There's an awful lot of pessimism about health-care reform just now, but at least one fellow holds out hope, and he decided to make his feelings public Sunday. That fellow is Sen. Al Franken, and his venue was a rally at the Minneapolis Labor Center. Minnesota Public Radio's Jessica Mador quotes Franken as telling the assembled that passing the health-care bill, even in its disappointing current form, would be better than starting from scratch. Workday Minneapolis offers a quote that sums up his case: According to Franken, we "can’t let the perfect be the enemy of the very, very good."

Franken also made a surprise appearance at the Conservative Political Action Conference a few days earlier, on Friday. He wasn't there in person, of course, but Minnesota blogger Ed Morrissey intoned him while introducing Rep. Michele Bachmann. Andy Birkey of the Minnesota Independent quotes Morrissey as saying. "The state bird is the loon, which explains why the the state question is: Al Franken? Really?! ACORN. Yeah … We have things to apologize for, Al Franken being chief among them."

"We really have a great sense of humor in Minnesota," Bachmann later said, and, in order to prove her point, shows a slide of the bewildering "Miss Me Yet" billboard of George W. Bush that was up near Wyoming, Minn. Of course, what people find funny is pretty subjective. Tim Pawlenty, speaking at the same conference, trotted out a Tiger Woods joke that he had debuted at the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce at the start of the month, saying that we could learn from Tiger Woods' wife and "take a 9 iron and smash the window out of big government in this country." As Joe Fryer of KARE11 explains, the joke, which seemed to make light of domestic violence (as well as seemed bizarrely timed, seeing as a fellow had literally smashed the windows of government last week -- with an airplane), got Pawlenty into almost instantaneous hot water Sunday on an appearance on "Meet the Press" (you can watch much of the interview on MPR):

"With that kind-of rallying cry, do you really expect people to take you seriously?" "Meet the Press" moderator David Gregory asked Pawlenty, who shrugged off the question, saying, "If we've gotten to the point where you can't make a joke, I think we're in trouble." Some might distinguish "making a joke" from "awkwardly borrowing from current events for the sake of making hyper-partisan points," but not us Minnesotans. We have a great sense of humor.

Well, perhaps not DNC Midwest spokesman Frank Benenati, who responded to Pawlenty's by dubbing him "TeaPaw" in Twitter -- "for pandering to radical right wing." Pandering is a strong word, but Pawlenty's speech did sometimes seem like a greatest hits of popular talking points, including that beloved chestnut, "Obama uses teleprompters." According to MPR's Tom Scheck, Pawlenty claimed the president used a teleprompter to talk to grade school children. Well, come on, that's a little funny, isn't it? "That's not a joke," Pawlenty then said. "That's a real story." Er, no, it isn't.

Pawlenty also invoked God, as Minnesota Independent's Andy Birkey details, quoting Pawlenty as saying "God’s in charge. There are some people who say 'Pawlenty, don’t bring that up. It's politically incorrect.' Hogwash!" Nobody seemed to want to comment on the thrill of seeing the word "hogwash" re-enter the political lexicon (we at the Glean can only hope Pawlenty brings back similarly dated expressions, such as "applesauce!" and "All my eyes and Betty Martin!"), but Bob Collins of MPR did take it upon himself to point out that Christianity has a few things to say about helping the poor and the sick, and slashing assistance for these groups out of the budget isn't one of them.

Benenati might call Pawlenty's speech pandering, but we'll call it "tailoring the message to the base," and surely the speech, with drew repeated applause, helped the outgoing governor raise his national profile. Well, not really. According to the Associated Press, in a straw poll taken of conference attendees, Ron Paul was the favorite as a potential presidential candidate. Pawlenty limped in at fourth place, behind Mitt Romney and Sarah Palin, who wasn't even at the conference. Perhaps Pawlenty's folksy expressions are not sufficiently dated. We suggest he start saying "bless your little cotton socks" when meeting somebody, and "bung ho!" when he leaves.

Jeez, Pawlenty has been taking up a lot of newsprint lately. Heck, we could write an entire Daily Glean about reactions to Pawlenty's criticisms of the stimulus package, which he has nonetheless been eager to use to address Minnesota budget shortfalls, but there's more news out there. For instance, Joe Repya dropped out of the race for governor, making the race smaller, although, as far as we can tell, self-proclaimed vampire Jonathan Sharkey is still in it, despite City Pages having a field day with Sharkey's teenage paramour.

Then there's the AP story about a Minneapolis woman who got hit with a $1,600 water bill, which the city says must be because of a dripping faucet or something. We at the Glean have heard this sort of story before, and it's almost always the result of a cat obsessively flushing a toilet. And, if it is a cat, can you blame him? We're all starting to go a little stir crazy, and the Star Tribune's Bill McAuliffe blames the weather in a story about how anxious and depressed Minnesotans get around this time of year.

Also in the news, Ron Maddox, the founder of Taste of Minnesota, died Friday at the age of 72, and a number of local news sources took the opportunity to detail his oversized personality. "Everything I do is sex, politics, sports and religion. Life is built around that," the Pioneer Press quotes him as saying, while MPR offers an enviable summary of the man's early years: "Maddox owned bars, danced on restaurant tables, and hosted wet T-shirt contests in St. Paul. He was elected to the City Council in the late 1970s — a time when St. Paul teemed with outsized personalities."

Ah, younger years, a time of infinite promise, and adventure, and herpes. Wait — herpes? Well, yes, for some. Specifically, as Andy Mannix of City Pages reports, an undisclosed number of high-school wrestlers have contracted the disease, causing several schools to pull out of section tournaments. The story quotes athletic director Mark Solberg as saying "Hopefully something like this will not happen again."

It's herpes, Mark. Expect flare-ups.