Rush accepts misleading NBC analysis showing Trump over performing delegate wins by 22%

From the NBC analysis here:

Trump now leads the Republican field with 756 delegates — or 45 percent of all delegates awarded to date. Yet he has won about 37 percent of all votes in the primaries, according to the NBC analysis, meaning Trump's delegate support is greater than his actual support from voters.

The math is not mistaken, just misleading.

If roughly 1635 delegates have been awarded so far to all GOP players, then Trump's delegate count represents 46% of those. The difference from 37% of the votes cast is indeed 22%.

But that's not a measure of Trump's "gaming" of the system, only of his real popularity over his competitors.

He's won, after all, 20 states outright in the popular vote while Cruz has won only 9. Trump should have a greater percentage of the delegates for that reason. And he does.

Republican proportional voting rules are bleeding delegates from both Trump and Cruz at about the same 35% rate

Trump has won the popular vote in 20 contests representing 924 delegates, of which he has been allocated only 609, or 66%. The proportional voting rules based on congressional district performance have thus bled away 34% of his support in those races. Ted Cruz bled away 206 delegates from Trump in these states, 22% of the total.

Cruz has won the popular vote in only 9 contests representing 433 delegates, of which he has been allocated just 271, or 63%. The rules have thus bled away 37% of his support in those races. Donald Trump bled away 115 delegates from Cruz in these states, 27% of the total.

And, on average, 10% of the delegates legitimately owed to both Trump and Cruz have gone to candidates who have had no chance of winning whatsoever, and wouldn't be able to argue they have a chance of winning were it not for this insane way of proceeding which gives them the delegates to say so in the first place.

It doesn't seem fair to the voters in these 29 states that their candidates won the popular vote but didn't win all the delegates, as in winner take all, which will most certainly be the rule when the Republican nominee finally faces the Democrat in November.

If all delegates in the Democrat primaries were allotted on a winner take all basis, the outcome wouldn't be much different than it is

Based only on the 29 states so far where Democrats have held contests which collected a popular vote, Hillary Clinton leads Bernie Sanders with 1142 pledged and super delegates to his 371 based on the Bloomberg data here, which are not complete in instances. That's a 75% to 25% race.

Turn it into winner take all instead, and the result isn't significantly different. Hillary would have 1803 pledged and super delegates from the 16 states in which she was the popular vote winner, and Bernie would have 698 from the 13 states in which he won the popular vote. That's a 72% to 28% race.

This analysis leaves out the 301 delegates so far where no popular vote was taken. They come from Iowa, Nevada, Maine, Alaska, Washington, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana islands and something called "Democrats Abroad".

It also leaves out the delegates Bernie has "poached" from Hillary under the rules in the states she has won, as well as the delegates Hillary has poached from Bernie where he has won the popular vote. On net I calculate Bernie has had the advantage from poaching, with 334 extra delegates in his column as a result in the 29 popular vote contests (661 minus 327).

As the delegate race stands today including all contests, it's a 62% to 38% race, with Clinton holding 1756 pledged and super delegates to Sanders' 1068.

That's close to the popular vote result on a percentage basis, where Clinton leads with 57% of the popular vote so far to Sanders' 43%, keeping in mind that we don't have a popular vote from 8 states and territories so far to make the analysis complete. 

Trump has won the popular vote in 20 of 32 states, should have 924 delegates under winner take all, gets only 743 under Republican rules

To date Donald Trump has won the popular vote in 20 of the 32 primary/caucus contests, entitling him to their 924 delegates on the winner take all principle, but the Republican "rules" made at the state level give Trump just 80% of these overall, while enriching others with undeserved delegate allocations at his expense.

Imagine if that happened in actual presidential elections, where the winner of the popular vote in a state normally wins all the state's electoral college votes representing both political parties. Under the current Republican rules applied to the presidential election, the Republican candidate and the Democrat candidate might so split the electoral college vote between themselves that the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives under the 12th amendment because no one happened to reach the majority of 270. Think of that at the federal level as the equivalent of a party convention at the state level deciding the outcome because, in the case of Trump, he failed to reach 1,237. The more likely outcome would be Republicans losing national elections because of close contests in traditionally Republican states where Democrats still lose but cut into their electoral college allocations if winner take all goes by the roadside. Republicans at the state level are actually paving the way in practice for Democrat reform efforts of electoral college rules.

