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 →

In this blog post, I’ve included a spreadsheet that analyzes the competitiveness of the 2020 Minnesota Senate races. I determined that only 23 races out of 67 are competitive. Fifteen of those include an incumbent Republican and eight include an incumbent DFLer. I then categorized the races into five levels of competitiveness. Continue reading →

Last month,  Peter Callaghan, Greta Kaul, and Tom Nehil published an informative article on Minnpost.com titled “Who’s running for the Minnesota Legislature.” It lists the current shape of the 67 Minnesota Senate races and 134 Minnesota House races. It includes useful filters so you can narrow down the list. 

In a recent blog post, I wrote that one person with energy and determination can have a significant impact on the 2020 elections by supporting a Democratic Minnesota House candidate in a swing district. So I decided to take a closer look at the 134 House races.   Continue reading →