Curses! Our secret plan of world domination and making Scott Jensen ruler of the Earth has been discovered!

Milwaukee Magazine's Bruce Murphy stops his story corrections long enough to actually speak to someone at the secret lair of the MacIver Institute to try to find out the real identity of "Number 1":

In response to my story suggesting former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen could become director of the newly formed MacIver Institute, Jensen wrote to say it’s not true. “I have a job I absolutely love at the Alliance for School Choice. They pay me well and I am passionate about my work there. I will not be leaving that post to take up any position at the MacIver Institute.”

Later, Jensen amended that somewhat, saying he is a consultant and his “main client” is the Alliance for School Choice. Jensen has done work for the group since at least 2006, when its federal tax form lists him as staff member working 38 hours a week and earning $126,045. In 2007, Jensen started a one-person consulting firm called Chartwell Strategic Advisors. Sure enough, the Alliance for School Choice tax form for 2007 dropped Jensen from the staff but added his Chartwell as a consultant, giving it $126,000.

How is it that this Washington, D.C.-based group added Jensen as a strategist?Perhaps because its former president (back when the group was called the American Education Reform Council) is Milwaukeean Susan Mitchell. Mitchell is still on the group’s board of directors. She also runs School Choice Wisconsin and has worked with Jensen and others to promote vouchers in this state.

Anyway, this seems to have left a little extra time for Jensen and Chartwell to help chart the course for the MacIver Institute.

Shocking! The horror! Scott Jensen is a consultant, and he actually is *gasp* CONSULTING FOR TWO ORGANIZATIONS! No wonder the left side of the Cheddarsphere is in a dizzy tizzy. Why, if this keeps up, Jensen will soon be consulting for three organizations! Then four! Then five!

Soon he will have a consulting operation active in every corporation and think tank in the world! And we'll have to clone him in our secret laboratories just to keep up with the number of consulting jobs. Eventually, there will be Scott Jensen clones everywhere talking about welfare reform, school choice, and cutting taxes. We'll be cloning Scott Jensens faster than Acorn can create fake voter registrations! By the time 2012 comes around, there will be enough Scott Jensens to elect Scott Jensen President of the United States.

And we're not only doing it here. We're making Scott Jensens in China and Russia. Even France! Every country in the world will soon be run by their own Scott Jensen! It's a spectacular plot to take over the world! And we almost got away with it!!!

(Have you ever noticed the political left in this state really is a bunch of paranoid ninnies?)

106-year-old nun casts vote for first time in 56 years

Mother Cecelia Gaudette was recorded by ABC News casting her overseas ballot from Rome. Thanks to ACORN, she was also registered to vote in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida.

A better use for ACORN

This week's Friday Afternoon Cocktail is sponsored by ACORN.  When it comes to protecting the rights of non-existent people to vote absentee, nobody stuffs the registration rolls like ACORN.  They've succeeded in electing Christine Gregoire governor of Washington, and they've managed to increase voter registration in Indianapolis to 105%.  Just think what they could do in your neighborhood.

If you're careful with the rake and faster than a squirrel, underneath the oak leaves is pure gold.  Don't throw away the acorns.  Use them.

Jack Keller at the Winemaking Home Page has a recipe for acorn wine.

• 1 cup chopped acorn meats
• 2-1/2 lbs granulated sugar
• 1-1/2 tsp acid blend
• 1/2 tsp pectic enzyme
• water to make up one gallon
• 1 tsp yeast nutrient
• Sauterne wine yeast

Shell and chop the acorn meats in a blender or food chopper. You need one cup of chopped acorn meats, not one cup of acorn meats chopped. You can use some of the water to aid in chopping them if necessary, although newly fallen acorns that are still slightly green are soft enough to chop without the water. Bring a quart of water to boil and add the chopped acorn meats. Adjust heat to a simmer, cover, and cook for 30 minutes. Put half the sugar in the primary and strain the acorn-water onto the sugar. Stir until thoroughly dissolved. Add remaining water to equal one gallon. When cooled to room temperature, add all igredients except yeast. Cover and set aside 12 hours. Add activated yeast, recover and ferment 5-7 days. Stir in remainder of the sugar until disolved and transfer to secondary. Fit airlock and ferment 30 days. Rack, top up and refit airlock every 60 days for 6 months. Stabilize, sweeten to taste, wait 10 days for dead yeast to fall out, and rack into bottles. May taste after 6 months. [Adapted from recipe by Nancy McCoy, as reported in Dorothy Alatorre's Home Wines of North America]

Dennis Lange at the Five Seasons Brewing Company tells the story of how the pilgrims had to make do with a certain ingredient to make beer.

Being the mother of invention, necessity forced them to look for other sources of sugars needed to brew a batch of beer. They tried potatoes, sweet potatoes and even corn (think of the nice picture from your grade school book of the Native Americans providing corn … so the pilgrims could get liquored up!). Strangely, the most successful of the local "grains" was acorns. You gotta be crazy to make a beer with acorns, not to mention desperate, but aside from the preponderance of worms, acorns contain almost the same starch makeup as malted barley. By substituting acorns for a portion of the malted barley to make beer, the pilgrims were able to make it through the first couple of winters, even though the beer was a bit nutty.