The unfairness of that is self-evident. Winner take all in a state in presidential elections is designed to smooth the way to national unity. But the Republicans have instituted "proportionality" rules to the extent that they can't, in their mad factionalism, unite along lines which are similarly simple, reasonable and attractive to people who wish to embrace the party, and their country. Donald Trump has brought hordes of new voters to the Republican Party, but all Republican Party elites can do is turn up their noses at them. 

Ted Cruz, who has won the popular vote in just 9 contests so far compared to Trump's 20, is entitled to only 433 delegates using winner take all. But he has 545 at this hour, 26% more than he should have, some of which come from states and territories where the people themselves aren't even allowed by the Republican elites to formalize their opinion by voting.

There is no popular vote taken this year so far in Colorado, North Dakota, Wyoming, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands or American Samoa. Republican elites from these places decide who gets their combined 153 delegates. And #NeverTrump factions in these and other states have worked hard to make sure Trump gets as few of them as possible, if any.

To make matters worse, obvious losers like Marco Rubio and John Kasich are playing spoiler roles out of all proportion to their standing because of these rules.

Kasich has a legitimate claim on the delegates of only the one state he has won, Ohio. Instead of the 66 delegates he's entitled to, the Byzantine rules of Republicanism give him 143, 117% more than he should have.

In the case of Little Marco, he's still trying to bind his allotted 171 delegates to himself when they should be free agents because he's dropped out of the race entirely. Entitled to only 57 delegates from winning just two contests in Minnesota and DC, Rubio's unfair influence has been magnified 200% beyond what he's legitimately won because of proportional allocation rules in this year's contests.

The message being sent by Republicanism is obvious to everyone. The Republican Party is an exclusive club which has complicated, intricate rules for membership designed to keep out the riffraff, not win national elections.

Unfortunately, those rules will continue to keep the executive power far out of reach for them.

If they want to win the White House, Republicans should embrace the new voters, and Trump.

To do otherwise is political suicide.

Trump has big delegate win at Michigan Republican convention, libertarian wack job Rep. Justin Amash DEFEATED

Justin Amash endorsed Rand Paul in May 2015; Cruz is only his default candidate

CNN reports here:

Trump's national delegate director, Brian Jack, called it a "big win" for Trump. "The most important votes occurred this afternoon -- we went 5-0. Five delegates for Mr. Trump ran for committee assignments; all five were elected," Jack said. He added, "This was a big win for Team Trump. We won 25 delegates from Michigan last month, and now, at least 25 supporters of Mr. Trump will be delegates to the Republican National Convention." ... Of Michigan's 59 delegates selected Friday and Saturday, Trump supporters filled 25 spots, Cruz supporters filled 17 and Kasich supporters took another 17 -- although it was unclear who all the delegates were permanently aligned with. ... Kasich supporter Chuck Yob -- the father of Republican operative John Yob -- beat Cruz supporter Rep. Justin Amash for the other spot on the credentials committee.

Arrested in May 1970 with shoe boxes full of marijuana, Indiana establishment Republicans want their governor to be president, not Trump

Mitch Daniels

Poster Boy for Bush-era establishment Republicanism, Speaker of the House Hastert 1999-2007, was a child molester

But he won't be going to prison for that.

Story here.

If you felt molested politically by Republicans during the Bush era, there were good reasons for that which eerily echo in nature.

If you want that to continue, by all means vote for Kasich, or Cruz or for the hand-picked candidate of a contested Republican convention.

If you don't, vote for Trump.

Corrupt anti-Trump Indiana GOP requires convention delegation applicants to cough up $2,000 to participate, filters out supporters of The Donald

Reported by Politico, here:

Local GOP district leaders have picked slates of favored candidates from among the applicants that will be considered at Saturday’s caucuses — tiny meetings of county leaders that typically ratify the names with which they’re presented. Applicants must promise to furnish $2,000 to participate after they’re selected, a requirement that tilts the process away from newcomers and outsiders. Among the delegate applicants who made it on to recommended slates: several district GOP leaders, State Treasurer Kelly Mitchell, Secretary of State Connie Lawson, Congresswoman Susan Brooks, Carmel, Indiana, Mayor James Brainard and Portage, Indiana, Mayor James Snyder.

