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Source: http://thinkprogress.org/2011/04/29/florida-constitutional-amendment-abortion/

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Visual source: Newseum

But as he, the Alabama governor and legislators visited Tuscaloosa, 150 miles to the northeast there was little sign of federal aid or government officials ? an absence that revealed the enormity of a cleanup effort that spans eight states.
In rural DeKalb County, Ala., where 32 people were killed by the storms, Matt Bell ignored two black helicopters that flew overhead at noontime. Instead, he focused on a field of obliterated homes, scattered with pencil-size wood shards, shredded insulation, ripped paper, shoes, toys, towels ? lives in a million fragments.

Bell was helping a neighbor look for documents. Asked about federal assistance, he just shrugged, as many in this county did Friday.

The national response framework was covered in Daily Kos posts in 2007 and 2008 (see especially The National Response Framework And You (Part I):

Note in the [ Stafford Act chart] that it's the Governor, who asks FEMA, who asks the President to declare a Federal disaster or emergency so as to free up funds and relief that through the National Response Framework can be delivered to the states. If the Governor does not or cannot ask (i.e in a catastrophic situation), things may slow down, but FEMA, through the [Federal Coordinating Official], can help smooth over that process if a FCO has been appointed. If not, other catastrophic mechanisms outside the Stafford Act may need to apply. That's a post-Katrina lesson that is clearly in need of implementation. This implies that FEMA is running the show, though, and under DHS' complex hierarchy, that is far from clear.

The federal response is intiiated by the state, and complexity and speed are inversely related. The wider the area affected, the slower the response will be (because supplies and infrastructure needs to come from farther away.) So let's talk about cutting the budget, shall we? Especially for FEMA. (see GOP's Continuing Resolution Cuts Funding for National Weather Service, FEMA.) Brilliant idea.

EJ Dionne:

Alas, Americans don?t pay much attention to politics in Canada, our most reliable ally. That might change Monday night when returns roll in from the Canadian election. If the polls are right ? and there are a lot of ?ifs? ? our friendly neighbor to the north is brewing a political revolution.
The big news out of Canada is that North America?s largest social democratic party ? that would be Canada?s New Democratic Party, or NDP ? threatens to displace the centrist Liberal Party as the country?s main opposition. Even more astonishingly, the NDP has an outside chance of winning the most seats in the election.

Charles Blow:

Donald Trump is still playing to suspicions of President Obama. And it?s no longer theoretical. It?s theological. For the detractors, truth is no longer dependent on proof because it?s rooted in faith: faith that American exceptionalism was never truly meant to cover hyphenated Americans; faith in 400 years of cemented assumptions about the character and capacity of the American Negro; and faith that if the president doesn?t hew to those assumptions then he must be alien by both birth and faith.

Colbert I King:

I?m looking at a photo with the faces of three chimpanzees imposed on the bodies of a man, woman and child. The baby chimp?s face is covered with Obama?s picture. It was e-mailed in California this month with the message: ?Now you know why ? no birth certificate!?
The sender was Marilyn Davenport, an elected member of the Orange County Republican Central Committee, who thought her GOP colleagues would also get a kick out of seeing the president of the United States depicted as the offspring of chimpanzees.

?I simply found it amusing regarding the character of Obama and all the questions surrounding his origins of birth,? Davenport said in a written statement. ?In no way did I even consider the fact that he?s half black when I sent out the email.?

Kathleen Parker:

In a saner time, Trump would be dismissed as the carnival barker Obama implied he is. People would have recognized Trump as a self-aggrandizing megalomaniac and put a period at the end of the sentence. Not remotely would his name be followed with this phrase: ?who is leading other Republican candidates in polls.?
Which, at the moment, happens to be true. Indeed, Trump is enjoying a resurgence of self-regard, awarding himself accolades for forcing Obama?s hand.

To answer my own question, I honestly don?t know what to make of Trump?s popularity nor of the continuing belief that Obama wasn?t born in the 50th state. Yet even otherwise rational people continue to carry on and react as though facts were irrelevant. Even as the president spoke at a news conference to dispel remaining suspicions, the Twitterverse confirmed that nothing had changed. The conspirators conspired; the rueful rued.

The rueful rued? It's because people like Parker insist on false equivalence like in this piece. Denounce the crazies and praise the sane, Kathleen. Yeah, it means saying nice things about Democrats and bad things about Republicans. You'll get over it. Just suck it up and do your job.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/l3yc0ItdWc8/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Round-up

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Some "birthers" have said that doubts about President Obama's birthplace are now over since he released his birth certificate. But others are moving on to new conspiracy theories.

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/6WznPQWASC8/index.html

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Talking-Points-Memo/~3/fyOZgOW4cFU/uncensored.php

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President Obama will nominate Commerce Secretary Gary Locke as the next U.S. ambassador to China, senior administration officials said late Monday, continuing a game of musical chairs that has shuffled top administration officials at the start of the second half of Obama's term.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/07/AR2011030704348.html?wprss=rss_politics

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Jack Davis is proving to be a real wild card

Siena (PDF) (4/26-27, likely voters, no trendlines):

Kathy Hochul (D): 31
Jane Corwin (R): 36
Jack Davis (T): 23
Ian Murphy (G): 1
Undecided: 9
^{(MoE: �4.5%)}

I have to say, I wasn't expecting numbers like this, not at all, for a whole host of reasons. Republicans looked very unified in tapping Assemblywoman Jane Corwin - she was acceptable to the conservatives and even quite a few teabaggers, despite her establishment pedigree, and she also was personally very rich. Meanwhile, Democrats dithered, waiting weeks to pick a candidate after Corwin was already in the race. Furthermore, the one bona fide teabagger who hoped to run, Iraq war vet David Bellavia, screwed up his paperwork and failed to get on the ballot. And on top of that, Ian Murphy, the writer who achieved his 15 minutes with his fake David Koch prank call to Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, decided to hop into the race on the newly-reconstituted Green Party line. And oh, yeah, the 26th is the most Republican district in the state. The GOP seemed poised to avoid the mistakes they'd made in the NY-20 and NY-23 specials. It didn't seem promising for Dems.

