We do "understand" your point of view, O One Whose Arrogance Seems Most Unjustified.

We reject your point of view, having "understood" it for what it is, an argument in favor of socialism or at least much greater government control and wealth-distribution than we feel is consistent with the notion of a Free Citizenry in a Free Republic.

Why do you not understand, idiot?

Anyway, years later, Obama's still on about bitter clingers (impliedly). From the Jodi Kantor book "The Obamas:"

Later in the first term, there were points where the American public seemed to be giving up on Barack Obama.. But the relationship went both ways, and there were many times the president seemed to be giving up on the public, too, convinced Americans would never understand his point of viewÂ…

…Being in the White House seemed to intensify one of his best traits, his natural seriousness, along with one of his worst, his conviction that he was more serious than anyone else. There was a gap between the way Obama consumed information – in orderly, high-level briefings – and the way nearly everyone else in the country did, and it could often turn him derisive.

More at the link. Obama claims that he had to hold the birth certificate press conference because that issue was consuming the country and stepping on his economic message.

In fact, as Geraghty notes, the only place where that was a dominant issue was MSNBC, suggesting Obama and his people watch all the live-long day and assume that's representative of the American political conversation.

As I've said, Obama has exactly two victories during his presidency: 1, permitting himself to be pressured into making a Gutsy Call that anyone except Ron Paul would have made, and 2, successfully producing ID that would be acceptable at the DMV.

Beyond that, it's pretty thin.

Posted by: Ace at 09:22 AM | Comments (197)
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The WSJ is liveblogging the arguments.

Overall, the liveblogger says the Supreme Court "seems sympathetic to part of the Arizona Law. "

What is less clear is the fate of two sections of the Arizona law that create new state-law crimes based on violations of federal immigration law. Justices across the ideological spectrum at times asked skeptical questions of those latter provisions.

From the tenor of the oral argument, itÂ’s possible a ruling in the case may not fall strictly along ideological lines. Some of the courtÂ’s liberal justices, though expressing concerns about the Arizona law, wondered whether the state could be prohibited from checking the immigration status of individuals within its borders.

One of those provisions is making it a state-level crime for an illegal alien to seek employment in state. Chief Justice Roberts seemed skeptical about this provision. Sorry, I don't see what the other one is.

This exchange seems important. (Reformatted in first-to-last top-to-bottom format; timestamps and signatures stripped out.)

As earlier in the day, the justices remained fixed on Section 2(B), which requires Arizona police to check immigration status of people they stop when they reasonably suspect they may be present unlawfully.

All that section does is require state officers to notify the federal government that they picked up an illegal immigrant, Chief Justice Roberts said. ItÂ’s totally up to the federal government to decide whether to take any action against that person. He couldnÂ’t understand how that interferes with federal discretion over immigration enforcement.

Take those off the table, the chief justice said. “What could possibly be wrong” with having an Arizona cop call the feds to check immigration status?

...

Mr. Verrilli said, it created an accountability problem. State employees were enforcing federal laws, but were not accountable to federal officials.

[Also] he said, the huge number of inquiries would overwhelm federal resources

But federal law already requires the government to respond to immigration inquires from state officials. No member of the court seemed to accept Mr. VerrilliÂ’s insistence that ad hoc inquiries from state cops were okay, but a statewide policy to do so systematically somehow undermined the federal immigration scheme.

“You can see its not selling very well,” Justice Sotomayor told Mr. Verrilli. “I’m terribly confused by your answer.”

Seems to me, said Chief Justice Roberts, the federal government doesnÂ’t want to know whoÂ’s here illegally or not.

Pew Survey: Illegal Aliens are Self-Deporting. Net immigration from Mexico is zero, or maybe less, a survey finds.

From Kaus, with more. He observes that the previous CW claim (actually the liberal talking point, but I'll go with him and just call it "CW") was that illegals will never, ever leave, so we have to "just deal with it" through amnesty.

Now the CW shifts to "the illegals are leaving on their own anyway, so let's get rid of all the laws and enforcement that have helped impel them to leave."