“One of my criteria for filtering out folks was whether or not they support Donald Trump,” said one district GOP leader. “I didn’t care whether they supported Ted Cruz or John Kasich.”

Indiana may vote for Trump on May 3rd, but most of the 57 delegates are already anti-Trump

So reports Politico, here:

Republican Party insiders in the state will select 27 delegates to the national convention on Saturday, and Trump is assured to be nearly shut out of support, according to interviews with a dozen party leaders and officials involved in the delegate selection process. Anti-Trump sentiment runs hot among GOP leadership in Indiana, and it’s driving a virulent rejection of the mogul among likely delegates. ... Pete Seat, an Indiana GOP consultant whose firm was recently retained by the Kasich campaign, said he would be “shocked” if there were more than a handful of Trump supporters in Indiana’s delegation.

Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump should be the candidates for president: The rest are tools for outside interests

Ranked from biggest tool to outside interests to smallest, based on percentage of PAC money to the total raised through February 2016, reported here:

Rick Perry: 91%

Jeb Bush: 78%

George Pataki: 71%

Chris Christie: 69%

Scott Walker: 61%

Carly Fiorina: 54%

Mike Huckabee: 53%

Marco Rubio: 50%

*Ted Cruz: 46%

Lindsey Graham: 44%

Rand Paul: 42%

Bobby Jindal: 41%

*John Kasich: 30.2%

Rick Santorum: 30%

*Hillary Clinton: 28%

Martin O'Malley: 15%

Ben Carson: 14%

Jim Webb: 13%

*Donald Trump: 5%

*Bernie Sanders: 0.1%

*still in the race

(watch the gif here)

Rigged party system is leaving both Trump and Sanders supporters feeling voiceless: What's the point of voting if delegates are going to do what they want?

Be the first one on your block to have your boy come home in a box

From the story here:

[T]he sense of futility is building among supporters of Mr. Trump and Mr. Sanders, both of whom have strong appeal with people who already believe that a rigged political system leaves them voiceless and disenfranchised. ...

“It’s people who are in charge keeping their friends in power,” said Tom Carroll, 32, a union plumber who lives in Bethpage, N.Y., summing up how he viewed the electoral system. Mr. Carroll, who was at Mr. Trump’s rally on Long Island on Wednesday, expressed irritation at a system that does not always abide by the one person, one vote concept. “In other countries, we pay to fix their election systems and they get their fingers colored with fingerprint ink when they vote,” he added. “What’s the point of everyone voting if the delegates are going to do what they want?”

Colorado GOP establishment systematically de-credentialed Trump voters at convention: "Removed and replaced because I voted for Trump"

Here.

I dunno, I just work here

Mark Levin is a hot-headed radical who doesn't have the temperament to host a radio show let alone lead an Article V convention

"We are rapidly approaching a moment of truth for the life of our nation!"

He goes from ripping #NeverTrump on April 7 here to joining it on April 9 here.

Just think what he might do at a convention. He's proposed only eleven amendments to the constitution. That's not exactly the slow, incremental change usually supported by genuine conservatives. Can you imagine him suddenly changing his mind and proposing twenty-two? forty-four? Well, I exaggerate, but now we see how quickly it could get out of control with someone like him at the helm, or advising it. He reminds me of General Buck Turgidson more and more everyday.

Forget nuking the Russkies, Levin wants to nuke the constitution!

A constitutional convention would be a disaster in the age of Obama. Unfortunately, Mark Levin also has no check upon his appetites, including for vengeance.

Marlene Ricketts of Chicago Cubs/TD Ameritrade fame is funding #NeverTrumper Erick Erickson, spending nearly $15 million so far against Trump

Reported here with FEC documentation here:

So it perhaps shouldn’t come as a surprise to find out that Erick Erickson’s media venture “The Resurgent“, is taking Super-PAC money from the (formerly Scott Walker advocates and financial backers) Ricketts family of Wisconsin who fund OUR PRINCIPLES PAC to the tune of $3,000,000 in February alone.

OpenSecrets reports here that Our Principles Pac, organized to oppose Donald Trump, has spent $14.8 million so far in the 2016 election cycle.

Last I checked Joe and Marlene Ricketts live in Wyoming, not Wisconsin.

