When 15 thousand people drop about thirty bucks and fill Hilton Coliseum in Ames, Iowa for a Cyclone basketball game, it is considered an insignificant event even in the limited world of the Big Twelve Conference over a single weekend.  ESPN rarely even bothers to visit. When 16 thousand folks in Ames drop thirty bucks and vote in something called the Ames straw poll, we are told it is a nationally significant political event that will have impact into the next year and across all 50 states.  All media outlets are abuzz.  Um, is it just me?  Why do we do that? Today Michele Bachmann is basking in the glow of a victory so mathematically insignificant that the total of all the votes tallied for all candidates is significantly less than the margin of victory will be in the vast majority of single congressional districts in the 2012 election.  And yet, this event has supposedly cemented her place as a top tier candidate in the GOP field along with newly entered...(Read Full Post)