Posted by: Ace at 08:51 AM | Comments (141)
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Sources suggested Gingrich might drop out if he failed to win or come in a close second in Delaware. He didn't (56% Romney, 27% Gingrich), so now sources say he's going to exit.

The former House speaker will "more than likely" endorse Mitt Romney when he makes his announcement to either suspend or end the campaign, a source said.

This seems gratuitous:

Gingrich's exit is a stark turnaround from his public posture just a few months back, when in December he confidently declared following his rise in national polls that he's "going to be the nominee."

That's like saying Tom Brady lied when he said he'd win the Super Bowl. "This score represents a stark flip-flop from Tom Brady's previous 'I intend to win the game' position."

Tom Brady

He lies like The Devil.

Joke h/t Misfit Politics' Attack Watch ad. I just can't think of anything right now.

Posted by: Ace at 08:18 AM | Comments (86)
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Foreshadowing?

Britain's economy slid into its second recession since the financial crisis after official data unexpectedly showed a fall in output in the first three months of 2012, piling pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron's embattled coalition government.

The Office for National Statistics said Britain's gross domestic product fell 0.2 percent in the first quarter of 2012 after contracting by 0.3 percent at the end of 2011, confounding forecasts for 0.1 percent growth.

The contraction was prefigured by a huge fall in construction activity.

I don't know if this campaign line works, but I've been thinking Romney could say something like: "Barack Obama has been trusting Europe to pull us out of recession. But we've never counted on Europe to pull the world out of recession before -- America has always been the engine. This time, we're counting on weaker economies to pull us out of recession instead of doing the job ourselves, and it's having predictable consequences."

That's very first-draft. But the basic idea is to tie together four different things -- Obama's passivity, Obama's disregard for America's position as the Indispensable Nation, his overfondness of European socialism as an economic model, and of course his miserable failure.

Posted by: Ace at 07:53 AM | Comments (128)
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I believe we need a new status.

Romney's speech last night is getting a lot of praise, and the key line, the MJGR, comes in at the 06:28 mark:

If he keeps up his rhetoric and argument in this vein, it will be a lot easier for distrustful Republicans to jump, AND win over the independents. No need to "move to the middle" when the middle is waking up. John McCain II he is not.

H/T to eman for coining MJGR. more...

Posted by: CAC at 07:23 AM | Comments (226)
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Poll to be released at 12EST will show Romney up 45-44 over Obama. He trailed by 9 previously, and in that poll the D/R split was R+3. Now? Even, so with a more Democratic sample he still jumped ahead.

This confirms the Roanoke Poll giving Romney a lead just weeks ago.

Also, Republicans have managed to annihilate the Democrats' voter registration efforts of 2008 in Iowa. Before November 2008, President Obama enjoyed winning the state in part to a +100k voter registration advantage. In a WSJ article in March, Republicans had shrunk that to just 3k. Well, since that primary, Republicans have registered even more voters, and it is now official: as of April 2012, there are now more registered Republcans than Democrats in the state. In fact, the margin is larger now than it was in 2004, when President Bush (barely) carried it.

I will link up the Rasmussen poll once it is officially released.

Posted by: CAC at 06:52 AM | Comments (132)
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Happy Wednesday.

The President lied his little pointy head off yesterday when he claimed to quote---"I'm just quoting here. I'm just quoting . . . I didnÂ’t make this up"---from Republican Congresswoman Virginia Fox on irresponsible student loan debt. He claimed she said she had "very little tolerance for people who tell me they graduate with debt because thereÂ’s no reason for that." In fact, she said she had "very little tolerance for people who tell me that they graduate with $200,000 of debt or even $80,000 of debt because thereÂ’s no reason for that."

351 small banks can't repay $15 billion in TARP loans.

"It was like a shootout in the movies!" said one neighbor after two NYPD officers unloaded 84 bullets at a man last night. The man shot once at the NYPD officers and they returned fire. Both police officers reloaded twice during the barrage. The man was hit fourteen times. He lived.

The Supreme Court will hear argument today in the case of United States v. Arizona. It's the Arizona immigration law case. The high court is also expected to release at least one opinion later this morning.

With respect to the primaries last night, Romney secured 146 delegates last night. Paul got 4. Gingrich got 0. Romney also took every single county in each of the five states.

