Capitol View: May 17, 2006 Archive

Bush for Kennedy

Posted at 9:49 AM on May 17, 2006 by Bob Collins

Read in the paper today that the campaign wasn't commenting on Laura Bush coming to town for a fundraiser for Mark Kennedy. Here's what Tom Scheck says is floating around the MN YoungRepublican site.

US Senator Norm and Laurie Coleman

Cordially invite you
to join them in welcoming

Mrs. Laura Bush

For an evening in support of

Mark Kennedy
Candidate for United States Senate

Tuesday, June 6

"The Blue Room"
4:30 p.m. - Reception

"The Red Room"
6:00 p.m. - Dinner

The Depot
225 Third Avenue South
Minneapolis, Minnesota

For more information
Please call 651.644.2506 or email rsvp@markkennedy06.com
All attendees must be paid and registered by June 1

As Pennsylvania goes?

Posted at 10:07 AM on May 17, 2006 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)

Primary election day in Pennsylvania yesterday, and a whole bunch of incumbents -- 14 in all -- were swept out of office including the top two Republicans in the state Senate; the first time that a legislative leader was voted out of office in 40 years.

Maybe some folks will say this indicates a tidal shift nationally, but that may be wrong. There apparently was a lot of voter angry over a pay raise the lawmakers gave themselves last year.

There were a couple of congressional races worth peeking at yesterday. In Kentucky, Andrew Horne, a veteran of the war in Iraq, lost to a Democrat political columnist. In Pennsylvania, another war vet -- Patrick Murphy -- won the Democratic nod in a congressional swing district.

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Caution, humor ahead.

Posted at 10:26 AM on May 17, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

My boss always gets a letter or two whenever we go the humor route but, hey, what are you going to do? Politics is funny. It just doesn't usually intend to be.

The GOP has a new Web site out. Amy's Record, which purports to set the record straight on Senate candidate Amy Klobuchar.

On Minnesota Stories, a very tech-savvy gentleman, Chuck Olson, returns the volley... in a humorous sort of way.

This could be the start of a good match. I'll see your Web site, and I'll raise you a video. Wonder what's coming next?

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Random non-political musings while watching the Senate

Posted at 10:49 AM on May 17, 2006 by Bob Collins (4 Comments)

I'm working at home this morning, watching a not-terribly-riveting Senate floor debate over HF 2916, the fire safety account. So naturally my mind is wandering. I glanced out the back door and saw something that I see many times over the Twin Cities:

See that contrail? It's up about 37,000 feet. The thing is cruising along, reaches the Twin Cities, and then takes a hard left, more to the East (this is looking directly West). Why?

Fuel prices are bankrupting airlines, why not just take the route indicated by the red line (I put that there, that did not appear in the sky over Woodbury, just for the record) and save a few thousand dollars? There can't be a plane going in the other direction to avoid, they fly at different altitudes.

Or maybe it has something to do with the curvature of the earth and they're not really turning at all?

Tell you what. I'll keep an eye on HF 2916 for you. You figure that out and let me know.

Back to work.

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Politics and "tar baby"

Posted at 2:23 PM on May 17, 2006 by Bob Collins (1 Comments)

Every morning, I look at the traffic stats for the MPR regional news & information site. I like to see what people are responding to. OK, fine, you caught me. I look to see how Polinaut is doing (4th most popular page on the site, and moving rapidly up on Midday and Midmorning, which is the real reason why Kerri Miller is doing that Fox TV gig).

Anyway, without reading the papers this morning, I did today's routine exercise and notice this story was the most visited page on the site yesterday.

When a two-month-old story comes in #1, I know something's going on and some high fallutin' Web site has either linked to it, or a bunch of people had a reason to Google it.

So I did, and, sure enough... Tony Snow came through in his first media briefing as White House press secretary with this little quip:

Again, I would take you back to the USA Today story, simply to give you a little context. Look at the poll that appeared the following day. While there was -- part of it said 51 percent of the American people opposed, if you look at when people said, if there is a roster of phone numbers, do you feel comfortable that -- I'm paraphrasing and I apologize -- but something like 64 percent of the polling was not troubled by it. Having said that, I don't want to hug the tar baby of trying to comment on the program -- the alleged program -- the existence of which I can neither confirm nor deny.

Hmm...that briefing was at 12:30 ET yesterday and I've been doing this long enough to know that if a story shoots to #1 on our site in connection with something that happened halfway through the day, then something other than the orderly progression of the news cycle is taking place.

Someone, my theory goes, is trying to whip up the troops.

