Today's installment of campaign-related news items that won't necessarily generate a post of their own, but may be of interest to political observers:

* In a new video, Jim Messina, President Obama's campaign manager, notes that the campaign raised $43.6 million in April, which is down from March's totals.

* In Wisconsin, the latest Daily Kos/Public Policy Polling survey shows Gov. Scott Walker (R) ahead by five in his recall fight against Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett (D), 50% to 45%. The election is three weeks away.

* Gallup asked respondents to put aside personal preferences and predict who would win the 2012 presidential election. Obama led Mitt Romney, 56% to 36%.

* Karl Rove's attack operation, super PAC Crossroads GPS, is launching a 10-state, $25 million ad buy, attacking Obama's economic policies.

* In New Hampshire, Public Policy Polling shows Obama leading Romney by 12, 53% to 41%.

* In New Jersey, Quinnipiac shows Obama with a healthy lead over Romney, a dynamic that wouldn't change if Gov. Chris Christie (R) is added to the ticket.

* On a related note, incumbent New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez (D) leads his Republican challenger, state Sen. Joseph Kyrillos, 45% to 35%.

* New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) has already withdrawn from VP speculation, but she moved even further away this week when she mocked Romney's preferred immigration policy. "'Self-deport?' What the heck does that mean?" she asked.

Associated Press

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) yesterday said he would do in 2013 exactly what he did in 2011: use the debt ceiling to hold the nation hostage. As Boehner sees it, Democrats have to give in, or he'll trash the full faith and credit of the United States and crash the economy on purpose.

And why did Boehner declare his intentions in mid-May? Because the Speaker is trying to shape upcoming tax-policy negotiations, applying leverage to get what he wants. The problem, as Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner noted yesterday, is that Boehner's calendar doesn't quite work.

At the end of this year, an enormous fight is looming over taxes and revenue, when all of the Bush-era tax cuts are set to expire, just as major spending cuts from the debt-ceiling agreement are set to begin. This doesn't directly relate to the debt-ceiling fight, but Boehner wants it to -- yesterday was partly about sending a signal to the White House. The Speaker was effectively saying, "I'm holding a gun to the nation's head; if you don't want me to pull the trigger, don't push for any tax increases."

But Geithner spoke at the same fiscal summit, and said something interesting.

"[O]n the current estimates ... we're likely to hit the debt limit sometime before the end of the year, but Congress has given the executive branch a set of tools that buy [administration officials] some time. And those tools will probably take us into the early part of 2013, thus separating somewhat the timing of the expiry of the tax cuts and the sequester with the ultimate need for Congress to act on the debt limit. You know, they should do it as soon as they can, but that's the basic sequence in this context."

That may sound a little clunky, but in everyday terms, the Treasury Secretary was explaining that policymakers will be dealing with expiring tax cuts and triggered spending cuts in December, but won't be dealing with the debt ceiling until January and February.

Boehner wants to tie the debt limit to the December discussion, but the administration has no reason to play along. Indeed, at this point, we don't even know who'll be the President or the House Speaker the next time the ceiling needs to be raised.

To be sure, the variables may change, and as Brian Beutler noted, if federal receipts slow, the deadline for the debt-ceiling vote may come much sooner.

But for now, Boehner has a strategy that he probably won't be able to execute.

If you're going to present arguments based on anecdotes, make sure the anecdotes say what you want them to say.

Last month, Mitt Romney blamed President Obama for a closed drywall plant in Ohio, but the facility was shut down during the Bush era. This week, the Romney campaign released a video showing a closed Electrolux plant in Iowa, but the company has added more American jobs than it had lost.

Romney also released this video about Steel Dynamics, which benefited in part from an investment by Bain Capital.

The point of the clip isn't subtle: Romney wants voters to overlook all the mass layoffs he orchestrated at his vulture-capital firm, and instead focus on some relative success stories. The minute-long ad even tells the viewer that Steel Dynamics is a "perfect entrepreneurial story."

But this anecdote isn't quite what Romney wants it do be.

What Romney doesn't mention is that Steel Dynamics also received generous tax breaks and other subsidies provided by the state of Indiana and the residents of DeKalb County, where the company's first mill was built.

