North Star Politics

Happy Veteran's Day, everybody. Let's honor our veterans today and again in Nov. 2006 when we beat the Republicans who have been attacking them on so many fronts.

That's how I read this article. "You get the government you deserve?" Wow. Thanks a lot, Mayor Kelly. I'm fairly sure that no one is regretting their votes for Chris Coleman today.

Partially hilarious yet partially not column in the Strib today. Nick Coleman writes some thoughts about the mayor-elect of St. Paul.

ANWR language cut from the House spending bill! Let's hope the drilling doesn't make it out of conference committee.

Mayor Coleman:

Everything went as well as we could possibly have imagined. 69-31. Wow. I swung by the victory party, and it was great. A lot of very happy people there. Adding to all of this tonight is all the national coverage this race got tonight, some of it being here, here, and here.
(UPDATE: And here)

Gov. Corzine:

I can't say I'm terribly impressed; New Jersey's a pretty blue state for us to be losing in. Then again, Massachusetts and New York have Republican governors. It's a good win for Corzine and one that the rest of us needed. Now we need to keep NJ's Senate seat after 2006 - it may not be easy.

Gov. Kaine:

This is the one we should really be partying about. A good Democrat elected in a very red state. It's likely that this will be something of a bellwether for 2006, one that looks very ominous for Bush (who was in Virginia stumping for Kilgore last night) and the Republicans. In your face, Mr. President!

Polls close in 19 minutes. I'm shamelessly boosting this post from Minnesota Republican Watch.

• St. Paul Mayor

• Minneapolis Mayor

• Virginia Governor
• New Jersey Governor
• California Ballot Initiatives
• Ohio Ballot Initiatives

I've got a friend who's phone banking for Coleman, and he/she is telling me that it's going to be a blowout. I'm anxious to hear about the Virginia gubernatorial race; I believe that that race will be the real bellwether for 2006.

I'll admit it: I'm a junkie.

To me, Election Day is right up there with Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year's, and the first day of summer. Today is the day that all of the work we do 364 days out of the year comes together and pays dividends. This is perhaps the most exciting day of the year, and this year I think we'll have a lot to be happy about after the results come in.

Vote, volunteer (you might even see me!), and pray today. It'll all be worth it tonight.

Welcome to everybody from the Chris Coleman campaign.

I'm supporting Chris Coleman because he's the candidate that will improve St. Paul's future. Why?

For one thing, a lot of people much smarter than me think so. I think all of those state representatives and state senators make a powerful statement. One would think that they would know who can best serve their constituents in the mayor's office. Kelly, on the other hand, boasts the endorsement Chicago Mayor Richard Daley - what does he know about St. Paul?

For another, public safety (which I see as a top priority for the mayor of nearly any big city) has not improved under Kelly's administration. Chris' website notes the statistics - more violent crime and fewer police officers. Either of these facts would be bad enough, but both together is unforgivable. Mayor Kelly apparently has a plan to put 100 new police officers on St. Paul streets by 2010, and that's awfully nice, but what has he been doing for the past four years? Chris Coleman will do better.

A third important issue is transportation. I just don't think that Mayor Kelly has done enough to promote quality pubic transportation. While progress has been made on the central corridor line, it's not enough - it's been on the table for a long time, and it seems like it's only the fact that it's an election year that is making Kelly promote it. According to Kelly's website, he'll make it a major focus of his second term. Too late, Mayor Kelly. Chris Coleman will do better.

Yet another issue is, unfortunately, that of Kelly's endorsement of Pres. Bush last year. I'm not such a partisan that I would condemn him just for this, but it should be clear to everyone by now that Pres. Bush hasn't been good for the city of St. Paul, for Minnesota, or for the United States of America. Bush has failed us all, and in endorsing Bush, Kelly both showed enormous disloyalty to his party and linked himself to each and every one of Bush's failures. Once again, Chris Coleman will do better.

Tomorrow, I encourage all St. Paulites to go to the polls and vote for Chris Coleman for mayor.

(Cross-posted on Knowledge)

I'll be honest - I have perhaps never been as disgusted/angry with the media as I am tonight. I just got done watching a heavily promoted lead story on the KMSP (FOX 9) News at 9. The story? Underage Gopher hockey players drinking alcohol! Oh my God, of all the things they could do, those stupid athletes picked perhaps the most heinous thing in the world!

I am, of course, young and naive - so much so that I believe the media has an important, irreplaceable, and responsible place in this country. That’s why I’m so pissed off tonight – of all the things KMSP could have covered as their top story tonight, they chose some legal adults (if minors in the alcohol sense) drinking, responsibly, in a bar. Not only that, but they spent six weeks working on the story. Six weeks that they could have been uncovering (Republican) scandals, (Republican) cronyism, (Republican) corruption, corporate sleaze, fraud, anything. I guess this is technically investigative journalism (they used a hidden camera!) but this is not real investigative journalism. Hey, folks, college athletes drink. I could have told you that.

As a matter of public policy, I have never understood the 21 drinking age. It does nothing to prevent underage drinking. Huge percentages of high school students and college underclassmen drink despite (because of?) the law. Many European countries give parents wide discretion about their kids’ drinking (Switzerland, for example, has no minimum drinking age), and things seem to work out okay there. The National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984, which forced states to change the drinking age to 21, showed that the drinking age is arbitrary – it could be 10, 18, 21, or 35 – and when you think about it, it does seem pretty unfair that one can be drafted and die in the military without legally having a drink. Combining those two arguments, Wisconsin now wants to let 19 year-old service members drink legally. I understand the argument for the 21 drinking age, which is basically that older adults are less likely to drive drunk, and there’s some merit to that, but I think there’s a lot more merit in letting parents teach their kids what alcohol is and how to drink before they get a chance to go out and abuse the stuff.

In short, this story sucks. It busts a local team for doing something that, lets face it, practically every college student does. It will probably end up pissing off a lot of Gopher fans, which will be bad for FOX. It’s bad for the public because KMSP has wasted its time on a useless non-story while it could have been doing real journalism. Then again, I’m not surprised. Local or not, it’s still FOX news.

UPDATE: You know you've done something stupid when it makes fark.com.

Congressman Gil Gutknecht (R-MN01) has always confounded my efforts to peg him. Occasionally he'll seem like a true conservative (at least fiscally) and sometimes he'll be entirely partisan. I can't quite tell which role he's acting regarding this issue, but I think it's probably a little bit of both. It certainly underlies the inherent heartlessness of hardcore fiscal conservatism. In this case, however, the partisanship comes from a Minnesota congressman unwilling to provide for constituents' heating shortfalls. Rep. Gutknecht certainly isn't acting in his district's best interests in this case.