The news just broke; North Dakota’s long-serving Democratic-NPL senator Kent Conrad is retiring after 2012:

President Obama said in a statement that he was “saddened” about the news of Conrad’s retirement but added: “I look forward to working with him during the next two years on the important issues facing our country.”

Conrad, who currently chairs the Senate Budget Committee, has been in office since 1986 and risen to become one of the most influential — and intellectual — policy makers operating in the nation’s capital.

Conrad had been open about his ambivalence about running for another term and had taken several actions in recent months that suggested he was leaning against running again.

Conrad turned down a chance to chair the Senate Agriculture Committee — an industry of huge import in North Dakota — to stay on at the helm of the Budget committee and supported the debt commission report, a decision that would have almost certainly put him in political hot water in the context of a political campaign.

And with that, North Dakota’s trifecta of Congressmen, which two years ago was pound-for-pound among the most powerful threesomes in Washington – Conrad, plus Byron Dorgan, who retired last year and Earl Pomeroy, who was soundly thrashed last November – leaves the stage after a combined total of something close to eighty years in Congress, leaving traditionally-conservative North Dakota with a decent shot of being represented by…conservatives.

For the kids, anyway:

The Minneapolis and St. Paul public school districts said they are canceling classes and activities today because of extremely cold weather and snow accumulation.

The districts both said it could not guarantee that all buses would arrive on time and on all routes, given the state of the city’s streets in the wake of the weekend snowstorm. That, coupled with chilly weather, the districts decided to close.

I actually impulse-bought a snow-blower over the weekend.  Not sure how I got by without one all these years.

A sign of the times – Finnish-Americans voted heavily Republican for the first time:

Around 100 years ago Finnish immigrants flocked to the mines and woods of the country around Lake Superior, where the topography and weather must have seemed familiar. They’ve been a mostly Democratic, sometimes even radical voting bloc ever since. No more, it seems. Going into the election, the three most Finnish districts, Michigan 1, Wisconsin 7 and Minnesota 8, all fronting on Lake Superior, were represented by two Democratic committee chairmen and the chairman of an Energy and Commerce subcommittee, with a total of 95 years of seniority.

Wisconsin’s David Obey and Michigan’s Bart Stupak both chose to retire, and were replaced by Republicans who had started running before their announcements. Minnesota’s James Oberstar was upset by retired Northwest pilot and stay-at-home dad Chip Cravaack.

So here’s a new rule for the political scientists: As go the Finns, so goes America.

Obama must feel like he’s in a sauna right about now…

Earl Pomeroy – who was as untouchable as Jim Oberstar two years ago – is out in North Dakota.

He lost 55-45 to Chris Berg – no relation that I know of, although I hope to run that down soon.   And with that, North Dakota – which has been represented entirely by Democrats in DC since the eighties – is suddenly 2/3 Republican, and Kent Conrad has got to be sizing up lobbying as a career change.

We shocked the world.

It’s the second stupid, bigoted attack by the DFL in as many weeks – and it involves my good friend and longtime Northern Alliance colleague King Banaian.

Can you imagine the uproar if a Republican campaign would be stupid enough to drop a campaign piece saying…:

• “Keith Ellison: Too involved in Saudi Arabian politics to bother with Minneapolis”
• “Satveer Chaudhary:  Too Hindi To Bother With New Brighton”

Not only would the DFL descend on the idiot candidate like a biblical plague, but 99% of the GOP would feel obliged to join them.

But the DFL has done it again.

Last week, it was the anti-Catholic attack on Dan Hall in Burnsville, which has gotten national attention.

And over the weekend, perhaps a dumber attack still.

Courtesy of Luke Hellier at MDE, this mailer was sent out in re King Banaian, who’s running for House in District 15B – the east half of the Saint Cloud area.

Images courtesy MDE

King is the former chair of the Economics department at St. Cloud State.  He’s prominent enough an economist to land all sorts of contracting work for governments around the world who are interested in opening up free markets; since I’ve known him, he’s consulted with the Macedonian, Ukranian, Mongolian, Armenian, Kazakh and other governments.

Heaven forbid someone in the Legislature would have earned international respect at economics.

Here’s what the piece says:

King Banaian certainly has a resume – jetting acrosst eh globe to consult the governments of Egypt, Macedonia, Armenia, Ukraine and Indonesia.

But what does all his international travel tell him about the needs of families here in St. Cloud?

