Normally I do not post job openings. And no, with the picture of Michele Bachmann, it is not about yet another Bachmann DC staff vacancy. I would neither lead nor lure anyone into that realm of disaster, I have standards, and do not hype accepting wooden nickles.
However, for a bright and enterprising GOP functionary out of work, I am aware that there is a major high-visability resume-building opportunity of a kind that seldom arises, a once in a lifetime opening, see here, and here.
It is a local job, some traveling probably involved, time away from family, short-term, not permanant. I am presuming it is still open. I would give the job to Mark Kennedy, a man courteous enough to have given his seat to a lady, and when last heard from a man proud of and touting how he could do consensus work even across an aisle.
Mark Kennedy should run Pawlenty's - er, McCain's convention.
But I digress. They could perhaps find some Burmese general to run things - with an iron hand. Bachmann and Coleman should have no problem with that.
The picture is from a Minn. Monitor, May 13, 2008, online supplemental item by Paul Demko:
Norm Coleman is not the only member of the Minnesota Congressional delegation to receive money associated with lobbying firm DCI Group. Freshman Rep. Michelle Bachmann received a $500 contribution from DCI Group partner Brian McCabe in 2006, according to Federal Election Commission Records. McCabe is also president of Progress for America, a conservative 527 group that spent roughly $45 million on advertising during the 2004 presidential campaign.
DCI Group has been under fire for its work lobbying on behalf of the despotic military junta in Myanmar. The man that John McCain tapped to run the Republican National Convention, Doug Goodyear, stepped down from the post after his DCI ties surfaced in Newsweek over the weekend. Doug Davenport, who was charged with heading up the McCain campaign in the mid-Atlantic states, also resigned owing to his work for the lobbying firm.
As first reported on Minnesota Monitor, Sen. Norm Coleman has received nearly $10,000 in campaign contributions from individuals and a political action committee affiliated with DCI. The DFL has called on Coleman to give the money to charity, but the senator has so far refused.
No other members of the Minnesota delegation [not even Kline?] have received DCI-related donations during the last three election cycles, according to FEC records.
Frist, credit is due Minn. Monitor for breaking the entire story, naming the various names and amounts shunted into the Coleman campaign treasury, and then supplementing it with news of the war chest building involvement of my district's representative in Congress, the one and only Ms. Michele Bachmann. (They can even be forgiven for spelling her first name the normal way instead of the Bachmann way, when they bring that kind of news.)
BUT THINK ABOUT IT --- If Bob Olson had gotten the DFL Sixth District endorsement, how he could make something of this situation.
Elwyn Tinklenberg is in no position to be throwing such stones.
If not in a glass house Elwyn himself has been several times through the glass revolving door, in the lobby.
It is similar to the situation where Peyton Manning can make the throws Ryan Leaf couldn't.
_____UPDATE______
The Coleman shoe dropping, days before the same with Bachmann, was something I learned of and posted yesterday, this link. I just added a footnote thought there - this thought - with reporting being of Franken and Coleman and their supporters moaning back and forth about the other's activities and ties - all of that leaves out the squeaky clean, intelligent, and progressive third Senate hopeful, Jack Nelson Pallmeyer, my first choice, over Franken [but with Franken being miles ahead of Norm Coleman so that whichever of the two, Nelson Pallmeyer or Franken gets the DFL nod, I would be supportive]. I like Jack better and believe he'd shake things up in DC more along the Wellstone lines than Franken, and bless him for that and for his cognizant and humane foreign relations views, but either DFL man is a good man who I would have no hesitation supporting.