Diana West concludes that wankers Rick Wilson and Kevin Williamson far exceed the Roger Stone standard for offensive rhetoric set by the sanctimonious Brent Bozell

Here:

What it is with these two men and masturbation is not, Glory Be, our concern; rather, it is their hellish level of discourse. I am wondering whether [L. Brent Bozo] will be issuing another righteous statement, as [he] did regarding Roger Stone, calling for "the media to shun" this noxious pair (and others, as you will see) and "denounce [them] in no uncertain terms"?

Repeat after me: Building a wall is impossible, building a wall is impossible, building . . .

And the right is paranoid, too, this week: Michigan's Steve Gruber repeats hysterical Yellowstone supervolcano story

Yesterday on his show Michigan's Steve Gruber uncritically read from this dark story, which has several iterations on the internet featuring a lurid "sea of red" map of earthquakes in Yellowstone, from which this claim:

So why are the public seismographs from the US Geological Survey (USGS) OFFLINE (to the public) today?  No one is providing any answers.

Even more peculiar, the privately-funded seismographs from the University of Utah . . . are also OFFLINE (to the public) right now.  No one is providing any explanation for this either.

The USGS page here showing earthquakes as recent as yesterday in Yellowstone features this box, with dead links to the University of Utah Seismograph Stations page here:

So what's up with that?

Well, just click "home" and the University of Utah Seismograph Stations page tells you:

UUSS has launched a redesigned website! Please visit us at http://www.seis.utah.edu  (http://quake.utah.edu ) to check out the new features.

Obviously, the government page at USGS hasn't been updated yet. Government moves slowly, and often incompetently. No news there.

Also at the Univ. of Utah home page you'll see this map of reality:

Not this scary beast, which appears to be an historical map of all events over a long period of time:

Paranoia will destroy ya.

Salon post on Michael Savage fizzles at the end

The piece by Robert Hennelly does a fair job of laying out the Savage oeuvre, only to show exhaustion at the end and descend into dark speculation that Savage wants part of the country to secede.

Paranoia will destroy ya.

Rush Limbaugh seriously wants you to believe Obama is trying to help Trump by attacking him

Here.

Call it the Claire McCaskill strategy: Make sure Hillary's got someone to run against that she can beat, like Claire beat Todd Akin.

That, folks, is how much Rush Limbaugh wants Ted Cruz to be the candidate, not Trump.

Marist poll finds 53% think the middle class is dead

Here and here:

[A] majority of Americans, 53%, believe the middle class is dead. There are now only those who are struggling and those who are not. 44% disagree and believe a strong middle class remains in the United States. Racial differences are seen here, as well. When it comes to the state of the nation’s middle class, a majority of non-whites, 52%, think the middle class is still strong while only 40% of whites agree.

Hey Ted, a dinosaur communist beat you in Wisconsin!

Bernie Sanders: 567,936

Ted Cruz:           531,129

Cheating Trump of the nomination and discriminating against his supporters is Republican suicide

So says Conrad Black, here.

Trump support mirrored by the growth of the 1099 worker as corporate greed turns the Buchanan Brigades into Trump's FU Army

From David Dayen in The New Republic here:

But The New York Times’s Neil Irwin might have found an answer [to the anger out there] last week, when he pointed to eye-opening new research from Princeton’s Alan Krueger and Harvard’s Lawrence Katz on Americans in alternative work arrangements, which they defined as “temporary help agency workers, on-call workers, contract workers, and independent contractors or freelancers.” This cohort of the workforce grew from 10.1 percent in 2005 to 15.8 percent at the end of 2015, representing an increase of 9.4 million workers. That’s all of the growth in the labor market over the past decade. ...  “Angry” voters may simply be angry workers tossed into the Darwinian world of the modern economy, operating without any fallback support from their employers or their government. This was bound to find its way into our politics, but though solutions for these workers exist, nobody is talking about them.

At 8.2 million after 32 contests, the popular vote for Trump alone with 16 states yet to vote is set to surpass 12 million.

Rush makes a ring composition of today's lyin' show, featuring at the end Ted Cruz lying about the last four contests

Claiming Trump has lost them all.

If Cruz can't count to four, he's not qualified to be president.

