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Minnesota. We live in this state at the risk of our own demographic peril. While we can split hairs, we have few sizable minority middle classes to speak of. We remain a socially siloed state. We're heavy on Germans and Swedes and light on salsa.

And I don't need a Margaret Mead to prove me wrong.

Just look at our roads around here.

Ever heard a Rumble Bee Hemi Truck behind your Prius? Probably not since you took that trip to Kansas for a looksee at Thomas Frank's specious observations about Red State voting. Or perhaps that one time in college when you were young and ventured to bars like the Hogsbreath in Ham Lake (or thereabouts.)

And I am 90% certain you've never seen a Lobo Edition Ford F-150. That's Spanish for "wolf," in a kind of politically incorrect way that Will Steger would probably protest.

The truck is wildly popular in Los Angeles and big states like Texas. It proves that Latinos have fallen prey to "badge engineering" just as quickly as soccer moms take to their smallish hybrid SUVs.

The Lobo is every inch one big, bad beast of a machine. The kind that devours fossil fuel and sub-compacts with a relish of a stockbroker at the sushi bar on expense account.

And its continued popularity in the face of rising fuel costs in those Latino-laden Southern states (as red as the truck itself) may say something about a voting block who could very well usher in into office the same feral energy policies that blue states fear.

Its hard to see this from the seat of a Hybrid in Linden Hills, without a Lobo, or much red meat for that matter, in sight.