Other than the fact that he’s lived there for a couple of decades and become a pillar of the community, you mean?

But worst of all is the photo.  King – that is his real name, and it’s a family thing – is of 100% Armenian descent.  And like most Caucasians from that part of the Caucasus, he’s fairly described as “swarthy”.  Sitting in front of an exotic-looking building, the piece is clearly aimed at some SEIU droog who might be wavering in his DFL loyalty; they’re counting on that droog to look at the picture and go “d-uuu-uuuh, he looks like one of them AY-rabs, g’huck”.

Check out the postcard.  It’s from Saint Paul.  And while I can’t make out the ZIP code from the postmark, I’ll lay 1000-1 odds it’s from the DFL mothership down on Plato.

(On the upside?  At least the DFL bothered to check his biography; had they gone by his name, the piece might have read “Saint Cloud doesn’t need any drunk Irish running things”.  If they went by the photo alone, we might have been favored with some Juan Valdez references. We should perhaps be thankful for small favors).

I asked Banaian for comment earlier.  He’s too busy campaigning to worry about it yet.

The DFL:  they want to win Minnesota one ignorance racist rube at a time

UPDATE: King Banaian says “people here knowmy service as a local economic expert as well as international adviser. Voters care about fiscal accountability, not my passport”.

I suspect he’s right.  But it’s not the people in 15B that I’m worried about.  It’s that wacky bunch down on Plato.

Via the NWS, there’s a storm brewing over God’s Country:

COLDER AIR MOVING SOUTHEAST FROM SASKATCHEWAN WILL RESULT IN RAIN CHANGING OVER TO ALL SNOW OVER WESTERN NORTH DAKOTA THIS MORNING AND THEN OVER NORTH CENTRAL NORTH DAKOTA BY AFTERNOON. THE COLDER AIR WILL REACH CENTRAL AND SOUTHERN NORTH DAKOTA BY THIS EVENING.

THE PRECIPITATION WILL BE IN THE FORM OF ALL SNOW TONIGHT THROUGH WEDNESDAY ACROSS ALL OF WESTERN AND CENTRAL NORTH DAKOTA.

THE COMBINATION OF THE VERY STRONG WINDS COINCIDING WITH PERSISTENT FALLING SNOW WILL RESULT IN VERY LOW VISIBILITIES.

THUS A BLIZZARD WARNING HAS BEEN ISSUED FOR ALL OF WESTERN AND CENTRAL NORTH DAKOTA WITH THE EXCEPTION OF SOUTHWEST NORTH DAKOTA.

ANTICIPATED SNOWFALL AMOUNTS WILL BE HIGHER FOR THOSE AREAS MAINLY NORTH AND EAST OF THE MISSOURI RIVER. BY WEDNESDAYAFTERNOON…THE HIGHEST SNOWFALL AMOUNTS WILL RESIDE OVER FAR NORTH CENTRAL NORTH DAKOTA ACROSS THE TURTLE MOUNTAINS WHERE 10 INCHES OR MORE OF SNOW IS POSSIBLE. FROM MINOT TO HARVEY AND INTO CARRINGTON EXPECT 4 TO 8 INCHES OF SNOW. 2 TO 4 INCHES OF SNOW IS POSSIBLE ALONG A LINE FROM WILLISTON TO GARRISON…BISMARCK TO JAMESTOWN AND SOUTH TO WISHEK TO ELLENDALE. 1 TO 3 INCHES OF SNOW IS LIKELY WEST OF THE MISSOURI RIVER.

Hopefully it stalls over the Red River and doesn’t arrive in Minnesota ’til Tuesday.

Getting ready to go on the Rob Port show on AM1100 The Flag in Fargo.  Tune in!

UPDATE:  Talked about the Tracker story, and the rumors about Mike Hatch’s interest in the gubernatorial race.

UPDATE 2:  Here’s the audio:

I never really “got” Louisiana.  It always seemed to me that the big selling point of the entire state’s culture was indolence interspersed with bouts of toxic drunkenness.

Bloomberg says there’s a reason for that;  it’s a statistical fact:

In Louisiana, where the humidity is as thick as the gumbo, people prefer to take it slow. Hunting, fishing, and outdoor sporting activity may have earned Louisiana the nickname “Sportsman’s Paradise,” but new data indicate that the more popular pastimes are sleeping, goofing off, and watching television.

