Minneapolis/st. Paul News Blog

Ralph Nader, as we all know, is something of a painful contradiction. On one hand, he's the father of consumer rights. On the other, he's the monomaniacal, unrepentant enabler of George W. Bush's ascent to the presidency.

In case you missed it, Nader is running for president once more. He'll be in town on Thursday for a rally at which he'll complain about being left out of the debates. If you're inclined to attend, the necessary information can be found here. Nader recently took the time to speak with City Pages by phone, and we thought we'd share the conversation with you, our most gentle readers.

Hennepin and Ramsey County Sheriff’s departments, along with Minneapolis and St. Paul Police, and the FBI, whew, raided at least six homes this weekend in the lead-up to the Republican National Convention. They busted down doors in full riot gear with semi-automatic weapons in hand, placed folks in handcuffs and seized “protest equipment.” It was show of force that a St. Paul City Council member described as excessive.

While I was downtown picking up City Pages' RNC credentials today, I happened across the Liberty Parade. Luckily, I had my trusty Flip Video with me to record the spectacle.

In the wake of a pending national emergency in the Gulf, presumptive Republican nominee John McCain announced Sunday that the Republican National Convention will be delayed. Most of Monday's schedule has been eliminated as attention shifts to Hurricane Gustave.

According to the New York Times:

Convention planners and delegates arriving in St. Paul said it would be politically perilous to hold a four-day party as Americans were evacuating New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in advance of Gustav, a Category 3 hurricane, with winds of up to 125 miles per hour, that is expected to make landfall sometime on Tuesday. The Bush administration’s unsteady response to Hurricane Katrina, which left New Orleans in ruins three years ago, outraged Americans and remains, for many, a stain on Mr. Bush’s record.

President Bush and party leaders are working round the clock to make sure the mistakes of Katrina are not repeated, both for the sake of the nation, and Republican party leadership. President Bush and Vice President Cheney have cancelled their plans to attend the convention on Monday. For his part, McCain called on party members, asking them to "take off our Republican hats and put on our American hats.”

If you're not arrested for protesting the Republican National Convention, don't worry. You can still spend some time inside a prison cell. Amnesty International is bringing it's full-scale replica of the boxy rooms the US government uses to confine suspected terrorists to St. Paul during the RNC. The room features a small bed, steel toilet, shackles, and a camera and monitor for visitors to record a 30-second message with their thoughts about the prison.

Apparently there is nothing that makes Republican strategists more nervous than the possibility of being photographed in front of a Nazi flag during the convention. Albeit, even if it is a historic memento and reminder of American servicemen fighting on the right side of what is perhaps one of the more socially justified wars in American history.

Throughout the past week, Republican party planners have made numerous requests to TRACES Center for History and Culture in St. Paul, that it remove a Nazi banner on display at the front of its museum in the Landmark Center, says Museum Executive Director Michael Luick-Thrams.

A RNC party is being planned for inside the building and the flag is visible from the room where the party will be hosted, says Dina Vaynerman, program and marketing manager for Minnesota Landmark, the company commissioned by Ramsey County to manage the building. However, the lights at the museum will be turned off during the event.

Initially staff at Minnesota Landmarks contacted the museum to take down the display, on behalf of a client. "We have lots of events going on during the convention and get a lot of high class demands," says Dina Vaynerman, program and marketing manager at the company. "I don’t think this has been ever asked of us before," she later added.

Vaynerman wont won’t comment on who the client is, but museum staff says they were told it was a large law firm. "It’s a big swastika flag and they were uncomfortable with that," says Vaynerman. "They were afraid someone might see it and get offended."

Luick-Thrams says he was told that the client renting the building next Thursday was worried that "a delegate or some official might inadvertently be photographed" by it.

"Both parties, during both conventions, care about impression management—but this move seems to my staff and me to go too far," said Luick-Thrams in a press release.

The museum is refusing to take down the display.

Absolutely horrendous news broke this morning: Anderson Cooper might not come to Minnesota. The impeccably moisturized superstar anchor of CNN, whom we featured in our guide to the RNC, is instead preparing himself to do actual journalism. With hurricane Gustav barreling toward Louisiana, the pre-eminent heartthrob of the modern era will once again report from ground zero.

After months of railing on the need for experience, John McCain has chosen a 44-year-old running mate with two years as a state governor under her belt. Talk about staying on message.