The story of Bain and Steel Dynamics illustrates how Romney, during his business career, made avid use of public-private partnerships, something that many conservatives consider to be "corporate welfare."

The former governor, on the campaign trail, likes to tell voters that government "gets in the way of creating jobs." Romney apparently didn't feel this way when he relied on government handouts as part of his private business deals.

The Steel Dynamics example is especially interesting -- the community even had to levy a new income tax to help finance Romney's venture. I wonder why the ad overlooked this detail.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie and Newark Mayor Cory Booker have made a parody video. From the New Jersey press:

The three-and-a-half minute video unveiled Tuesday night at the New Jersey Legislative Correspondents Club dinner shows the Republican governor being thwarted at do-gooding by Booker. The mayor fixes the governor's flat tire, catches a falling baby and backs up Bruce Springsteen after the music star loses a guitar, each time telling Christie, "I got this!"

Not to take the fun out, but when we watched this at my house, our reaction went from Hey, that governor who snarls at town halls and wants the majority to vote on our rights seems so likeable to something more along the lines of Wow, he knows exactly what he's doing.

Associated Press

Romney's magic act in Iowa yesterday.

Mitt Romney delivered a curious speech in Iowa yesterday, presenting his thoughts on the budget deficit, the debt and debt reduction, which is worth reading if you missed it. We often talk about the problem of the left and right working from entirely different sets of facts, and how the discourse breaks down when there's no shared foundation of reality, and the Republican's remarks offered a timely peek into an alternate reality where facts have no meaning.

Even the topic itself is a strange choice for Romney. If the former governor is elected, he'll inherit a $1 trillion deficit and a $15 debt, which he'll respond to by approving massive new tax cuts and increasing Pentagon spending. How will he pay for this? No one has the foggiest idea.

In other words, the guy who intends to add trillions to the debt gave a speech yesterday on the dangers of adding trillions to the debt.

More importantly, though, Romney presented a vision of the last few years that bears absolutely no resemblance to reality at any level. Jon Chait had a good piece on the remarks.

Mitt Romney delivered a speech today about the budget deficit. It’s hard to wrap your arms around Romney’s argument, because it’s an amalgamation of free-floating conservative rage and anxiety, completely untethered to any facts, as agreed upon by the relevant experts.

In the real world, the following things are true: The budget deficit was projected to top $1 trillion even before President Obama took office, and that was when forecasters were still radically underestimating the depth of the 2008 crash. Obama did propose temporary deficit-increasing measures, an economic approach endorsed in its general contours, if not its particulars, by Romney’s economists. These measures contributed a relatively small proportion to the deficit, and their effect is short-lived. Obama instead focused on longer-term measures to reduce the deficit, including comprehensive health-care reform projected to reduce deficits by a trillion dollars in its second decade. Obama put forward a budget plan that would stabilize the debt as a percentage of the economy. Obama has hoped to achieve deeper long-term deficit reduction by striking bipartisan deals with Congress, and he has tried to achieve this goal by openly endorsing a bipartisan deficit plan in the Senate and privately agreeing to a more conservative plan with John Boehner, both of which were killed by Republican opposition to any higher revenue.

The story told by Romney is one in which all of these things are either untrue or could not possibly be true.

I don't think Mitt Romney is stupid. I do think Romney is operating from the assumption that voters are stupid.

A few weeks ago, the Senate approved the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act fairly easily, with a 68 to 31 vote. Though all 31 opponents were Republican men, the measure enjoyed at least some bipartisan support.

But the measure still has to get through the Republican-led House, which will vote on its own, watered-down version of VAWA today. The White House, hoping to make matters clear to the lower chamber, issued a veto threat yesterday, saying the House GOP version is unacceptable.

The House GOP bill is stripped of expanded protections included in the Senate-passed version, which extends coverage to gay, bisexual, and transgender victims of domestic abuse.

"For instance, H.R. 4970 fails to provide for concurrent special domestic-violence criminal jurisdiction by tribal authorities over non-Indians, and omits clarification of tribal courts' full civil jurisdiction regarding certain protection orders over non-Indians," the White House said in a statement.