In a new ranking by Businessweek.com based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Louisiana claims the top spot as the country’s laziest state. To be clear, by “lazy” we do not mean lacking work ethic or engagement. Rather, it is a measure of leisure time spent doing sedentary activities compared with activities that require more physical effort, such as exercising and even working. Mississippi and Arkansas came in second and third, and while states in the south and southeast are represented heavily in the list, such East Coast states as Delaware and New York placed in the top 20.

The average for the U.S. population: 8 hours, 35 minutes sleeping; 2 hours, 38 minutes watching television; 44 minutes socializing; 18 minutes relaxing; and 3 hours, 23 minutes working. Looked at another way, Louisianans over the course of a year spend on average 3,285 more minutes sleeping and 9,855 more minutes watching television than the national average.

But while growing up why would I, in particular, find the whole “Big Lazy” culture so foreign and incomprehensible, when so much of the rest of our culture seems to lionize it so?

In North Dakota, the least inactive state, people sleep 8 hours, 4 minutes; watch 2 hours, 19 minutes of television; socialize for 40 minutes; and relax for 22 minutes. The average time North Dakotans spend working is just over 5 hours.

Ah.  Now I get it.

Caught this in the Jamestown newspaper from a couple of weeks ago.

Jamestown’s Bruce Berg scored a hole-in-one at Hillcrest Golf Course on Thursday.

Not bad for being ten days after his seventy-somethingth birthday.

Congrats, Dad!

I’ve lived in the Twin Cities for almost 25 years, now.  And for most of that time, being from North Dakota has meant I’m my entire social circle’s connection for Everclear (the full-strength 195 proof stuff, not the pantywaisted 175 proof swill they sometimes sell in Minnesota), fireworks (the NATO-graded stuff) and cheap cigarettes.

But never let it be said that Terry Keegan will miss a trend.  Apparently noting the hottest economy in the land, Terry is pandering to the people with the money next week…:

The pub is holding our first ever “NODAK NIGHT” on Friday, July 23. We are encouraging everyone with a North Dakota conection, of any kind, to come in and mingle with other North Dakotans. We are offering the first drink free for anyone with a connection.

…perhaps to curry favor and make connections for an expansion to Minot or Dickinson or someplace else out in the oil patch with low taxes and high beer consumption rates?  We dont’t know, but Terry’s no dummy.  (Marty is, but since he’s from NoDak too, I keep that quiet).

It starts at 7PM.

I’ll be bringing my JHS ’81 annual…

(via one-time temporary Grand Forksian Chad at Fraters Libertas)

The Great Plains  – from North Dakota through Texas – are   becoming an economic hotbed, especially given the lousy general economy:

On a drizzly, warm June night, the bars, galleries, and restaurants along Broadway are packed with young revelers. Traffic moves slowly, as drivers look for parking. The bar at the Donaldson, a boutique hotel, is so packed with stylish patrons that I can’t get a drink. My friend, a local, and I head over to Monte’s, a trendy Italian place down the street. We watch a group of attractive 30-something blondes share a table and gossip. They look like the cast of the latest Housewives series.

It might sound like an evening in the Big Apple, but this Broadway runs through downtown Fargo, N.D. A decade ago, this same street was just another unremarkable central district in a Midwestern town: bland restaurants, adequate hotels, no decent coffee. After the local stores closed for the day, the street was mostly populated by a few hard-drinking louts.

Now, that’s the downtown Fargo I remember!

Throughout the good times and, more important, the bad of this new millennium, the cities of the plains—from Dallas in the south through Omaha, Des Moines, and north to Fargo—have enjoyed strong job growth and in-migration from the rest of the country. North Dakota boasts the nation’s lowest unemployment rate—3.6 percent in May, compared with the national average of 9.7—with South Dakota and Nebraska right behind it.

What do these states have in common? Besides energy, I mean?

Good, conservative government (except possibly Nebraska).  North Dakota’s Republican-controlled legislature meets every other year, and hasn’t gotten a pay raise since the 1890’s; they get $5 a day (although the per diems do make it possible for people to actually do the job).

The trend has been particularly strong in urban areas. Based on employment growth over the last decade, the North Dakota cities of Bismarck and Fargo rank in the top 10 of nearly 400 metropolitan areas, according to data analyzed by economist Michael Shires for Forbes and NewGeography.com. Much of that growth has come in high-wage jobs. In Bismarck, the number of high-paying energy jobs has increased by 23 percent since 2003, while jobs in professional and business services have shot up 40 percent.

