Over 80% of the jobs added in February – if we can trust BLS stats, at all – were low wage (and there’s a Zero Hedge link for those of you who have been starved for such). But don’t sweat it – I’m sure that our economy is far more valuable with more people tending bar than working in mines…

On Saturday, the GOP has caucuses in Kansas, Kentucky and Maine and a primary in Louisiana – if the Great Wall of Trump is starting to crack, we should see some signs of it in these places.

People are still arguing that Cruz should step aside and allow Rubio to be the Anti-Trump – sorry, folks, but that just isn’t rational. I caucused for Rubio but you just have to admit that stopping Trump requires someone to get more delegates than Trump…and Cruz is best positioned to do that. Cruz is, on balance, probably the guy who can keep most of the GOP Trumpsters on side. Whether or not he can generate the sort of cross-over Dems Trump has been getting is an unknown. Now, if Rubio starts to do well and pulls ahead of Cruz (this would require, at minimum, winning Florida), then perhaps Rubio can be our Anti-Trump…but elections are about votes, not about what one prefers. Right now, Cruz is getting more votes.

Gallup has Obama above 50% approval…that is bad but, also, I think quite wrong. What has happened in Obama-world which would make people think, “wow, he’s doing a good job?”. It could be a reflection of popular disgust with Obama’s prospective replacements which is driving Obama’s numbers up. It’s the first time in two years Gallup has Obama in positive territory, so I suspect it is an outlier. This is is borne out by Gallup showing Obama +7 while no other recent polling shows him in that condition – and his RCP average is 48% approval, if you include this latest Gallup poll. But, we’ll have to see how it goes – keep in mind that the President’s party usually scores within a point or two of the President’s approval rating at election time…so if people are getting happy out the Obama Era, it bodes ill for the GOP…on the other hand, the collapse in Democrat primary turnout (ie, what people are doing rather than saying the pollsters) is a stronger indicator that Obama’s time has gone.

Allahpundit wonders – is it going to be Trump/Kasich or Trump/Cruz after all is said and done?

Topical: Hitler or Stalin – who is worse?

Progressives explained: “There’s no alternative to logic except laziness” – G K Chesterton.

Making sure Trump cannot corner the Insane-American Vote: Hillary will get to the bottom of the UFO business in Area 51.

UPDATE: Well, Cruz crushed it in Kansas and Maine, while Trump narrowly carried Louisiana and Kentucky. What we have here is a political contest which no one can see the end of – Trump still has the advantage, but it is small and shrinking. Meanwhile, Bernie took Kansas and Nebraska while Hillary rolled to victory in Louisiana…I’m starting to suspect that Her Majesty’s coronation might be delayed.

The Justice Department has given a grant of immunity in the Hillary case…grants of immunity are usually only given to someone who is guilty but willing to spill the beans on someone else. My guess: beans will be spilled on Someone Other Than Hillary. This way we get a prosecution while Hillary can be given an allegedly clean bill of health on the whole matter. Only question is who get thrown under the bus.

But is Bernie playing his hand in a manner to ensure that no one else can step in if Hillary is indicted?

Mitt Romney is going to give a speech tomorrow – some expect a Rubio endorsement, everyone expects some sort of attack on Trump. I don’t think an attack on Trump will do much – the sort of people backing Trump will treat Romney’s words with contempt. On the other hand, endorsing Rubio might help. On the other other hand, endorsing Cruz would be quite the unexpected thing – and probably be most useful in stopping Trump, if that can still be done.

Related: Lindsey Graham suggests it might be time to rally around Cruz.

For an alternative GOP view on Trump, Roger L. Simon appears unfazed by Trump’s enormities:

…With all his victories, however, many Beltway Republicans are obviously still tremendously upset by Donald’s success. It’s hard to tell how big the #NeverTrump crowd is, but you will excuse me if, in plain English, I don’t know what the Hell they’re talking about.

Do these people want to lose? Would they prefer Hillary Clinton be president? Are they looking for a perfect candidate? Has there ever been one? Donald Trump may actually be expanding the Republican Party. Isn’t that good? … For that group I would recommend a reading of Hugh Hewitt’s “Six reasons Trump is still better than Clinton.” If Hugh can write that after Donald famously dissed him for low ratings at the last debate, a lot of other people can swallow their pride too and get on board…

Meanwhile, Jonah Goldberg isn’t having any of it:

…Trump says he gets along with everybody and will unify the country, even as he suggests that an inconvenient judge is biased because he’s Latino, vows to ban all Muslims from the country, insists his Central Intelligence Agency will torture people, and boasts that he will declare war on disloyal journalists.

When your opponent is that unreasonable, the reasonable response is not surrender.

