Which means I can take it easy, sit back, and watch the dough just roll on in. Like a Congressman. Or some “green energy” exec with ties to the Democrats. Or Alec Baldwin’s colorist.

Ah. Bliss.

*****
Friday update: About half way home. Thanks to all who’ve contributed so far!

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Then this fop has the audacity to compare the NFL, which has more in common with OPEC than with Sweden, to politics, trotting out the old public financing meme.

Of course, politics can be just as aggressive as football but the candidates would be on equal footing. They wouldn’t have to be petrified by a shady Super PAC, coming out nowhere with millions of dollars for one particular candidate and then blowing everyone else out of the game.

Then the inconvenient rubes citizens who don’t like one or both of the candidates would have to be shut-up …

For the good of The Game, of course.

– which is shocking, because, as noble, hard-working immigrants yearning for freedom, they are indeed the best among us, and all they want is to pick watermelons and lettuce and wash dishes and raise their families in peace, unmolested by the nativists and xenophobes.

But if whether or not they’re left alone to do so requires a bit of voter fraud along the way, well… the ends justify the means, right?

(thanks to geoffB)

I post this here because I believe it important to make it clear to Republicans who are pushing it as our duty to back Mitt Romney, should they succeed in garnering him the nomination, that what they are asking us to do is give our one vote to a man who fundamentally disagrees with foundational tenets of free market capitalism, backing instead a kind of government-guided command and control, corporatist / liberal fascist economy.

A Republican is. And many of our conservative opinion leaders are telling us to get in line behind him.

Meaning, either “conservatism” has — like “liberalism” before it — evolved in meaning to embrace its erstwhile opposite; or else we’re being told to back a Republican candidate who both accepts, and plans to govern within, an economic framework as defined by the Left — meaning we’ve conceded that in order to win elections, we have to surrender our foundational principles and agree to manage an overreaching, unconstitutional federal Leviathan from within the confines of a progressive, Marxist economic framework.

I choose no thank you.

oatmeal: “Sure, it’s probably a racist hate crime to note that, put a little white chef’s cap on his dome, and the President looks just like that officious Cream of Wheat bitch.

“But that doesn’t make it any less true.”*

I know. What’s being reported is that the unemployment rate has fallen yet again (hell, not just a fall, but a “plummet”!) And subsequent reports will likely show unemployment continuing to edge down in the run-up to the 2012 election, creating a picture of an economy on the mend under the steady stewardship of a driven President refusing to be defeated by either the fiscal mess Bush bequeathed him, or the do-nothing Republican Congress that is trying to thwart him, most likely because he’s Black.

And that’s because we have a media who are actively interested in seeing Obama re-elected — so much so that they no longer concern themselves with facts, but rather only with how best to frame facts in the aid of a progressive world view. And if that means massaging the narrative a bit — by, for instance, leaving unmentioned the strange decline in the numbers of Americans (who it would appear at a casual glance must be dying off at a remarkable clip) being counted as part of the potential work force — well, then an activist with the best of intentions acting on his or her patriotic duty to bring the hoary old US Constitution kicking and screaming into the 21st century has gotta do what an activist with the best of intentions acting on his or her patriotic duty to bring the hoary old US Constitution kicking and screaming into the 21st century has gotta do.

Fortunately, some of us know the real story. Unfortunately, the postmodern President and his academic sophists are willing to bet that they can shape perception and create an alternate set of “truths” before the election — and given the way we’ve been conditioned to accept the media as mostly unbiased, and given how we’ve been inculcated with deconstructed and reframed notions of “fairness,” “tolerance,” and the like, they may just be right.

But on the off-chance some erstwhile non-engaged American happens by here, allow me to help. From Americans for Limited Government:

Once again, the civilian labor force participation rate has declined, from 64 percent to 63.7 percent in a single month. Since January 2009, it has declined from 65.7 percent, resulting in approximately 4.7 million people no longer being counted towards the unemployment rate. If they were included, the real rate of unemployed working age adults would be 11.01 percent, and the underemployed would be 17.6 percent.

