News Leader Takes A Mulligan

The News Leader took a Mulligan, literally.

The Fernandina Beach bi-weekly newspaper announced that it has hired another new editor, Amy Mulligan, the paper’s third in less than a year .

In a January 14 front page article announcing Mulligan’s hiring the News Leader said in the last sentence of the article, “Mulligan replaces Jim Luksic as editor.”

In golf a mulligan is a do-over. It’s when a golfer in a friendly game, unsatisfied with the result of  a shot, takes the same shot again. The News Leader has apparently expanded that concept to a second, third shot, etc. in an attempt to get it right.

Before Luksic arrived at the News Leader Tracy Dishman, served as its editor driving the paper off a far left cliff, cluttering its editorial pages with progressive drivel that read like 1950s era Soviet Union propaganda.

The News Leader, which announced Luksic as editor less than a year ago, didn’t explain why he left or where he went. The much traveled Luksic joined the News Leader from the Clay County Today where he was managing editor for about a year. Prior to that he was an editor and reporter in Wyoming, Kansas, California, Nevada, Key West, etc.

The paper said Ms. Mulligan previously lived in Ocala and worked at the Villages Daily Sun as a senior managing editor.

During his brief tenure at the News Leader Luksic cleaned house, scrubbing the paper’s editorial pages of Marxist-like screeching columnists and firing biased and inept reporters. I don’t have any insider information but assume he did so with the approval and maybe at the urging of recently appointed Publisher Todd Frantz.

One of the best moves the nomadic Luksic made during his brief tenure was to give George Vaill a column on the front page of the paper’s “Around Town” section. Octogenarian Vaille is familiar to anybody who visits downtown Fernandina on the weekends as he single-handedly staffs a “Free Advice” table from 11 a.m. until 2 p.m. in the pocket park on Centre Street, next to the Amelia Island Coffee Shop. His column is appropriately titled “Free Advice.”

I visited him out of curiosity once and discovered a soft spoken, friendly fellow who genuinely enjoys the company of others and listening to what they have to say.

Like the  “Free Advice” he dispenses Vaill, doesn’t preach or delve into politics in his self-deprecating folksy human interest columns. He often writes about himself to put topics in perspective but isn’t full of himself and readers can almost picture a twinkle in his eyes. When reaching the end he accomplishes what most writers aspire to do – leave their readers wishing there were more.

On the Opposite end of the spectrum was former columnist  Jennifer “Look at Me, Look at Me” Silverman, who wrote a sleep aid titled “The Curious Columnist” and whose curiosity didn’t extend beyond her nose. This gal’s motto appeared to be “But enough about me, what do you think about me?”

Also gone are the two far left radicals, Chuck Oliva, and Mark Tomes, that splattered the editorial pages with their distaste of everything conservative, Republican, or anything they perceived as opposing their progressive views. The newspaper photos of this duo appeared to accurately reflect their grumpy viewpoints.

Whether it was Luksic’s doing or Frantz’s direction, the new editor inherits a professionally staffed newspaper opposed to the chaotic leftist mess it was under Dishman. Hopefully Publisher Frantz won’t have to take another Mulligan.

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NOT The Flag Of Our Fathers: The 50 U.S. state flags that appear on the East side of Shave Bridge on holidays such as July 4, Veterans Day, etc. are placed there courtesy of Fernandina Beach’s American Legion Post 54 members who volunteer to put them up and remove them when the holiday is over.

This past year while helping put the flags up Army veteran Scott Sarazin noticed the flag of his home state of Minnesota was not the one he remembered when he grew up and lived there.  The one the folks in Minnesota provided looked suspiciously like the Somali flag thought Scott.

The traditional state flag Scott recalls features a native American on horseback and a farmer plowing a field, under the phrase “L’etoile du Nord”  (“Star of the North”), which was adopted formally as the official state motto in 1861.

Scott’s family members sent him the traditional flag, and he used it while dispatching the new one to the fire pit. Scott was a step ahead of Vice President J.D. Vance who spoke last week in Minneapolis and also had the Somali look-a-like flag taken off stage and replaced by the traditional one.

Critics say the new flag, which was adopted in 2024 under the Tim Walz administration, has been panned by many residents as resembling the Somali flag.

Maybe Walz and his sycophants figured that since so many Somalis have settled in Minnesota and managed to scam the state and federal government out of  billions of tax dollars with very little effort, they thought this crowd of enterprising unemployed Somali pirates deserved some sort of official recognition for their fraud that may exceed $9 billion.

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Walz-To-Walz Chaos: To demonstrate their support for the Somali thieves last Sunday, January 18, a gang of Anti-ICE agitators disrupted services at Cities Church in St. Paul. In that group was Don Lemon and several other zealots, who later admitted it wasn’t just a protest of a religion, but a protest of white supremacy and conservative entitlement.

Part-time Amelia Island resident Jeff Childers, who pens the daily “Coffee & Covid” column posted the best description of  the disgraced lefty “news person” Don Lemon I’ve ever seen  writing: “Former CNN employee Don Lemon didn’t just fall from grace; he fell from grace, crashed through the floor, and tumbled through the first eight levels of Dante’s Media Inferno on his way to the very lowest level— where resentful, washed-up podcasters live.

“’Pride, Envy and Avarice,’ Dante Alighieri once wrote, ‘are the three burning coals that have set all hearts on fire.” That describes the miserable little wretch Lemon perfectly.

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Speaking of Minnesota: If it was the policy of the U.S. that anyone who sneaks into the country and makes it to Minnesota is immune from deportation, then we wouldn’t have an immigration system at all. If America is going to remain a sovereigns nation with laws then it needs a federal law enforcement agency such as ICE in charge of finding illegal aliens and deporting them.

Rants such as those spewed by the disgraceful Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, and the shameful Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob “Small” Frey, demonizing ICE, and the federal government led to the death of protestor Renee Good and may lead to more.

The vile garbage these two twits utter doesn’t protect residents of Minnesota, just the opposite. It endangers citizens, law enforcement officers, and bystanders .

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Somali Pirates Hit Maine: The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced Wednesday, January 21, that it has launched a new immigration enforcement operation in Maine amid reports of large-scale fraud tied to members of the Somali community in the state.

ICE says it has already arrested 50 people as part of the targeted operation, dubbed “Operation Catch of the Day,” according to Fox News. The operation has identified about 1,400 targets, including individuals accused of child rape, drug trafficking, and sexual assaults, ICE Deputy Assistant Director Patricia Hyde told the outlet.

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Can You Hear Me Now? A Zagat survey on dining trends notes that the number one complaint of customers dining out wasn’t lousy service or bad food, but noise.

I can empathize with those disgruntled diners. A few years ago Linda and I entered a restaurant about 5 p.m. and discovered we were the only patrons there. It was obvious why. The piped in music was so loud we could barely hear each other. When I asked the server to please turn it down she said: “No, the kitchen staff likes it.”  We left without ordering saying to the manager on the way out that we hoped he paid the kitchen staff well as they would probably be his only customers.

According to the Zagat survey restaurants turn up the volume of music because they think loud fast music leads people to drink alcohol faster. However, another study shows that playing slow music leads people to spend more money on drinks and linger longer at dinner.

In Fernandina Beach the City Commission’s paid parking regulation to be enacted next month may speed diners up despite the kind of music or the volume.