North Dakota doesn't count because delegates are unbound with 18 uncommitted, and Trump won Arizona.

Lyin' Rush Limbaugh repeats the false narrative to shape perceptions more favorably for Ted Cruz

He just repeated the false narrative that Trump hasn't won anything in a month, that Trump has lost the last four or five contests.

In the last month Trump has lost two to Cruz: Wisconsin and Utah. But Trump won Arizona and the Northern Marianas.

Prior to Utah, the only thing Cruz has won outright was Idaho, way back on March 8. North Dakota was not a win.

Liar.

The number of Democrats crossing over to vote Republican yesterday in Wisconsin appears to have been relatively small, unmoved by Trump's trade stand

From Politico here:

While 65 percent of those voting in the Republican open primary identified as Republican, another 29 percent said they were independent and 6 percent said Democratic.

Turnout in the Republican primary in Wisconsin was enormous.

In 2008, barely 403,000 voted in the primary which picked McCain over Huckabee.

Yesterday, 1.06 million reportedly voted in the Republican contest won by Ted Cruz, with some votes still remaining to be counted.

Six percent of that is 64,000 Democrats.

In the Democrat contest won by Bernie Sanders, 993,000 votes were cast, about 120,000 fewer than in the 2008 contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. So only half of the no-shows might have gone Republican.

The voters worried about free-trade whom Donald Trump hoped to attract went instead to Bernie Sanders in Wisconsin:

Demonstrating Sanders’ unusual strength, he ran competitively with Clinton, 51-47 percent, in who’d be the best commander-in-chief. And he won by particularly wide margins among those very worried about the economy’s direction, those who expect life for the next generation of Americans to be worse than it is today and those who think trade with other countries takes away U.S. jobs. Finally, he won 78 percent of those who favor more liberal policies than Barack Obama’s; Clinton won those who want to continue Obama’s policies, but by less of a margin. ...

Trade was a potent issue for Sanders in his surprise win in Michigan and helped him make Missouri and Illinois agonizingly close, though, Clinton turned things around in Ohio. In Wisconsin, more than four in 10 think trade takes away more American jobs, while fewer than four in 10 think it creates more jobs.

As with Michigan, ARG poll got Wisconsin massively wrong, predicting Trump +10 when it was Cruz +13

Ted Cruz wins the lesbian vote in Wisconsin, slows Trump momentum by less than 4%

On the most generous interpretation of the delegate allocation, Trump goes from needing 488 additional delegates before Wisconsin to needing 482 now. This assumes he still gets 12 more from foot-dragging Missouri and 3 in Wisconsin not yet shown (total 6) for a total of 755 vs. 749. He goes from needing 53.2% of remaining delegates to needing 55.2%, the two-point difference representing a slowdown in momentum of not quite 3.8%.

Using the same assumptions, Cruz goes from needing 762 before Wisconsin to needing 720 now, or from needing 83% of available delegates before to needing 82.5% now. That's not even a 1% pick-up in speed.

Going forward, Trump momentum is bound to pick-up as the race heads east to Trump's backyard, where Cruz will have trouble attracting votes from New York values voters.

Kasich, however, could continue to be a problem for Trump in the more liberal east, but interestingly he came in a distant third everywhere in Wisconsin and won nothing. Even in liberal congressional district 2, which includes Madison and had Tammy Baldwin as its Democrat representative, Kasich came in a distant third.

Cruz narrowly bested Trump in CD-2 by fewer than 2900 votes.

With 34% of precincts reporting, 2016 Wisconsin GOP presidential primary turnout already exceeds total in 2008

Wisconsin Republicans are totally in the tank for a path to legalization, which is lyin' Ted Cruz' true position, also Gov. Walker's

From the exit polling, here:

More than six in 10 GOP voters in Wisconsin think undocumented immigrants should be offered a path to legal status, on track to be the highest of any state this year (it’s topped out at 59 percent in Virginia). Only a third support deporting undocumented immigrants, fewer than in previous primaries. Deportation voters have been a strong group for Trump in previous primaries; Cruz beat Trump in recent contests (North Carolina, Missouri and Illinois) among the larger group that favors a path to legal status, and Kasich won them in Ohio.

If Ted Cruz wins Wisconsin tonight, it'll be nothing more than a dead cat bounce

Ted Cruz' momentum collapsed by 44% in March.