That’s not bad for a region best known by East Coast pundits for the movie Fargo.

It’s not all farming and oil, as anyone who’s been through Fargo knows:

Nowhere is this potential clearer than in Fargo, which is emerging as a high-tech hub. Doug Burgum, from nearby Arthur, N.D., founded Great Plains Software in the mid-1980s. Burgum says he saw potential in the engineering grads pumped out by North Dakota State University, many of whom worked in Fargo’s large and expanding specialty-farm-equipment industry. “My business strategy is to be close to the source of supply,” says Burgum. “North Dakota gave us access to the raw material of college students.”

Microsoft bought Great Plains for a reported $1.1 billion in 2001, establishing Fargo as the headquarters for its business-systems division, which now employs more than 1,000 workers. The tech boom … has spawned both startups and spin-offs in everything from information technology to biomedicine. Science and engineering employment statewide has grown by 31 percent since 2002, the highest rate of any state.

Now, when you bring up the relative prosperity of the conservative plains compared to DFL-plagued Minnesota, the inevitable counterwhinge is “yeah, well…it’s all because of oil!”

And it’s true – there is oil:

But the biggest play by far is in energy, including coal, natural gas, and oil, which exist in prodigious quantities from Texas to the Canadian border. Besides the vast reserves of oil that have made it the country’s fourth-largest producer, North Dakota possesses significant deposits of natural gas and coal, as well as huge potential for wind power and biofuels…The energy boom has placed states like the Dakotas and Texas in an enviable fiscal situation. Oil and gas revenues are filling up their coffers, allowing them to eschew the painful cutbacks affecting most coastal states. North Dakota has a $500 million surplus, and next year the cash gusher could rise to more than $1 billion, estimates Dragseth. That could go a long way in a state with barely 600,000 people.

Next time some irritating lefty pundit yaps that the Twin Cities will become a “cold Omaha” if we don’t jack up taxes, tell ’em “bring it on”.

Meanwhile back in my hometown of Jamestown, ND, they’re getting ready for more flooding, as the two reservoirs north of town fill to records.

Now, Jamestown is built at the confluence of the James River – the world’s longest non-commercially-navigable river – and Pipestem Creek.  Both rivers drain a huge basin in central North Dakota (and South Dakota as well) into the Missouri River.  Given their huge watershed, both rivers are fairly sensitive to fluctuations in water supply; in the eighties, during a very dry period, the James barely flowed.  On other other hand, before the James was dammed up in the ’50s, a wet season could leave Jamestown half-submerged. (The Pipestem also flooded, in 1969, leading to another dam in the seventies).  So in theory, Jamestown should be flood-proof – unless it’s been a very wet winter and both reservoirs are nearly full.

Suffice to say it’s been a very wet winter:

Jamestown and Stutsman County should prepare for the same combined releases as they did during the 2009 floods, according to the Army Corps of Engineers, which changed its forecast for the James River and Pipestem Creek Friday.

The corps’ had originally estimated releases of 1,800 cubic feet per second. The new forecast recommends building emergency levees to handle combined releases of 3,200 cfs from Jamestown and Pipestem reser-voirs — the same level the two dams released at the peaks of the 2009 flood.

1,800 to 3,200 cubic feet per second.  Bear in mind the usual combined release from both dams is about 30 cfs.

According to the corps, the 0.5 to 1.5 inches of precipitation received in the James River Basin this week changed the situation and now reservoir pool levels could exceed 1997 levels, according to the “most likely” forecasts. The upper range of forecasts indicate reservoir pool levels could reach the same levels as in 2009, said Col. Robert J. Ruch, Omaha district commander for the corps.

It’s going to be another flood-prone year throughout the upper Midwest.

It looks like it’ll be official: North Dakota governor John Hoeven is going to announce his candidacy to replace Byron Dorgan in about an hour.

Listen to the press conference at 6PM Central time here.

Ed and I interviewed Rob Port, who is the foremost political blogger in North Dakota, who correctly noted a nuance that escapes a lot of outside observers; while North Dakota is famously Republican, the state also has a mixed traditi0n in terms of spending; it has the nation’s only successful state bank and state mill; there’s a long prairie populist tradition, as well as some of the Scandinavian communitarian traditions that the state shares with Minnesota, that means the state government is a little more activist than many other Western states.  As such, Hoeven is a more “Moderate” Republican on spending than some of his GOP counterparts.  It’d be a mistake to call him a RINO; he’s probably slightly to the right of Norm Coleman and John McCain, and if elected he’ll be a big improvement over Dorgan, and vastly better than either of Minnesota’s senators.

