A flier accuses Patty Wetterling of shipping American jobs overseas, based on the argument that Wetterling is accountable for the companies whose stock is owned by mutual funds in which Wetterling has invested. But Wetterling's Republican opponent, Michele Bachmann, is in the same position.

More article and race background below the fold.

From the Saint Paul Pioneer Press, which generally tilts endorsements to the GOP:

http://www.twincities.com/mld/twincities /news/editorial/14668111.htm

"RUN, RUN, RUN

Mike Erlandson, one of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor candidates for Congress in the Minneapolis-based 4th District who was not endorsed by party activists at their convention earlier this month, announced he will stay in the race. He will join several others in the Sept. 12 primary, including the endorsed candidate, state Rep. Keith Ellison.

Erlandson is a former state party chairman who will now be challenging his party's favored candidate. Former state Sen. Ember Reichgott Junge, Minneapolis City Council Member Paul Ostrow and peace activist Erik Thompson are also running in the DFL primary.

We think this is a good thing. The activists who attend party conventions tend to be more ideological and less common-sensical than the universe of party voters. The activists should recommend but not dictate. When there are other good candidates, voters should have an opportunity to select the best one in a primary, as they will in Minneapolis.

We wish some of the strong candidates who lost the party-activist endorsement in the suburban 6th Congressional District, including state Reps. Phil Krinkie and Jim Knoblach, would follow Erlandson's lead and keep running. That would give GOP primary voters an alternative to state Sen. Michele Bachmann, a charismatic firebrand who won the activists' recommendation."

Another in the series of news and views you probably won't see much of in the American press.

« For most African nations, the future looks more favorable than it has in quite some time. This sentence, taken from the fifth annual « Economic Perspectives in Africa, 2005-2006,» a report published 16 May by the OECD, may give some measure of hope to citizens of this continent considered the worst off on the planet.

Of course, the authors of this report do not gloss over ongoing humanitarian catastrophes in Sudan or in Ethiopia, or that instability is causing damage in Ivory Coast or in eastern parts of the DR of Congo, not to mention the «economic ruin» which is Zimbabwe.

Check out the photoshopping on this baby from Mark Kennedy's home page (GOP Candidate for Senate, Mark Dayton's vacated seat):

http://www.markkennedy06.com/

Hmmmm...is that a third arm there? How'd he do that?

(Smaller, in case he's had the good sense to take it down off his front page):

http://www.markkennedy06.com/News/Docume ntSingle.aspx?DocumentID=14781

Looks like the GOP's talking points were in line this week - tall fishing tales.

DISSUADING IRAN?
J.-F. BAYART
Le Monde Editorial 2 May 2006

As long as another drumbeat to war is being sounded, I suspect we can count on the English-language yellow press (a pleonasm, I know) to be fulfilling it's stenographer's role of keeping the beat. In view of this, time permitting, I will relay voices of reason from foreign press.

The following is my xlation of Le Monde's editorial on Iran, in today's edition.

(Please excuse the quick translations, its not like I'm being paid for this...)

http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@ 2-3232,36-767404,0.html

Europe is falling into the trap of believing it has the answer to what is unfortunately the wrong question: how to keep Iran from nukes. Day after day, the voice of reason becomes less and less audible. We are fabricating a crisis whose consequences will be incalculable without having the slightest idea how to face off against it.

The origins of Iran's nuclear program goes back to 1974. Even then, it had a military dimension, but no one had anything untoward to say about it when it was all about countering the Soviet threat. Iran was Israel's ally, which Washington had already permitted to arm itself with the bomb. France and Germany cooperated with Teheran without worrying much about what was to follow. Khomenei abandoned the program, but the Iranian resumed the program in the mid-80's in response to the territorial threat posed by Iraq. And Washington's attack on Baghdad in 1991 comforted them in this endeavor, as it underlined for them the vulnerability of their nation as well.