Overall, that includes the 12.7 million people that BLS says are actually unemployed, and then 4.7 million who have given up looking for work, plus another 10.5 million who can’t find full-time work. All together, there’s 28 million working age adults who simply cannot find work in the Obama economy.

Notes Jim Pethokoukis:

Bottom line: The unemployment rate is dropping because economic growth continues to be so anemic that nearly 4 million Americans have quit looking for work and have been disappeared by the Labor Department. This still isn’t much of a recovery.

— Says you. To the mainstream press, such an unemployment rate “plummet” is a clear sign that The Won may have finally been able to break the Bush curse and raise the economy from the dead.

Couple that with the fact that, since Obama took office, we no longer have to worry about the seas rising, and what we have here is the perfect storm for a progressive re-election — and the fundamental transformation of the US!

In his “The Case for Romney,” Jonah Goldberg suggests that, because Mitt Romney is not particularly ideological, he’d make for a controllable — and grateful — President:

Many conservatives argue that Romney’s stiffness is a superficial objection, and that he’s a solid conservative who can appeal to moderates and independents. Other conservatives think Romney’s lack of fluency is a real problem, not because it proves he’s faking his conservatism but because it would put him at a severe disadvantage in the general election in the same way authentic but stiff liberals such as Gore and John Kerry suffered from their inability to comfortably interface with carbon-based life.

And others simply think Romney’s a big faker.

It’s this last group of anti-Romney holdouts I’d like to address. First, let me say: I feel your pain. The Tea Party arose in no small part out of a delayed allergic reaction to the rhetorical and, to a lesser extent, policy problems of George W. Bush’s presidency and the deep resentment that came with having to vote for John McCain in 2008. These disappointments were visited upon the conservative base by something the naysayers (often problematically) call “the Republican establishment.”

[...]

Let me try to offer some solace. Even if Romney is a Potemkin conservative (a claim I think has merit but is also exaggerated), there is an instrumental case to be made for him: It is better to have a president who owes you than to have one who claims to own you.

A President Romney would be on a very short leash. A President Gingrich would probably chew through his leash in the first ten minutes of his presidency and wander off into trouble. If elected, Romney must follow through for conservatives and honor his vows to repeal Obamacare, implement Representative Paul Ryan’s agenda, and stay true to his pro-life commitments.

— except, if you’ll allow me a brief interjection here, we’ve already heard from one of Romney’s advisors, Norm Coleman, that the promise to repeal ObamaCare is a disingenuous: like the GOP House leadership, Romney will make overtures about repeal, but he hasn’t the stomach to fight for anything more than “conservative” tweaks to the big government institutional coup ObamaCare represents, and every technocrat, regardless of party, slavers over (recall, at crucial moments, the GOP House leadership scuttled or suppressed legislative attempts by TEA Party conservatives to defund ObamaCare’s implementation architecture). Too, we’ve seen that, in Massachusetts, Romney was willing to turn on a dime with respect to his new-found pro-life promises, embracing and elevating the bureaucratic state’s illegitimate authority over something so constitutionally seminal as respecting religious freedom.

So why on earth would we believe he’d do what he says he’d do while he’s forced to try to appeal to the conservative base? That is, on what evidence are we to believe that, if Romney is in fact our Presidential pet, he’s been effectively housebroken? Continues Goldberg:

Moreover, Romney is not a man of vision. He is a man of duty and purpose. He was told to “fix” health care in ways Massachusetts would like. He was told to fix the 2002 Olympics. He was told to create Bain Capital. He did it all. The man does his assignments.

In this light, voting for Romney isn’t a betrayal, it’s a transaction. No, that’s not very exciting or reassuring for those who’d sooner see monkeys fly out their nethers than compromise again. But such a bargain may just be necessary before judgment day comes.

Or, put another way, it may not feel good to settle, but hey, settling isn’t so bad if you just resign yourself to settling.