"The bill also fails to include language that would prohibit discrimination against LGBT victims in VAWA grant programs. No sexual-assault or domestic-violence victim should be beaten, hurt, or killed because they could not access needed support, assistance, and protection."

The Violence Against Women Act has been a bipartisan success story for nearly two decades, and this year's reauthorization was not expected to be one of the year's more contentious disputes. But the Senate version, co-written by a liberal Democrat (Vermont's Pat Leahy) and a conservative Republican (Idaho's Mike Crapo), is apparently too much for the House.

So, the Republicans have gutted the Senate version. Indeed, the House proposal "adds burdensome, counter-productive requirements that compromise the ability of service providers to reach victims, fails to adequately protect Tribal victims, lacks important protection and services for LGBT victims, weakens resources for victims living in subsidized housing, and eliminates important improvements to address dating violence and sexual assault on college campuses. Among the most troubling components of this bill are those that jettison and drastically undercut existing and important, long-standing protections that remain vital to the safety and protection of battered immigrant victims."

House Republicans are likely to pass their version anyway, sending VAWA to a conference committee. Time will tell how that turns out. But in the meantime, when it comes to assessing the GOP's efforts to undermine women's interests in 2012, the fact that Republicans are putting the Violence Against Women Act in jeopardy clearly deserves a place on a very long list.

Associated Press

For months, the Republican U.S. Senate primary in Nebraska has been a bitter proxy fight, pitting the GOP establishment's choice, state Attorney General Jon Bruning against the even-more-far-right state Treasurer Don Stenberg. The two waged a bruising battle for nearly a year, but as recently as two weeks ago, it looked like Bruning would get the nod.

Who won? Oddly enough, neither of them.

In a dramatic, come-from-behind dash to the finish line late Tuesday evening, state Sen. Deb Fischer of Valentine laid claim to the Republican Senate nomination.

Her late surge, perhaps unprecedented in modern-day Nebraska political history, upended a Senate race that appeared to be settled as recently as 10 days ago with the GOP prize within the grasp of Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning.

One almost needed a scorecard to keep up with the competing contingents. First there was Bruning, an experienced and well-funded statewide candidate recruited by the National Republican Senatorial Committee, backed by the party establishment at the state and national level. Then there was Stenberg, who enjoyed the support of Jim DeMint, Rick Santorum, the Club for Growth, and FreedomWorks.

And finally there was Fischer, who had Sarah Palin's backing, and financial support from Joe Ricketts, the wealthy AmeriTrade founder, who paid for some late attack ads targeting Bruning's character.

As the dust settled last night, Fischer beat Bruning by four points, 40% to 36%, with Stenberg finishing a distant third, despite $2 million in spending from right-wing groups. Fischer will face former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D), who's trying to make a comeback after several years away from his native Nebraska. Fischer is arguably the favorite in this "red" state, but in light of the GOP primary results, Democrats are more optimistic about the race than they were a few days ago.

In terms of the larger lessons from this primary fight, we learned that Jim DeMint and the Club for Growth aren't nearly the kingmakers they thought they were, but more importantly, we also learned that the Republican establishment, after losing badly in Indiana last week, and suffering a series of embarrassments in 2010, is far weaker than many realized.

Indeed, in 2014, how much sway will the NRSC have when it tries to recruit candidates? Given its recent track record, very little.

Romney's formal rivals try to airbrush their past criticism of him. The thing is? The internet is forever.

Sen. John McCain wants campaign finance reform again. So who does he huddle with? Not Republicans.

Americans Elect gives up the dream of a viable third party for 2012.

The House votes on its version of the Violence Against Women Act, which specifically does not include protections for illegal immigrants, gay people and Native Americans.

The Army today allows female soldiers into formerly all-male combat units. 

Indianans Hoosiers unite to protest the bullying of a gay student.

We believe that Peter Zuckerman is a good man who did a poor job reporting the facts on an important story in 2005. The entire community was buzzing about Mr. Zuckerman's sexual orientation after a local radio talk show had talked about it for days. We came to Mr. Zuckerman's defense and chastised the talk show for bringing his sexual orientation into the debate. I apologize for any personal pain that he suffered because of our involvement. That was not our intent.

