Dear Leader. Rand Paul doesn’t really have that, so he picked the next best thing — nameless German stock photo characters!

………

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul launched his presidential campaign Tuesday complete with a page to endorse the new presidential candidate.

The endorsements are then presented on a map of the United States.

The people on the endorsement map, however, appear to be stock images from a Italian photographer Andrea Piacquadio who goes by the name Olly or Ollyy on stock image sites, and according to his Shutterstock page, is based in Germany.

DOY! BuzzFeed tracked down some of the models featured on the page, and all led directly back to the Germany-based stock photo guy. This might seem like a big BuzzFeed SCOOP!, except that they failed to actually ask the stock photos if they were indeed supporting Paul for USA President. They might have been, YOU DON’T KNOW.

There’s also a section of Paul’s website where you can pick out a special social media avatar that says what kind of US American you are, and that you support Rand Paul. There are all the normal ones — Christian for Rand, Conservative for Rand, etc. — but the one that sticks out at us is the sure to be wildly popular Jew For Rand avatar! That one guy is gonna have a field day changing his Facebook and Twitter pictures, knowing that Rand Paul made it just for him:

………

Those photos have disappeared, just like the spelling errors, but the Lonely Jew avatar remains. May we also suggest Furry For Rand? Something tells us he might get some traction there.

Additionally, the YouTube of his announcement was blocked for copyright infringement.

But that was yesterday, and today is today.

Specifically, he threw a hissy fit at a reporter who wanted specifics on his abortion position:

It’s Day Two of Rand Paul’s Excellent Presidential Adventure, and he is having a bad day. Again. He started his morning picking a fight with the “Today” show’s Savannah Guthrie because she didn’t ask him questions the way he thinks she should, and he followed that up with a quick explanation to the New York Times that when reporters ask him questions he doesn’t like, “That isn’t journalism.” (Side note: Waging war against reporters when you are running for president is a FANTASTIC strategy, and we encourage Paul to stick with that for sure.)

And then it just got worse. For Rand Paul, that is:

In an interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday, Paul would not say where, in his view, a pregnant woman’s rights begin and those of the fetus end.

“The thing is about abortion — and about a lot of things — is that I think people get tied up in all these details of, sort of, you’re this or this or that, or you’re hard and fast (on) one thing or the other,” Paul said.

That Dr. Paul did not care for questions about abortion is no problem, because Republicans hate talking about that. Except for how it is one of their very most favoritest things to talk about, and you cannot run for office as a Republican unless you say every sperm is sacred at least 154 times in every speech, or else the ’bortion-haters will say you love killing babies, and you are not even a Republican at all, and they will not vote for you, no sir. But Paul did NOT want that mean AP reporter asking him about that: ………

And on a more substantive level, it appears that the bulk of Rand Paul's senior campaign staff are implicated in the bribery scandal of his father's last presidential campaign. (They bribed an Iowa pol for an endorsement.)

The late night hosts have to be licking their chops over this.

It Appears that Batsh%$ Insane is Bad for Business

Because it looks like the big corporate fat cat donors are not supporting the Republicans as one would expect:

Last month, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee just about doubled the haul of their counterparts, the National Republican Congressional Committee. The DCCC pulled in $6.64 million, while the NRCC brought in just $3.8 million. While the NRCC has more cash on hand (around $12.2 million to the DCCC’s around $9.5 million) and slightly less debt, over the course of the year the DCCC is outraising the team with the big House majority.

The year-long totals show the DCCC raising nearly $48 million to the NRCC’s just over $44 million.

I think that the Republican Party Presidential Primary clown show has convinced business executives that Republicans are simply not a good investment, because while one can price risk, you can't price uncertainty, and insane motherf%$#er teabaggers are the very definition of uncertainty.

Run, Little Ricky, Run!!!!

