Saturday punditry from sources far & wide....

Charles Blow:

Racist. Tea Party.

Are those separate concepts or a single one? Depends on whom you ask.

According to an article accompanying a Washington Post/ABC News poll released on Wednesday: "About 61 percent of tea party opponents say racism has a lot to do with the movement, a view held by just 7 percent of tea party supporters."

This gulf of perception has left Tea Party organizers struggling to scrub the stain of racism from its image, but those efforts may fly in the face of the facts.

Bob Herbert in Chicago, on urban violence:

Driving through some of this city’s neighborhoods is like driving through an alternate, horrifying universe, a place where no one thinks it’s safe to be a child.

David Leonhardt:

Pay no attention to the unemployment rate — that is, if you’re trying to make sense of today’s jobs report.

It is an excellent report. The economy added more jobs last month than it had in four years. Over the last two months, employers have been adding jobs at a rate faster than the population is growing. If that continues, the unemployment rate will soon start falling.

It rose last month because of a something of a statistical quirk. The Labor Department counts people as officially unemployed only if they are not working and looking for work. Between March and April, there was a surge in the number of out-of-work people who started looked for work. That — not job losses — is what swelled the ranks of the officially jobless and caused the unemployment rate to rise to 9.9 percent, from 9.7 percent.

and

David Leonhardt:

Besides the healthy gain in jobs, today’s employment report had other good news, too.

The average length of the workweek increased, to 34.1 hours, from 34 hours. It hit a low of 33.7 in October.

Dave Weigel:

Why are so many Sarah Palin fans angry about her endorsement of Carly Fiorina? Because DeMint got into the California fray first and endorsed Chuck DeVore, and they take him seriously. By not waiting until a candidate is obviously going to win, DeMint has built real cred.

NY Times:

A day after a harrowing plunge in the stock market, federal regulators were still unable on Friday to answer the one question on every investor’s mind: What caused that near panic on Wall Street? ...

But, maddeningly, the cause or causes of the market’s wild swing remained elusive, leaving what amounts to a $1 trillion question mark hanging over the world’s largest, and most celebrated, stock market.

Mike Allen:

--PUNDIT PREP: This is vintage Bob Gates and will have people talking wherever our troops are stationed throughout the world. He has challenged the Defense Department, Congress and industry before, and won. But this may be his toughest task yet. So he will provocatively ask very challenging questions today in hopes of getting the department to recognize we are terribly top-heavy, and we must make dramatic changes in the way we do business. In order to sustain ourselves through these hard economic times, we must make hard choices and be more fiscally disciplined. In order to continue to be as big and busy as we are, we have no alternative but to find real savings from within ourselves.

THE OBAMAS had a date night last night at Komi, Washingtonian magazine’s #1 restaurant for past two years. Pool report from Joyce Jones of Black Enterprise: “People gathered on a few corners near WH on foot and on Segways … Arrived at restaurant at about 7:08. … The first couple emerged from Komi at 9:13 and were greeted by the crowds that had waited for two hours to see them. But by then it was dark and black vans blocked most of the view. Still, they cheered, screamed and clapped. … It appears that the diners in Komi gave them a standing ovation as they left. MObama was carrying a wrapped bouquet and both were wearing huge smiles.”