Well, there’s nothing quite like a mediocre monthly Jobs Report to get one’s Friday started on a slow roll, and we’ll soon be into the regular slide into the weekend. But here are some mid-day items of sustenance for those paying attention:
* Another national poll, this one from Bloomberg, shows HRC’s popularity dropping (though only down to 58%/37% ratio), but we don’t have the internals to see if the shift is concentrated among former Romney voters and is thus just an acceleration of the inevitable.
* Peggy Noonan argues Obama’s highly indirect and debatable “encouragement” of extra scrutiny of conservative groups by IRS worse than Nixon’s blatant “go get ’em” orders because IRS ignored Nixon. Lord-a-mercy.
* Washington Examiner‘s Tim Carney calls for abolition of federal payroll taxes as “free market populist” measure.
* In a somewhat less populist stance: Republican local elected officials in rural northeast Colorado talking secession from state because of lefty policies frustrating oil, gas & agribusiness exploitation of their land.
* Wealthy Romney backers gather in Utah to celebrate each other and the Mittster. “Free-market populism” probably not on the agenda.
And in non-political news:
* It’s National Donut Day!
Back in a bit.
