NYTimes.com

The grey lady sees ol' blue eyes in the White House.

​In an article in the Sunday edition of the New York Times titled "The 2016 Election, Already Upon Us," Washington bureau chief David Leonhardt pontificated on likely candidates for a presidential election four years in the future.

In among the usual suspects -- Hillary Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, Elizabeth Warren -- is an awfully familiar local name.

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The city's 2003 plans imagine a Metrodome-less downtown.

​The Metrodome, in its current form, has become an afterthought in recent weeks as Gov. Mark Dayton and Mayor R.T. Rybak push for the Vikings to stay somewhere in Minnesota.

Though one Rybak proposal imagines an $895 million renovation of the Metrodome, it seems obvious that the 'Dome's days as an NFL stadium are numbered. Will the city load up the 30-year-old venue with dynamite? And if it does, what will downtown look like without the stadium?

The city has a plan on the books examining that very question, the Downtown East / North Loop Master Plan, which came out in 2003. In a plan designed to "encourage renewed interest in living, working, and shopping in downtown Minneapolis," the city considered the increasingly likely scenario in which the Minnesota Twins and Vikings no longer needed the Metrodome.

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R.T. Rybak says the city has shelled out more than $30 million on the Dome over the years.

​This isn't going to help the Vikings on that whole new stadium plan idea thing.

Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak sent a letter to Gov. Mark Dayton earlier this week claiming the city is entitled to a $30 million cut of the profits if the Metrodome is sold -- money that has been set aside to help foot the bill for the Arden Hills stadium proposal.

Rybak spokesman John Stiles says the mayor is actually a big advocate for a new stadium, but doesn't think this $30 million should help fund it, especially if the Vikings move out of Minneapolis as planned.

"The mayor's often said, 'Number one, it's important for the Vikings to stay in Minnesota'," says Stiles. "His strong preference is they stay in Minneapolis."

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Mayor R.T. Rybak's proposal would avoid property tax hikes for most Minneapolis residents.

​Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak proposed his 2012 budget in downtown Minneapolis this morning.

The good news: those pesky potholes might be filled in sooner than expected.

The bad news: The city of Minneapolis could lose 90 employees.

As of today, the city can pretty much tell us where the potholes will get filled. Which jobs are going to be cut is harder to say.

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Booker's Snowmageddon was bigger than Rybak's.

​Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak never goes anywhere without his Blackberry and iPhone, and he's a tweetaholic when blizzards come to town, updating his followers about snow plow progress and urging neighbors to move their cars and help each other out.

Yesterday, as more than a foot of snow fell on our fair city, Rybak couldn't help but poke fun at Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker. The man who became legendary during a December blizzard for becoming a Twitter Super Hero.

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Years of cuts have already left the department below industry standards.

​If Minnesota Senate and House Republicans get their way, the Minneapolis Fire Department is in for even more bad news.

Republicans announced a budget proposal yesterday that recommends cutting Local Government Aid to help balance our $6.2 billion deficit.

If the bill were to pass, Minneapolis would have to lay off eight firefighters, says John Stiles, spokesman for Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak.

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The mayor says Pawlenty-era cuts have put the city in a tight spot.

​Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak's 2011 budget proposal calls for at least 32 cuts to the fire department. Many in the department think personnel levels are already too low, making it more dangerous than ever to be a fire fighter in Minneapolis. Here is an abbreviated version of our interview with Rybak on the cuts.

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Image via YouTube/IBNN

Spike Moss, at right, walked out of the Project CeaseFire meeting.

​North Minneapolis activist Spike Moss leveled accusations of racism at Mayor R.T. Rybak's office yesterday, furious at what he called the mayor's disrespect for local volunteers working day and night trying to curb the rising violence across the city. At issue: Project CeaseFire. At stake: a $2.2 million U.S. Department of Justice grant.

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Buy weed and pull a trigger, the mayor says

​Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak thinks we gave him short shrift this morning, after he blamed marijuana buyers for the recent spike in gang violence and homicides around the city. So he did what a lot folks do: He offered a (lengthy) comment below our post.

"The comments I made about this are a lot more complex than you state here," he said. "My point about marijuana comes in here: The gangs that operate in this area get a lot of money from the sale of drugs and the key money drug is marijuana. If you buy marijuana in this area it's a good bet that they money you paid directly or indirectly gets back to the gangs who are part of this violence."

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Obama and Rybak discussed ways to combat radicalization of Somali youth

​Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak joined Newark, N.J., Mayor Cory Booker and Columbus, Ohio, Mayor Michael Coleman at a White House meeting on Tuesday to talk about coping with terrorist groups recruiting people on American soil.

One of the issues at hand, according to the Newark Star-Ledger, was the growing worry about radicalization of some members of the growing Somali communities in both cities.

It's another example of how we're gaining notoriety as a place where groups with terrorist ties are finding recruits. "60 Minutes" recently trained its cameras on the case of 20 missing Minnesota men believed to have been recruited by Al Shabab--a terrorist organization with ties to Al Qaeda.

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