Franken/Coleman

I do courtesy links time to time for members of the liberal blogads network, and today's recommendation is CultureKitchen for their posting on the Minnesota senatorial contest between Al Franken and Norm Coleman (as a Midwesterner this is one I've been following closely, and was in Minnesota recently to see the sleazy negative ads Coleman was running). Since for the Democrats to really accomplish big changes requires 60 senators, the fate of the nation in some ways depends on some of these close senatorial races.

I've been a fan of Al's for a couple of decades.

Here is my own comment on that race, reprinted from July 11, 2007:

It is tiresome that some observers dismissed Mr. Franken because he is a humorist. Lots of comedians have served in the US Congress, though few had been professional humorists before being elected.

Norm Coleman himself has said the most hilarious things. His positions on various issues are listed at this page (scroll down and look on the right). He wants to increase the number of people carrying concealed weapons in Minneapolis (after what happened at Virginia Tech, is that a good idea?), wants to fund the Iraq War indefinitely and no questions asked, opposes auditing contractors with Defense Department contracts in Iraq, and wants to see Roe v. Wade overturned. Like Joe Lieberman, he seems to be preparing his constituencies for a brutal aggressive war on Iran. He's just a barrel of monkeys.

Al is positively sober in comparison. He wrote Norm Coleman asking him to bring the troops home.

Coleman was one of the targets of a Democratic Party ad campaign launched Tuesday:

Coleman's official position on Iraq is at his web page.