—Frank L. VanderSloot

I am a strong supporter of the argument that gay and lesbian people should have the same rights as all other Americans. My argument against It's Elementary was not against the film itself but with its intended audience. I don't believe that sexual concepts – either homosexual or heterosexual - should be introduced in our schools to first, second and third graders. I would endorse It's Elementary for adults, but most Americans would agree it should not be shown to little kids.

—Frank L. VanderSloot

Tonight's guests include:

Glenn Greenwald, contributing writer for Salon

Steve Schmidt, former senior strategist for the McCain-Palin campaign, and MSNBC political analyst

While watching tonight's video preview, take a listen to tonight's soundtrack. (Just be sure to allow the ad below to play out entirely before starting the song.)

Executive producer Bill Wolff shares a preview of tonight's show:

Today's edition of quick hits:

* They can still probably afford good lawyers: "The Federal Bureau of Investigation is examining potential wrongdoing surrounding JPMorgan Chase's $2 billion trading loss, people briefed on the matter said Tuesday."

* Greece: "Greek political leaders said Tuesday that they had failed to find consensus to form a government, pushing the rudderless country to new elections amid political instability and volatility in financial markets that could push Greece to abandon the euro."

* Murdoch media scandal: "Rebekah Brooks, the former head of Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper empire and a close friend of Prime Minister David Cameron, was formally charged on Tuesday."

* Counter-proliferation: "Gen. James E. Cartwright, the retired vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and a former commander of the United States' nuclear forces, is adding his voice to those who are calling for a drastic reduction in the number of nuclear warheads below the levels set by agreements with Russia."

* Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) is reportedly planning to move forward with President Obama's nominees to the Federal Reserve Board. Whether Senate Republicans will allow the chamber to vote on them is far from clear.

* Colorado: "A bill that would have allowed civil unions for same-sex couples in Colorado was defeated on Monday night during a special legislative session called by Gov. John W. Hickenlooper to debate the issue."

* I have a hard time understanding why conservatives, who used to consider themselves the patriotism police, would celebrate someone renouncing their American citizenship to avoid paying taxes.

* In Virginia, Republican state lawmakers apparently believe gay people who believe in gay rights shouldn't be allowed to serve as judges. It's the 21st century; I just thought I'd mention that.

Anything to add? Consider this an open thread.

The Obama campaign unveiled its first salvo against Mitt Romney's controversial private-sector background yesterday, an offensive the Republican campaign surely knew was coming eventually. This morning, the former governor released a two-minute clip in response, which had almost certainly been prepped and was ready to go.

The point of the video is to show three unemployed Iowans who are clearly struggling, and whom Romney hopes to use as proof the "Obama economy" not working. (Presumably, by this logic, if the president's economic policies were worthwhile, unemployment would be zero percent, and Republicans wouldn't be able to find anyone who could appear on camera.)

There's nothing to connect the president to the plight of the individuals in the video -- unlike, say, the plight of those who got laid off because Romney's vulture capital firm threw them out of work -- but we're supposed to blame Obama anyway. What's more, there's nothing in the clip to explain why these struggling folks would be better off under a Romney administration that intends to cut taxes for the wealthy while slashing public investments that benefit working families, but we're probably not supposed to think too much about that, either.

What's more, as Jamelle Bouie explained, What stands out about this video is that the Romney campaign has moved away from acknowledging any roots to the crisis, which would require a nod to the previous, Republican president, and treating the Great Recession as a random event -- like a bad hurricane or tornado -- for which no one is responsible. In this narrative, the GOP didn't mismanage the economy into the deepest downturn since the Great Depression. Rather, the economic crisis simply happened, ex nihilo, and Obama did nothing to stop or mitigate it."

Romney's video, in other words, is powerful just so long as you have a very short memory, no understanding of current events, and no interest in the candidates' backgrounds, platforms, or ideas.

Romney's target demographic, in other words, is uninformed amnesiacs.

But there's another catch: the Republican's video highlights a closed Frigidaire plant. In 2012, Frigidaire is ... hiring.