I guarantee you there will be pundits today wringing their hands about voter turnout last night. They'll be pretending that turnout (which I assume was low, but didn't bother to check because any moron could tell you it'll be low) is an indicator of how dedicated Romney's voters really are. They'll be pretending this because pundits have to pundit about something and their pulpy little parietal lobes don't have a lot of punditry primed for a primary with only pro forma polls pending.

Newsflash: the GOP candidate will be Romney; not only does everyone know it, but everyone has known it for over a week now. So obsessing over the turnout last night is stupid for a few obvious reasons:

(1) Incentives matter. What's the incentive to vote if your vote isn't going to affect the outcome of the race?
(2) Disincentives also matter. Why vote if your preferred candidate has dropped out and you're left with candidates you'd really not pull the lever for?
(3) Obama ate a dog. Last night's contests in no way reflect the incentives and disincentives of participating in the general election.

First person to tweet me a link to a pundit moaning about turnout last night gets my undying gratitude and a free year's subscription to the HQ, but mostly just a free year's subscription to the HQ.

Posted by: Gabriel Malor at 02:53 AM | Comments (475)
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So What's Your College Major Actually Worth?

Here's a nice chart from the Chronicle of Higher Education that takes census data and shows the median income for college graduates according to their major. And I'm guessing that a lot of colleges would prefer that incoming students not see it.

As you might expect, some of the tastiest salaries come from the toughest subjects. Petroleum engineering majors earn $120,000. Brown jobs really do rule. Ecology majors on the other hand get a little more than one third of that: $44,000. And remember: that isn't a starting salary; it's the median income for all the people in the field up to age 65. Stuffing envelopes for Greenpeace does not often lead to great things.

Yes this is median lifetime earnings. So if you're a college student and your major is to the right of say biology, well you really have no business borrowing money for college. It's a bad investment.

And this article leads Don Surber to declare that underemployment is good for college graduates:

What a life lesson these 20-somethings are learning. The law of supply and demand trumps a sheepskin. Always has. Always will. I am 58 years old and no one has ever asked what my GPA is. People come to this blog and they don't know whether I have a PhD or an eighth-grade education. They judge me on what I have to say and how I say it.

Underemployment rocks because it knocks out that sense of entitlement. People also learn what real work is.

Posted by: Maetenloch at 06:21 PM | Comments (678)
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ABOVE THE POST UPDATE- DEMOCRATIC TURNOUT SHORT 20% OF EXPECTED 175K IN PHILADELPHIA, 2000: 121K 2004: 133K 2012: 144K(up only 9%)

PENNSYLVANIA**CALLED FOR ROMNEY AT 20:30**
PROPERTY OF ALBANY AND BLOOMBERG
CONNECTICUT, SUBURB OF NEW YORK CITY **CALLED FOR ROMNEY AT 20:30**
HIDEOUS CHUNK OF DELMARVA THAT DEFIES REASON WITH ITS STATEHOOD**CALLED FOR ROMNEY AT 20:25**
NEW ENGLAND SWAMPLAND**CALLED FOR ROMNEY AT 20:30**

Only state even remotely "contested" is Delaware, if the Gingrich campaign can stop chuckling while saying it.
All five should go to Romney, and comfortably. Turnout will be down in all five as the primary is essentially over.

The Democratic primary fight in PA between Critz and Altmire in the 12th district could be interesting to watch though.

*Quick little announcement for you morons and lurkers: I am in the process of working on a new method of reporting election results focusing solely on margins, simplifying the burning question of who is ahead and where in tight races. I will be kicking that off with the Wisconsin Recall on June 5th. The method is easy: I get results directly from county sources and report them here. No need to click through AP, CNN, and a dozen other sites. All the numbers you would need to know, who is doing what where, all on the same page, updated minute by minute. Just refresh the page and enjoy. My goal is to out-project and out-report the biggies (like reporting Waukesha's results on the night of the primary right here on AOSHQ ahead of several major news sources). About time my ADD became useful...

Posted by: CAC at 04:06 PM | Comments (419)
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more...

Posted by: CAC at 03:33 PM | Comments (143)
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