George Will thinks we need to stop extending unemployment benefits because it just subsidizes unemployment: clearly, those who have been unemployed for 99 weeks are choosing to live off their unemployment checks instead of filling all those empty jobs that are available. Alan Greenspan is warning us that the bond markets are going to put a halt to U.S. borrowing, and the fact that treasury yields have gone down lately is a sign that the problem is even more real than we think. No wonder Paul Krugman thinks that we could be on the precipice of a third Depression.

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• Current Mood: Cybered
• Currently Listening To: "Crosseyed and Painless", Talking Heads

Representative Tom Emmer, running for governor, has a lot of ideas about “redesigning government”. One of those ideas, apparently, is ending benefits for legislators. Emmer thinks that legislators and other elected officials should not get health insurance, pension contributions, or per diem payments. If Emmer wants a legislature that does not reflect Minnesota, then this is a great idea.

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• Current Mood: Friday

Arizona and Oklahoma have been battling it out lately over which state can be the kookiest, but come on, the anti-immigrant law that Arizona has bletcherously vomited onto the national pscyhe definitely wins. It’s got it all: racial profiling, forcing people to do things they have no expertise doing, and opening cities to huge lawsuits from crazed constituents who think that they aren’t doing enough to keep the dark-hued people out. Of course, given the monumental stupidity of the law, it’s being embraced by conservatives around the country and in Minnesota as well.

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• Current Mood: Calm
• Currently Listening To: "Us and Them", Pink Floyd

Lately, FrumForum has been the only bastion of fairly reasonable conservative thought. Take, for example, this post in which Peruvian free-market thinker Hernando de Soto Polar lists what he thinks is necessary for effective derivatives regulation. His list is something I wholeheartedly agree with, especially the reminder that the financial system only helps create wealth, it should never be seen as a wealth generator in and of itself. It also, coincidentally, jibes fairly well with the legislation in Congress. No wonder financial reform is seen as an electoral winner.

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• Current Mood: Testy
• Currently Listening To: "Girl With No Eyes", It's A Beautiful Day

I’ve noticed a trend lately when it comes to transportation issues: conservative Republicans are doing everything they can to argue against a complete, multi-modal approach to dealing with transportation issues. It’s happening at the national level, where Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood (a former Republican Congressman, it should be noted) announced a more bike-friendly transportation policy, prompting one Republican Congressman to wonder if LaHood was on drugs. It’s happening at the state level too, where today some Republicans argued against a bill that would encourage, not require, local units of government to take into consideration all road users (drivers, bikers, pedestrians, bus users, and anybody else) when designing roads.

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• Current Mood: Sore
• Currently Listening To: "Motion Picture Soundtrack", Radiohead

While some media conservatives were ranting about the end of American civilization after the health care vote last weekend, there were a few thinking ones who were addressing what the Obama health reforms meant for the country and for people going into the future. True, if you blinked you would have missed the intelligent commentary, but it is out there, and yes, it does have some value in figuring out where to go next.

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• Current Mood: Weekend
• Currently Listening To: "Hello, I Love You", The Doors

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to some pretty strong emotions when I watched those 216 votes come in last night on C-SPAN. As somebody who, perhaps foolishly, believes that the point of politics isn’t to merely score more points than the other people, but to enact real programs that lead to a better life for everybody, these kinds of victories are few and far between. Considering that health care reform has been almost a century in coming, these things are far between indeed. This may be the most important bill I will see in my lifetime, on par with Social Security and Medicare. To undertake a significant transformation of how health care is viewed in this country has been foolhardy; to see it succeed is nothing short of astonishing.

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• Current Mood: Hopeful
• Currently Listening To: "Another One Bites The Dust", Queen

I’ve uploaded pictures from the DFL SD59 convention last Saturday here. Plenty of samples below the jump…

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• Current Mood: Monday
• Currently Listening To: "The Tourist", Radiohead

Today was the DFL Senate District 59 convention at Edison High School. Julia and I were elected as delegates at our precinct caucus a few weeks ago, so we got up early on a Saturday morning to attend. We were out of there by 2:30, which isn’t bad for a district convention. Sadly, we were not elected to the state convention, though both of us ran for delegate positions.

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• Current Mood: Tired

The statements from many Republicans these days about health care are unnerving. Governor Pawlenty says that maybe hospitals should be able to turn away indigent people who need treatment. Earlier, he vetoes a reasonable GAMC extension, and Republicans in the House vow to uphold his veto despite overwhelmingly voting for the extension in the first place. At the Health Care Summit in DC, Republicans don’t seem to care about people who can’t afford health insurance; it’s “their problem“. When Representative Louise Slaughter told a story about a woman being forced to use her dead sister’s ill-fitting dentures because she couldn’t afford dentures on her own, Republicans mocked the story. Rush Limbaugh, scum that he is, says that Democrats should be thrilled with that, because Democrats love recycling, after all. He also tells a person who broke their wrist and can’t pay $6,000 to fix it, “Well, you shouldn’t have broken your wrist“.

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• Current Mood: Walking Subcaucus Time!
• Currently Listening To: "Girl With No Eyes", It's A Beautiful Day
• Just Watched: Into The Wild