The Michigan State Tree is the Eastern White Pine. Its needles are three to five inches long, with five blue-green, slender needles per fascicle. A fascicle sheath is not present. Needles appear blue because of three or more lines of stomata. Its flower is Monoecious. Males are cylindrical, yellow, in clusters near branch tips; females are light green, tinged in red, at ends of branches. Cones are four to seven inches long, cylindrical, with thin, rounded cone scales, very resinous. It grows from 150 to 190 feet high. We hope you enjoy our GOP Primary Open Thread/Lumberjack Festival. Thank you.

So in case you haven’t heard, ol Mitt Romney is in a bit of a tizzy over what’s happening in Michigan. As Nate Silver has noted, polls that until recently seemed to suggest that Romney would likely carry his home state have swung suddenly and violently in the direction of his principal rival for the GOP nomination, and now the race between Romney and Rick Santorum is too close to call.

A frustrating development for Romney, moreover, is a sudden bout of Democratic enthusiasm for his opponent, with the Santorum Campaign and UAW officials hoping to mobilize a large Union turnout in favor of the onetime Senator from Pennsylvannia and present day candidate for Pope of America. The Romney campaign is alleging that this mob of temporary turncoats is little more than a dirty trick designed to weaken Romney and ensure that the least electable GOP candidate gets the Republican nomination:

“It’s outrageous to see Rick Santorum team up with the Obama people and go out after union labor in Detroit and try and get them to vote against me,” Mr. Romney said.

Is it a dirty trick, as Romney alleges?

Maybe, maybe not. OK, probably. But before vociferously accusing his opponents of dirty tricks, Mittens might want to re-visit an interview he gave to ABC News back in 2007:

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[CNS News]

“If you read President Kennedy’s text, while there were certainly some very important things and good things he said in that, there were some things that triggered in my opinion the privatization of faith, and I think that’s a bad thing.” [ThinkProgress]

“Gov. Jerry Brown tangled with a reporter from the conservative Washington Times newspaper after his meeting with Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius on Sunday. At one point Brown, who was defending his earlier tenure as governor and his efforts to bridge the state’s budget gap, asked the reporter: ‘Are you a Moonie?’” [LAT, via Little Green Footballs]

• “President Obama wants everybody in America to go to college. What a snob!”
• “There are plenty of tards out there living really kick-ass lives.”
• “Satan has his sights on the U.S.”
• “It says on your chart that you’re fucked up.”

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“Romney recalled he was ‘probably 4 or something like that’ the day of the Golden Jubilee, when three-quarters of a million people gathered to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the American automobile… And it took place June 1, 1946 — fully nine months before Romney was born.” [Toronto Star]