Heard rumors about the demonstrators here in Denver? Whipsawed with fright about potential disruptions to your life during the Republican National Convention next week? We talked with several protestors who plan to make the trip, and here's what we found: mostly, they want to talk. Talk and feed you.

FOOD NOT BOMBS: LET'S DO LUNCH

Oz, a slender, t-shirt-clad 20-something with a journal he's handwriting in between time serving meals, looks like the activist he is. A student from Vermont, Oz is working with the group Food Not Bombs handing out free sustenance to community members here in Denver.

Like many who have come to protest at the DNC, he's trying to catch a ride to Minneapolis-St. Paul for the Republican National Convention. But if you're expecting to hear overheated political rhetoric about confrontation, you'll have to look elsewhere. Oz talks a mile a minute about issues, and strategy, and most of all dialogue.

Oz trolls for a ride to the RNC with the sign on his back.

"A lot of people go [to the RNC] just to yell at the Republicans -- but we've got to talk and listen to them, too," he says. "We're on different sides of the political spectrum, but we're all Americans."

Republican Texas Representative Ron Paul apparently won't be hitting up fancy parties and schmooze-fests while in Minneapolis next week. The former presidential long shot has not been asked to speak at the RNC. Instead, Paul and his scrappy band of Paulbots are throwing their own party: The Rally for the Republic at the Target Center which will feature an impressive lineup of offbeat political types including soon-to-be cable TV judge Jesse Ventura and bow-tied pundit Tucker Carlson. While he's in town, Paul is also going to make a few bucks by signing copies of his book, The Revolution: A Manifesto, at Barnes & Noble in Roseville.

Early Tuesday morning, police detained three visiting activist journalists in town to videotape cops during RNC protests as the three walked in northeast Minneapolis. The officers confiscated their belongings, which included computers, cameras, cash, and personal effects.

Yesterday, the cops gave it all back.

In between, the wronged parties, who belong to the Glass Bead Collective, managed to kick up a bit of a media storm, with everyone from the Strib to Newsday reporting on the incident.

Tim Pawlenty abruptly canceled several media appearances on behalf of John McCain today without explanation, reports the AP:

Pawlenty, in Denver to criticize Democrats on McCain's behalf, canceled without explanation an afternoon roundtable interview with the AP as well as other media interviews. Questioned about the vice presidential selection earlier, Pawlenty would only say that he is to be in Minnesota on Friday for the state fair. He had cautioned during a series of morning TV interviews that while speculation might be fun, "most of it turns out to be inaccurate."

Does it mean anything? Who knows. But according to others who may know something, expect an announcement tomorrow morning, or maybe even tonight. And keep your fingers crossed for that Biden-Pawlenty match-up.

The John McCain campaign's favorite smear-of-the-moment against Obama is that he's a "celebrity". McCain famously launched the attack in this ad, which in turn led to this response from Paris Hilton. It's a pretty clear attempt to make up for McCain's obvious shortcoming of not being able to attract and electrify a crowd the way Obama can.

But a better measure of "celebrity" would be appearances on late-night talk shows, and by that metric, McCain is 13x the celebrity Obama is, as Ana Marie Cox of Swampland points out:

John McCain was on the Tonight Show last night for the thirteenth time.

A little bird points out who else has been on the couch with Leno that many times: "Pamela Anderson, Dr. Phil, Larry the Cable Guy, Simon Cowell, Jennifer Love Hewitt." Schwarzenegger has been on twelve times; Obama has been on once.

As Denver prepares for Barack Obama's speech today at Invesco Field, the McCain camp have a canny counterpunch planned. They will release the name of John McCain's running mate tomorrow.

This is an attempt to blunt the impact of a potential post-convention bounce for Obama. It's also the latest instance of strange timing in an odd year for releasing such news: McCain's doing it on a Friday, the day when people always try to bury bad news. Maybe that says something about who the pick is going to be.

A day later, Hillary Clinton's stirring endorsement of Barack Obama is still the talk of Denver. Remarkably, some in the press and some recalcitrant Clinton backers are still clinging to the idea that this is somehow a sham. She didn't go far enough, a noisy few are saying.

To which I say: What does Hillary have to do to convince you? Defeated candidates don't have the endorse the nominee -- she did. They don't have to campaign for the nominee -- she did. And then after all of that, under enormous pressure to be all things to all people, she gave an impassioned and moving speech full of grace at a pivotal time. She went above and beyond what might have been expected even of a president, let alone someone in her position. Clinton was warm, fiery, gracious, and inclusive.

