Minnesota Redistricting is Very Likely To Snuff Out Bachmann
Minnesota has been on the bubble in the last few years as to whether or not it will lose a Congressional district in the next decennial reapportionment, but given the state's outsized economic drubbing...
View ArticleReevaluating "Sporting News" 100 Best Baseball Players List in the...
In 1998, "The Sporting News" released a list of what it considered the 100 greatest baseball players in the game's history. It's a pretty good list, although there are a few fairly controversial...
View ArticlePhilip Morris to Uncle Sam: Checkmate
I was reading yesterday how, in anticipation of the new 156% federal cigarette tax hike poised to take effect on April 1, Philip Morris is rapidly phasing in a price increase on its cigarette brands as...
View ArticleClosing GM Dealerships Definitely Will NOT Help
Every time I hear a backseat driver critic of the American car industry impart their infinite wisdom on why filing Chapter 11 would be the best option at this point for General Motors and Chrysler, one...
View ArticleWhat's Your Favorite Month? (w/Poll)
We got into a discussion on this topic at work today and I thought it would make for a fun diary. As with everything, people have different preferences in terms of season. Hailing from the Upper...
View ArticleRemember When People Got Their Undies in a Wad Over TV Violence?
Reading today about how Virginia Congressman James Moran proposed to ban erectile dysfunction ads from primetime television underscored for me just how much things have changed in terms of what rolls...
View ArticleThe Only Way I Could Support Funding Health Care With Soda
Well that was fast! Despite all the lofty campaign rhetoric, I knew it would only be a matter of time until all would-be health care funding mechanisms that were progressive, universal, or...
View ArticleThe Emerging Republican Majority
I'll say right off the bat that this will be a controversial diary. It's very hard to evaluate long-term political trendlines and my theories could certainly be proved wrong, but the trajectory of...
View ArticleFDA Tobacco Regulation: Gateway to Even Less Safe Food
Barring a procedural obstruction, the likelihood is that the Senate will vote this week to give the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over tobacco. It passed the House recently by a...
View ArticleThe Ten Best MacGyver Episodes
I said in the "Seinfeld" thread that I would do it....and I did it!Yeah, yeah, I know. "MacGyver" is a relic of a cheesy bygone TV era full of hammy acting, one-dimensional characters, and...
View ArticleObama Will Lose Me With a "Soda Tax"
You'll find few people more supportive than me of health insurance reform with a public option. Hell, I'd prefer we nix the public option and go straight to single-payer. It would be very hard to...
View ArticleThe 20 Most Exciting Senate Elections of the Last 20 Years
Every fall I get election fever. And when it comes to odd-numbered fall like this one, nostalgia gets the best of me and I get to remembering the dramatic moments of elections past. I got to thinking...
View ArticleThe Untold Reason Why Unemployment Won't Go Down Before the 2010 Midterms
This is gonna be a dark and bleak diary. There's no benefit of sugarcoating what is increasingly looking like a midterm election disaster next November. It's starting to hit home with just about...
View ArticleThe Illogic Of Taxing "Cadillac Health Care Plans"
I've always scratched my head about the logic that surrounds removing the tax exemption on generous health care plans. It seemed like yet another Ponzi scheme that governments employ with increased...
View ArticleWhy Do Republican Candidates Advertise On Here?
This will be a brief diary, but having seen this on a couple other lefty blogs I frequent, I'm curious about the prevalence of Republican candidate ads on the Daily Kos...
View ArticleWhatever Happened To Jay From Jefferson Avenue?
I recently did a video project with an old high school friend that profiled the decline of my once-thriving southern Minnesota hometown. The video project brought me back to Jefferson Avenue, the most...
View ArticleShould Olympians Pay Higher Insurance Rates? And Other Observations
If you're like me, you've been glued to the Winter Olympics this week and will likely continue to be next week. Perhaps it's my Minnesota upbringing, but I feel a certain cultural bond to these winter...
