Someone Should Have a Talk With the Headline Writers at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Here's to Al Franken's Campaign

No one can fill the shoes of the man who was my Senator for the time I lived up in the frozen tundra, but it's really a shame that Norm's boney ass has been sitting in Paul's chair for the last few years...I hope he's swiftly removed tomorrow night.

Here's Paul Wellstone's last floor speech before he checked out...hard to watch this without getting choked up. Love his policies or hate them, the man believed every word that came out of his mouth and apologized for none of it. We should only be so lucky to have a few more like him...

Screw you and the horse you got your teeth from, Norm.

Sorry For All the Mini-Posts Today

I know you come here for long-winded dissertations on the news of the day, and my inability to come through for you really bums me out, but I'm feeling a bit scatterbrained...yet still have a few goodies.

So, apology aside, things are looking up for DemocraticComedianNewYorker Al Franken, who's running for US Senate seat of FormerDemocraticComedianNewYorker Norm Coleman's in the Land of 10,000 Lakes...the latest Star Trib poll has his lead in the teens now!

"That's Not Country First. That's Obama First"

Unveiled in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, this might be McPalin's new punchline...

Nod to Jake Tapper.

Will Peter Ciresi, the Christ Figure, Rise in Three Days?

Looks like that's what's needed as Al Franken won the Dem Senate nod in the Land of 10K Lakes last night.

The Problem With Calling Your Opponent an Idiot

While I don't live and breathe the MN Senate race, what I have read suggests that Norm Coleman is running against Al Franken by basically calling him an idiot comedian, unfit for office.

From where I sit, you can go into these races choosing one of two broad strategies. Either you can say you respect, but disagree with your opponent, or you can take the Coleman strategy and call the person fundamentally incompetent.

Taking the Coleman strategy must make it a hell of a lot less comfortable, then, to find out you're tied with someone who you have determined is a total idiot.

What does that say about you (or the electorate, Normy)?

I Hate Minnesota (Femi)Nazis

We may have found some ground that can sustain Rush Limbaugh and Al Franken at the same time.

Seems that Senator Amy Klobuchar and others up in the frozen tundra might be ready to stay home or get another Democrat to run against Horseyface Coleman for his US Senate seat this fall.

These folks remain apparently ticked off about Franken's career as a satirist, during which he...wrote satire, some of which was off-colour and sexist if you read it listerally.

While I can understand Minnesotans being a little bit trigger-shy when it comes to electing someone from an entertainment career, it's downright silly for them to draw this kind of line in the sand.

And the DFL had better be careful because Franken has a better shot at defeating Norm than St. Thomas grad, Michael Ciresi.

Al Franken...In it to Win It

Over the weekend in beautiful Rochester, Minnesota, the state Democratic Farm Labor Party had their convention and picked Al Franken to be their candidate to go up against douche bag Norm Coleman.

While I'll stop short of endorsing everything Franky seems to be talking about these days, during the time I was up there, Norm (then the mayor of St. Paul who had recently switched his registration from Democrat to Republican) was a guy who made my skin crawl. So I'm for just about anyone who sends him out to the glue farm.

Norm's slimy New York accent just makes one guess that his breath stinks of old luggage.

It was not exactly an easy ride for Franken...as of late, the GOP machine has been pulling some interesting tax stories about him as well as a satirical piece in Playboy from the 1990s that, when read literally, would be offensive.

How stupid.

No one reads the articles in Playboy!

So anyway, I'll enjoy watching this race as the next few months tick by.

King of the Casserole

I picked up a really good cookbook some time back that I've been digging into...The Better Homes and Gardens Biggest Book of Casseroles.

I've made a few of the breakfast dishes on weekends (a baked egg/hashbrown/ham/broccolli concoction this morning and a cinnamon raisin baked french toast dish a few weeks ago were both winners) as well as some dinners (the Reuben casserole was easy and just as good as the name suggests).

I recommend this book without reservation...even if you think it should be called HotDish.

Google Maps Streetview Adds New Cities...Including Cleveland!

A few years ago, A9, Amazon's search engine, introduced a streetview-like functionality.

It was the first step on a path towards an application that everyone knew would be cool.

Well, it just got cooler with the folks from Mountain View adding the following new cities the other day.

• Albuquerque, NM
• Anchorage, AK
• Austin, TX
• Cleveland, OH
• Fairbanks, AK
• Little Rock, AR
• Madison, WI
• Nashville, TN
• Rockford, IL
• Richmond, VA
• Spokane, WA
• St. Petersburg, FL
• Tampa, FL

Below are a few shots from our fair city. Give it a try yourself!
Quicken Loans Arena, downtown.
Corbo's Bakery, down the street, that I walk by every day.
My old school apartment in Minneapolis.

So, waxing nostalgic about the old days, Barenaked Ladies' The Old Apartment came to mind. It's set to Gilmore Girls footage...which is always cool.

Enjoy!

One of the Funniest Culinary Sentences I Have Ever Read

This comes from the Wiki-entry for Hotdish...something that the rest of the country outside of Minnesota just calls "casserole."

You don't get much better than this...

