True North

JINDAL SAYS HE’S NOT INTERESTED IN NO. 2 SPOT WITH MCCAIN
Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said Wednesday he will not run for vice president on the GOP ticket, making him among a growing number of those pulling themselves out of the race.

Jindal’s comments come as speculation is swirling that John McCain might announce his running mate choice imminently, as a way to draw attention away from Barack Obama’s high-profile overseas trip.

The Louisiana governor told “FOX & Friends” that he’d be “surprised” if the McCain campaign came down with a decision this week. And he threw water on the buzz about his own chances.

“Let me be clear: I have said in every private and public conversation, I’ve got the job that I want. And I’ll say again on air: I’m not going to be the vice presidential nominee or vice president. I’m going to help Senator McCain get elected, as governor of Louisiana,” Jindal said.

This makes sense to me: if you run for a delegate position, you are supporting that party and it's endorsed candidate. A Wisconsin delegate may be stripped of her DNC delegate position this week for openly supporting John McCain. From the Journal Times:

Members of Wisconsin’s Democratic Party will vote Friday on the delegate status of Debra Bartoshevich, a Democratic National Convention delegate from Waterford who has publicly supported Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

Bartoshevich is expected to lose her delegate credentials, said Marilyn Nemeth, a representative from Mount Pleasant who serves on the committee that will cast the deciding votes.

Campaign advertising for local and state elections has its own charm, if not the slick messaging of more national efforts. This holds true, I think, in smaller states more than larger states. When I lived in California, every political ad appeared to be produced by Madison Avenue, with very little flavor of California and its districts.

Norm Coleman’s latest ad, “Why Not?”, shows that kind of local charm, even if it doesn’t say anything new at all:

In his Examiner column "War and peace and the Democrats," Paul Mirengoff collects conflicting statements made by Barack Obama on his signature issue of Iraq. Paul's column cites and relies in part on Peter Wehner's Commentary article "Obama's war," but it distills and updates the evidence of Obama's extraordinary cynicism. Paul shows that, in a line headed by Bill Clinton and John Kerry, Obama has perfected the art of trimming on the most serious issue confronting the United States. Paul concludes with Obama on the surge:

The night President Bush announced it, Obama opined that nothing in the plan would “make a significant dent in the sectarian violence.” But after the surge accomplished this and more, Obama insisted that he had always known that adding troops would tamp down the violence. Anyone can be wrong about whether a military operation will succeed or fail, but an honest person cannot be wrong about whether he predicted success or failure.

(Bemidji Pioneer) Local anti-war activists are announcing plans to march on the final day of the Republican National Convention. The Anti-War Committee plans a news conference Wednesday to announce plans for the September 4 demonstration, which includes a rally at the State Capitol followed by a march to the Xcel Energy Center where the convention will be held.

Another anti-war protest was already planned for the first day of the convention, September 1.

Two national groups - the Troops Out Now Coalition and the International Action Center - have endorsed the second protest along with several local groups.

It's VP tea leaf reading season, and a Republican source who attended a small private meeting with John McCain Tuesday in New Hampshire tells CNN that the GOP candidate dropped a serious hint about Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty.

Rick Bupkus of Chicago will be leading a coalition of Second Amendment activists to Saint Paul this September to picket the Republican National Convention. 

“We need to convince the Republicans to join with the majority of Americans who support Second Amendment rights”.

GOP spokesperson Anna Elk responded “Er…the GOP was supporting Second Amendment rights long before it was politically cool to do so…”

It must be a slow news day at the Huffington Post.  Gabriel Beltrone “investigated” the McCain campaign’s press/blog conference calls, looking for evidence of bias.  Beltrone discovered that one particular blogger has had more than two questions answered in these calls … me.  Basically calling me a shill, Beltrone manages to use one question I asked as evidence, demonstrating that Beltrone doesn’t have a very good grasp of the issues:

It's been said that the opposite of Progress is Congress, and never has that been more true that on the immigration issue. They could have easily passed legislation that secured our borders, expelled the criminals within our borders and reformed our completely broken immigration system. Instead they sat on their ass and kissed the hands of racist nationalist groups like La Raza whose stated goals include the fragmentation of the United States.

