RANDOM THOUGHTS from the retirement lane. The reason for the Obama campaign's Bain Capital attacks and Elizabeth Warren defense (you can't be successful on you're own) is that the Obama administration has nothing left to campaign on. They have to destroy any vestige of the (capitalist) market in order to survive the 2012 election.

STEVEN PERLSTEIN: Help! He's drowning in rules. Perlstein discusses outsourcing and how it may be reshaping the economy. Which leads to an interesting question: can Obama (or any President) bring manufacturing back to the United States?

FIVE MYTHS about free enterprise. Give the Washington Post some credit here; occasionally they do let an intelligent (i.e., conservative) commentary slip in.

DANA MILBANK: Ruined by one-party rule.

It's not often that residents of the District of Columbia get to brag about our local government, but this is one of those moments when we are leading the nation. We in the capital are on the cutting edge of entropy.

Even perennial contenders such as Louisana and New Jersey can't compete with the record of dysfunction and corruption we have compiled in recent weeks.

Milbank does have occasional bouts of sanity when it's his ox being gored, but here's the rub: he won't vote to kick the bastards out because D.C. is a one-party town and Milbank refuses to vote in the Democrat primary (lest he be thought of as biased, you see). So rather that taking part in reforming his vaunted party, he whines that he's disenfranchised by ... the Tea Party and Republicans!

Kojo Nnamdi (D.C. resident and NPR radio talk show host) agrees D.C. is corrupt, but -- wait for it -- it's Congress' fault for not making the District of Columbia America's 51st state.

You have to read it to believe it.

GOVERNMENT ROADS. And government kids.

HA! EVEN THE CREW is abandoning the Titanic. Bill Whittle tries to encourage them to stay on board.

FRANK J. FLEMING: A short history of the progressive movement.

NO JOY: read the comments; you'll get the idea.

FROM MY EMAIL: some advice about 'punching back twice as hard' when spammers come calling:

1) Any time you see an email that says "forward this on to '10' (or however many) of your friends", "sign this petition", or "you'll get bad luck" or "you'll get good luck" or "you'll see something funny on your screen after you send it" or whatever --- it almost always has an email tracker program attached that tracks the cookies and emails of those folks you forward to. The host sender is getting a copy each time it gets forwarded and then is able to get lists of 'active' email addresses to use in SPAM emails or sell to other Spammers. Even when you get emails that demand you send the email on if you're not ashamed of God/Jesus --- that is email tracking, and they are playing on our conscience. These people don't care how they get your email addresses - just as long as they get them. Also, emails that talk about a missing child or a child with an incurable disease "how would you feel if that was your child" --- email tracking. Ignore them and don't participate!

2) Almost all emails that ask you to add your name and forward on to others are similar to that mass letter years ago that asked people to send business cards to the little kid in who wanted to break the Guinness Book of Records for the most cards. All it was, and all any of this type of email is, is a way to get names and 'cookie' tracking information for telemarketers and Spammers -- to validate active email accounts for their own profitable purposes.

3) Email petitions are NOT acceptable to Congress of any other organization - I.e. Social security, etc. To be acceptable, petitions must have a "signed signature"and full address of the person signing the petition, so this is a waste of time and you are just helping the email trackers.

Tips for Handling Telemarketers:

1) Say 'Hold On, Please...' while putting down your phone and walking off (instead of hanging-up immediately). Then go back and hang up when you eventually hear the phone company's 'beep-beep-beep' tone. This makes each telemarketing call so much more time-consuming that boiler room sales will grind to a halt if they continue to call.

2) Those annoying phone calls with no one on the other end are a telemarketing technique where a machine makes phone calls and records the time of day when a person answers the phone. This technique is used to determine the best time of day for a 'real' sales person to call back and get someone at home. After answering, immediately start hitting your # button on the phone, 6 or 7 times as quickly as possible. This confuses the machine that dialed the call, and it kicks your number out of their system.

Junk Mail Help:

1) When you get 'ads' enclosed with your phone or utility bill, return these 'ads' with your payment. Let the sending companies throw their own junk mail away. For junk mail with postage-paid return envelopes, why not get rid of some of your other junk mail and put it in these cool little, postage-paid return envelopes.

2) Let's help keep our postal service busy since they are saying that e-mail is cutting into their business profits, and that's why they need to increase postage costs again.

Save your sanity and help these folks go out of business sooner rather than later.

DEREK HUNTER: Our Disgraceful President. Courtesy of the 'reality-based community'.

TAKE THAT, MR. PRESIDENT:

"WHEN IT COMES TO ENERGY, President Obama wants us to use less and pay more. But the countries with the best human health and highest material wealth are those with high-energy consumption."

THEY'LL TURN US ALL INTO BEGGARS 'CAUSE THEY'RE EASIER TO PLEASE: Deliberate Dismantling of Welfare Reform.

THE REAL OBAMA steps forward.

Update: as predicted by Ayn Rand.