Tune in!

If someone who goes to a “Tea Party” is a “Tea Bagger”, then shouldn’t fans of Ed Schultz be called “scum baggers?”

Apropos not much.

———-

Well, it was apropos not much, until I caught this bit of late-breaking news; according to the HuffPo,  Fast Eddie Schultz is thinking about running for North Dakota’s newly-open Senate Seat.

MSNBC talk show host and liberal firebrand Ed Schultz is considering a run for Senate in his home state of North Dakota following the abrupt resignation of Senator Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) on Tuesday evening.

The longtime talk show host, who was until recently based out of Fargo, North Dakota, told the Huffington Post that “there is a lot to think about” after he was approached by Democratic leaders in the state about a possible run. But the possibility is there, even if a decision is far off.

A brief tangent:

Dear Lord:  If I say my prayers and eat my vegetables, can I please please please please please watch Fast Eddie Schultz flame out against John Hoeven?  Just once in my life?

The MSNBC host, who has lengthy ties to the state, said he was called last night by Dorgan who, in a rather suggestive question, asked Schultz how old he was. Hours later Boucher was on the phone asking Schultz to consider a run for the Senate seat.

“I asked him very point-blank if this was an official ask.” Schultz said. “He said, ‘Yes it is’. I’m flattered. I’m honored.”

His “ties to the state” include time as a legendarily peevish sportscaster and, later, cut-rate Limbaugh clone who flipped his political allegiances about eight years ago, to the relief of conservatives everywhere. 

I MCed a “Debate” between him and Michael Medved almost two years ago.   In it, he showed that if he weren’t allowed to bellow, bluster and wave his hands like a puffy, red-faced pocked Mussolini, he’d be overmatched in a battle of wits with Jessica Simpson. 

Oh, yeah.  And he’s a dick.  After my turn at MCing his “debate” appearance, during which I (like my co-host Matt Entenza) questioned both Medved and Schultz aggressively but civilly, he called me “Mitch Craig” on the air, and referred to me as an “a-hole”.   Not that being called names fazes me – puhleeze, I get worse from my own family – but it just shows you what a class act that intellectual flyweight Schultz really is.

For the record:  Fast Eddie Schultz is an ignorant, moronic blowhard; if intelligence and wit were gasoline he’d run out of gas halfway around the inside of a Cheerio.  He actually is as dumb, knee-jerk and hate-choked as the lefty cliche about talk radio would have you believe about his competition.

Run, Eddie.  Run.  I dare you.

Growing up in North Dakota, you got the impression not much changed.  Ever. 

The retirement of Byron Dorgan prompted me to do some checking – and I had no idea how little changes in North Dakota politics.

Bear with me. 

Dorgan’s been in the Senate for 18 years (following twelve more in the House).  He succeeded Kent Conrad, who kept a pledge to serve only one term (and promptly turned around and won North Dakota’s other Senate seat when Quentin Burdick died immediately before the election, in 1992, after serving since 1960).  Conrad succeeded Mark Andrews  (whom Dorgan had succeeded as North Dakota’s House representative in 1980) in an upset election in 1986.  Andrews had succeeded Milton Young, who had served as North Dakota’s senior Senator since 1945.

Young himself succeeded former governor John Moses, who died after only two months in office.  Moses had succeeded Gerald Nye, who’d served since 1925.

So – except for the 12 year interregnum with Andrews and Conrad, and Moses’ tragically-foreshortened term, North Dakota’s “Class Three” Senate seat has been held by exactly three men in the past 85 years.

The other seat, part of Class 1?  The combination of Conrad and Quentin Burdick takes us all the way back to 1960;  he succeeded the legendary “Wild Bill” Langer (but for a few months with former governor Clarence Brunsdale, who was appointed when Langer died in office), who’d held the office since 1940, succeeding former governor Lynn Frazier, who’d held the office since 1923. 

So – seven men have accounted for almost a century in representing North Dakota in the Senate (and among them they account for much of the same time in the House, too). 

