Wednesday Open Thread [5.29.13]

NY Congressman Peter King (R):

“We know the type of suffering that people go through during these types of crises and we’re not going to hold – I’m certainly not going to hold the good people of Oklahoma hostage because they may have some hypocrites in their delegation. […] We had to wait over 100 days before we even got the aid approved to New York and New Jersey. Now, we find the senator from Oklahoma who voted against aid to New York and New Jersey saying that aid should be sent to Oklahoma because there’s a difference between tornado assistance and hurricane assistance. This is absolute hypocrisy.”

Some polling goodness:

KENTUCKY–US SENATE—Public Policy Polling: Senator Mitch McConnell (R) 45, Kentucky Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes (D) 45.

NATIONAL–OBAMACARE APPROVAL—CNN: CNN helpfully decides to couch this poll as finding that 54% of the country oppose Obamacare. Well, that is not really true. Let’s look at the findings of this poll in chart form:

There, you see, only 35% of the respondents in the CNN poll actually oppose Obamacare. CNN decided to add in those who thing the law is not liberal enough and want Single Payer Healthcare as opponents of the law. That’s not really accurate. That 16% when pushed will support Obamacare as opposed to any conservative alternative or nothing at all, but given their druthers, they’d rather have single payer or a public option. Kevin Drum summarized the results in an accurate way, which is largely the opposite of what you’ll see in most of the published reports: “According to a recent poll, 59 percent of Americans support Obamacare, while 35 percent oppose it. Among supporters, 43 percent support the law as is, while 16 percent think it doesn’t go far enough.”

There you go CNN. Was that so hard?

MINNESOTA–GOVERNOR—Public Policy Polling: Gov. Mark Dayton (D) 51, Kurt Daudt (R) 39; Dayton 52, Tom Emmer (R) 39; Dayton 51, David Hann (R) 36; and the rest of the possible Republican field of candidates trails Dayton by 16 points or more.