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Job-hunt tip for R.T.: Don’t play with finger puppet of boss-to-be on YouTube

Maybe Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak doesn’t really want a job with the Obama administration after all. In a YouTube video released this week, hizzoner momentarily toys with a small felt replica of the person who has the power (among other powers) to hire him. “These are finger puppets?” Rybak exclaims. “Barack Obama finger puppets? I love this!”

If the stunt sets a poor example for the state’s growing legions of job-seekers, the video  – which is meant to promote free weekend parking at Gaviidae Common in downtown Minneapolis during the holiday shopping season - actually lives up to its “fun” billing in the mayor’s tweet about it today. Other highlights: Rybak abusing escalator protocol and poking fun at his chequered driving record (news video).

And if the finger-puppet clip does nix R.T.’s chances for a D.C. gig, at least the video gives a taste of what a Bill Hillsman-type Rybak-for-Governor ad might look like. See it after the jump.

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Hi ho, Nate Silver! If recount’s ballot challenges rise exponentially, they’ll hit 2,500

Simple math tells us that if the Al Franken forces and the Norm Coleman camp keep ramping up the ballot challenges, they’ll reach a combined total of 1,732 challenged ballots by the end of Minnesota’s U.S. Senate recount. That’s if each campaign continues to increase its number of challenges in the neighborhood of 140 per day, as they did the first two days.

(Minnesota Secretary of State Mark Ritchie predicts 1,500 challenged ballots, and fivethirtyeight.com’s Nate Silver estimates roughly 1,800. But since every campaign challenger at every recount site represents an independent variable, I think my guess is as good as theirs.)

More complicated math, working with the rate of increase rather than the hard-number jump, suggests the combined total could hit 2,518. That’s if each campaign were to continue to become increasingly picky over the next two days — at the same percentage rate of increase they showed from Day One to Day Two.

For Franken, the day-over-day increase so far is 42 percent, which if repeated on Day Three and Day Four of a projected four-day recount, would lead to a total of 1,233 challenges.

For Coleman, who had a 44 percent increase from Day One to Day Two, the grand total would be 1,285 challenged ballots, if he were to keep increasing his challenged ballots by 44 percent each day. Drilling down, that means he would challenge 373 on Day Three. And on Day Four, Coleman’s daily challenged ballot count would be – hold on to your hat, Nate Silver! – 538.

Lizard People: A meme born in a Minnesota voting booth

MPR’s “Challenged Ballots: You be the judge” post has got to be the site’s top traffic generator ever. I’ve seen it linked locally and nationally, on buttoned-up news sites and Comedy Central’s Indecision ‘08. That last one, which references the infamous contested write-in vote for “Lizard People” (destined to be our “Hanging Chad of Aught Eight”), ends with a few salient questions:

Should the county have accepted the Franken vote? Does the voter consider Al Franken equivalent to the Lizard People? Is Lizard People a collective, or just one person like Cat Power? If elected, will the Lizard People rule benignly or will they control us with their forked-tongue tyranny?

Currently MPR is the top hit on a Google search for the term “Lizard People” (followed by “The Best Conspiracy Theories (Lizard-People Are Running the World!“). Whoever these reptilian-Americans are, MPR, Al Franken and Norm Coleman really put them on the map. In fact, according to Google Trends, they weren’t anywhere at all up til now.

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Has T-Paw lost his luster on the national political scene?

The Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza has assembled a list of 10 Republicans across the country who will be influential in trying to resurrect the party over the next four years. Conspicuously missing from the mix? Gov. Tim Pawlenty. While Cillizza explains his reasoning for other notables left off the list (Sarah Palin and Mike Huckabee), no reason is provided for the Pawlenty ommission. At the top of the GOP heap? Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal.

WSJ: Franken campaign trying to ’steal’ election

When the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal last weighed in on Minnesota’s still-undecided Senate race, it was frothing about supposedly nefarious behavior by local election officials that was threatening the integrity of the process. Yesterday the lead recount attorney for Al Franken’s campaign, Marc Elias, wrote in to correct the record.

Now the WSJ editorial writers have apparently decided that the local officials overseeing the recount are model civil servants. Their ability to conduct a fair, efficient process, however, is being threatened by the legal shenanigans of the Franken campaign. The WSJ accuses his campaign of attempting to ’steal’ the election by asking the five-member statewide canvassing board to examine absentee ballots that were rejected by local election officials.

Put aside that these ballots have already been ruled on by trained election judges. Put aside, too, the invasion of voter privacy. The real problem of allowing Mr. Franken to conduct his own voter discovery operation is that this is changing the rules after the election has been held. The gambit introduces subjective judgment and political pressure into a voting process that is supposed to be immune to both.

Perhaps I’m confused, but why would examining absentee ballots that have been rejected be any more inherently subjective or prone to political pressure than scrutinizing ballots cast on election day?

Video: Palin discusses turkey pardon in front of slaughter-in-progress

Getting into the Thanksgiving spirit, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin pardoned a turkey yesterday, but afterwards, she stopped to speak with MSNBC about it in an unfortunate spot — just in front of a hatchery employee who was slaughtering the birds. Knowing what’s going on just behind her, Palin’s talk of a “brutal campaign,” her answer to a question about state programs that might end up “on the chopping block” and her quip about the “levity” of the turkey pardon take on new meaning.

Americablog, in response to Palin’s tone-deaf back-drop, dusts off a fitting Thanksgiving cult classic: the Turkey Drop episode from “WKRP in Cincinnatti,” after the jump.

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Rybak likes idea of White House urban policy czar — enough to be it?

Mayor R.T. Rybak of Minneapolis did an excellent job today on Minnesota Public Radio of extolling the virtues of the proposed urban policy officein President-elect Barack Obama’s White House. He did a fairly miserable job of professing a lack of interest in whether Obama might offer him the job running it.

It’s a red-tape-cutting position that seems better suited to R.T. than other possible Obama jobs floated recently for the mayor, who has striven to streamline city government through a 311 service, among other things, and whose support for Obama’s presidential run slightly predated the Big Bang.

Transcript excerpts and more after the jump.

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Minnesota employers cut 7,500 jobs last month

Minnesota’s unemployment rate edged up to 6.0 percent last month, with employers slashing 7,500 jobs, according to new figures from the Department of Employment and Economic Development. In September the state’s unemployment rate was at 5.9 percent, with job losses of 2,300.

There were 16,400 fewer jobs available last month than at the same point in 2007, a drop of 0.6 percent. Particularly hard hit have been the construction (-6,700 jobs) and manufacturing (-9,200 jobs) sectors. Nationwide the unemployment rate is at 6.5 percent, with 240,000 jobs eliminated last month.

(Image cribbed from CrimePsych blog).

Ellison denied progressive leadership post

Rep. Keith Ellison has fallen short in his bid to lead the Congressional Progressive Caucus. According to PolitickerAZ, the 80-member body will instead be headed by Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva and California Rep. Lynn Woolsey. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is a former co-chair of the caucus.

(H/T: BrauBlog)

Newsflash: Bill O’Reilly apes Coleman ‘victory’ line

It’s hardly newsworthy when Bill O’Reilly apes GOP talking points, but since it’s local: The O’Reilly Factor namesake on Nov. 18 claimed that Sen. Norm Coleman “was certified the winner” of Minnesota’s race for U.S. Senate. The Coleman campaign has thrice declared victory for Coleman, even though the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, has unequivocally stated, “Only when this recount is complete in its entirety will we know who is elected.” Coleman “won by a mere 215 votes,” O’Reilly added. But by the end of the first day of recounts, Coleman’s lead is down to 172 votes.