I just finished participating in Rep. Michele Bachmann's conference call summarizing the "American Energy Tour" trip to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and to Alaska. The most bizarre question and followup was from the Pioneer Press' Jim Ragsdale.

Rep. Bachmann used a word picture to describe the offlimits energy supplies in this way:

Picture the pantry being full of food and your children wanting to eat. Then picture that the pantry is locked. America has lots of energy but Congress has locked the pantry.

Mr. Ragsdale started by saying that he liked the picture, then asked this question:

Oil, natural gas, and wind energy baron T. Boone Pickens testified today to the U.S. Senate on moving from foreign sources of oil to, well, natural gas and wind energy. We are certainly too dependent on oil from unfriendly nations, and renewable energy should be pursued and used where it makes sense, but some of Pickens' testimony caused me to pause.

"I have to think in 10 years, the demand for oil — because the price now is going up — in 10 years, you're going to have $300 oil. Maybe higher, I don't know," said Pickens, as quoted by Fox News.

It really is eye opening to get into a new state for a long period of time so that you can see the difference between the way the state you live in (or in my case lived in for 14 years) and the one you are in now. Case in point is how the current economic downturn is being handled by the State of Utah versus how it's hitting the State of Minnesota. First Minnesota....thanks to a slowing economy, state revenues are down $530 million, the reserves (rainy day fund) is down $33 million and spending is up $64 million, leaving the state in the hole $935 million - a far cry from the $2.2 BILLION surplus that the state had at the end of FY 2006. That led some legislators to come flat out and say "I Told You So".

One year ago the economy was doing well and the Legislature was overflowing with ideas on how to spend the $2.2 billion state budget surplus. It was the first time in several years that we weren't facing a large deficit. A new cast of leaders was eager to validate its sweeping victory in the 2006 election by turning their campaign promises into promises kept.

In the midst of the spending frenzy, I wrote to constituents my belief that "we need to be prudent with spending and not leave ourselves in a tough situation if the economy takes a sudden downturn." There was at the time plenty of historical evidence to suggest such a downturn could take place.

Utah, on the other hand, took many of the steps that Rep. Beard laid out in his legislative update. I know Rep. Beard will not be surprised at the results of such prudence.

Doug Grow - long known as the DFL’s number two shill in the mainstream media (second only to Lori Sturdevant) - is trying to blow some wind into the sails of the Elwin “E-Tink” Tinklenberg campaign.

E-Tink is trying to unseat Michele Bachmann in the Sixth Congressional District. He’s most “famous” in Minnesota for having been Jesse Ventura’s do-nothing Tranportation Commissioner. He should be even more famous for his ghoulish performance after the collapse of the I35W bridge, almost a year ago. As the fires still blazed and before the last girders had fallen into the water, Tinklenberg joined State Rep. Alice “The Phantom” Hausman on TV and radio coverage of the tragedy, claiming - before the National Transportation Safety Board investigators had shut off their pagers summoning them to Minneapolis - that the collapse was the result of Tim Pawlenty’s refusal to raise the gas tax. The performance was a ghoulish embarassment that would have ended the career of a politician…

Yesterday, the RNC and Xcel Energy Center kicked off their seven-week buildout for the Republican National Convention, and they gave a tour for the local press.   The center is really three venues: Xcel itself, the River Center, and the Roy Wilkins Auditorium, and the GOP have rented all three for over nine weeks.  It’s easily the largest event the facility has ever staged.

Anyone who's willing to challenge John Murtha on his home turf is ok in my eyes. If you want my undivided attention, though, is when the fundraising dollars come flowing in for that prospective candidate. That's what's apparently happening according to this post:

According to campaign manager, Peg Luksik, William Russell for Congress reported raising $637,137 to Murtha's $113,155 to the Federal Elections Commission (FEC). The combined totals from the first and second quarters of 2008 exceed $900,000.

