Since it's the Friday after month's-end, the new monthly unemployment numbers were released today. Which adds another bar to the "bikini bottom" chart. Now, the measure of how many people know exactly what this means is exactly the measure of how well Democrats are getting the "jobs" message out. Because, as I've said previously, this chart should be front and center in the Democrats' campaigns this year.

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Three states held Republican primary elections yesterday, which makes it a good time to check in on the Tea Party and their preferred candidates, to see how things now stand (as well as where they could head), as we get closer to the midterm elections in November.

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I'm starting to feel a little like Martin's character, I have to admit. Because President Barack Obama seems to have hit a plateau in his approval ratings, which have remained largely unchanged for the past three months now, and not significantly changed since last November. Could it be that we've all just made up our minds about the job the president is doing? Should I just end this with "next Obama Poll Watch column in three months...?"

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Boy, Louisiana just can't seem to catch a break, can it? If it isn't Mother Nature walloping it with hurricanes, its a man-made disaster of enormous proportions about to bury its bayous and waterways under a blanket of foul-smelling muck.

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Charlie Crist just made the Florida Senate race a whole lot more interesting, by announcing he will run as an independent candidate, making it a real three-way race. This will make the election more interesting for political reporters, because it's always more fun to cover a three-horse race than a two-horse race (as it were). But the most interesting question to me is what happens if Crist actually wins and goes to the Senate -- with which party would he caucus?

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Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just scored a political victory by losing a vote. That sounds counterintuitive, but it's true. By failing to bring the Wall Street reform bill written by Chris Dodd to the floor for debate, and by losing a cloture vote on the issue to Republican opposition, Reid has shown that the Democrats (and the White House) have learned a few lessons from the health reform debate. Because by refusing to back down, and refusing to "compromise" (read: water the bill down and add loopholes for Wall Street) with Republicans, Reid is showing real strength, and real leadership.

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Democrats had a pretty good week last week. As attention shifts away from unpronounceable volcanoes (more on them in a moment) to the struggle in the Senate over Wall Street reform, the two parties almost seem to have changed their normal methods of playing the political game. The Republicans are all over the map on the issue, and extremely worried about the impression by angry voters that they are doing Wall Street's bidding -- as well they should be. Republicans are, one day, loudly denouncing the reform bill, using their standard Big Lie technique... and then, the next day, saying a deal is very close, and even voting for strong reform in committees. Republicans (some of them, at least) are chickening out of the upcoming partisan battle the Republican leadership seems to want over the issue (more on chickens later on, too). Democrats have, so far, managed both to admirably stay on message and showed an amazing amount of backbone in countering specious Republican arguments. And, so far, polls show the voters are solidly on the Democrats' side on this one, and just not buying what Republicans are telling them. As I said, we seem to have entered BackwardsLand, or something.

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Ever wondered where the Tea Partiers actually live? The PBS NewsHour website has now helpfully mapped it out as part of their "Patchwork Nation" project (in partnership with the Christian Science Monitor), for anyone interested to see. This map isn't exactly surprising, as it shows Tea Partiers are more concentrated in traditional Republican areas. But it is interesting to see such a level of detail, measured as concentration of Tea Party members for every county across America.

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I speak of the "value-added tax," or "VAT." Republicans are horrified that President Obama has a secret plan to pass this tax, and are shouting from the rooftops (of the nearest Fox News building) how strongly they're going to oppose it. The facts that Obama himself has come out against the idea, and it seems to have virtually no support in Congress, have not gotten in the way of Republicans doing so, either.

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There was an amusing story in the news recently about some folks who got word that a beer company had sent hundreds of cases of beer to the local dump, because it was past its expiration date. Finding this a shame, these enterprising folks "liberated" themselves 50 cases of free beer, presumably to drink it forthwith. The most amusing part was the closing quote in the article, from the beer company's president: "Beer is a popular product."

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