Polinaut: April 13, 2006 Archive

How does Minnesota rank

Posted at 10:45 AM on April 13, 2006 by Bob Collins (7 Comments)

With the Easter/Passover recess at hand, and with me having absolutely no interest in the exciting world of trunk highway bonding, I've been playing around this morning with a Web site called Statemaster.

One of the things that struck me when I first moved here many years ago is how obsessed Minnesotans are with how they rank. Or maybe it's a newsroom thing, but whenever there was a survey out that involved Minnesota compared to other states, it was an instant story, especially if it showed Minnesota superior to most other states. I guess that made us feel better about being Minnesotans, although I still can't figure out why we need to.

And then during the great budget cutting of a couple of years ago (when we couldn't afford to do anything like build stadiums for wealthy folks and provide health care to poor ones. Boy, those were the days, eh?) we pretty much constantly heard comparisions and justifications based on what other states were doing in the way of building stadiums and providing health care.

So I'm thinking this will be a big hit.

Here's some highlights of where we rank.

* Most murderous - #43
* Most taxed = #4 (no clue if this includes fees)
* Most trigger-happy - #44 (it's interesting to me that the bottom 4 states are from New England, where we were taught to just beat the crap out of people with our bare hands, of course.)
* Most penny pinching - #3
* Most educated = #6 (yeah, baby! I are #6! And the four states ahead of us are from New England.)
* Best place to live - #2 (So how can we be most taxed and the second-best place to live?
* Estimated # of illegal immigrants - #18
* Milk production - #6 (we couldn't even beat Pennsylvania)
* Sex ratio - #11 (Yeah, surprised me too, but it turned out not to be what I thought it was. It's ratio of men v. women)
* Attempts to quit smoking - #47 (look in the grass at any highway offramp and you know this is accurate.)
* Binge drinking = #3. (OK, explain this to me, Wisconsin, North Dakota and Minnesota, Iowa are 1-2-3-4. That tells me binge drinking is part of our cultural makeup here. I should find the "softball" ranking and figure out if there's a connection.)
* Growth in Medicaid spending - #45 (wouldn't have guessed that, would you?

I can see I'm not going to get any real work done today.

Comment on this post

Rep. Kennedy hit in face with hammer

Posted at 12:58 PM on April 13, 2006 by Bob Collins

Ha ha. Made you look. It's Patrick Kennedy.

It's slow today.

Somehow it doesn't surprise me that a congressman needs to have a demonstration on how a hammer works. OK, yeah, that's a cheap shot for the quick laugh (I can make a good living off that). The guy was actually demonstrating some shock absorbtion gel that's used in shoes.

Anyway, the hammer head fell off, which wouldn't have happenened probably, if they still made 'em in New Britain, which, for the record, is not in young Kennedy's district.

This is interactive media, man. Fill in your own title.

Posted at 3:06 PM on April 13, 2006 by Bob Collins (11 Comments)

Pretty slow today other than Ford (the one that employs 1,900 people) closing up shop. A chance to catch up on some Votetracker work and watch the Cubs (by the way, is there anybody in Chicago that can sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" on key?). I have to post something, I guess, since you were kind enough to come see if there's anything new. There's not. But here's a picture of Ford Bell looking pretty much like, well, Ford Bell at a forum today.

Wait a minute! Is that a Polinaut nugget I see? Yep, sure is. I'm saved! What the heck is this all about?

I mean, c'mon, you're a candidate for the U.S. Senate, who wears a "hello, my name is" label when you're a candidate for the U.S. Senate?

Anyway, in the interest of fairness, here's Mark Kennedy looking Mark Kennedyish.

Note the absence of the "hello, my name is" thing. What do we have in its place?

An American flag. Who you going to vote for? Someone who needs a sticker? Or the greatest country in the whole world? (Is that Amy Madigan's speech before the town school board in Field of Dreams I hear?) (I struck this line because, well, too many of you thought this was a serious statement. Go figure.) By the way, if you want to wear a sticker, you know what sticker you wear? Your campaign sticker.

Here's the story behind the story. A worker with the sponsoring organization, who was in charge of labels, peeled off the Kennedy sticker and started to put it on the congressman. Just then, a staffer -- seeing the developing problem -- lunged forward and arrived just in time as the hand put the sticker right in the middle of the staffer's forehead. What was cool is there was that Bionic Woman "na na na na na" sound as the near calamity was unfolding.

Or maybe not.

Anyway, can't tell you about the forum. We needed another reporter on the Ford story and Mark Zdechlik was pulled from the Senate event to go to the plant and find out, I guess, what it's like to be told you're losing your job.

Where was Amy Klobuchar? Don't know, but she wasn't at the event. I did see a press release cross the fax where she declared her support for Ford workers. Not exactly the kind of stuff we run through the newsroom with shouting "interrupt programming!"

(Update-- Wait. This just in. There was a "scheduling conflict" and the Klobuchar team tried to reschedule but it didn't work out. She contends she tried to arrange a new date with the Kennedy folks but they refused. Film at 11.)

You know what would be funny? If sometime a politician showed up at a debate wearing this:

If only there were still humor in politics.

Comment on this post

Minnewisowa

Posted at 4:48 PM on April 13, 2006 by Bob Collins

The Weekly Standard has a Barry Casselman article on the Senate race. You can only get about 4 paragraphs of it online, thus it doesn't make sense to link to it as I normally would when articles appear. But Barry sent his work along and I'm posting it here. Whether that gets me into trouble or not, we'll see. Nobody has yelled at me yet today, so ...

AS MINNESOTA GOES.......
High political stakes in northern states

Dumb and dumber

Posted at 5:45 PM on April 13, 2006 by Bob Collins

Larry Sabato seems to suggest in his latest Crystal Ball that a degree in rocket science is not a prerequisite for a career in politics.

Who knew?