We all know that election night is going to be stressful, so, for fun, I thought I could offer you ten questions to see how accurate you can predict the US and Minnesota elections.

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In his excellent convention speech, Joe Biden identified four crises in America: “The worst pandemic in over 100 years. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The most compelling call for racial justice since the ’60s. And the undeniable realities and accelerating threats of climate change.” 

I think it is vitally important to the future of America to add one more crisis: the easy spread of misinformation and the inclination of citizens to suspect data and facts. Continue reading →

Dear Tim,

Two years ago, in the second week of August 2018, we were in a union hall in St. Paul to celebrate your victory in the primary election. We had attended the state convention with you, walked in parades with you, and spent hours making calls to help you win the primary election. We continued to campaign with you for the next several months and were in downtown St. Paul to celebrate your election as governor. We were convinced that you were the right person to implement policies that would benefit all of Minnesota – the cities, the suburbs, and of course, Greater Minnesota. Continue reading →

Ever since global warming became an issue, climate-change-denying Republicans have relied on four big lies to block solutions. Now they are trying to use these same lies to reduce fear of the coronavirus, and they are failing. The difference between climate change and the coronavirus is that the effects of the former happen over decades, while those of the latter happen over days. The four big lies allowed Republicans to successfully kick the climate-change can down the road. But that is not going to work with COVID-19.

The four big lies are:
You cannot trust the federal government
You cannot trust scientific experts
You cannot trust the media
You can trust prayer.

Let’s take a look at each lie and why it was successful in the past and is failing now. Continue reading →

DFL’ers have three major objectives in November: elect Joe Biden, elect Tina Smith, flip the Minnesota State Senate. The Democrats only need to flip two seats to win control of the Senate. Because of the interest in the Minnesota State Senate, in March I provided an analysis of this year’s contests to control the Senate. Before the August 11 primary election, I’m now providing an update to the spreadsheet that I included in my March post. Continue reading →

I submitted this letter to the Star Tribune’s opinion page. They did not print it (one reason might be that I had a letter to the editor published only two months ago), so I thought I should post it here. I make additional comments about this worthwhile and timely topic at the end. 

During the COVID-19 crisis, America is beginning to recognize everyday heroes like doctors, nurses, teachers, garbage collectors, and supermarket workers. This is a big step up from calling pro-athletes and rock musicians heroes. But, some heroes are not getting the recognition they deserve – blood donors.  Continue reading →