It appears that Rick Santorum^* is making the pilgrimage to Iowa, indicating that he is looking to run for President in 2012:

Add former Sen. Rick Santorum to the list of potential 2012 Republican presidential candidates.

POLITICO has learned Santorum will visit first-in-the-nation Iowa this fall for a series of appearances before the sort of conservative activists who dominate the state GOP’s key presidential caucuses.

While this might not be good for the nation, or for the caucus goers of Iowa, or any attempt to have sanity return to the Republican party in 2012, it is good for late night talk show hosts, columnist Dan Savage,^† and anyone interested interested in heaping scorn on nonsensical quotes from Republicans, like yours truly.

This promises to be as entertaining as the Fred Thompson Clown show of 2008.

Of course, it could go horribly awry, as my father illustrated in 1968, when he noted, "Those stupid bastards nominated Richard Nixon! There is no way that we can lose now."<sup>‡

*</sup>The definition of Santorum is, "That frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the byproduct of anal sex".
^†Who coined said definition of "Santorum."
^‡Piss poor political forecasts run in my family, so do not take my predictions as gospel.

Way to Go, Guys

The New York Times got its hands on an advance copy of the "audit" of the 2020 election in Maricopa County, Arizona, and Joe Biden's margin of victory rose.

Oops:

After months of delays and blistering criticism, a review of the 2020 election in Arizona’s largest county, ordered up and financed by Republicans, has failed to show that former President Donald J. Trump was cheated of victory.

Instead, the report from the company Cyber Ninjas said it found just the opposite: It tallied 99 additional votes for President Biden and 261 fewer votes for Mr. Trump in Maricopa County, the fast-growing region that includes Phoenix.

“Truth is truth and numbers are numbers,” Karen Fann, the Republican Senate president who commissioned the vote review, said as the findings were presented to the State Senate on Friday.

Mr. Biden won Arizona by roughly 10,500 votes, making his victory of about 45,000 votes in Maricopa County crucial to his win. Under intense pressure from Trump loyalists, the Republican majority in the State Senate had ordered an autopsy of the county’s votes for president and the U.S. Senate seat won by Mark Kelly, a Democrat.

Review officials implicitly acknowledged Mr. Biden’s victory, noting that there were no substantial differences between the new tally of votes and the official count by Maricopa County election officials. But they also claimed that other factors — most if not all contested by reputable election experts — left the results “very close to the margin of error for the election.”

Yet in the hourslong presentation before the State Senate the review officials did not focus on the numbers showing Mr. Biden’s victory but instead presented a blizzard of hypotheticals, none verified, most hinting darkly at a tainted election. They came prepared with slides, ballot scans and discussions of arcane election rules.

Among the "experts" who testified was the former lover of Fran Drescher, whose claim to fame was a fraudulent claim that he invented email, more than a decade after the first email was sent, and more than 2 years after the f%$#ing Queen of England sent her first email.

So, the clown show continues.

Mess With the Bull

Leaders of the anti-voting terrorist group True the Vote have been jailed for refusing to state who allowed them to have illegal access to voting machines.

They are claiming that some sort of sooper sekrit FBI agent did that, and so they can't tell the judge.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt is not buying their bullsh%$:

The leaders of True the Vote, an organization that has spread unfounded claims questioning the results of the 2020 election, were taken into custody Monday morning after a federal judge in Texas ruled them in contempt of court.

Founder Catherine Engelbrecht and former board member Gregg Phillips were escorted by federal marshals out of a Houston courthouse and into a holding cell following the judge’s decision.

The order marked the latest twist in a defamation case brought last month by Konnech, an election software company that True the Vote claimed allowed the Chinese government to have access to a server in China that held the personal information of nearly 2 million U.S. election workers. Konnech has vigorously disputed the claim.

The judge overseeing the case, U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt, had ordered Engelbrecht and Phillips to reveal the name of a person who allegedly helped True the Vote access Konnech’s computer systems.