And the response is, "Well she didn't say Obama was qualified to be the pope, raise the dead, and turn sewer water into fine cologne."

Senator Clinton often consults with City Pages for image advice. And I have it on good authority that she has had it with this sentiment. She's willing to go that extra mile to convince you that she really, really means it. Here are three things she is willing to do for you.

Hopefully St. Paul Police will be shown this video as an example of "What not to do" next week. This tough guy cop brutally cross-checks a CodePink protester with his baton:

As Jeff Shaw notes here, Michele Bachmann repeatedly referred to the "Democrat Party" on Larry King yesterday. It's a stupid slur invented by the Republicans as part of their platform in 1996. From Wikipedia:

Democrat Party is a political epithet used in the United States by some people (in many cases, conservative commentators or some members of the Republican Party in speeches and press releases) instead of the name (or more precisely, the proper noun) Democratic Party.

Many members of the Democratic Party object to the term. New Yorker commentator Hendrik Hertzberg wrote: "There’s no great mystery about the motives behind this deliberate misnaming. 'Democrat Party' is a slur, or intended to be - a handy way to express contempt. Aesthetic judgments are subjective, of course, but 'Democrat Party' is jarring verging on ugly. It fairly screams 'rat.'"

But Bachmann's continued use of the phrase puts her out of step with the GOP, which voted on Tuesday in Minneapolis to start referring to the Democratic Party by its proper name:

On Tuesday, members of the Republican platform committee meeting in Minneapolis voted down a proposal to call the opposition the "Democrat Party" in the 2008 platform. Instead, they'll go with the proper Democratic Party.

"We probably should use what the actual name is," said Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, the panel's chairman. "At least in writing."

With speech reviews rolling in, our own Michele Bachmann (R-Neptune) rolled onto CNN to give her glassy-eyed take on Hillary Clinton's just-delivered oration.

After Kay Bailey Hutchinson half-heartedly delivered a talking point or two and Dennis Prager went on a bizarre anti-government rant that had nothing to do with Clinton's speech, Bachmann was asked if Clinton had scored.

"I think she did make a score, especially with her tangerine-colored pantsuit."

Hillary Clinton gave the Twin Cities a shoutout in the line of the night during her speech at the Democratic National Convention.

After ticking off John McCain's agenda--with a pointed reference to him not believing women deserve equal pay for equal work--Hillary used the geography of the Republican National Convention to deliver a bon mot that cemented the "McSame" meme:

"With an agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities. Because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart."

A few days ago, I wrote about how Hillary Clinton's speech tonight was pivotal. Moments after watching her speech, I think she knocked it clean out of the park.

Remember how John McCain didn't seem to know how many houses he had? Well, now the housing drama has gotten even weirder. It turns out at least one of McCain's houses was in fact owned by a man calling himself "Eldon Smith," which is apparently a fake name used by McCain to disguise the fact that he was moving out of the Phoenix congressional district he represented. From Politico:

In 1986, when then-Rep. McCain was running for the Senate seat vacated by Barry Goldwater, he quietly began remodeling a $500,000 house in central Phoenix owned by his wealthy father-in-law James Hensley. The $225,000 project -- which included the construction of a 4,000-square-foot addition, swimming pool, jacuzzi, cabana and barbecue -- held political peril for McCain, who was already fighting charges that he was as an opportunistic carpetbagger.

The new house was located in Phoenix's fourth congressional district -- outside of the first district in Tempe which he represented at the time.

AP caught wind of the work at 7110 North Central Ave. shortly before the general election and dispatched a reporter to examine blueprints at the planning department. They found the permit applicants were listed as Hensley and a mysterious "Mr. Smith."

The reporter tracked down McCain's plumber, who told him he'd been told Mr. Smith's first name was "Eldon."

Eldon Smith, it turned out, was John McCain.

When confronted with the blueprints, McCain's spokeswoman didn't deny that the renovation was being done for McCain and his wife Cindy -- and suggested that Smith was Cindy's mother's maiden name. She didn't explain why Marguerite Hensley might have been listed as "Mr. Smith."

