On a lovely spring Saturday in Texas, just as the sun set, Jenna Bush had her wedding at her father's prop "ranch" in Crawford. And for that special moment -- or at least a day later, when the White House released some nice pictures from the exclusive event -- America was one nation again.

Since the divisive election of 2000 that led to the heartbreaking recount in Florida, there have been Two Americas, and the angry middle-class and working-class people of this large nation have been unable to agree on anything for any reason.

But our horrible, maddening first eight years of this awful century were all forgotten for a brief, beautiful moment over the weekend, when George W. Bush Junior's daughter was married to this one guy, Henry Hager.

Good morning, and welcome again to Videos of the Week. The big story this week was, of course, the virtual coronation of Barack Obama as the Democratic nominee. We have a couple of clips related to the making of that sausage, plus a few morsels of John McCain, a couple of cool tricks, and a Mike Gravel chaser.

Before we get to those, I just want to quickly plug Political Machine reader Tom Fitzsimmons' satire work over at The Specious Report, and at Daily Kos. Drop in there, laugh it up, and leave him a good rating, won't you?

By popular demand, I am adding the Obama 59 state gaffe, right after the jump.

Leading off this week is a video from my buddy Cenk at The Young Turks. For reasons that will be obvious later, I'm going to tell you nothing about it.

First they took away the green-back, providing we hard-working Americans with a paper currency more reminiscent of "Monopoly" money than the enduring bills-of-olde upon which our great nation was built. Then they tried to usurp the hallowed dollar with a $1 coin, confusing red-blooded American values with the effete preferences of a European coinage class. And now, shame of shames, they are trying to take the copper out of our pennies.

Hath Congress no shame? Might as well they take the bullets from our soldiers' guns. The penny is a foundational, iconic symbol of American purity. It is the alpha of our mighty financial empire. It dates back to the "pfennings" of Charlemagne, showers fortune upon its finder when heads-up and supplies a litany of poetic idioms - penny for your thoughts, I don't have two pennies to rub together, and I need to spend a penny (British parlance meaning, a need to urinate). Since the centennial of his birth, the penny's front has featured the profile of President Abraham Lincoln, while its reverse has born the image of Lincoln Memorial since the sesquicentennial of that great American's birth.

What infernal lure has so seduced Congress that they should entertain such blasphemies as the desecration of the perfect penny?

$100,000 million / year.

Pennies presently cost 1.26 cents to manufacture. By minting steel pennies with a copper plating, the cost would be reduced to .7 cents. The same applies to 7.7 cent-to-mint nickels. Why, being rid of the penny altogether would save the mint billions in material, production and distribution costs.

And yet, we are sentimental about our dear pennies, aren't we? To be, or not to be, thou dear copper penny? That is the question.

President Bush and Senate Democrats may have reached a deal in a long-running battle over the Federal Election Commission. The commission has been unable to function since October of 2006 because of controversies surrounding Bush nominee Hans von Spakovsky. Senate Democrats don't like von Spakovsky's views and have blocked him from consideration by the full Senate. The FEC has six commissioners, three Republicans and three Democrats, and needs at least four to function. Only two of the commission's seats have been filled as a result of the stalemate. Now, as part of a package meant to break the impasse, the president has nominated three new candidates for the commission.

Likely Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama placed a hold on von Spakovsky's nomination, triggering a series of Republican Senators to place holds on Democratic nominees in protest. Obama's hold, placed together with Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), was made in reaction to certain controversial decisions that von Spakovsky, a lawyer in the Justice Department's Voting Rights section, had made. Von Spakovsky is seen by Senate Democrats as a champion of policies, such as a Georgia voter identification law and a Texas redistricting plan, that would disenfranchise black and Latino voters respectively. Both the Georgia law and the Texas redistricting were eventually upheld by the Federal courts. A similar Indiana law requiring photo identification for voters was recently upheld by the Supreme Court. Those rulings make the Democrats' position on von Spakovsky less tenable, and the White House is refusing to withdraw his name as part of the package announced Tuesday.

After months of advising his listeners to vote for Hillary Clinton in open Democratic primaries, ultra-conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh is changing his tune by urging Democratic superdelegates to force the issue and make Barack Obama their nominee. From CNN:

"I now believe he would be the weakest of the Democrat nominees," Limbaugh, among the most powerful voices in conservative radio, said on his program. "I now urge the Democrat superdelegates to make your mind up and publicly go for Obama."

"Barack Obama has shown he cannot get the votes Democrats need to win -- blue-collar, working-class people," Limbaugh said. "He can get effete snobs, he can get wealthy academics, he can get the young, and he can get the black vote, but Democrats do not win with that."

But Jamal Simmons, a Democratic strategist and Obama supporter, disagreed, saying the Democratic Party has "the best coalition to go out and talk to people across racial lines, which are the unions."

Limbaugh's plan to interfere in the Democratic Primary process, dubbed "Operation Chaos," was given legitimacy yesterday when Obama supporter John Kerry attributed Hillary Clinton's victory in Indiana to the gabber's tactic. What is behind this reversal? Is Rush being sincere? Is he mad at Bill Clinton for "hitting on" his "date?" Or is it all some kind of triple-reverse psychology?