I don’t know whether Trump will win the nomination or the presidency. But I am fairly certain that if he does, a great many people will one day say, “My God, what have I done?”

So this Swedish teenager – apparently starry-eyed for some boy – agrees to travel nearly 2,000 miles with him to Syria. The story says they took a bus to ISIS controlled territory! What in heck is going on in this world? First off – just what did anyone ever hear about ISIS which makes them say, “sounds good; sign me up?”. She’s not Muslim – she’s native Swedish…what brings such a child to such a place? And how in heck did she just waltz in there where our Special Forces troops risk life and limb to get in?

We live in very strange and amazingly stupid times.

Christie endorses Trump. See my above comment.

Glenn Reynolds analyses the Trump phenomena and notes that similar political rumblings are being seen in Britain. Boiled down – people are afraid to hold in public unpopular opinions until it is safe to so do. As more and more people “let it all hang out” people start to realize that their secret views are not really all that unpopular and a preference cascade erupts – in a flash, safe political calculations are upset. Trump’s vulgar demagoguery is allowing more and more people to, as it were, let it rip in the public square. This is allowing some people of decidedly fascist and/or racist views to poke their heads up a bit, as well – and that shouldn’t be ignored and should be smacked down as much as possible…but it is also allowing people to say true things which have been forbidden for a long time. We’re all going to get to see how this plays out – I don’t think anyone is going to be able to stop it from happening, even if Trump ends up losing. The cat is most definitively out of the bag.

Host of un-watched ultra-leftwing TV show is boycotting her show because it keeps getting pre-empted by things people would rather watch.

Yet another false accusation of racism. Racism does, indeed, exist in the United States. My “block” list on Twitter is probably half outright racists. But it doesn’t really keep a minority person down…and 7 years after we elected our first African-American President is is the height of absurdity to keep harping on racism as if this were still 1960 in the Jim Crow South. But, liberals want to keep harping on it – and if they just have to make stuff up, that is what they’ll do.

And also 7 years into Obama’s Administration, the Washington Post makes the shocking discovery that here is a lack of U.S. leadership in the world.

What’s coming for us…

Been a lot of grief these last couple weeks – so, my thread title should fix that right up. Right?

Oh, well – as least I tried.

Anyways…

Yet more on the Hillary scandal(s) – as I said, she won’t get indicted. Obama just won’t allow that…but the more of this that comes out, the more likely Hillary won’t get elected…and may not even get the nomination. If you think a GOP brokered convention would be a clusterfark, you ain’t seen nothing…if the Dems have one, it will be downright insane. Just imagine all the varied and conflicting Dem interest groups demanding a seat at the table…

Allahpundit does a bit more Romney ’16 trolling – in a confused and broken world, it’s good to have some things we can rely on.

Jeb is going to lose very badly in South Carolina tomorrow – and his donors are getting ready to bail out. Over to Rubio? Time will tell…

Liberals coming up with more excuses to dump Hillary.

Foreign policy: it’s bad. It needs to be fixed. Unless we get a 9/11 style attack on the USA between now and November, I don’t think it’ll play a role in the election.

College – a place where you rack up 30k in debt and come out knowing less than a 12 year old did 40 years ago.

Remember when America had talent?

Various part of the GOP are starting to do opposition research on Bernie Sanders. As I always say, don’t pay attention to what people say, watch what they do. People would not expend the time and money to do this unless some serious political number-crunchers have found out that Bernie has a path to the nomination.

Related: far left coming up with excuses for ditching Hillary.

What to do in an active shooter situation:

I have watched training videos on what to do in the event of an active shooter situation, and they all focus on the Run/Hide/Fight principle. Run if you can, hide if running isn’t an option, and fight if options A and B fail. What you should not do is simply lay down and die, or hope that the attacker dies of a stroke, or sit passively and get murdered. And in every one of these training videos, if you get to the Fight stage, the video producer recognizes something very basic, very simple, and yet so important – arm yourself. Grab a chair, grab a stapler, grab a binder or a coffee pot. Grab whatever you can to inflict the maximum amount of damage on your attacker, because something is better than nothing. But you know what is better than something? The right tool for the job, that’s what. You can attack an active shooter with a coffee pot, if that’s all you have, but wouldn’t you rather have a rifle at that moment, as well as the training to use it properly? Of course, because it’s the right tool for the job.

There’s a surfer gang that keeps others away from surfing. Who knew?

Lunatic lefty politician and corrupt, political hack get into a fight. It is Grayson vs Reid: Pass the popcorn.

Democrats must be more worried about 2016 than we thought – the Maryland legislature has over-rode a veto and will ensure that about 44,000 felons are able to vote in Maryland this year.