Almost equally odd?  While Young, Burdick and Andrews were all fairly typical pre-Reagan Republicans from a famously Republican state, Dorgan and Conrad are both relatively to the left among red-state Democrats, Nye was an anti-war isolationist, and Langer was a prairie progressive in the “Granger” mold, with not a few allegations of corruption chasing him through his career; he was something of a Huey Long-type figure as both Governor and Senator, with the record to show for it.

Nothing really does change much, it seems, in North Dakota.

I grew up in North Dakota; I was born in Rugby, and grew up and graduated from high school and college in Jamestown.  I was 19 before I saw a city bigger than Fargo.  The place is still a huge part of me.

And for my entire cognitive life, Byron Dorgan’s been in politics.  He was appointed Tax Commissioner when I was five years old, at age 26; he was elected to the House, succeeding Mark Andrews, when I was a senior in high school in 1980.  He was elected to the Senate 18 years ago.  He’s been a politician virtually his entire adult life – and much more than mine.

As you’ve no doubt heard, Dorgan’s not running for re-election:

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) announced this evening that he’s retiring at the end of his term, a shocking development that threatens Democratic control of his Senate seat next year.

Dorgan was up for re-election in 2010, but the third-term senator wasn’t facing any strong Republican opposition– but was facing the growing possibility of a serious challenge from popular Gov. John Hoeven (R-N.D.).

Cassy Fiano, writing at the Greenroom, echoes a common mistake among those who don’t follow NoDak politics:

The Democrats are dropping like flies, and this gives the GOP just one more potential opening. North Dakota was won by John McCain in the election last year, and it’s entirely possible that Dorgan would had been defeated anyways.

Well, perhaps – but Mac had nothing to do with it.  North Dakota has voted Republican in virtually every election since statehood – but Dorgan went to the house in 1980, not only succeeding a popular Republican (Mark Andrews, who went to the Senate), but bucking the Reagan tide in one of the reddest states there is.  He survived the Gingrich revolution quite handily.

The reason?  Like many farm states, which are mostly famously conservative, North Dakota is addicted to pork.  The various federal Farm Bills are the staff of life – at least politicially.  And Byron Dorgan brought home the pork for a generation.  Not “dumb pork” – none of the Ben-Nelson-style legal graft.  Just lots and lots of farm bill subsidies.

And so a generation of North Dakota farmers has voted for Republicans – even Nixon and Dole – while sending Dorgan (and his successor as Tax Commissioner, Kent Conrad, and Earl Pomeroy – all of them porkocrats) to Washington to keep the swag coming.  And time is money in Washington; Dorgan’s seniority made him one of the most powerful men in the city.

But this year is different.

A recent Rasmussen poll showed him losing to Republican Governor John Hoeven, 58% – 36%. This would’ve scared the pants off of Dorgan… especially considering that Hoeven hasn’t even said that he’s going to run yet.

And the biggest question of this election isn’t “how big will Hoeven’s margin be”; it’s “will he run?”  Hoeven’s been a very successful governor; North Dakota is one of four states to have no budget deficit last year; North Dakota’s schools’ results are as good as or better than Minnesota’s, for vastly less money per student; the state rode out the recession in some style, and not entirely because of the oil boom.  In a just world, he’d be a presidential candidate; he’s one of the most accomplished governors anywhere.

But he’s been reticent so far about committing to run for higher office.  That’ll be the big question.

The Politico:

In his statement, Dorgan said his retirement was borne out of the desire to spend more time with his family.

And Beria died of a cold.

Democratic Senate campaign officials only found out about Dorgan’s decision within the last 24 hours. Dorgan began calling Senate leaders on Tuesday afternoon to inform them of his decision to retire, according to Senate insiders.

He had previously given no sign that he wasn’t going to run for re-election or was even considering retirement and had been raising money for his 2010 campaign.

Could it be that Dorgan finally found a third rail even he couldn’t jump over?

Obamacare is a famously unhealthy product to push in North Dakota, whose population veers between a fairly elderly population outstate who stand to take a huge hit on healthcare with the demotion of Medicare, and a fairly young population in high-tech and university-dominated Fargo and Grand Forks.

Could it be that the rabid partisanship of the Pelosi/Reid Axis has led a Democrat two key Democrats (along with Senator Dodd) to jump before they get impaled?

This is a closed-circuit message for the readers of this site who graduated from Jamestown (ND) High School in 1981.  The rest of you can rejoin this blog with the next post.  Thanks.

’81 people – the artist formerly known as Ruth Newman is starting work on the 30 year reunion.

