Zandar

The number one golden rule of statistical analysis:  Correlation does not always equal causation.  Having said that, there's pretty strong correlation in this NY Times analysis of areas with high incidences of racially charged Google searches and areas where President Obama underperformed in 2008 by Seth Stevens-Davidowitz:

Some delightful naivete from Rolling Stone's Chris Thompson on why the GOP's racial barricade strategy is "doomed to fail" needs to be tempered by some cold, harsh reality.  First, Thompson's premise:

And the Wall Street Journal goes there, accusing AG Eric Holder's crusade to combat voter suppression of minorities as being nothing more than "racial incitement".

CNN asks this question:

If you want to know why Republicans are so very interested in vote suppression among Latino voters (and minorities in general, but especially Latino voters) at the state level, it's because of this right here:

It's time to get your Village kaiju fight on.  Giant monsters everywhere, and yet this one has seemingly been defeated before it could shoot lasers out of its mouth.  Centrist lasers.  Paul Krugman mourns today's putative opponent, Americans Elect.

Politico's Ben White gets his inner Matt Taibbi on and declares that voter don't understand the nuances behind last week's $2 billion Big Casino loss from Jaime Dimon and JP Morgan Chase (or the fact that Republicans in Congress fatally weakened the Dodd-Frank legislation), the only thing they understand is that it's all President Obama's fault.

I have a couple of observations from the NC Amendment 1 vote last night.  First of all, I've never been more ashamed of the state I grew up in.  I say that coming from one of the reddest parts of western NC, which hasn't elected a Democrat to the House since Nixon was in charge of the country.  Second, all the polling was basically wrong as hell.  Most everyone agreed that the Amendment was going to pass by 8-10 points or so.  It ended up passing by 22 and with hefty turnout.

I've talked about this before at ABLC and whenever I bring up the myth that African-Americans and Latinos are against gay marriage more than white voters are, it turns out that it just isn't true.  I explain why it's garbage, I explain that the forces of inequality are trying to split the liberal coalition apart along these false "fault lines" on purpose, and I still catch static from the assembled.

There are some days where I'm just entirely ashamed of the state I grew up in, North Carolina, and this is one of those instances.

Yeah I know.  It's a chunk of Meet The Press, and it has Rachel Maddow.  But it's actually a good argument, and Maddow drops the gloves here on a roundtable on the War on Women when GOP strategist Alex Castellanos goes all "now listen here young lady..." and she basically slaughters him and hangs him on a meathook.  Hilary Rosen and GOP Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers go at it too.

President Obama killed it this weekend at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in DC Saturday night.

Conservatives continue to attack Michelle Obama as proxy to her husband, this time over the idea that in a bad economy, the Obama family shouldn't dare go anywhere lest they draw the ire of swing state voters in Republican focus groups.

Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove and his merry band of propagandists at Crossroads are going after our "celebrity" President again, just like the GOP did in 2008.  Nothing new under the sun, except for the $300 million in Obama-bashing they plan to do in the next six months.