This chart shows in striking fashion when the productivity gains of the U.S. economy split off from the growth in pay. Brian Beutler talked to various economists about why it happened. There’s no simple answer — and there’s no prospect of the systematic causes of the great decoupling being corrected in this political climate any time soon. But beneath all the noise and nonsense of this campaign season, that split between productivity and wages is a fault line between the two parties. Mitt Romney and Republicans in general don’t consider that decoupling to be a problem. Barack Obama and Democrats will acknowledge it’s a problem, although there’s considerable disagreement over whether the fixes are politically possible.

Facebook has a new feature that lets you indicate in your profile if you’re a registered organ donor and will connect you to your local registry.

But here’s the cool part.

The California chapter of the registry that Facebook teamed up with reported an 800 percent increase in donor registrations yesterday.

Video lowlights of the strange phenomenon that was the Newt 2012 campaign.

The silliest part of the silly season is the breathless speculation about the veepstakes. We promise not be breathless.

The Miami Herald dug up George Zimmerman’s old Myspace page that has him railing at “mexicans.”

We’ll be hosting our inaugural Google+ Hangout Thursday, May 3 at 3 p.m ET.

Join TPM2012 reporters Evan McMorris-Santoro, Benjy Sarlin, and Pema Levy as they give you the inside scoop on Obama v. Romney and share their insights on the campaign ahead.

What questions should we ask? What do you want to know? Shoot us an email with “Hangout” in the subject line, or tweet @TPM.

This is pretty remarkable: “As of 7:55am May 2, Donate Life California has had a 5105% increase in online sign ups since April 29!”

Evan McMorris-Santoro reports from today’s Romney event in suburban Northern Virginia where women were front and center.

Drudge/Politico accusation against Obama blows up in their faces because they didn’t read the preface to his book.

Politico followed by Drudge claimed that Obama never shared with readers that some of the characters in his book Dreams of My Father were composite characters. Only he says so very clearly in the preface to the book, which they failed to read.

To understand the last 40 years of American history, look at this chart.