View ArticleFood, Inc. Had Me Until The Last Two Minutes
Here in Iowa, the documentary Food, Inc. just aired on the local PBS station. I had heard great things about the film and it lived up to expectations for me. They made a very convincing case. I'm...
View ArticleThe State of NY Is About To Violate Native American Sovereignty Agreements
The white man has a shameful centuries-long tradition of making treaties with Native Americans and then violating them at the first convenience. Most believe that our government's days of dishonoring...
View ArticleThe Most Exciting House Races In The Last 20 Years, State By State
Even in unfavorable election climates or off years, I always seem to get election fever at some point in September. As disgusted as I've been in recent months watching the political climate get...
View ArticleHandicapping MN-Gov
I noticed today that Nate Silver crunched the numbers for the Minnesota Governor's race and determined that Democrat Mark Dayton had a 77% chance of victory. Pretty generous. With the exception of...
View ArticleKY-Sen: What Is Conway's Most Likely Victory Baseline?
I'm not optimistic that Jack Conway will win in this environment, but he's still in the game and so long as Rand Paul is his opponent, it's a safe bet that he'll remain in the game. But Kentucky has...
View Article"Temporary Extension"? Who Does He Think He's Kidding?
There are two mind-bogglingly stupid narratives floating around among apologists for the "deal" to which Obama just surrendered to. The first is that this is a politically inopportune time for choking...
View ArticleThe 10 Darkest Country Songs of All-Time
Or I should say the 10 darkest country songs in my lexicon. One of the primary appeals of country music for me is that even some commercially successful songs delve into some of the darkest, seediest...
View ArticleAlmost Nobody Will Have Enough Money To Retire
It's fascinating listening to the latest litany of arguments coming mostly from the political right about the simultaneous need to reduce Social Security outlays and convert every last American worker...
View ArticleNo, John Boehner Does Not Have The Most Difficult Bargaining Position
Even down to the framing of the inside baseball, John Boehner and the Tea Party have the media fooled. Even on MSNBC, all I've been hearing all night tonight is that John Boehner is in this terribly...
View ArticleDid High Cigarette Taxes Create Scott Walker?
For two years in a row, former Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle proudly signed TWO increases in Wisconsin's state cigarette tax with the help of both houses of the then Democratic Legislature. The...
View ArticleHypothetical Guantanamo Option Regarding Debt Ceiling
This is a pretty out-there proposal, and possibly a jump-the-shark moment for the few who believe I haven't already jumped it, but drastic times could call for drastic measures. Failure to raise the...
View ArticleYou Just Watch...Obama's Gonna Get Rolled Again
Much as we all enjoyed seeing Obama take on a tougher tone with Republicans tonight, he once again made the fatal flaw of making an opening bid that's what we would hope to get as a final compromise AT...
View ArticleThe 10 Most Exciting States To Track Close Races
I thought this would be a fun little diary. Listed below are the 10 states that, for different reasons, are my favorite states to follow close elections in. All of the favorites are "coalition"...
View ArticleHandicapping Minnesota for 2012 County by County--Romney Counties
I had hoped to write one giant diary to cover my profiles of all 87 Minnesota counties and the corresponding predictions for the 2012 Presidential election, but with about 80 of 87 county writeups...
View ArticleHandicapping Minnesota For 2012 County by County--Obama Counties
Ever since I got my first World Almanac in 1990 I have compulsively followed Minnesota's county-by-county election returns, and beginning in 1997 when I got my hands on the Minnesota blue book, my...
View ArticleMike Bloomberg and David Koch: The Same Person
Two high-profile billionaires have made the headlines for different reasons in the past two weeks. Plutocrat extraordinaire David Koch and New York City Michael Bloomberg may not seem like they have...
View ArticleHow Much Has Anti-Tobacco Policy Hurt Us On Gun Control?
