It's an SNL POTUS reunion! The Saturday Night Live actors who played every American president since SNL's start, sans Ronald Reagan, have teamed up for a little satire and a little advocacy. They offer a soft push for Congress to pass the Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

In the video are: Fred Armisen, Will Ferrell, Darrell Hammond, Dana Carvey, Dan Aykroyd and even Chevy Chase (who decimated Gerald Ford in SNL's heyday and set a very high bar). Jim Carrey joined the crew to play Reagan, and he's good.

It's now the comics versus the banks. Maybe those fake presidents can do what the real president thus far has not. That's a joke (or perhaps not). Whatever your view, the video itself is funny. Bravo to Funny or Die, a great website, for putting this Laugh Pack together. Watch it below:

Rasmussen is now out with new surveys on the gubernatorial and Senate races in New York State.

Gubernatorial General Election Matchup
Cuomo 55 (+1 vs. last poll, 1/18)
Lazio 30 (-5)
Und 10 (+3)

Cuomo leads Lazio by more than 30 in the RCP Average for New York Governor.

Rasmussen also tested a three-way race with Carl Paladino, a Buffalo developer, as a third "Tea Party" candidate. Cuomo lead with 50 percent, followed by Lazio at 19 and Paladino at 15.

Senate General Election Matchup
Gillibrand 44 (-1 vs. last poll, 11/17)
Pataki 42 (unch)
Und 9 (+4)

Pataki leads Gillibrand by 2.7 in the RCP Average.

Rasmussen also found Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand leading Mort Zuckerman 47-36, with Zuckerman listed as a Republican. Zuckerman has since announced he won't run.

President Obama has a 57 percent approval rating; 42 percent disapprove.

Gov. Bob McDonnell (R-VA) delivered the GOP response to the State of the Union. Sen. Scott Brown (R-MA) is a sensation in the party, appearing at CPAC and already in demand on the campaign trail.

But much more quietly, Chris Christie (R) is shaking things up in his first days as New Jersey governor, tackling the state's massive fiscal crisis with swift, critics say severe, actions. A new FDU/Public Mind poll finds that a majority of Garden State voters support him in that effort.

Fifty-two percent approve of his job performance less than two months in, while 21 percent disapprove. Support is somewhat divided along party lines, with Republicans backing him 74-7, and Democrats split 38-33. Independents approve by a margin of 43-17 percent. Christie's fav/unfav is now 47 / 25, an improvement from a 41 / 44 split in a poll just before last November's election.

Christie's getting support not just from his home state, however. Excerpts of a recent speech to New Jersey mayors is being circulated widely among national conservatives as an example of a Republican leader walking the walk when it comes to reducing government. Here's an excerpt:

When I went into the treasurer's off in the first two weeks of my term, there was no happy meetings. They presented me with 378 possible freezes and lapses to be able to balance the budget. I accepted 375 of them.

There is a great deal of discussion about me doing that by executive action. Every day that went by was a day where money was going out the door such that the $6 billion pool was getting less and less. So something needed to be done.

People did not send me here to talk, the people sent me here to do. So we took the executive action we did to stop the bleeding.

As we move forward, and we evaluate what we need to do three weeks from now in our fiscal year 2011 budget address, you all need to understand the context from which we operate.

Our citizens are already the most overtaxed in America. US mayors hear it all the time. You know that the public appetite for ever increasing taxes has reached an end.

Gov. David Paterson (D) has just a 24 percent approval rating among New York Voters, his lowest mark ever in Quinnipiac's polling. Yet a clear majority of voters -- 61 percent -- say that he should finish out his term rather than resign. Only 31 percent say he should step down now, though the survey was conducted March 1 and 2, as more stories appeared about Paterson's alleged interference in a domestic violence case. Quinnipiac's Maurice Carroll says "there was a noticeable slip in support from the first night to the second night of the survey, after more damaging news came out and the National Organization for Women called for the Governor to step down."

Perhaps one reason that voters want Paterson to stay in office is that few know Richard Ravitch, the newly-appointed lieutenant governor, who would take his place. Nearly 4-in-5 state voters say they haven't heard enough about him to form an opinion. Asked who would more effectively run the state this year, 47 percent say Paterson while 29 percetn say Ravitch.