Three activist journalists in town to videotape the RNC protests were stopped, questioned, and searched by police officers early this morning and had their cameras, a computer, and personal effects seized, one of the three, Vlad Teichberg, told City Pages this afternoon.

For those of you who missed Michelle Obama's speech last night, the best part came at the end, when Barack appeared on the TV screen and his children, Malia and Sasha, said hi to their daddy. The White House hasn't seen kids this cute since Kennedy.

The best part was how Sasha helped clean up Obama's gaffe--he mistakenly said he was in St. Louis, but when she asked, "Daddy, what city are you in?" he was able to correct himself and tell her, "I'm in Kansas City, sweetie."

Alright, so back in 2000 Ralph Nader was all the rage. He convinced plenty of folks that Bush and Gore were the same dude. He filled areas with his cynical campaign speeches. Hell, Eddie Vedder opened for him. He was the shit of the millennium.

And then, well, gullible humanities majors discovered he was flat ass wrong.

In St. Paul, with the RNC heading in our direction like an anvil shaped cloud, the neighborhoods remain calm. Weekend shoppers make their way down Grand Avenue, popping their heads into clothing stores and coffee shops. And on can listen to the laughter and noise of bar stories getting swapped on Selby Avenue at night.

Usually, reading long comment threads on major news sites is like wading into quicksand trying to find a nickel. Just get a new nickel. Looking for treasure among the noise is just too tiring.

But buried in the muck of this long Washington Post thread is the following succinct pearl, more like a Franklin than a nickel:

"One Spouse.
One House.
Obama."

There's some family values for you.

Will Governor Tim Pawlenty become our nation's next vice president? It's hard to keep track of all the many factors at play. Each week, the VP Pawlenty Meter (TM) provides an odds sheet to ensure you make your best bet.

OK, first a confession: We have no inside dope, so we don't really know for sure that Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty will be chosen by McCain this week. Which means we may very well look just as foolish as the rest of the media when they were prematurely forecasting Obama's pick. But the stars are certainly seeming to line up in his favor.

The first bit of evidence that T-Paw is the chosen one comes in the form of a McCain campaign email sent to Minnesota Republicans yesterday announcing a late-September fundraiser that will feature the Veep. Jonathan Martin at Politco has the scoop:

The e-mail invite touts the "Special Guest" as "The Vice Presidential Nominee."

The event is to be held Sept. 22 at the Hilton Minneapolis.

Major cautionary note/"To Be Sure" line: There is no reason to think that Mitt Romney or somebody else couldn't help raise money for the party ... But nobody would be a draw among Minnesota Republicans more than the Gopher State's own Gov. Tim Pawlenty.

McCain's reaction to Obama's selection of Biden also would seem to favor Pawlenty over Mitt Romney.

You don't want any trouble. You just want a front seat at history, to be a witness to the dance of democracy. Gentle reader, I implore you: by all means, stroll with camera in hand throughout the thoroughfares of your town's convention. But come prepared!

I've been through a few of these mass gatherings – including the famous one that went sour in a hurry, the Seattle World Trade Organization riots a decade ago. Not every convention is going to be Chicago '68, and not every enormous event features black-clad police sweeping the streets to do battle with anarchists. Still, if WTO taught me one thing, it was to anticipate shit getting three times as bad as you believe it will and then plan accordingly. You'll see why below.

Generally, bring the goods (a first-aid kit, sunscreen) that you would take camping. Here are some other items to keep in that rucksack, messenger bag, or hobo knapsack.

On paper, Joe Biden shines as a vice president pick. Not only is the man a formidable politico in his own right (ample experience, foreign relations credibility, and a moving back story), but his qualities also nicely compliment Obama— which is a polite way of saying he’s an establishment-approved, nonthreatening party steward whose appearance at a country club would elicit exactly zero double takes.

But can an Obama/Biden ticket can parlay this commingling of strengths and sensibilities into swing state victories?

Maybe. But don’t count on it. Here’s why.

An anecdote...

Among the Democratic Party Reptiles here at the convention, enthusiasm for Joe Biden as VP is more "he'll do" than "woo-hoo." No one's speaking for attribution on that score, of course, but the pick so far is being met with mild enthusiasm at best. Biden speaks here Wednesday, so perhaps he can change some minds and fire up the base.

With the general public, Biden's regarded much more favorably, according to a just-released Zogby Poll. That same poll has very bad news for Tim Pawlenty's VP hopes.