Important, um, career advice from Rhode Island U.S. Senate candidate.

Our Polling Editor Kyle Leighton on what we can and can’t tell from presidential approval ratings.

The GOP plan to extend all the Bush tax cuts failed in the Senate on a 45-54 vote. Senators voting against their parties: Mark Pryor of Arkansas for the Democrats; Scott Brown of Massachusetts and Susan Collins of Maine for the Republicans.

Here’s our explainer of what’s happening and why.

A second vote to extend the Bush tax cuts only on incomes below $250,000 in underway. Stay tuned …

There you have it: Senate Democrats just prevailed 51-48 a vote to extend the Bush tax cuts only for incomes up to $250,000.

Vice President Joe Biden presided over the Senate. Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Jim Webb (D-VA) voted with Republicans against the legislation.

Keep in mind, Harry Reid was unable to pull this off with larger majorities in 2009 and 2010.

Lots has changed since then, and no one factor contributed to the shift. Having President Obama on the ticket played no small role. That his opponent is Mitt Romney certainly made a difference. The White House’s shift into a more aggressive, populist mode after last summer’s debt limit debacle was a necessary ingredient.

Historians will have the benefit of hindsight to decide if this was part of a larger, post-financial-crisis shift in American politics that manifested itself in the Occupy Wall Street movement and continues to be fed by the anemic economy. Again, no one of these factors is dispositive and it’s difficult to assign relative impacts to each one. But all of a piece.

Statement from President Obama on the Senate vote:

With the Senate’s vote, the House Republicans are now the only people left in Washington holding hostage the middle-class tax cuts for 98% of Americans and nearly every small business owner. The last thing a typical middle class family can afford is a $2,200 tax hike at the beginning of next year. It’s time for House Republicans to drop their demand for another $1 trillion giveaway to the wealthiest Americans and give our families and small businesses the financial security and certainty that they need. Our economy isn’t built from the top-down, it’s built from a strong and growing middle class, and that’s who we should be fighting for.

Sen. Al Franken eulogizes long time comedy writing partner Tom Davis on the Senate floor.

Romney on Rafalca: “I have to tell you. This is Ann’s sport. I’m not even sure which day the sport goes on. She will get the chance to see it, I will not be watching the event. I hope her horse does well.”

So as you know, yesterday the Daily Telegraph claimed it talked to a Romney ‘advisor’ who suggested that Barack Obama simply doesn’t grasp the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ heritage that makes the US-UK ‘special relationship’ such a cornerstone of US security. This seemed like a more than usually explicit suggestion that Barack Obama may be (shall we say) lineage-ly incapable of understanding just what this whole being an American thing is really about. Suspicion fell quickly on Romney foreign policy advisor Nile Gardiner who specializes in the Anglo-American ‘special relationship’ and has — as Laura Rozen points out — a rather Blimpish penchant for invoking the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ peoples and their heritage as a cornerstone of his foreign policy views. Gardiner quickly, flatly — if rather implausibly — denied that he was the source in question, though he did concede that the Telegraph reporter had contacted him for the article in question.

[Late Update: This morning a knowledgable source at the Telegraph confirmed Gardiner’s denial, i.e., that he was not the source of the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ quote in the original article.] Read More

Colbert: I’m glad someone finally brought up the whole Anglo-Saxon thing.

NRA declines to comment on President Obama’s new call for gun control.