There is always some misbehavior in the news, but lately it has seemed a bit childish. For instance, Rochester was the site of a goose-punching. Well, that’s not completely right. It was a statue of a goose, and it was dressed like Shakespeare, but these points seemed secondary to the man who did the punching. According to WCCO, his explanation for why he assaulted the statue was simple: “just because it was a goose.”
And then there is the tale of a Northfield man who was upset that his airplane was diverted from Minneapolis to Rochester. According to the Associated Press, the man might be charged for responding with “unruly behavior.” The nature of that behavior? “He allegedly stomped his feet and banged his fists in the area around his seat.“
Sometimes, though, the behavior of airplanes makes people just want to stomp your feet and bang your fists; heck, if you’re being held on the tarmac for an extended time, such as three hours, you might be tempted to hold your breath until you turn blue. According to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, in the month of June alone, “over two hundred planes were on that tarmac for over three hours,” she says on her Minnesota Minute video podcast (reposted here on MinnPost). In it, Klobuchar discusses the Airline Passenger Bill of Rights that she is co-sponsoring, the details of which she has mapped out on her web page and include providing adequate food, water, ventilation and restroom access when airplanes are stalled on the tarmac. If we at Daily Glean might be able to offer a suggestion as well, if a plane is to be stalled for three hours, we’d appreciate one of those built-in rotating circle beds that Austin Powers had.
According to Mike Kaszuba of the Star Tribune, the Minnesota GOP has some complaints about misbehavior of their own. Specifically, they have a problem with sitting mayors running for governor. Obviously, their complaint is specifically directed at mayors Chris Coleman and R.T. Rybak, who have both expressed some interest in a gubernatorial bid but have yet to make it official. According to the GOP, they’re pretty much already campaigning, and therefore “violating a state law that requires them to formally register their campaigns.“
They have nothing to say about Tim Pawlenty’s secret-to-nobody-but-himself run for president, but, then, they don’t need to, because the rules are different for a presidential bid. However, one thing that is the same in a race for governor and a race for president is that you have to get more votes to win, and Pawlenty has a bit of an uphill battle against him in Minnesota: As related by the Star Tribune’s Rachel E. Stassen-Berger and Pat Doyle, a Star Tribune poll discovered that “a majority of Minnesotans don’t want to see Gov. Tim Pawlenty run for president in 2012.” At this point, 55 percent are actually opposed to him running, according to the survey, although if he were to somehow get the Republican nomination, 25 percent said they would vote for him, and an additional 25 percent said they might. In the meanwhile, 43 percent said there was no way they would cast a vote for Pawlenty.
It’s a rough figure, and this is rough math, and we’re years out from the actual election, of course, but it must be a little discouraging that if Pawlenty were to run against Obama today, he would have to fight to persuade more than 25 percent of voters from his home state to cast their ballot for him, while Obama would only have to persuade about 7 percent to vote against him.
“The government’s economic stimulus money isn’t just for hard hats, contractors and teachers,” the Associated Press informs us. No, the plan includes $225 million earmarked for programs that address violence toward women and $100 million for other crime victims, helpfully detailed here. The AP interviews Minnesotan Cindy Lyons, an advocate for Domestic Abuse Project, who would be out of a job without the stimulus money. “Hopefully I can stop somebody from going to the hospital,” she says.
Tainted cocaine is headed toward Minnesota, if it isn’t here already, according to FOX9. The stuff has been laced with Levamisole, which is used to deworm cows but increases dopamine levels in humans, which, in turn, increases pleasure. It has a rather nasty downside, though: “it has the side-effect of wiping out white blood cells and crashing the immune system,” which means that even a minor injury could lead to a fatal infection. The tainted cocaine is already responsible for three deaths and at least 22 hospitalizations in the United States and Canada.
“We did everything they said. Be involved in your kids’ school. Doesn’t matter,” KARE11’s Boyd Huppert quotes one distraught parent on the subject of the closing of the Riverview Specialty School for Math and Environmental Science in Brooklyn Park. The school is one of eight that the Anoka-Hennepin district voted to close (two will be repurposed), saving the district $3 million, which, it should be noted, is just a fraction of the district’s projected $18 million deficit.
Next Monday, Brett Favre suits up against his former team, the Green Bay Packers, and the team’s coaches are downplaying the significance of the game. “The place won’t be vibrating or anything like that. We just kind of go about our business,” the Star Tribune’s Judd Zilgad quotes Brad Childress as saying. Apparently, Childress forgot to tell one Eau Claire bar, who are taking Favre’s defection to the Vikings sort of personally, according to a story by Alyssa Waters of the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, reprinted in the Pioneer Press. The bar is planning to burn Favre paraphernalia during the halftime of the Vikings/Packers game.