Cream of mushroom soup is so ubiquitous in hotdish that it is often referred to in such recipes as "Lutheran Binder."

Yah, Youbetchya. Vote for Al(len) Franken!

While he's had some weirdo angry outbursts in the last few years, there's something really charming and interesting about the Franken Senate campaign up in the tundra.

Former Democrat Norm Coleman is a horse's ass and I would think of voting for Al just on that basis.

But Al's no dummy. As I think I've posted here before, his Air America show, while I might not agree with much of what he talks about, really allowed him to hone his rhetorical skills and I'm watching this race with great interest.

I had a funny experience at work today. I got hooked into a conference call with a woman in another business unit and had to ask, after listening for a moment, if she grew up somewhere in Minnesota.

"Yah, I live in Roseville. Whydoyaask?"

Anyway, here's a cute Al commercial.

Iowa is Ripping Minnesota Off!

Will Cody be offended, or is this just another example of the easy going gopher being violated by its neighbor?

This new term has been going around a lot lately among the pundit class when talking about the debates, but the term is more-solidly associated with Minnesota.

Minnesota Nice is Not Nice When You're a Writer?

While it was not the most original editorial in the world, there was a mildly-interesting little article on the bottom of the editorial page in the Times this morning about young women writers and a certain flavor of politeness they have to overcome if they are to be taken seriously as writers.

The writer is able to use a visit to a small Lutheran college in Minnesota as the backdrop and does the obvious comparison to the phenomenon known as Minnesota Nice here.

It's a little bit of a hodge-podge of an article (the writer also laments the fact that more professors are choosing to live in the Cities and commute out to the small town colleges where they teach) and doesn't really address the negative perception of Minnesota Nice (that some people find it to be fake) but it was a nice little diversion to scan through.

Tutu You!

There's a controversy brewing in the little sister city of St. Paul, Minnesota.

St. Thomas University recently revoked a speaking invite to Nobel Peace Prize winner, Desmond Tutu over some statements he's made about Israel.

Some people got a little bit twitchy when (as they see it) he drew parallels between modern Israel and the Nazis.

Imagine that.

"I'm a Minnesota Guy"

That's how Jim Ramstad summed up his decision today to leave the US House after his 9th term runs up. Ramstad is 'one of the good Republicans' according to frequent keep-Dan-honest poster, Cody, and I can't agree more.

While I won't push myself off as a student of his House career, I know that one of his signature issues since coming to the House is health care for those afflicted with mental and addiction disorders. The recovering drinker hopes to make a little more of a dent in this before leaving the Beltway.

He worked on this fervently with the late Senator Paul Wellstone (who I would call one of the 'good Democrats' :-) ) on this issue. Wellstone had a family connection to mental illness.

But to go back to the horse race interpretation, this does not bode well for the GOP, as The Hotline notes, since he's the latest in a line of Republicans to just walk away from Washington, perhaps getting out of the way of a party implosion in November 2008.

Let the Blame Game Begin

Nod to Cody for the heads up on this one that's getting digged a lot...

The Problem with "Dumb" Online Advertising

What happened in the Twin Cities tonight is just awful.

I used to drive across that bridge regularly...be ready for a bigass investigation.

Anyway, I went back over to the Star Trib for a little local coverage and found a prime example of stupid advertising strategies.

If you don't set up your site to scan content of the page and compare it to what you're advertising, you could end up with this...a picture of a bridge collapsing, a big rig on fire, and an auto company pitching its truck as having passed America's toughest road test.

Doh!

Franken for Senate

Huffpo has an article above the scroll first thing this morning on Al Franken's money raising prowess in his bid to remove "Republican" Norm Coleman from his Minnesota US Senate seat.

Al's been doing well, predictably, with the entertainment crowd. Rosie O'Donnell is one of his benefactors. He's doing so well, in fact, that he outraised Coleman during the 2d quarter by a small margin.

I was a graduate student at the U of MN between 1996 and 2000, so I have some experience in the area of voting for a celebrity candidate (who went by the nickname, "The Mind") for a major seat in Minnesota. I'm watching this race with some interest.

Franken's radio show on Air America appears to have been good for him not only in further-cementing his name association, but also with being able to articulate his positions and tell good back stories. While I can't link him from work, check out some of the Youtube content on him. He's clearly comfortable talking about what government can do for people.

I certainly see him as a more serious person than Ventrua ever was, as well as smarter, but it will be interesting to see how much the RNC decides to fight for Coleman.

Well, Ralphie Boy, It's Like We Say Down in the Sewer...

This story out of the Twin Cities kind of caught my eye this morning.  Apparently there was some bad communication to workers around whether or not a biomed company had the rights to dispose of blood into the sewer system.

The one fella was pretty upset that, in the pursuit of his daily tasks working in the sewer, he had swallowed some of his bread and butter...which might have contained blood.

Now I'm all for worker protection and think (from my layman's perspective) that this merits an investigation.   But if it's SOP for workers in the department to get sprayed in the face and swallow things from the sewer, then pitching a fit now seems like suing the tobacco companies for the bad breath you get
from smoking.