When they declined to meet the court’s 9 a.m. deadline, the judge found them in contempt. The pair have claimed, without evidence, that the person who helped them was a confidential FBI informant.

It should be noted that even if this person was an FBI informant, if they had not outed this individual, it would not have compromised them.

They are, of course, lying about this.

Here is the postscript to this whole clown show:

Engelbrecht and Phillips most recently were executive producers of “2,000 Mules,” a widely discredited film purporting to show countless people casting illegal votes by mail based on surveillance video and geotracking data. Though spokespeople for the movie said it made millions of dollars in revenue, no fraud was ever found. 

These people are con men and liars, and they have actively supported violence and terrorism against election officials, which has, among other things, assault with a deadly weapon against a random air conditioner technician.

These people are a clear and present danger, and they should be pursued to the fullest extant of the RICO and anti-terrorism laws.

I Now Know How The Daily Show Writers Feel…

The Mustache of Insanity

Because former recess appointee UN ambassador John Bolton is saying that he might run for President:

During recent appearances on Fox News, Bolton has been asked whether he would run for president. "Well, you know it's a great honor when people ask me that question, and I have been asked that question," Bolton said on Wednesday. "I don't think anybody involved with politics should worry about that until after the elections this fall."

He also said: "I'm not saying no. That's right."

This promises to be easier to ridicule, and even more funny, than the Freddie Thompson Clown Show presidential campaign of 2008.

I so want him to run.

Do you know that it's been over 100 years since we elected a president with facial hair (Taft, 1908).

He is Probably Going to Win the Primary Tomorrow, but Cory Booker is a Corrupt Rat-Bastard

You may remember his wankitude in the 2012 elections, when he said that Obama being mean to Bain Capital gave him a sad, but it's worse than that.

He is deeply and openly on the take:

The conference room in the Mountain View, Calif., headquarters of LinkedIn was packed with the stars of Silicon Valley. Top executives of Facebook, Google and Twitter gathered around a table; the billionaire Sean Parker looked on from a back row. The guest of honor: Cory A. Booker, the mayor of Newark.

The stated purpose of the gathering was to give Mr. Booker, already a Twitter fanatic, a seminar on social-networking technologies. But hanging in the air was an electrifying sense of being in the presence of an ascendant politician they believed understood the potential of the new digital world they were shaping.

“He’s part of this tide,” said Gina Bianchini, an entrepreneur who was at the meeting, in May 2009. “It feels like he’s one of us.”

Two and a half years later, some of those same Silicon Valley leaders joined forces again on Mr. Booker’s behalf. But this time, their efforts resulted in giving Mr. Booker, until then an admired outsider, the equivalent of full-fledged membership in their elite circle: an Internet start-up of his own.

Mr. Booker personally has obtained money for the start-up, called Waywire, from influential investors, including Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s executive chairman. A year after its debut, Waywire has already endured a round of layoffs and had just 2,207 visitors in June, according to Compete, a Web-tracking service. The company says it is still under development.

Yet in a financial disclosure filed last month, Mr. Booker, 44, revealed that his stake in the company was worth $1 million to $5 million. Taken together, his other assets were worth no more than $730,000.

That revelation, with just a week left in Mr. Booker’s campaign for the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, shows how a few tech moguls and entrepreneurs, many of them also campaign donors, not only made a financial bet on the mayor’s political future but also provided the brainpower and financing to help create a company that could make him very rich.

Why is this blatant influence peddling?

Well, the tell is that Waywire hired the 15 year old son of the head of CNN and gave him stock options:(Yes, it's NY Post, but echos the New York Times story linked above, and it is far less oblique)

He isn’t even old enough to drive — but CNN President Jeff Zucker’s teenage son has already resigned from a cushy position at Cory Booker’s closely watched Internet start-up.

After somehow scoring a seat on the advisory board of the rising Democratic star’s Waywire video-sharing site, 15-year-old Andrew Zucker abruptly quit yesterday amid questions over his qualifications.

