This week’s ruling that comedian and former SNL personality Al Franken was the winner of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race, eight months after the actual election, should have me thinking about things like filibuster-proof majorities and how it affects the prospects for health care reform. Instead, it has me thinking about my career as an actor, and the role Franken played in it.

The producer for our evening newscast made an astute comment to me today. He said before Michael Jackson’s death, a poll of how he’s regarded by people would have been evenly split: 50-percent that he’s an unparalleled musical talent, a great man, whose “eccentricities” are part of his genius; and 50-percent that he’s a sick person, whose obvious musical greatness becomes secondary to his bizarre life and inappropriate enjoyment of the company of young boys. I told my producer I thought he was right, and that since Jackson’s death, that ratio has shifted to more like 95-percent positive and 5-percent negative.

When one discusses “moving violations” on Manhattan’s busy streets, it’s assumed the reference is to traffic offenses by drivers of cars, trucks, and other internal combustion vehicles. But it’s time to expand this definition to include another entire group of “moving” offenders: errant pedestrians.

One of the things that’s fun about following party politics is trying to connect the dots from a party’s actions and policies to its larger electoral goals. For example, every Democratic candidate for President spoke at the 2007 NAACP Convention, while only one minor Republican hopeful showed up, making it one more factor guaranteeing the African-American vote would remain overwhelmingly in the democratic column (it probably would have anyway, but the GOP’s complete punt was noteworthy). In 2004, the Bush Administration signed a farm bill that increased subsidies to growers by 80-percent at a time when the budget deficit was starting to balloon. The intention? To lock up the farm states for Bush’s re-election later that year. It’s politics, the way the game is played by both sides.

If you’re a little excited about the way the stock market has rebounded this week, and about today’s announcement that obless claims plummeted last month, who could blame you? Check out a few of today’s internet headlines that seem to point toward an end to this horrid recession:

“NYU Professor Roubini Sees Recession Ending In 2009”
Wall Street Journal ‎

“China's Economic Recovery Gathers Steam”
TIME

“ Bonds fall on indications of recovery”
CNNMoney.com

“US industrial output appears on the mend”
Reuters

1) Insurance executives are people, too. Ha-ha! Just kidding!

2) Just about everybody is against health care reform, except for the 85% of Americans who polls show are for it

3) We should let Canada be better than us in something.

Last week, just before taking my 7-year-old twin boys to my hometown of Cincinnati for a family reunion, I took care of something that’s a rite of passage for little boys everywhere: I got them their first wallets. They recently “discovered” money, (actually, they’ve quickly become frighteningly obsessed with it), so I figured it was time to get them their own wallets, not just to give them a place to keep their cash, but to begin to learn to handle and protect their money responsibly.

I’ve been called many things, especially since I began blogging. But I’ve never been called a prude. So my choice of a topic today surprises even me a little bit, but it’s something that bugs me more and more. I’m talking about the increasing, indiscriminate, and casual use of loud and graphic profanity in public… profanity that is spoken—often yelled—with no regard to who might be hearing it; not young children, not elderly people, not anybody. And I’m not talking here about “hell” and “damn.”

I use profanity sometimes. Just about everybody I know uses profanity sometimes. In the TV news business, it goes with the territory; it’s often a tense, deadline-driven, pressurized environment, and, frankly, it’s something of a tradition. But here’s the way I approach it: if I swear, either for emphasis or out of annoyance, it’s in front of people who I’m certain aren’t surprised or offended by it, and who at times express themselves the same way. I make every effort not to impose my flawed vocabulary on others who might not appreciate hearing those words, i.e., any strangers who might be within earshot.

It appears the movement to convince people that President Obama was born overseas is petering out. Evidence is mounting this week—there was never a shortage of it--that he was, in fact, born in the good old U.S. of A. Once again, officials in Hawaii have confirmed the legitimacy of his birth certificate, and even Ann Coulter is finding the effort by the so-called birthers to be ridiculous and embarassing. Let’s face it, when Ann Coulter thinks your movement is too extreme, it’s time to fold up the street corner card table and go home.

I had a great time yesterday visiting with the Brooklyn artist who shot the time lapse video of the Manhattan Bridge, noticeably swaying and moving (as it’s designed to do, by the way). It’s been a big hit on youtube. If you’d like to see the entire video, and other work by Kevin Vertrees, go to his website, skydogproject.com

Watch my piece from last night’s PIX News at 10, after the jump...

There are physicists who believe that all quantum possibilities—every point on what they call the “wave function”—actually come true in some universe, somewhere. Right now, guys, at some point in the cosmos a parallel you could be in a hot tub, sipping champagne with your longtime girlfriend, Jessica Biel.