Last week
‘North Dakota Nice’ Plays Well in Senate Race — NY Times
An enigmatic engine of the US economy, North Dakota has an interesting Senate race going on right now. As the story cites, while the GOP has the state deeply shaded in red for the Presidential race, the fight over replacing long-time Democratic Senator, Kent Conrad, is not as handily Republican as one (or Reince Priebus) would think, as the Democratic contender Heidi Heitkamp embodies what the article describes as “North Dakota nice.”
Excerpt: “I said: ‘Heidi, save your breath. I’m voting for you,’ ” Mr. Rademacher recalled, marveling at her personal attention. “I don’t necessarily agree with her, but I trust her.”
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To Encourage Biking, Cities Lose the Helmets — NY Times Sunday
For an inherently Eugenian topic, this New York Times columnist raises an unconventional (yet anecdotal and empirically sound) concept: If bike-share programs require their riders to ride with helmets — even if they are in places where it is conducive to bicycling, such as having a moderate climate and larger roads — they are a statistically significant number less likely to be used. For instance, the article says that Melbourne’s program (where helmets are mandated) only gets 150 daily riders, while a program in chilly Dublin has 5,000.
Excerpt: “On the other hand, many researchers say, if you force or pressure people to wear helmets, you discourage them from riding bicycles. That means more obesity, heart disease and diabetes. And — Catch-22 — a result is fewer ordinary cyclists on the road, which makes it harder to develop a safe bicycling network. The safest biking cities are places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where middle-aged commuters are mainstay riders and the fraction of adults in helmets is minuscule.”
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A mandate of slackers: Turning out your base, not winning arguments, is increasingly the key to electoral success — The Economist
A discussion of how the modern political system has started to become run by the engine of getting out the vote. My take: As the piece eventually turns to, Obama and Romney need to recognize this as increasingly driving the narrative of the election, if they are going to (as it appears they have already started) use this election as a mandate. Obviously, neither of them will admit that it’s an over-dramatized horse-race, but can they not argue that it’s 100 percent not?
Or, more eloquently stated: “Yet politicians should not be blind to the implications of a growing emphasis on turnout rather than persuasion. Before elections, candidates of both parties are happy to boast about their clever get-out-the-vote operations, special-interest campaigns or ballot initiatives designed to lure specific voter groups to the polls.”
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Anyone else excited about the debate? John McCain is.
He told CNN he thinks this debate will go down in history. Of course, he has his reason to think that: Romney and Ryan are going to refocus the debate on out-of-control spending. But also, just in the practical, the pair has been in this kind of debate since 2007, and both of them had some extenuating factor keeping their debates running far longer than any should be. For Romney, there were the 25 or so pre-primary debates where people like Rick Santorum, Herman Cain and Newt Gingrich all fell apart in entertaining ways, and this wasn’t even his first attempt at the Republican nomination. For Obama, his battle with Hillary got close enough to the convention for everyone to start hypothesizing about a ‘brokered convention’. In any regard, it should just be great television.
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Jefferson Smith Was Cited for 1993 Misdemeanor Assault Involving a Woman — Willamette Week
In the “found at the last minute, but can’t help but include it” category. Yep, that’s the cover story today. And yes, that’s Portland current mayoral candidate Jefferson Smith. Just saw it in the office, so I haven’t fully read it yet, but according to the story, it happened at a party near campus while Smith was attending the University of Oregon.
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And, lest we forget…

Sometimes, Mitch McConnell makes it way too easy to laugh at him.