Inside the Beltway: Z-Z-Z-Z-Z-Z

NEWS AND OPINION:

To dream of politics is not a bad thing. But it’s a tricky business. “Discussing politics in your dream is considered a sign of success, providing the conversation was with someone of your own sex and the discussion wasn’t heated; however, to talk politics with someone of the opposite sex suggests you are currently engaged in a futile effort. To dream of being involved in a political campaign predicts added responsibilities with inadequate compensation,” wrote Lady Stearn Robinson and Tom Corbett in the 1974 “The Dreamer’s Dictionary”

And if you dream of voting, it “suggests that you need to cultivate more self-confidence. Try asserting yourself, for a change,” the authors advised.

And here’s more snooze insight, perhaps apropos for President Obama and Mitt Romney: “Quick success with your current short-term plans is the forecast if your dream featured taking part in an election.”

GREYHOUND ONE, PT. 2

The same sleek black bus that created a sensation along heartland roadways almost a year ago is back again. President Obama begins a two-day “Betting on America” tour of Ohio and Pennsylvania on Thursday aboard the Secret Service-approved vehicle, touting the message that his economy is “built to last,” according to campaign spokesman Ben La Bolt.

While in the Buckeye State, Mr. Obama tours a historic home in Maumee, attends an ice cream social in Sandusky, visits an elementary school in Poland and a rally in Parma. Local TV viewers have been treated to a new campaign ad that frames Republican rival Mitt Romney as a “pioneer in outsourcing U.S. jobs to low-wage countries.”

But others travel the same roads on Mr. Romney’s behalf. Former presidential hopeful Tim Pawlenty and Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, both on the list of vice-presidential choices, will be in both states to counter the Obama campaign claims and do a little handshaking of their own.

“This bus tour should be called the ’Apology Tour,’” observes Mahoning County Republican Party Chairman Mark Munroe, whose region is the last stop on Mr. Obama’s Ohio itinerary before he heads to a rally in Pittsburgh on Friday.

’’Our children can’t find jobs, this guy has been nothing but a disaster, and November can’t come soon enough,’’ Mr. Monroe tells the Warren Tribune Chronicle, a local newspaper.

BEACH READING

“Cowards,” by Glenn Beck; “What the (Bleep) Just Happened?: The Happy Warrior’s Guide to the Great American Comeback,” by Monica Crowley; “The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama’s War on the Republic,” by David Limbaugh; “The Tyranny of Cliches: How Liberals Cheat in the War of Ideas,” by Jonah Goldberg; “One Second After,” by William Forstchen.

(New books to read before the November elections, as recommended by best-selling thriller-fiction author and National Review contributor Brad Thor).

ERICKSON’S PICKS

“Want the GOP to stand up to Barack Obama? Tired of the GOP cutting deals? asks RedState.com founder Erick Erickson. “Then you absolutely must support these candidates still in Republican primaries.”

They will lend the Grand Old Party, uh, “testicular fortitude,” he says.

In U.S. House races for Arizona, it’s Ron Gould, Matt Salmon, and Dave Schweikert. In Florida: Ron De Santis, Sandy Adams, Chauncey Goss and Adam Hasner. In Louisiana, Jeff Landry. In Michigan, Jack Hoogendyk and Kerry Bentivolio, and in North Carolina, Scott Keadle.

In Senate races, it’s Clark Durant in Michigan and Ted Cruz in Texas. Mr. Erickson says this is also just a starter list, with more likely to come.

NADER STILL RAIDING

Veteran consumer advocate and occasional presidential hopeful Ralph Nader is pondering Bentonville, Ark., these days. Mr. Nader has fired off a letter to one Michael Terry Duke, CEO of Wal-Mart, located in that town down South.

“We are writing you today to urge Wal-Mart to support raising the minimum wage - something that will not only aid the economy, but that could also improve Wal-Mart’s bottom line,” Mr. Nader wrote, citing a multitude of figures supporting the idea that better wages spark more consumer spending,

He also provided Mr. Duke with a new University of California study that traced just such a phenomenon in “big-box retail,” and Wal-Mart itself. The researchers found that if the store were to increase the minimum wage to $12 per hour, it would add less than 50 cents to the final bill of the Wal-Mart shopper.

“Where will minimum-wage earners spend the extra money they make?” Mr. Nader asked. “For many of them, the answer is most certainly Wal-Mart.”

He then looked to the past, citing Henry Ford, who in the year 1914, doubled his workers’ wages, telling his critics, “If you cut wages, you just cut the number of your own customers. If an employer does not share prosperity with those who make him prosperous, then pretty soon he has no prosperity to share.”

See the complete letter here: www.nader.org

POLL DU JOUR

• 55 percent of Americans think the Supreme Court upheld “most provisions” in the health care law; for Republicans, it was 56 percent; for Democrats, 64 percent.

• 30 percent overall “don’t know” if the court upheld the provisions; 25 percent of Republicans “don’t know,” and the same percentage of Democrats “don’t know.”

• 15 percent overall say they thought the court rejected the provisions; for Republicans, that number went to 19 percent; and for Democrats it dropped to 11 percent.

• 40 percent of Americans overall disapprove of the court’s ruling on the health care law.

• 70 percent of Republicans disapprove; 15 percent of Democrats disapprove.

• 36 percent of Americans approve the ruling; 13 percent of Republicans and 66 percent of Democrats agree.

• 24 percent don’t have an opinion; 17 percent of Republicans and 19 percent of Democrats also have no opinion.

• Disappointed, surprised, good, happy, disgusted: the top “one word reactions” to the court ruling.

Source: A Pew Research Center for the People & the Press survey of 1,006 U.S. adults conducted June 28 to July 1.

• Dreamy afterthoughts, books titles, press releases to jharper@ washingtontimes.com.