Looking to the man Democrats will turn to as their candidate this fall, Attorney General Andrew Cuomo (D) seems to be feeling no collateral damage. His approval rating is 70 percent, with high marks across all party lines. Asked who should handle an investigation of Paterson, 25 percent say Cuomo while 61 percent say a special prosecutor should be appointed.

"He's like a 5-foot man in six feet of water." - An anonymous New York lawmaker explaining Governor Paterson's current situation.

Quinnipiac's latest in the Pennsylvania Governor's race shows Republican Attorney General Tom Corbett holding double-digit leads over a group of largely unknown potential Democratic challengers with more than one in four voters undecided:

Democratic Primary
Onorato 16%
Wagner 11
Hoeffel 10
Williams 2
Undecided 59

Republican Primary
Corbett 43%
Rohrer 5
Undecided 49

General Election
Corbett (R) 42 (-3 vs. last poll Dec 17)
Onorato (D) 32 (+2)
Undecided 24

Corbett (R) 42 (-3)
Wagner (D) 30 (-1)
Undecided 26

Corbett (R) 41 (-5)
Hoeffel (D) 30 (nc)
Undecided 27

Not D.C., Washington state:

Washington's January jobs numbers, reported Tuesday by the state Employment Security Department, were the most promising in a long time: 12,400 net new payroll jobs, the first increase since November 2008 and the biggest one-month gain in nearly three years.

Get out the defibrillator quick: CNN is dying. What other conclusion can be drawn from the Nielsen ratings from February, which showed the once dominant news network finishing in fifth place for the first time ever- and now trailing CNBC and Headline News as well as its main competitors, FOX and MSNBC?

The numbers are, as you can imagine, pretty stark. Wolf Blitzer's show, The Situation Room, was down 44% in total viewers in February.  Campbell Brown,  Larry King, and Anderson Cooper all posted their lowest ratings ever in February among total viewers, declining 50%, 55%, and 59%, respectively.

The numbers are equally grim among the coveted 25-54 demographic. CNN's share of the market with this group during prime time declined from 21% last February to just 10% this year.  Even worse, its market share among viewers 25-54 in day time - what's been seen as the network's bread and butter - declined nine percent in the last year to 14%.

After a good year in 2008 fueled by sharp election coverage, CNN President Jon Klein has stubbornly refused to change course despite the network's epic slide over the last 15 months.  The loss of Lou Dobbs last year obviously made things worse. But as CNN continues to fade, the question is whether anything less than a radical makeover can save this once proud, but deeply humbled network.

For students at Northwestern University who were treated to a lecture on ethics by.....Rod Blagojevich:

[Students] laughed during the introductions, when a campus leader said the College Democrats invited the indicted Illinois ex-governor to speak to "make sure tomorrow's leaders respect the rule of law."

They laughed when someone insisted that tapping Blagojevich to lead an ethics discussion was akin to asking Tiger Woods to lecture on fidelity.

And they laughed when he compared himself to Thomas Jefferson, Elvis and a mythical Greek figure.

The audience response appeared to ruffle Blagojevich, who returned to his alma mater to give a speech on "ethics in government." He raised his voice, bemoaned the local media and vehemently denied any wrongdoing.

A dubious distinction for Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison. Tonight, it appears that she becomes the first sitting senator to lose a bid for governor since Sen. Bill Knowland (R-CA) lost in the 1958 general election to Pat Brown (D). Jon Corzine (D) is the last sitting senator to successfully make the leap from the Capitol to the State House, though he lost his 2009 re-election bid.

Hutchison's Senate term runs through 2012, and she has already committed not to seek a new term then. A campaign-in-waiting had already begun among Republicans who expected to contest a special election for Senate this year, assuming she would resign for her gubernatorial bid. She chose not to, a factor that ultimately may have contributed mightily to her defeat.

Another twist: former Houston Mayor Bill White (D), now the nominee to face Perry in the general election, had initially formed an exploratory bid to run for Senate as well. He switched to the governor's race when it became apparent Hutchison would not in fact resign.