Minneapolis--St.Paul, Minnesota is a beautiful metropolitan area: great schools, great health care, sophisticated and a very urban area. Venture outside of Minneapolis- St. Paul and one finds a state that boasts as its motto "The land of 10,000 lakes." Minnesota is indeed a beautiful and diverse state.

The biggest tourist attraction of the last decade is the Great Mall of America. With more than 400 stores and a theme park occupying the middle, the Mall attracts visitors from the other 49 states and from around the world. Use to be Northwest Airlines, headquartered in Minneapolis, would sponsor charter flights from Europe and Japan for shoppers to visit and spend Yen and Euros at the Mall.

The Twin Cities is also a major corporate headquarter city with the likes of 3M (NYSE: MMM), Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT), Medtronic (NYSE: MDT), US Bank (NYSE: USB), General Mills (NYSE: GIS) and many others. The Minneapolis-St.Paul Airport is a major hub in the U.S. with Northwest Airlines as its principle occupant.

But all of that pales before "The Bathroom."

Continue reading 10,000 lakes and one famous bathroom

10,000 lakes and one famous bathroom originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 17 Sep 2007 18:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Democratic front-runner Sen. Hillary Clinton owes her fellow Senator Larry Craig a huge debt.

The scandal involving the Idaho Republican has deflected the media's attention from the revelations of dodgy campaign contributions her campaign received from fugitive California businessman Norman Hsu. Craig is a much better story. For one thing he's a conservative Republican with close ties to social conservatives who is so out of touch with reality that it's comical. His "I am not gay. I never have been gay" statement convinced no one.

What makes Craig's downfall so dramatic is that it came from a high perch of moral superiority that Republicans seem to like to inhabit more than Democrats. There also have been rumors about Craig's allegedly secret gay life since the early 1980s when there was a scandal involving members of Congress having sex with male pages. Craig, a Congressman at the time, issued a statement denying rumors that he had been implicated. He reportedly is now close to resigning.

Continue reading Media World: How Larry Craig took the heat off Hillary Clinton

Media World: How Larry Craig took the heat off Hillary Clinton originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 31 Aug 2007 15:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.