Buddy: can you spare 100 million dimes?

It turns out that the Minneapolis-St. Paul Host Committee's assurances that the money for the Republican National Convention wasn't a problem were a little more complicated than first blush.

The Los Angeles Times' Tom Hamburger said the organizers found themselves $10 million short last month, but were rescued by Robert Wood "Woody" Johnson IV and friends. Johnson is an heir to the Johnson and Johnson fortune.

It also quotes convention official Jeff Larson, a principal at a FLS Connect, a major Republican fundraising and telemarketing operation, based in Oakdale. He's been better known more recently as Norm Coleman's landlord: it's Larson's basement Coleman rents on the cheap in D.C.

Hamburger, for those of you keeping track at home, has a connection to the RNC of his own. He was the former Washington Bureau chief for the Minneapolis-based Star Tribune.