It’s high season for political signs. This one went up a few weeks ago on a fence on a residential street in Minneapolis, with clarifying graffiti added later.

Meanwhile, an intriguing Obama-Palin sign face-off is playing out above above Obama’s Minneapolis HQ at Central and E. Hennepin avenues — see it after the jump.

What signs or scenes are you seeing? Email us a picture or leave a comment in this post. A collection has been started here. 

After all, who wouldn’t pay to see this lineup? First you’ve got Dylan (OK, it’s Independence Party candidate David Dillon, but he does a mean Dylan in his “Subcommittee on Homeland Blues” video).

Then come two real curiosities. Erik Paulsen is the opposite of a RINO — he’s every bit a Republican, just not in name. Whether by evolution or Intelligent Design, his signs and Web site have nothing to show he is a Republican.

But that’s mild stuff compared to DFLer Ashwin Madia, who the Paulsen campaign has touted this week as that rarest 3rd District species: an actual unmarried, childless apartment-dweller who doesn’t coach soccer. To find anything as bizarre, you’d have to travel to the Washington, D.C., office of the 3rd District’s current member of Congress, Jim Ramstad. The nine-term Republican, who’s retiring, hasn’t fathered kids and wasn’t married until three years ago.

Four other debates are still scheduled in the race, and WCCO-TV hosts all three candidates Sunday at 10 a.m.

CQPolitics rates rush to center a toss-up

CQPolitics.com takes an extended look at the rush to the center among 3rd District contenders and rates the race as “No Clear Favorite” — the most competitive category. The attention is fresh if the quotes belong to what now seems a long-past Age of the National Conventions. One highlight:

Paulsen said the Republican Party “has lost a little bit of its brand,” but that it deserved to do so given the fact the party has moved away from core principles like a balanced federal budget. Paulsen said he wanted to be part of a “new generation of Republican reformers.”

Madia OK with new version of bailout

Madia’s campaign released a statement Friday afternoon on the latest bailout — er, economic recovery — bill in the U.S. House of Representatives. It reads in part:

I am pleased that a significant bipartisan compromise has been achieved. However, I am disappointed that compromise required more than $100 billion in pork barrel spending in order to achieve passage. Putting wooden arrow, rum, and NASCAR tax credits in a must-pass bill is exactly the kind of wasteful spending I will work against when I get to Washington.

Madia spokesperson Dan Pollock clarified that for the Minnesota Independent as meaning that Madia would have voted for the new bill. Madia told reporters Wednesday he would also have voted for the earlier version — if inaction were the only alternative. “Ashwin thinks it’s ironic that most [of] the Republicans seemed to need $100 billion in pork spending to switch their votes,” Pollock wrote in an e-mail. “Obviously, it’s a bit different in Ramstad’s case.” The long-sought Wellstone-Ramstad mental health bill was added to the package this week.

Dillon first said he preferred that Congress ready a rescue but not act yet. But he tells the Minnesota Independent that he came around to supporting the plan after consulting economists and bankers over the course of the week — and after reading it for himself. “I downloaded all 451 freaking pages,” he said. “And I have to tell you, the first 230 pages were really good.” Dillon said he liked the oversight, goals, and executive pay limits he saw in the document’s first half — and even some of the second half’s miscellaneous add-ons, though he said he didn’t like to see legislation get done that way. 

Paulsen’s position on the bailout plans put forward this week isn’t known. If the campaign responds to requests for information about his position, look for an update at MnIndy. 

More business backers for Paulsen

Three groups added their endorsements Thursday to the roster of business interests backing Paulsen’s candidacy. At what was apparently the third Paulsen news conference this week at which the candidate himself did not appear, Paulsen got pledges of support from the TwinWest Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Businesses, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. None of whom, it seems, could cajole enough members to buy tickets so the chamber of commerce in Paulsen’s hometown of Eden Prairie could host its debate.

Beyond the Polls tips race to Paulsen

A blogger at a Web site called Beyond the Polls called the 3rd District race a toss-up in July, but in a post on Minnesota races today calls it for Paulsen, the Republican — “only because I have to pick somebody, but I don’t feel real confident in the prediction.” Probably a good instinct, since the previous sentence is this:

The race might hinge on turnout and whether Obama wins by enough to carry Paulsen with him.

“I simply refuse to believe there are no community organizers in Alaska.” That’s what Marjorie Childress wrote at the New Mexico Independent after Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin maligned community organizers at the Republican National Convention (RNC).

Indeed, though their work may carry different job titles — “advocate” seems to be Alaskan for “organizer” — plenty of Alaskans do community organizing. In fact, Gov. Palin is currently hiring people to do the work of community organizers. At Workplace Alaska, Alaska’s Web site for recruiting state workers, there are two current job openings for this position:

Social Services Program Coordinator, in Anchorage or Juneau. From the job description: “The incumbent is expected to perform technical assistance, on-site community development … The duties of the position require frequent travel and strong community development skills … Your experience securing resources for youth-related programs and services, through grant writing, negotiating agreements and partnerships with a variety of organizations and agencies, and/or grassroots community mobilization.”