The rich kid’s consulting career as a “millennial adviser” ended just hours after it was revealed that he had been granted stock options in the firm co-founded by Booker, the Newark mayor who polls show is a shoo-in for the US Senate after a special election.

“Despite the fact that his affiliation with Waywire was extremely limited to only an advisory capacity, in order to avoid even the perception of a conflict, Jeff’s son has resigned from the Waywire advisory board, effective immediately,” CNN said in a statement.

News of Andrew’s stock deal lit up social media yesterday, with critics on Twitter branding it a “gross nepotism alert.”

Corporate-governance experts also called his hiring highly unusual, saying they’d never before heard of anyone so young getting such a cushy gig.

Advisory boards are usually stocked with “seasoned folks who have been through the process of making that kind of a start-up work, or enhancing the capacity of a company so it can move to an IPO [initial public offering] or the next level of business,” said Eleanor Bloxham, CEO of The Value Alliance. “So you’re not generally looking in the high-school age range.”

The defense is that he got less than qualified than, "Lady Gaga's manager."

Seriously, the royalty of Silicon Valley is showering their largess on this guy because it's such a good idea? For a web site that got 2,207 visitors in June?

Seriously, I got 1,457 unique visitors in June, and I'm the worst writer on the internet.^™

But wait, there's more. There is also the case of his old law firm, which continued to pay him for years while getting lucrative contracts from the city:

Cory Booker pocketed “confidential” annual payouts from his former law firm while serving as Newark mayor.

Booker, the front-runner in New Jersey’s Senate race, received five checks from the Trenk DiPasquale law firm from 2007 until 2011. During that time, the firm raked in more than $2 million in fees from local agencies over which Booker has influence.

“This was a settlement buyout for my interest in the firm,” the mayor told The Post at a campaign stop in Jersey City yesterday. “I had an equity stake, and we had a negotiated settlement.”

Booker worked at the West Orange firm for five years, leaving in 2006 when he was elected Newark’s mayor to avoid “the appearance of impropriety.”

He refused to answer how much he received in the five years after leaving.

“It’s all been disclosed for the last seven years,” Booker said.

Not quite. Booker’s state financial disclosures from 2006 to 2011 list two sources of income — the city of Newark and the law firm. The forms mandate reporting of income over $2,000 a year, but do not require an exact sum or range.

Booker’s closed lips on the earnings fly in the face of his public stances. In 2002, he released his tax returns during his unsuccessful race against incumbent Mayor Sharpe James, and ripped James for not doing the same.

The returns “provide the only clues as to how many deals the mayor is involved in . . . and the only record of the money he’s making on the side,” Booker said at the time.

When The Post asked Friday for Booker’s recent returns, his campaign refused to turn them over.

And then there are his positions on the issues:

• He supports privatizing public education and handing it to Wall Street.
• He has repeatedly allied himself with religious organizations that have sponsored Uganda's "Kill the gays" bill.
• His close relationship with Scaife/Olin/Koch funded political organizations.
• His founding an organization heavily funded by the Walton (Wal-Mart) family.

If he wins the primary, he is almost certain to win the general.

First, New Jersey is very blue now, and second, the Republican field is best defined as a clown show.

The Road to 60 Through the Commerce Department?

We are hearing reports that New Hampshire Senator Judd Gregg (R) is being considered for Secretary of Commerce.

This is interesting for a number of reasons:

• Secretary of Commerce is typically low profile, the last, and possibly only "Rock Star" Secretary of Commerce was Herbert Hoover.
• Gregg is a sitting senator in a state that has become reliably blue, so this might be preferable to his standing for election in 2010.
• The governor of New Hampshire is John Lynch, who is a Democrat, and would likely appoint a Democrat to the post.

If this is true, then, once the Norm Coleman clown show is done, we would have 60 votes against a filibuster, assuming, of course, that Joe Lieberman doesn't knife the Dems in the back.