But the one wild card has proven much wilder than I had anticipated: zillionaire nutball Crazy Jack Davis is having a much bigger impact than his shot-to-hell reputation would seem to warrant. Prior to this year, Davis had run for this seat in three successive cycles from 2004 to 2008, losing twice in the general and once in the primary ? all three times as a Democrat. But he cut a strange figure for a Dem, sound like the most unhinged of right-wingers on his favorite issue, immigration. He also has a well-deserved reputation as a lunatic who is impossible to work with, abuses people, and can't hold on to staff. Thus he earned the epithet "Crazy," and he's been Crazy Jack Davis for about as long as I've known of him.

He looked to cement that reputation a few months ago, when he decided he'd get into the mix for this seat yet again, following Rep. Chris Lee's resignation. But this time, Davis wanted to score the Republican and Conservative Party lines ? well, I told you he was crazy. He was quickly rebuffed by both, but this is where that unusual "T" line comes in next to his name in the blockquote at top. Thanks to his millions (he's always spent his own money freely), Davis was easily able to get on the ballot as an independent, and cannily chose to name his ballot line the "Tea Party." This caused an entertaining split among teabaggers in western New York, with the "real" teabaggers insisting that Davis was just trying to bogart their good name (yeah, I know, LOL)... but there was nothing they could do about it.

And thanks to his free-spending ways, it seems like Davis is screwing up what should have been a sure thing for Corwin. At the same time, he's also hurting Hochul. Looking at the cross-tabs (PDF), Davis gets 24% of the Republican vote, 20% of the Democratic vote, and 27% of the independent vote. Rare to see a candidate with such cross-spectrum appeal!

It'll be very interesting to see how the major-party candidates react. Surely the campaign committees are doing their own polling, but even if it doesn't match Siena's, these numbers will have to make operatives second-guess themselves a bit. Does Corwin start attacking Davis? Or does she try to pound Hochul? Or both? As I see it, though, the strategy for Hochul is a lot simpler. As Siena notes:

They strongly oppose cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits to help close the deficit (59-38 percent); however, they strongly support increasing personal income tax rates for the wealthiest Americans (62-35 percent)....

Hochul's most recent ad attacked Corwin on Medicare ? Corwin said she'd have voted for the Ryan Republican budget ? and I said the other day that she should make this her unrelenting theme for the final weeks of the campaign. The poll numbers bear that out. (I'm sure that Hochul won't call for tax increases on the rich, despite that being super-popular in a red district, but that wouldn't be a bad idea, either.)

We'll also have to see if the DCCC and NRCC decide to get involved here. If Hochul can use Medicare the way ex-Rep. Scott Murphy beat Jim Tedisco over the head with the stimulus in the spring of 2009, this could be a real race ? coupled, of course, with the Jack Davis factor. All of a sudden, things just got exciting in western New York.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/Nhertbt1QEg/-NY-26:-Jane-Corwin-(R)-leads-by-just-five-in-new-poll

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Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates thanks presidents Bush and Obama.

Source: http://feeds.abcnews.com/click.phdo?i=634d845ce2851041f9b83933c05114f7

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/04/29/2011-tornado-outbreak-deaths_n_855646.html

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Due to a wave of online support?much of it from you guys?the Democratic Party committees in Wisconsin are starting the recall elections with a large cash advantage on their Republican counterparts. Here are the fundraising totals in the most recent reports, which show activity through March 21st:

Some quick notes on these numbers:

?Almost all of the Democratic money came from small donors on Act Blue. Check out the Act Blue stats for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin here, and the Wisconsin State Senate Democratic committee here.

?The Democratic Party of Wisconsin spent a large amount of money because they are the central organizing hub for the recall petition gathering effort.

?The amount of money the Democratic committees have on hand exceeds the total amount of money all of the incumbent Senators facing recall have on hand:

* Hopper has $9,844 in debts
* Amount raised from January 1 through April 22
** These numbers reflect activity from March 22 through April 18, and thus are more recent than the numbers for the state committees listed above. Also, numbers for Republican Robert Cowles are not currently available.

Overall, the Democratic advantage is solid but far from decisive. This is because outside expenditures are likely to dominate spending during recall elections, just as they did in the Supreme Court election. In that election, JoAnne Kloppenburg and David Prosser received a combined total of $600,000 in public financing for the general election, while six times that amount was spent by outside groups. The ratio of candidate money to outside money could be similar during the recall elections.

Source: http://feeds.dailykos.com/~r/dailykos/index/~3/QjFJDs3Cy7w/-Wisconsin-Democrats-start-recall-elections-with-large-cash-advantage

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Recent polls have found that as much as 15% to 20% of the public, including about 30% to 45% of Republicans, falsely believe that President Barack Obama was not born in this country. Will Wednesday's release of Obama's long-form birth certificate put an end to the birther myth?

Source: http://rss.cnn.com/~r/rss/cnn_allpolitics/~3/I4WMxerzl7g/index.html

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Gen. David Petraeus will return to Afghanistan before confirmation.

Source: http://feeds.abcnews.com/click.phdo?i=483015a4e6cc81ceb9f677563f025cfe

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George W. Bush’s father: I have a form of Parkinson’s disease, which I don’t like. My legs don’t move when my brain tells them to. It’s very frustrating. But I am in no pain, and I have discovered the amazing scooters, which Barbara accuses me of driving like I drive my boat. But they help [...]