The Twin Cities were also a four sport team through 1987 (when the Timberwolves started up) till 1993, when the North Stars slinked off to Dallas. So the Twin Cities were a 4 sport town quite a bit longer in this stretch. Of course if you are going to start arguing areas, then one could lump Baltimore with DC, but then the Ravens would mess up the streak.

This should be fun. That goodness for optical scan ballots - no chads. The margin is down to 571 votes - less than 0.02 %. See link below.

The best hope of getting rid of Bachmann will be re-districting for 2012. And the best way to get her a competitive district would be Minnesota to get a Democratic governor in 2010.

One of the strangest realization of last night for me was that Dean Barkley had coattails! Bob Anderson, the Independence Party candidate won 10% of the vote, after essentially not running a campaign other than showing up for debates. His party even endorsed El Tinklenberg, but Anderson was still on the ballot.

Many of those Anderson votes must have Anderson votes must have been protest votes, but still it was amazing.

Let me add my condolences to the stack.

Your peice was very moving.

First, Andrew thanks for this post. I think that you did a better job of surveying the situation than the story by Joseph Romm.

I agree that there should be some strings on any bailout of the Big Three. It is important that these strings be flexible, though. The emphasis should be on meeting fuel effiency goals, not on particular technologies, since better solutions may be developed. The details of any plan needed to be hammered out carefully, but something needs to be done.

An important point that needs to be emphasized is that the though the car companies are culpable for selling us what they have been selling us, consumers need to take some blame as well.

We have been buying bigger cars than we need, with over-powered engines for too long. So while I think that it important to move toward new technologies like plug-in hybrids, simply moving to smaller engines can help fuel efficiency immensely and lower costs.

So the next time you buy a car, don't just look at trendy technology and fuel efficiency. Think hard about what you need in a car. When you decide on a model, seriously consider buying the option with the smallest engine.

I never got those jokes about black Presidents in the movies. Haven't they seen Bruce Almighty? It isn't a great movie, but then again neither is Deep Impact.

As others in this thread have noted, both Coleman and Franken were born in New York. Coleman left new York for Iowa in the middle of law school, while Franken moved to Minnesota when he was young and went to school in Minnesota.

Also, let me second the call to end the use of the ridiculous phrase "Minnesota Nice". It is a meme that is hard to kill, but it is none the less silly. As someone how as lived in both Minnesota and some of its neighboring states, I can tell you that Minnesota manners are not unique. So please kill this cloying phrase.

One important piece of info not include here is that in the actual number of votes recounted through yesterday, Colman is ahead 43.28% to 40.07%. This is good for Franken, since it means fewer of his votes have been counted so far. What this in practice means is that many of the smaller precincts and counties, which are predominantly Republican, have finished their recounts already.

So Franken has a little more hope than the straight linear projection explained above would suggest, but it is likely to come down to the challenged votes. At this point it is hard to guess how those will go. Has one candidate or the other made more challenges that are likely to fail? At his point it is hard to guess.

I am sorry to hear that you are cutting back, King, but glad to hear that you will still be around.

After reading that Ask Pablo was gone, I feared that worse might be coming.

Pablo, who not so incidentally could have used some better editting and fact checking, but who always got a good conversation going in the threads.

Now I just am hoping that more bad news isn't coiming for Ask the Pilot or for Andrew Leonard when he gets back from vacation.

Thanks for the great reading King - sorry that I will have to find somewhere else to waste more time now.

That Washington Independent quote just proves that they haven't been watching this very closely. There's way too much up in the air still to be declaring a winner. There are still absentee ballots to deal with, duplicate ballots, and withdrawn challenges. Then there will be court challenges.

So yes, Al has had a good week. But this is far from over. And that's OK. The process has been long, but it has been tempered and fair.

King,

Did you see the SI year end wrapup "The Best Year Ever" ? Before or after you finished your piece? It is an obvious angle since this was a very good year, and for all I know there could be dozens of similar year end pieces already out their. I can imagine, though, being halfway through writing a piece, having something similar come out and being quite annoyed by the misfortune.

Anyway, a nice finish to a good year of writing on your part. See you on the other side.

The Republicans in Washington's statements are nothing new. The real news now is the back and forth on whether the wrongly rejected absentee ballots will be counted:

http://politicalblogs.startribune.com/bigquestionblog/?p=1254

In Illinois, it is comptroller, not controller.

How could any article on this topic this week not include a link to the new Colbert and Colmes? http://blog.indecision2008.com/2009/01/06/stephen-colbert-and-alan-colmes-discuss-democrats-racism/