The blog Ars Technica reports that Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon advised internet service providers that he would use "every ounce of my energy to protect network neutrality." Wyden made his surprisingly tough comments in front of a group of tech executives in Washington yesterday.

Wyden told providers that may be thinking about charging customers for various forms of access to "think twice." If they did so, Wyden believes that the "very philosophical underpinnings of what we fought for for the last 15 years" would be undermined and such a move would leave Congress with little motivation to protect providers from taxation and regulation.

And no, I'm not talking about the ongoing soap opera called "Hillary v. Barack." I'm talking about the credit crunch.

Voters in both Indiana and North Carolina last night said the economy was their top concern in deciding who to vote for in the Democratic primary; 67 percent in Indiana and 60 percent in North Carolina. So perhaps they will breathe a sigh of relief to know that the worst of the credit crisis, at least, may be over. There are also signs today that inflation pressures may be easing, and the value of the dollar is also up a bit against other major global currencies.

(However, we still have those pesky dark spots, like The National Association of Realtors today saying pending sales of existing homes fell in March by 1 percent, disappointing the market., and oil prices rising above $122 a barrel, among other concerns.)

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said financial markets are emerging from the credit crisis. "There's no doubt that things feel better today, by a lot, than they did in March," Paulson said, although he was careful to predict that there would be further "bumps along the road," and that it will take "some months longer" for the market problems to disappear completely.

President Bush again pledged today to veto legislation scheduled for debate in the House today that would see the government buy up $15 billion of abandoned homes and help an estimated 500,000 homeowners facing foreclosure. The bill is expected to receive significant Republican support, but the White House argues the Democrats' plan would open taxpayers to too much risk.

Amidst rising prices and record profits, Congress is set to pass a new round of subsidies and special protections for some of the largest corporations and richest people in the country worth close to $300 billion. But it is not a new energy bill loaded with tax breaks for oil companies, it's a new five-year Farm Bill containing direct payments and price supports for farmers who in many cases have seen their incomes skyrocket in recent years. The bill extends or increases many of the programs enacted in the 2002 version; but this time the White House is threatening a veto.

President Bush triggered howls from conservatives when he signed the 2002 Farm Bill and his Administration is taking advantage of public unease over food prices to try and force Congress to cut the programs popular with farmers. "This is the right time to reform our nation's farm policy by reducing unnecessary subsidies," he said last week. But the bill has bipartisan support from Democrats and Republicans eager to court Mid-Western votes and seems headed for passage. That would set up an election year showdown between the Administration and Congress over the normally mundane topic of agricultural policy with prospects for the Congressional and presidential elections in the balance.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, is warning Congress that the Pentagon will be forced to stop paying soldiers after June 15th if a $108 billion supplemental war-funding measure is not passed soon. He told Roll Call (subscription required) that the uncertainty surrounding the bill creates unnecessary pressure in the military. "It makes it extremely difficult to execute the day-to-day business of the Pentagon without knowing the money is coming," he said.

The Bush Administration and Congressional Republicans have been calling on Congress to pass the supplemental war funding bill before the Memorial Day congressional recess. Democrats have been debating within their own caucus on how to proceed with the funding request. Some Democrats want to pass a bill nearly double the size requested by the White House to cover the remainder of this fiscal year and next in an effort to avoid having to vote on another supplemental funding bill during the fall election season. Others want to limit the amount of aid that the United States would provide the Iraqi government for infrastructure projects due to rising oil prices. The White House has said that the president will veto any bill that exceeds his funding number; and stresses that cutting aid for the Iraqi government could actually prolong the war effort.

In either case, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) sees no need to hurry. "I think we'll do our best to finish this before the Memorial Day break, but if we don't, it's no big deal. There's money there," he said.

From Robert Reich, Bill Clinton's former Secretary of Labor:

When asked this morning by ABC News' George Stephanopoulos if she could name a single economist who backs her call for a gas tax holiday this summer, HRC said "I'm not going to put my lot in with economists."

I know several economists who have been advising Senator Clinton, so I phoned them right after I heard this. I reached two of them. One hadn't heard her remark and said he couldn't believe she'd say it. The other had heard it and shrugged it off as "politics as usual."

Er, you can say that again. Discounting expert opinions and stubbornly sticking to bone-headed policy ideas: Sounds pretty familiar after 8 years of George Bush, no? More Reich:

The gas tax holiday is small potatoes relative to everything else. But it's so economically stupid (it would increase demand for gas and cause prices to rise, eliminating any benefit to consumers while costing the Treasury more than $9 billion, and generate more pollution) and silly (even if she won, HRC won't be president this summer) as to be worrisome. That HRC now says she doesn't care what economists think is even more troubling.

Following the bizarre logic of discounting the advice of those who are the most learned about a given subject, one can recall an eerily familiar pattern. Global warming? Why should we put our lot in with those meddling climatologists? Force levels in Iraq? Why listen to dissenting voices at the Pentagon? All those informed opinions are really just so elitist, right? Isn't that what the average voter wants to hear? It's all a bit like a Stephen Colbert sketch come to life. Video after the jump.