If you’re a classmate, there’s a Facebook group, and/or an email address if you’d prefer.  I won’t post ’em here, but send me an email at “feedbackinthedark” which is at Yahoo dot com, and I’ll get you the info.

I’m already looking forward to it!

…and so too should be the plan to spend billions, that we don’t have by the way, on a high-speed link to Chicago.

According to the plan, freight and passenger rail 20-year capital costs could range from $6.2 billion, with nearly two-thirds of that provided by federal, state and local government. The Twin Cities-Chicago line is expected to top $1 billion alone.

The plan was ordered last year by the state Legislature, well before a scramble erupted in many states to push their own high-speed rail plans. That was triggered by the infusion of $8 billion in federal stimulus money specifically earmarked for such rail lines nationwide.

Ah yes, the ubiquitous stimulus “dollars.” A misnomer if ever there was one, as they should be called the stimuless “debt.” There are no dollars, and wasting money on what will amount to be a string of empty tin cans traveling the tundra at high speed will stimulate nothing but the sugar-plum dreams of liberals spending other people’s money to build their little fairy tale world.

We can count on the Gov to lay down across the tracks and stop this nonsense, right?

Gov. Tim Pawlenty, previously not a big advocate of high- speed rail, endorsed the Twin Cities-Chicago route last spring.

[sound of scratching record]

Not so much.

Funny thing is, we already have a high-speed link to Chicago.

Its called an airport.

…where by the way, we just spent a mountain of cash on to add another runway

I’ve seen flights as cheap as $25 to Chicago this year.

The Minnesotan that can’t afford a flight has no business in Chicago.

The Chicagoan that can’t…I’d just as soon he stay down there.

I”d hoped this story would turn out better:  three women’s softball teammates from Dickinson State (in far western North Dakota) were found dead,  in a jeep in a pond near the city:

Police said three missing North Dakota college softball players have been found dead in their vehicle, which was pulled from a pond northwest of Dickinson.

As I ponder sending my own kids off into the world, I pray for the families.

Caught this piece from the Forum Group’s Saint Paul bureau; Al Franken is shilling for money for Byron Dorgan:

Franken today sent an e-mail message to his supporters asking them to donate to Sen. Byron Dorgan’s campaign who last year, he said, “made the long trek from North Dakota to Minnesota and we spent some time talking to folks about helping small businesses and getting our economy moving again. I can’t tell you how grateful I was for his insight and support.”

…

“Look, we need genuine champions of the middle class in the Senate, and Byron Dorgan is one of the best,” Franken wrote. “Can you donate $5 or more today to help Senator Dorgan gear up for 2010?”

Federal Elections Commission reports indicate Dorgan’s campaign has $4 million in the bank.

Of course, there’s more to it than a simple repayment of a campaign favor.

Dorgan – who was a heavyweight in North Dakota politics when I was starting out in radio news in NoDak 30 years ago – is the king of the purple-dog Democrats.  He’s a Democrat, and a fiscally-liberal one at that, in a state that’s voted Republican for president almost every possible election since statehood; local politics in North Dakota tends to be also rigorously right-of-center. 

But since the eighties, the state has sent Byron Dorgan, and then Kent Conrad, to the Senate.  It’s about the money, of course; Dorgan and Conrad are champions of big farm bills; they have enough seniority between them to deflect light artillery fire.  NoDak’s voters (like those in South Dakota, Montana and much of the rest of the Midwest, who send plenty of socially-conservative, fiscally-profligate people to Washington) know where the loot is.

But this election, there’s a real challenge.  John Hoeven, North Dakota’s very popular and wildly successful Republican governor (who is, at the moment, the nation’s longest-serving state governor), is rumored to be interested in going to Washington.   He won his last gubernatorial bid by almost fifty points…

…and the rumors are causing strange things to happen in North Dakota Republican politics.  People are donating money, coming to meetings…

…and talking about doing to Dorgan what voters in South Dakota did to Tom Daschle not so long ago; “the unthinkable”.

And so Dorgan would seem to be calling in his markers, dipping into that bottomless pool of Twin Cities liberal money (which, dimes’ll getcha dollars, he’ll softpedal back home) to pad his war chest for what could be the biggest challenge of his long political career.

We’ll be talking with people from the NDGOP on the Northern Alliance in coming weeks.  This could get interesting.