The problem with such an argument — beyond the rather obvious one of being asked yet again to settle (which, funny how the Beltway insiders are never asked to settle, isn’t it?) — is that Goldberg would have us believe that, should we relent and throw our support behind Romney’s “inevitable” candidacy, a President Romney will be in our eternal debt, and will therefore understand his elevation to the presidency as a mandate for carrying out the conservative / TEA Party agenda.

But in truth, it won’t be to conservatives that Romney will be indebted, but rather to the very GOP Establishment that’s been so keen on seeing a technocratic squish reach office and “manage” the Leviathan (while the GOP, they hope, controls all the committee chairmanships, etc.) that they’ve shown themselves far more willing to smear, attack, and destroy conservative candidates than they’ve ever shown themselves willing to take it to Obama on his rank personal and professional history, such as it is.

That is, Romney will have to answer to his “compassionate conservative” GOP handlers, who have shown themselves to be anything but conservative, and whose “compassion” consists largely of showing Democrats that, when Republicans are in power, they, too, can pander and spend. Only with lower taxes.

Who he won’t have to answer to, once he reaches the Oval Office, is the unsophisticated ideologues to whom he is now so unconvincingly trying to pander.

A President Romney in the debt of the GOP Party elite is precisely the kind of power play the party leaders are hoping for, because it is meant to show the TEA Party types who is really in charge, and how politics in DC really work, despite the best efforts of conservatives to organize and galvanize against the status quo. It is meant to assert the dominance of the ruling class over the voters who they wish to show they can ultimately control.

And it isn’t just the GOP leadership, either: as Nancy Pelosi reminds us, many in Congress are longing for the days before the TEA Party uprising, when Party affiliation didn’t much matter, and elections didn’t really matter.

An easily led Romney is a nightmare for conservatives precisely because he will be both indebted and easily led; and while I’m no great fan of Newt’s, at least I believe that he has the instincts and ego to stick it to the GOP ruling elite who has worked so actively and vociferously to destroy and defeat him.

Put another way, if he chewed through his leash, it wouldn’t be conservatives Gingrich would be looking to bite.

And that makes him more palatable than Romney — though I continue to hope that Santorum is able to move conservatives to rally around his candidacy.

(thanks to dicentra)

Obama uses the National Prayer Breakfast to rewrite the New Testament

And when I talk about shared responsibility, it’s because I genuinely believe that in a time when many folks are struggling, at a time when we have enormous deficits, it’s hard for me to ask seniors on a fixed income, or young people with student loans, or middle-class families who can barely pay the bills to shoulder the burden alone. And I think to myself, if I’m willing to give something up as somebody who’s been extraordinarily blessed, and give up some of the tax breaks that I enjoy, I actually think that’s going to make economic sense.

But for me as a Christian, it also coincides with Jesus’s teaching that “for unto whom much is given, much shall be required.” It mirrors the Islamic belief that those who’ve been blessed have an obligation to use those blessings to help others, or the Jewish doctrine of moderation and consideration for others.

When I talk about giving every American a fair shot at opportunity, it’s because I believe that when a young person can afford a college education, or someone who’s been unemployed suddenly has a chance to retrain for a job and regain that sense of dignity and pride, and contributing to the community as well as supporting their families — that helps us all prosper.

It means maybe that research lab on the cusp of a lifesaving discovery, or the company looking for skilled workers is going to do a little bit better, and we’ll all do better as a consequence. It makes economic sense. But part of that belief comes from my faith in the idea that I am my brother’s keeper and I am my sister’s keeper; that as a country, we rise and fall together. I’m not an island. I’m not alone in my success. I succeed because others succeed with me. And when I decide to stand up for foreign aid, or prevent atrocities in places like Uganda, or take on issues like human trafficking, it’s not just about strengthening alliances, or promoting democratic values, or projecting American leadership around the world, although it does all those things and it will make us safer and more secure. It’s also about the biblical call to care for the least of these — for the poor; for those at the margins of our society. [...]

We’re required to have a living, breathing, active faith in our own lives. And each of us is called on to give something of ourselves for the betterment of others — and to live the truth of our faith not just with words, but with deeds.

