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There was a lot of craziness going on on the House floor yesterday due to the debate over the smoking ban bill but, as usual, Rep. Mark Olson (R-Big Lake) managed to up the crazy to a whole new level.

Yep, that’s right, Mark Olson is asserting that if you drink 32 glasses of water after smoking that you’ll have absolutely no risk of cancer… wow. He also kept talking about centurions when he meant centenarians. Although, maybe he really did mean centurions; I guess I can’t really account for how professional officers of the Roman Army reacted to tobacco…

I was just watching the live feed from the State House floor (because I’m just that cool) and I can’t even explain what I just saw. They’re debating the omnibus education bill right now (actually interesting otherwise) and everything was going just fine until Rep. Mark Olson (R-Big Lake) got up for a 3-5 minute speech. First of all, yes, that Mark Olson, but he’s managed to up the ante.

So, Mark Olson gets up to talk about a provision to allow voluntary mental health screening in public schools. Now, it seems pretty obvious that this might draw some references to Virginia Tech considering that Cho is said to have been mentally ill. So, I don’t really fault Olson for going down that path but, that being said, he had a very tight rope to walk. It starts getting nasty when Olson started politicizing the massacre and citing it as a reason for not passing the measure; yes, he’s trying to make the case that VA Tech shows that we shouldn’t allow voluntary mental health screening. How does Mark Olson string together these two supposedly conflicting realities? Well, of course Virginia Tech was caused by “psychiatric drugs,” or so Mark Olson says…

In fact, the whole speech was totally crazy. At one point in the speech Olson is literally yelling “Suicide! Suicide! Suicide! Death! Death! Death!” on the floor of the Minnesota State House. If this weren’t so outrageously offensive in light of the weight of the current events it would almost be funny, but it was outrageously offensive, and it wasn’t funny.

You have to see this to believe it and I will try my best to find a clip of the speech. I’m going to give this video another look, but I’m pretty sure that another view won’t change my mind: Rep. Mark Olson has to go.

UPDATE: Still working on video and a complete audio clip, but here’s the portion where he’s yelling about Death and Suicide on the State House Floor. It’s completely out of context right now, but stay tuned and I’ll get a longer clip.

Already Representative Marty Seifert has made a name for himself as a “vocal” Minority Leader. Heck, a new word has already been coined for his outlandish attempts a folksy one-liners: “Seifertisms.” Well, it seems as though we can add one more to the long list of head-turning Seifertisms.

On Thursday of last week Representative Seifert spoke to a large crowd at the League of Minnesota Cities Breakfast. At some point the conversation turned to why the Democrats had been so successful in the last election cycle. Rep. Seifert expounded on a number of reasons and at some point in this list said that it didn’t help that “the President’s approval ratings are right there with gonorrhea.”

This quote has been repeated to me by a number of people who were present at the event and a Forum Communications reporter said that the quote “more or less sounds accurate.” I have been trying all morning to get a hold of the Minority Leader and was supposed to speak with him shortly after one o’clock. But as it is now more than an hour and many more phone-calls later, I am proceeding with the information I have. The only response from the Minority Leader that has been relayed to me is that “something similar was said but the quote as is, is not completely accurate.” I eagerly await Mr. Seifert’s correction but operate under what has been confirmed to me thus far in the mean time.

Now, I have to say that I find this quip somewhat amusing but I have to wonder what the White House thinks of a Republican legislative leader comparing them to a sexually transmitted disease. Although perhaps the Representative was aware that STD’s are rising in popularity in Minnesota and, as such, meant it as a compliment to the President. Yeah, probably not…

More as this develops.

MPR has its 2007 Budget Balancer up and running! I wasted a lot of time fiddling around with this thing last year and this year’s doo-hickey seems much improved. It allows you to increase or decrease funding to various, generalized issue areas and see how your budget stacks up. And as an added bonus, you can e-mail your results to your state legislators and the Governor! (pretty cool).

As fun as the calculator is, however, it does have some fatal flaws. First and foremost on the list of flaws is illustrated in the note at the bottom of the introductory article:

Part of the surplus is money that will be in the bank on July 1. Part is a prediction that tax collections will exceed spending over the next 24 months. And the effects of inflation are not included in the spending estimates.

Notice that last part? Yeah, it makes a big difference in how much we can actually spend. And no where does the calculator mention that the surplus is by and large a one-time bonus. That is, most of the surplus money from this year won’t be around to fund the continuation of funding increases in the future… that makes a big difference in how we can spend this cash.

Bottom line: this is a really fun tool but its ability to reflect reality should be strongly cautioned against. When reality is added into the equation, our wallet isn’t so bulging.

Also, the always wonderful Minnesota Monitor has some fun analysis on the various possible outcomes and how Minnesotans feel about the budget so far according to the calculator.

It’s February of 2007, 21 months away from the election, and already we have a millionaire and a nationally known political commentator in the ‘08 Senate race. Doesn’t it seem ridiculous that we won’t have a candidate until September of 2008, less than two months from the election?

Minnesota’s September primary is archaically late in the cycle. It is a schedule meant for a time in politics when campaign periods were measured in weeks, not months and millions of dollars seemed an absurd amount to spend on even a Senate campaign — a time long past. For better or for worse our campaign cycles are getting longer and the money being raised is spiraling out of control to ridiculously high levels. Although the price of campaigns surely necessitates a quick and elegant solution, the length of our campaign periods needs to be embraced rather than bemoaned. Longer campaign periods facilitate greater knowledge of the candidates and the issues in the general public but our current primary schedule does much to sabotage these gains.

By waiting until September, allowing candidates under two months of head-to-head general election time, we are unnecessarily cutting short the truly productive period in a campaign. Even worse, the extended primary battles that can result from this late primary can consume millions of dollars on candidates that will not even be on the ballot. By extending the period of the election during which we have one Democrat and one Republican, we can extend the period when the public is educated about the issues that are crucial to governing.

This morning Representative Steve Simon and Senator Dan Larson introduced a bill that would push our state’s primary back to June from September. This change would not be effective until June of 2010, negating the possible political motives behind the bill. I would like to whole-heartedly extend my support for this extremely important bill. Although it may sound melodramatic, I sincerely believe that this move is necessary to preserve the exceptional quality of Democracy in Minnesota. I hope that legislators on both side of the aisle will share my sentiment and I strongly encourage everyone reading this to contact their own legislators to show your own support.