"It's like a sauna in here"

Minnesota is a weird state. How does a place that has been so cold recently suddenly pull a tropical climate day out of early November?

It's also a weird political state. We've had Jesse Ventura and continue to have third party impact in gubernatorial (my favorite word!) races. Our Democrats aren't called Democrats, they're called DFL (Democratic Farm and Labor). Now we've also sent the first Muslim to ever serve national office to Washington. We do things a little differently than the rest of you chucks out there. Happily, we are also a state that has not created a constitutional amendment denying equal rights to people, at least not yet.

And somehow, both state branches of legislatures belong to the DFL, all the bureaucratic positions (auditor, sec. of state, attorney general) are DFL, the only statewide federal position up for election was dominated by DFL (Klobuchar), there was a major upset that went to the DFL (Walz)...but we still have a Republican governor. How is this going to work out? But that's something about democracy: of the approximately 60% of eligible Minnesota voters who did vote, 46% wanted Pawlenty to be governor. That means this morning 54% of voters are unhappy, and we don't even really know about the other 40%.

Anyway, something tells me the word "veto" comes up in Minnesota newspapers sometime in the next four years.