When polled individually, all three of the President's primary gun control measures have majority support. The assault weapons ban has the smallest mandate, but most polls still show a clear majority...
View ArticleChained CPI: The Second Most Appalling Item in the Obama Budget
President Obama has long been telegraphing his intentions to screw over Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries, so it was no real surprise last week when he proposed "chaining" the Consumer Price...
View ArticleCan Democrats Really Afford To Forfeit The Votes of 46 Million Smokers?
If President Obama had had the decency to tell American smokers that he planned to single them out for ANOTHER $1,000+ per year tax increase at the beginning of his second term, would he have been...
View Article36 Million New Legal Immigrants Over 20 Years: The Debate We Should Be Having
Like so many public policy debates that go on in America, the people will be robbed of the debate we should be having as it relates to the immigration reform plan front and center in Congress right...
View ArticleRed State Senate Races: Geographic Paths to Victory
There are few things more exciting than watching the returns roll in for a close election, and particularly so when the election is in a red state. I got to thinking a few days ago how the county map...
View Article2012 Minnesota Predictions: How Did I Do?
Six months before the election, I made some long-range predictions on Minnesota county performances for the 2012 Presidential race. At the time, polls indicated Minnesota would perform similarly to...
View Article"I Don't Know Anybody Who Smokes Anymore!"...
A new poll came out this morning showing Minnesota's Democratic Governor Mark Dayton well positioned for re-election in November. The Koch Brothers haven't gotten their claws into the voting public...
View ArticleResisting The Wave: How Minnesota Democrats Mostly Prevailed Last Tuesday
When looking at the dreadful national maps chronicling last Tuesday's election results, it's hard to miss the island of blue in the middle of the country that is Minnesota. Whether it be the...
View ArticleElection 2000: The Most Realigning Election of My Lifetime
I remember back to July 2000, almost exactly 15 years ago and before the era when the results of new political polls were readily available on election websites moments after their release online. I...
View ArticlePhiladephia's New Soda Tax: Everything That's Wrong With Modern "Liberalism"
For the last two decades, we've been seeing one of the most dramatic resortings of political coalitions that the republic has ever experienced. It couldn't have been more clear in the World War II era...
View ArticleA Rural Survival Story: How Three Dem Congressmen From Rural Minnesota...
Having grown up in rural Minnesota, I had a feeling Hillary Clinton would play poorly there and that Donald Trump had the potential to do well. Some of the internals in the few quality Minnesota polls...
View ArticleMarijuana's Cultural Stock Is Soaring And Tobacco's Is Plunging....But It...
One of the more popular nonfiction books of the last generation is “Freakonomics”, and rightfully so as it connected a lot of data points that ultimately came to fascinating and often unexpected...
View ArticleAre 20-Year-Olds The Same As 2-Year-Olds?
Democrats have been quick to point out the flexible and situational values of conservatives in the Trump era, abandoning policy positions and moral touchstones they had previously claimed to hold as...
View ArticleScrew It! Let's Just Raise EVERYTHING To Age 21!
I went to the Minnesota Public Television website this afternoon to watch the weekly public access series “Minnesota Almanac”. Much of the hour was dedicated to middle-aged public officials decreeing...
View ArticleHandicapping Minnesota House Battlegrounds: Districts 1, 2, 3, 7, and 8
Based on the available polling data and my expectations of the parochial tendencies and recent localized voting patterns in Minnesota, I figured I’d take a stab at handicapping what I think the most...
View ArticleHandicapping IA-04: What Will Scholten's Path To Victory Look Like
Here’s my handicap of IA-04 and a path to victory for JD Scholten…..First and foremost, Scholten needs to win Story County by at least 20 points (and probably 25 points) with a robust student turnout...
View ArticleThe Most Horrific Takeaway of a Possible Bloomberg Nomination
I despise Mike Bloomberg. I always have. He governed New York City using the kind of naked patronage that would make a mob boss blush while fancying himself a messianic overlord willing to step over...
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