On the one hand, Iris Dement always looks like she’s singing with a mouthful of sour lemondrops.

On the other hand, she’s pretty amazing.
On the third hand, this song is the very definition of “bittersweet”.  It reminds me of how I feel about my own hometown, in a lot of ways.  For that matter, it reminds me of how I feel about Saint Paul, these days.

On the fourth – it’s a gorgeous version of the song, especially with Emmylou Harris sitting in on background vocals.

It wrenches the needle off the jingo meter.

It still provokes somber tut-tutting from our betters about the knee-jerk ignorance of NASCAR America.
And nowhere in American pop culture after 9/11 did the id of the vast mass of America between the Hudson and the Sierra Madre get expressed better.

Which isn’t to say there wasn’t competition.  Springsteen’s The Rising evoked loss, commemorated heroism, and opened the faucet on the best evocations of spirituality during times of tragedy in American pop music history. Neil Young’s “Let’s Roll” and Big and Rich’s “Eighth of November” took very different approaches to illuminating the best in American, and human, character against horrendous odds.

All well and good.

And it’s true; there are times when diplomacy and nuance and meeting your enemy halfway and being aware of ones’ own faults is essential – even in wartime.
But there are some times, some moods, when putting a boot in someone’s ass, the American way, is all that will suffice.  There are times when, like Churchill’s “Dunkirk” and Reagan’s “Shining City” and “Brandenburg Gate” speeches, I just need to hear it.

There is no substitute.

So kudos, Toby Keith.

…I mean it.

Oh, yes I do (emphasis added):

Snow has fallen in Dickinson in June, the first time in nearly 60 years the city has seen snow past May.National Weather Service meteorologist Janine Vining in Bismarck says there were unofficial reports of a couple of inches of snow in Dickinson on Saturday.

Snow was actually reported from Bismarck on west.

Go head, Sisyphus.  Have Saint Cloud top that.

Journalist, cause celebre, Fargo North/Concordia(Moorhead) alum and former Miss North Dakota, Roxana Saberi, came back to Fargo on Saturday for the first time since being freed from quasi-legal kidnapping in Iran:

The 32-year-old Saberi was greeted at the Fargo airport by a crowd of well-wishers and “Welcome home, Roxana” signs. Saberi, fighting back tears, said she was surprised at the emotions she felt.

“It’s the first time I’ve ever really cried in public,” she said.

Gov. John Hoeven and Rep. Earl Pomeroy were among the officials who met her after she stepped off the plane Saturday afternoon.

North Dakota is a very small place.  Even Fargo – by far the largest city – reflects a lot of the state’s small-town past.  And when I say “small town”, it’s more than just the fact that the towns are, y’know, small.  The place is isolated; small North Dakota towns are little tiny islands of civilization on a huge ocean of soil that, until recently, isolated people almost as effectively as water.  And ironically in such a huge, sparsely-populated place, privacy is almost impossible to come by; in a small town, or even in a big city populated by people who mostly come from smaller towns, everyone knows everything about you, good or bad, sometimes before you know it yourself.

Now, it’s not the same place it was when I grew up; many of the smaller towns, the old railroad whistle stops between the bigger cities, are drying up and blowing away; the internet and ubiquitous communications have come a long way in connecting even the most remote outposts to the outside world.  And you know the place is getting more cosmpolitan when Microsoft is among the the state’s biggest employers, and especially when the state’s long string of blond-haired, blue-eyed Scandinavian and German-descended beauty queens are joined by someone of Farsi-Japanese descent.  Things are obviously changing; perhaps that sense of never having any personal space is changing with it; I don’t honestly know.

But while I’m not qualified to speak for Ms. Saberi, it’s that lack of privacy – the sense that everyone is privy to your business, whatever it is – that drove, maybe still drives, a lot of us who leave the place.   Because the downside is, you’re never alone.

Of course, when things get ugly – when your town is flooding, when your daughter is missing, when catastrophe strikes you from out of the blue – the upside is, you’re also never alone. 

At any rate, welcome back, Ms. Saberi!

…and the “finish line” is mounted on a moving truck?

Just saying, for the benefit of those of you who’ve been kvetching about the cool weather in the Twin Cities – Logan Adams of the “It’s Good To Be IN ND” blog, affiliated with my hometown’s newspaper the Jamestown Sun, is throwing a “when will all the snow melt” contest.  And he doesn’t have a winner yet.

Because the snow is still melting.