Michele Bachmann had an impressive fundraising quarter in Q2, 2008. According to Larry Schumacher's post, Rep. Bachmann raised $346,000. To raise almost twice that isn't just impressive. It's eye popping.

Peg Luksik frames this perfectly here:

"The incredible story about Bill's campaign is that the $15 and $25 contributions are coming in from all over Pennsylvania and every corner of the country," said Luksik. "This is K-Street versus Main Street. These are patriotic families expressing support for soldiers, sailors and Marines, and people saying they've had enough of the old 'pay-to-play' culture in the Capitol. That's what's fueling this campaign."

Let's not kid ourselves. John Murtha has bought alot of votes with his DC-to-Johnsville porktrain. It isn't difficult to imagine that people who've gotten addicted to Murtha's pork will do everything possible to keep their pork flowing.

Let's hope this is the year where the K Street Goliath is felled by a Main Street David.

Comments welcome at LFR.

How a BLOG can benefit your BPOU

By SD51 Chair, Andy Aplikowski Blog:residualforces.com

1. It will save hundreds to thousands of dollars by being your immediate response vehicle. You can have responses or information up for all to see in moments with no cost and no arm twisting with the editor of your local newspaper.

Team Franken got a dose of bad news as the new week starts.

Just a few months ago, Al Franken had plenty of reasons to smile about his chances of unseating Minnesota’s Republican Sen. Norm Coleman .

Minnesotans oppose the war — and the president — that Coleman supported. Franken was doing his homework: he had entered the race early and was running a strong grass-roots campaign focused on local organizing and smaller-venue events.

And, in early June, he secured the DFL nomination at the state convention on the first ballot.

But costly mistakes in the campaign of former Saturday Night Live writer are now imperiling his chances of winning.

Poll trends in the past several weeks indicate that Coleman has increased his lead over Franken. Although the numbers have fluctuated, four of the last five polls show Coleman ahead of Franken - three by more than nine points. So now, CQ Politics is changing the rating on the race to Leans Republican from No Clear Favorite.

On Friday, we looked into the ragged, rough beginnings of Minnesota’s renaissance, back in the 2020’s.

Today - well, we’ll take a walk through the dingy side of Minnesota’s political transformation, see how the children are doing, and…well, we’ll indulge in some foreshadowing.

Today, the RNC and the Xcel Energy Center officially began its buildout for the Republican National Convention. The RNC will occupy the entire campus of the River Center for the next nine weeks, spending six weeks building the set, a week holding the convention, and a little over two weeks tearing it down. The partners for the event held a press walkthrough today, giving interviews and touring the facility as the workers arrived to begin work.

During the day today, I’ll be putting together the extensive video I took, the interviews I got, and publishing it at Hot Air — most of it exclusive to the blogosphere. In fact, I’m attending two events this morning, the other being a press conference with a Medal of Honor recipient in the Twin Cities who is announcing his support for John McCain. I’ll have video of that as well, and we’ll show some of it today on the Ed Morrissey Show here at 3 pm ET.

Cross-posted at Hot Air.

I recently began subscribing to a newsletter that is a daily reflection of the Founding Fathers thoughts and beliefs. I got one late last week that really hit home with this blogger.

"Without Freedom of Thought there can be no such Thing as Wisdom; and no such Thing as Public Liberty, without Freedom of Speech."

-- Benjamin Franklin (writing as Silence Dogood, No. 8, 9 July1722)

Reference: The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, Labaree, ed., vol. 1(27)

My friend Kathleen O'Hearn of America's Future Foundation sent me an e-mail to remind me of an event on Thursday, July 24, about the future of conservatism and its relationship to the Republican Party. The event features Jeff Larson (convention host committee), Ryan Sager (author of "Elephant in the Room"), David Freddoso (writer for National Review) and Annette Meeks (Freedom Foundation of Minnesota).

You can read more about the event on the AFF web site. Be sure to send an RSVP.