bob dylan

Several explanations have surfaced for U.S. Rep. Joe Wilson’s outburst during the presidential address to Congress Wednesday, including policy-induced ejaculation and an anger-compensation scheme you might call pay-for-bray. Here’s another, spookier theory: Wilson was caught in a Barack Obama-Bob Dylan heckling continuum.

But you might get him anyway. Word has reached our shores that the Bard of Hibbing is being courted by car companies who want his voice telling their customers via satellite-navigation systems whether to turn right or left.  

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar promised “I’m not going to be rationing health care” but she rationed out 14 question-asking opportunities among more than 10,000 callers during her tele-town hall on health care reform Sunday. Her staff wouldn’t let the St. Paul Pioneer Press see exactly how the tele-death panels that chose the lucky questioners operated, [...]

In 1984, President Ronald Reagan was warned by a young White House associate counsel named John Roberts against sending a letter of commendation to singer Michael Jackson, who died yesterday. One reason: Praising the King of Pop would set a precedent, requiring the president to also praise a “newcomer who goes by the name ‘Prince.’” [...]

Leave it that Hibbing mystic, Bob Dylan, to see another side of Barack Obama. Dylan’s rambling appreciation for the president, already apparent before the election, only grows weirder and more mythical:
He’s like a fictional character, but he’s real. First off, his mother was a Kansas girl. Never lived in Kansas though, but with deep roots. [...]

Polling places were mobbed around the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis early this morning. In a residential neighborhood near campus, a line of 300 people at Marcy Open School stretched out the door and around the corner. Poll workers had planned for the crowd: For the first time in memory (if not ever), four porta-potties lined [...]

UPDATED Well, they do call it the Independence Party. It turns out the party’s candidate in the 3rd Congressional District race, David Dillon, has donated a considerable sum of his own money to his campaign through Sept. 2: $122,000. That’s 81 percent of his campaign’s $150,513 war chest, which according to a fresh report from the Center for Responsive Politics’ opensecrets.org, makes Dillon the eighth biggest self-funding candidate for the U.S. House or Senate this year, by percentage of total money raised.