Locals give Pawlenty a Frosty send-off

Chris Steller — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 17:48:09 +0000

Michele Bachmann wasn’t alone Tuesday in probing unlikely links between politics and poetry. Two Minnesota bloggers also used poetry to illuminate the political landscape, adapting familiar lines by the late New Hampshire poet Robert Frost to Gov. Pawlenty’s trip to New Hampshire today.

Bluestem Prairie’s Sally Jo Sorensen, with help from Robin Marty of The Power Liberal, calls the rejiggered work “Stopping by New Hampshire on a Snowy Evening“:

Whose state this is I think I know
He’s going to New Hampshire, though
He will not see me struggling here
Or clear his roads now packed with snow

The GOP must find it queer
To act without a leader near
Between the Range and frozen lakes
The darkest forecast of the year.

Bloggers give his handlers a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the steep
Decline in what our families make.

The pothole’s looming, dark and deep
And Tim has promises to keep,
And miles to go until he’s Veep
And miles to go until he’s Veep.

Now that the barrier between politics and poetry has been breached, MnIndy offers this take on one of William Carlos Williams‘ better-known works:

This Is Just To Say (to the DFL)
by Rukavina Thomas Rukavina

I have noticed
the funds
that were in
the bank account

and which
you were probably
saving
for Margaret

Forgive me
they were outrageous
so sweet
and so bold

Border-wall issue divides Franken, Klobuchar

Chris Steller — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 13:15:06 +0000

Photo: The UpTake

“Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,” wrote poet Robert Frost. And U.S. Sen. Al Franken defines that something as all “relevant effective law enforcement agencies” — none of which, he says, love the wall between the United States and Mexico.

“Good fences make good neighbors,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar might quote in reply. She wants to see “a very good effort [along the border] … to make it harder to come in illegally.” A bill requiring completion of 700 miles of fence along the United States’ southern boundary divided the votes of Minnesota’s Democratic senators Wednesday.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina, might have hurt any chance he had of gaining support of the Senate’s newest member on Tuesday when he drew a parallel between Franken’s election win and a south-of-the-border coup.

The two Minnesota senators — who only Tuesday couldn’t have been closer as they embraced after Franken’s swearing-in ceremony — also split their votes on a proposal requiring government contractors to use the online E-Verify system to determine whether job applicants have the right immigration status, among other requirements.

Franken was against, saying the current three-year E-Verify requirement allowed better oversight than would a permanent commitment. Klobuchar supported the measure, calling E-Verify “a good employer verification process so that employers aren’t hiring people that shouldn’t be in our country.” In fact, she said she would like to see it “made a little tougher.”

Do Klobuchar and Franken see eye to eye on enforcement along the Canadian border, which after all defines their own state’s northern boundary? After six months of suffering with Minnesota’s second Senate seat essentially unmanned, do they support the unmanned drones that this year began patrolling the skies above the Boundary Waters? Are new passport requirements adequate or does Minnesota also need a fence?

Frost had a thought on that too:

Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.

Minnesota Independent » robert frost

Locals give Pawlenty a Frosty send-off

Border-wall issue divides Franken, Klobuchar