Leave aside that Obama’s “Jewish doctrine of moderation” appears to be a last minute addition with no link to actual Rabbinic teachings, but I’m unclear on where in the New Testament that Jesus exhorted his followers to petition Caesar to relieve the suffering of the poor. Oh, right …

Matthew 19:21 Jesus said to him, “If you would be perfect, go, harass the authorities to send the tax collectors to seize your neighbor’s wealth and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.” New Progressive Translation

Obama believes he would have written the Constitution better, so why shouldn’t he just improve on Jesus’ teachings?

In summer 2009 I started Fire Fifty, with the obective of firing fifty members of Congress in 2010 in order to take the House away from the Progs. The objective was met, though Fire Fifty had little to no impact. I think the idea was good, and I hoped that some national organization, with an interest in electing Republicans, might come along and run with the idea. Maybe some mythical organization, let’s call it, oh I don’t know, maybe the National Committee of Republicans, could suggest how to prioritize the application of resources and focus on the critical House races. Here’s the link to that.

(more…)

The Daily Caller, “Bribery, compromised officials leave indicted financial-crime suspects free from prosecution under Holder’s DOJ”:

A U.S. Justice Department source has told The Daily Caller that at least two DOJ prosecutors accepted cash bribes from allegedly corrupt finance executives who were indicted under court seal within the past 13 months, but never arrested or prosecuted.

The sitting governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands, his attorney general and an unspecified number of Virgin Islands legislators also accepted bribes, the source said, adding that U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is aware prosecutors and elected officials were bribed and otherwise compromised, but has not held anyone accountable.

The bribed officials, an attorney with knowledge of the investigation told TheDC, remain on the taxpayers’ payroll at the Justice Department without any accountability. The DOJ source said Holder does not want to admit public officials accepted bribes while under his leadership.

That source said that until the summer of 2011, the two compromised prosecutors were part of a team of more than 25 federal prosecutors pursuing a financial crime ring, and at least five other prosecutors tasked to the case were also compromised by the criminal suspects they were investigating, without being bribed.

TheDC is withholding the name of the source, a knowledgeable government official who served on the Justice Department’s arrest team and was involved in the investigation, in order to prevent career retaliation from political figures in the Obama administration.

A former high-level elected official vouches for the government source’s veracity. “[The source] was trustworthy … and you could tell [the source] information or [the source] could hear information and [the source] would keep things close to [the source’s] chest,” that former official told TheDC. “You could trust [the source] with your life.”

[...]

Eric Holder, the source said, personally approved the makeup of the investigation and arrest teams.

“The team which was put in place, of course, in tracking all the information that we had — Holder had to sign off on the teams. He signed off on them a year and a half ago,” the source said during an interview. “He wasn’t fully in control of it, but of course the knowledge and approval of it came from him.”

“There are internal documents, of course. He was briefed. He got a full scope of what transpired, and he got a full scope of what is going on with this case in particular. There is nothing going on in this case that Holder doesn’t know about right now.”

DOJ leadership has been fretting internally, the source said, about how to handle the story when the news breaks because it represents a new level of corruption in the Obama administration. The Holder Justice Department is concerned about the appearance that it lacks the competence to enforce the laws in which Obama has shown political interest, including those related to corruption and other financial crimes.

Consider this my shout out to the pragmatic “perception is reality” crowd: if all that matters is guarding the framing and distribution of the message (“I hope he fails” may be a valid hope, but it is, from the perspective of perception, well, unhelpful), then it follows that the framing and distribution of the message takes priority over all other considerations — and we shouldn’t be surprised or outraged when it does.

In fact, all that Holder is doing here is waiting until he can figure out the proper way to frame this latest bit of corruption in a way that is at the very least politically innocuous, and at best politically expedient.

My guess is, Holder will throw a few scapegoats under the bus, then swing the message over to corruption in the financial sector and its adverse impact on the 99%.

And luckily, the GOP is going to give them a Wall Street private equity fund multi-millionaire to use as their foil

You get the government you deserve.