Presidential Race

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Bachmann-Palin confusion was behind New York Times error

In a not-exactly-rare correction, the New York Times acknowledged it incorrectly indicated that a statement by Rep. Michele Bachmann, praising President-Elect Obama, was uttered on Nov. 5 not Nov. 6. The reason for the error: The paper confused Sarah “Pals around with Terrorists” Palin, who made comments about Obama on Nov. 6, with Michele “anti-American” Bachmann.

Times change (and they don’t): Comparing 2008 vote and 1860 cotton maps

Last week, I spotted a blog post showing a pair of maps: one represented cotton production in the deep south in 1860 and another had Election 2008 results. Today, Strange Maps offers a composite of the two, pairing color-coded vote results by county with dots representing cotton yield (one dot equals 2,000 bales). The conclusion [...]

U.S. Senate recount: The battle over rejected absentee ballots

What will happen to absentee ballots that were rejected as invalid by local election officials? That’s the question currently roiling the U.S. Senate contest between Norm Coleman and Al Franken as a state-mandated manual recount gets underway this week.

Red Lake has a knack for mattering in recount-tight races

Braublog notes that the purgers at President Bush’s U.S. Department of Justice may have been onto something when they targeted former U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger for working to advance voting rights for Native Americans; turnout continues to climb to new heights at the Red Lake Indian Reservation, running 95 percent in favor of Democrat Al [...]

MnIndy video: Karl Rove’s ‘funny stamps,’ meet Greg Rhodes’ ‘nature photographs’

Sunday’s New York Times Magazine carried a quizzical interview by Deborah Solomon with President George W. Bush’s former senior adviser, Karl Rove. Across 21 questions, Rove and Solomon covered a lot of political and even emotional territory, with an often-combative Rove laying claim to having had his feelings hurt by Solomon on an earlier occasion.
The highlight, though, [...]

Radio days: Obama’s wired-side chats, T-Paw’s missing mea culpa on ‘CCO

The parallels between the plan for President-elect Obama to post YouTube videos of his Saturday presidential radio addresses and President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s famed fireside chats aren’t lost on anyone this morning. Obama will roll out the practice tomorrow when he gives the Democratic response to President George W. Bush’s radio address.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s got his own regular radio gig, but his absence from it today meant a missed opportunity to set the record straight on his opinion of Minnesota’s electoral process.

Being black: It’s not required to see Obama’s win as ’special,’ and it’s not his only quality

In his concession speech last week, U.S. Sen. John McCain said, “This is an historic election, and I recognize the special significance it has for African-Americans and for the special pride that must be theirs tonight.” Since then, commentators have countered that the range of people to whom President-elect Barack Obama’s election carries “special significance” [...]