At ALEXsys, Alaska state government’s online job bank, there are two more community organizer-type positions advertised:

Village Advocate, Naknek, Alaska. Provide direct advocacy and crisis intervention services to adult and child victims of domestic violence, sexual assault, other crimes and related abuse. Provide systems advocacy to challenge and change institutional response and belief systems that allow violence to continue, including technical assistance and systems advocacy to village/tribal groups on community interventions in domestic violence and sexual assault.

Outreach Coordinator, Kotzebue, Alaska. Among the job duties: Disseminate information about suicide prevention, cultural strength and wellness through a variety of means. Coordinate and meet with local and regional organizations and bodies to keep them aware of outreach activities and to get their support and guidance.

On top of that, Alaska state government funds a dozen regional development organizations known as ARDORs, through a state agency that until last year was known as the Alaska Division of Community Advocacy. (Under the auspices of the Alaska Division of Community Advocacy, Sarah Palin served on the board of her ARDOR, the Mat-Su Resource Conservation and Development Council, while she was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.)

What do these ARDORs, these emissaries of community advocacy, do? One example is the Bering Straits Development Council, which according to the latest ARDOR annual report helped recruit a VISTA volunteer to tackle, among other projects, “poverty alleviation.” The Bering Straits organization also worked with the University of Alaska to “provide rural citizens with cooperative technical and organizational assistance. The goal is to foster a cash-based economy by creating rural cooperatives.”

Nearly 600 medical doctors have signed a statement calling for Republican presidential nominee John McCain to issue a full and public disclosure of all of his medical records. McCain is a 72-year-old four-time cancer survivor who has lived most of his life with physical disabilities as a result of torture endured as a prisoner of war.

In May the McCain campaign made more than 1,000 pages of medical records from the last eight years available only to select journalists for a three-hour period under a stringent set of rules. The statement argues that such a disclosure is insufficient and call McCain’s health “an issue of profound importance.”

If elected, the Republican nominee would become the oldest person ever inaugurated as president of the United States, a fact that is often mentioned in the context of his relatively inexperienced running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

McCain, who has been declared cancer-free and in good cardiovascular condition by his physicians, would be 76 years old at the end of his first term in office, if elected.

Now that McCain has a Rove-generated celeb of his own, one that the supposed “liberal media” is now treating as an icon for women despite her disturbing record of being anti-women on issues, McCain has pulled ahead in the horse race that has become American Idol to lead with 85 percent of news mentions to Obama’s 73 percent, according to perspectv.com.

The real irony, of course, lies in the whole “celebritydom” complaint McCain first lobbed at Obama. After weeks of Palintology stories it appears major news outlets really are more interested in covering, and throwing soft balls at, someone who paints herself as just like Britney Spears’ mom than they are covering the real, corrosive issues–like a failing economy, a failed war and failed foreign policies, a failed system that favors the private sector over the public–and how we got there. Stupid liberal media? Stupid, yes. Liberal, hardly.

Palin shows solidarity with the residents of Gravina Island.

Over 37 million people saw Sarah Palin declare in her acceptance speech that she told Congress, “thanks but no thanks on that bridge to nowhere.” That statement is demonstrably false, but the campaign of Sen. John McCain continues to tout Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin’s opposition to the so-called “Bridge to Nowhere” despite once linking it to the collapse of the 35W bridge.

During the 2006 gubernatorial campaign, Palin was a strong proponent of the project, which aimed to connect the town of Ketchikan, Alaska, to a nearby airport on Gravina Island.

“I support these infrastructure projects,” Palin said during a gubernatorial debate. “It will build Alaska, and it’s cheaper to do it today than it is tomorrow.”

Once governor, Palin killed the effort only after it became apparent that the federal government wasn’t going to put any more money into the bloated project beyond the $233 million in earmarks that Rep. Don Young, R-Alaska, had already secured. Under pressure to cut wasteful spending, Congress then stripped the stipulation that the money be spent on a bridge but allowed the state of Alaska to keep the $233 million for other transportation projects. Palin then directed her transportation commissioner, Leo von Scheben, to review transportation projects statewide to prepare a list of possible uses for the funds.

Days after the 35W bridge collapse John McCain connected that $233 million with the tragedy that claimed 13 lives in Minneapolis.

“Maybe if we had done it right, maybe some of that money would have gone to inspect those bridges and other bridges around the country,” McCain said at a campaign stop in Ankeny, Iowa on Aug. 4, 2007. “Maybe the 200,000 people who cross that bridge every day would have been safer than spending $233 million of your tax dollars on a bridge in Alaska to an island with 50 people on it.”

One month after McCain’s critical comments Palin changed her position on the bridge, citing the project’s high cost to Alaskans, while continuing to defend the project.

“Despite the work of our congressional delegation, we are about $329 million short of full funding for the bridge project, and it’s clear that Congress has little interest in spending any more money on a bridge between Ketchikan and Gravina Island,” Palin stated in a released statement dated Sept. 21, 2007. “Much of the public’s attitude toward Alaska bridges is based on inaccurate portrayals of the projects here. But we need to focus on what we can do, rather than fight over what has happened.”