Figured my last post was way too long, so let’s put up something more immediately topical.

Cosmopolitan puts a sad face on the fact that more Texas women are having babies…I’m telling you, abortion is a sacrament in the Church of Progressivism.

Jimmy Carter opines that Trump is far more malleable than Cruz – and he would know about being a malleable President!

Do you like your recently reduced gasoline prices? Obama doesn’t.

Rob long points out that organizing and voting is what wins elections – it was, after all, Team Obama’s massively efficient organization which got him the votes in 2012. My note on this: of all the candidates, Cruz and Hillary have, by far, the best nuts-and-bolts political organizations. All else being equal, this indicates they will be the nominees and one of them will out-organize the other and win. Preparation wins battles.

I watched The Right Stuff the other day – delightful movie but what struck me most about it was that it was really a story about men being men; wanting to be tough and brave and do the grand deed simply because it needs to be done and brave men have to step up and do it. We’ve lost that.

Hillary doesn’t want to release the transcripts of the speeches she gave before various fat cat corporations and organizations. Is it because she reveals secrets – or because they are such clear boilerplate garbage that no one could possibly justify paying $250,000 to hear it, and thus it is clearly just a bribe for future access?

So, the Black Lives Matter thing? If you had guessed it was ginned up by commie activists, you guessed right. It does, after all, have the primary mark of a leftwing program – it is based upon lies.

John Stoehr over at The Week notes that Hillary will continue Obama’s policies and this is proof that Hillary is the change we need. I wonder: do our progs even remotely realize how silly their double-speak sounds?

Pretty sure that Team Hillary’s prediction of a what will result from a Sanders win in Iowa is “a plague of locusts o’er the land” – Nate Silver, however, breaks it down pretty well. Bottom line: Iowa and New Hampshire are Sanders country…filled with white, upper class liberals. Elsewhere in the country, not so much. On the other hand, a Sanders win in both places might tilt enough voters in SC his way to make even a Hillary win look weak…and then just about everything is up for grabs in the Democrat primary.

Apparently, Bill Clinton wasn’t looking a picture of health at a rally – and there are plenty of questions about Hillary’s overall health. Sanders, at 74, does appear at times more vigorous than both of them (maybe being a granola-eating hippy does have benefits?). Not to be disrespectful, here, but in the Clinton’s we are proposing to elect a Geezer-American as President. This can be done – most famously by Reagan…but Reagan looked and acted like the picture of good health. Question: if Hillary gets elected and is incapacitated while in office, would the Administration tell us?

Trump is to travel to Arkansas next week – Allahpundit notes the oddity. The obvious conclusion – Huckabee is going to endorse Trump. Allahpundit notes some strong reasons for doing this (animosity towards Cruz; possibility of some position with Trump…maybe even a VP pick). It would be yet another major Evangelical voice coming out for Trump who is, well, let’s just say he’s a bit theologically vague and has a checkered past. I admit I don’t understand the willingness of Evangelicals to back Trump – especially against rock-solid Evangelicals like Cruz (and Huckabee). Maybe this is just because I’m Catholic and can’t see it all from the inside…I fully understand the forgive thing (it is only anti-Christians who believe that Christians are cruel and unforgiving), but I wouldn’t expect someone like Trump – who has not, apparently, repented of those past actions which rather flew in the face of Christian morality – to get this sort of Evangelical support. But, there it is…

The Administration is changing the rules on labeling Israeli-made products. Seems that if you make your product on land the Administration considers Palestine, you can’t call it “Made in Israel”. This is to punish Israel over the Settlements issue. But if they aren’t labeled “Made in Israel”, then what will they be labeled? That is unclear. But what is clear is that, once again, the Obama Administration is signalling anti-Israel views.

I am a fan of National Review and enjoy reading their articles, but their decision last week to come out against Trump was irresponsible, and displays a disconnect from everyday Americans that evidently even our conservative pundits share. Of course keep in mind, they all do work within the beltway, enjoy six figure incomes, and attend much of the same cocktail parties, so it isn’t difficult to surmise that after many of their collegial, more liberal friends bent their ear about how “offensive” Trump is, at their latest cocktail soiree, the executives at NR decided it was probably best to come out against Trump to shore up their DC bona fides. To me, it exposes them for their lack of appreciation of just how fed up Americans are with their current government and possibly how disingenuous they are when they do pontificate on smaller government, conservatism and states rights. It appears to me that the status quo sets well with the boys at National Review and the last thing they want is some one like Trump upsetting their apple cart. Besides, when a Democrat is in office, conservative publications and opinions sell better. Maybe that’s their end game.