First we find something called Whizbang which mentions the incident

John Amato even links to three stories (1, 2, 3) that, he says, show people have been fired for using the term. I read those three stories, and no one gets fired...

One of the links -- #1 actually -- is the story referenced above. Now the next assignment. Find out who the heck John Amato is. Whizbang, whatever that is, references something called Think Progress, whatever that is.

But in “American lore,” the expression tar baby is also a racial slur “used occasionally as a derogatory term for black people.” Use of the term has resulted in people being fired.

"people-being-fired" has each word linked to a different story. The MPR gets the "being" position, which ticks me off because I think we should have gotten the "people" spot, even though nobody got fired.

I check another link that Whizbang mentioned and it mentioned something called Crooks and Liars. I check Crooks and Liars. I get this:

But in "American lore," the expression tar baby is also a racial slur "used occasionally as a derogatory term for black people." Use of the term has resulted in people being fired.

Again, relegated to the "being" position. Bleah.

Memo to politicians: unless you want to get off your message (and, who knows, maybe that's exactly what Snow wants) and spend two days discussing why you think "tar baby" is or isn't offensive, don't say "tar baby." Pick any other word. Just ask the guy in Stearns County. Or the Washington DC city worker who got fired for using the term "niggardly" during a budget hearing. It has nothing to do with the word you think, but perhaps prudence dictates you use another word anyway.

On the other hand, it's good for the traffic stats if you don't.

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I told you I was bored

Posted at 3:59 PM on May 17, 2006 by Bob Collins (3 Comments)

A few months ago, in a column that ripped Mike Ciresi (sort of), I wrote:

I gave up any hope of being the guy who drives the Zamboni at the old Boston Garden quite awhile ago. But here at my place of employment, I'm constantly flailing away at suggesting new things, in the face of evidence sometimes that it's a wasted effort. But hasn't that been our national character: fighting lost causes?

So today, some of my colleagues in new media proved that dreams really can come true with this puppy:

Not just a Zamboni, but a custom-made Polinaut Zamboni. Radio controlled (only because they haven't made a Web-controlled version of it yet).

It'll be awhile before I'm good enough to take it to the ice. But this was quite a surprise. I was planning on the next installment in the Polinaut plan to take over the universe being action figures.

This is how Keillor started, you know. A stupid poster about biscuits.

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Things to do when you're bored

Posted at 5:11 PM on May 17, 2006 by Bob Collins

Continuing a theme.

Suggestion: Turn on channel 17 and watch the House take roll call votes. Notice when there's a vote on a bill which lawmakers spend an hour passionately arguing. Take special note of votes that appear significantly one sided (as with today's game bill on the House floor) and note the small number of "red" votes.

Think to yourself, "hmmmm...hunters vote, what are those folks with the red (i.e. "no" votes going to do). Wait for Steve Sviggum to say "clerk will close the roll."

Watch how fast the red lights turn green.

Nothing more worthless than a vote in favor of a lost cause.

Speaking of lost causes, sounds bad for the future of the dedicated funding for the environment effort. And property tax relief has suddenly become a dominant issue.

Wetterling (not) on the issues

Posted at 7:58 PM on May 17, 2006 by Bob Collins (8 Comments)

The blog Bachmann vs. Wetterling made an interesting discovery today. Sixth District candidate Patty Wetterling has removed the "issues" page from her Web site, days after inviting people to go to her Web site to see where she stands on the issues.

I checked myself and they're right. The issues page is gone from the navigation structure. Now, I know the page was there because I've been building the 6th District Select A Candidate this week and I used the page to check where she stands on some issues (which weren't actually there, by the way, but the issues page was).

In our Select A Candidate program, I have a function that allows us to enter the URLs of pages where we "source" the candidates positions.

As luck would have it, I wrote down the URL for her position on Iraq. I had other sources for other issues so that's the only URL on her site I have.

As you can see the page is still there.

I didn't take a screenshot of her site, however, so I don't know if the page has been redesigned or not, but it looks like the nav structure changed. The "new" nav structure is also on the issues page that I recorded.

So the question is not only, why aren't the "issues" on the nav structure anymore, why is the new nav structure -- without the issues link -- on the issues page?

If I had to guess, I'd guess that the nav structure was changed to add an item and I think it's the "add an event" function because I don't recall seeing that before.

So I checked the "cached" version on Google and, yep, the "add an event function" has just been added. But on the cached version, neither is the "issues" nav. That was cached yesterday at noon, however, and I did the SAC hunt on Tuesday morning.

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