Samantha Power, superstar intellectual and Obama foreign policy guru, has resigned from the Obama campaign after calling Hillary Clinton "a monster" who would stoop to anything to win.

Seems to me this is mostly a political/media event, not a change in the underlying reality. Power isn't going to stop advising Obama, and I doubt the Republicans would make an issue of him giving her a job if he wins on account of her having said mean things about Hillary Clinton.

It's all about the politics. With that, the floor is yours.

On these SUSA polls Josh and David have been dissecting.

Chris Bowers over at Open Left digs up a striking trend that might go unnoticed if you only look at topline numbers. He breaks each race into a solid or lean win for either candidate, or a strait toss up:

Against Obama, McCain's "solid" and "lean" states only add up to 123, while Obama's add up to 229. In a matchup against Clinton, the "solid" and "lean" states are of equal size: 201 for McCain, and 203 for Clinton. In other words, while McCain and Clinton appear evenly matched, McCain is only able to keep it close against Obama by running up a series of narrow wins in the toss-up states.

You should check out the full post to see the raw numbers and caveats, but it's a compelling case that while Obama and Hillary may be essentially even in this snapshot, Obama has an ability to quickly grow his margin of victory (or pad losses) that Hillary doesn't.

When his mom turned away he whispered in my ear. He said, "Take me with you."

I'll never forget it.

Will you?

Part 5 of Good Magazine's documentary on the homelessness epidemic in Los Angeles broadens the view to city housing policy, and the failure of LA to make any progress in the last thirty years (Part 4 on God here, Part 3 on drugs is here, Part 2 on kids is here, the introductory episode is here).

Hells if I know. You tell me. (In other words, this is an open thread.)

Alright, the work goes on getting things settled technologically here at Cafe. We've put together a first draft of a Frequently Asked Questions that we hope will help, and we have a long list of tweaks and bugs that our tech team is working at diligently.

Check out the FAQ and let me know what we should add.

A quick meta point on this absurd Charlotte Allen business.

This and a few other particularly silly pieces in otherwise august publications have made me wonder if the major newspapers have realized that in the networked public sphere creating fodder for conversations-- i.e. getting that essential link from blogs all the way down the long tail -- is one of the best ways to drive traffic. And therefore, if you're trying to live on a big budget from the old days, maybe you should just publish a bunch of link bait to "provoke." The Allen piece can't have been good for the WaPo's reputation as a serious publication, but it's probably been good for their bottom line.

Update: 243 links and counting.

"My heart just, just bled when I came to Skid Row and saw the things that I saw.

A level of compassion rolls in me in such a way that I knew that this is where I had to be."

Part 4 of Good Magazine's documentary on the homelessness epidemic in Los Angeles focuses in on the drug trade (Part 3 on drugs is here, Part 2 on kids is here, the introductory episode is here).