He was dead weeks ago. He just doesn't know it yet.

Libertarian Club for Growth really did hit up Trump for $1 million in June 2015, now it spends millions attacking him

Here.

So, Michelle Field's mom is Honduran born and runs a nonprofit for illegal aliens

Michelle Fields may have a very strong and until now secret motive to try to bring down Trump.

Rush says Trump's already trying to change the subject from his impending loss today to new immigration plan details

What rubbish. That must be the OxyContin talkin'.

Trump's detailed proposals have been out there since August 2015, on his website.

Hey Wisconsin, Make America Red Again!

Hillary lost to Obama in Wisconsin in 2008 by 193,000 votes in the Democrat presidential primary: Can she do it again?!

Total turnout in the Democrat presidential primary in 2008 was 1.11 million.

The question this year is whether Bernie Sanders will drive Democrat turnout there to a similar conclusion, or will Democrats cross over in large numbers to vote for Trump. The primary is open.

It would seem Sanders' natural voters are not the working class, in which case Democrats crossing over for Trump would come from Hillary's voters. It could be both: enthusiasm for Bernie among the young and far left boosting his turnout, and enthusiasm for Trump from the blue collars boosting Trump's. In which case Hillary and Cruz might be disappointed today in Wisconsin.

Fewer than 403,000 votes were cast in the Republican presidential primary in 2008, which was won by McCain with 225,000 votes. Huckabee ran second, and won in the western and central part of the state where Trump is supposed to be strong in 2016. Pretty odd. The ARG poll had picked McCain to win Wisconsin by 8, who won it by 17.8. This time around ARG is picking Trump by 10 against six recent polls showing Cruz by an average of 6.5.

ARG is also showing Hillary by 1 as polls open this morning. The Real Clear Politics poll average has Sanders ahead by 2.6.

Long lines of enthusiastic Wisconsinites at all Trump venues in recent days, despite the gaffes which upset polite society political correctness, argue for a stronger showing by Trump today than the consensus would suggest.

Delegate race update: Trump needs 53.76% of 930 available to win, Cruz 81.94%

Trump's delegate total tonight moves up to 737, Cruz' to 475.

Kasich needs 117.63% of the available delegates to win, in other words, MORE THAN ARE AVAILABLE.

Conservative talk radio is still lying to you: Ted Cruz' momentum steadily eroded in March by 44%

Ted Cruz ended the first week of March needing 57% of remaining delegates to get to 1237.

By March 10th he needed 61%.

By March 18th 77%.

As of March 23rd he needs 82% of remaining delegates to win.

The 25-point increase in his required future performance over three weeks represents a 44% slowdown in his momentum from the beginning of the month.

The voters are wasting their votes on Ted, as they are on Kasich.

Ted Cruz should suspend his campaign and begin negotiations with Trump. John Kasich should just drop out.

For the good of the party, and the country.

ARG Inc. poll got Michigan massively wrong, shows Trump +10 in Wisconsin tomorrow

The ARG poll had Kasich winning Michigan by 2 when Trump won it by 11.6.

Otherwise . . .

ARG has been pretty good this season.

It had Trump by 16 in NH. Actual: 19.5.

It had Trump by 12 in SC. Actual: 10.0.

It had Cruz by 1 in TX. Actual: 17.1. OK, way off but at least it got the winner right!

It had Trump by 25 in FL. Actual: 18.8.

It had Kasich by 6 in OH. Actual: 11.1.

Conservative talk radio in Wisconsin has been united for months in stopping Donald Trump, fawning over Ted Cruz

Which is why the voters in Wisconsin are unaware of Ted Cruz' flips on trade and immigration.

From the story here:

The Wisconsin talk radio conglomerate, which rallied conservative voters to help Gov. Scott Walker win three elections in four years, has now set its sights on stopping Mr. Trump by deprecating the delegate leader and elevating Mr. Cruz. ...

The most popular conservative talk show hosts here — Mr. Sykes, Jeff Wagner of WTMJ, and Mark Belling, Vicki McKenna and Jay Weber of WISN — are united in their disdain for Mr. Trump, with Jerry Bader, a radio personality at WTAQ in Green Bay, rounding out the group.

“The thing that’s been unique in this presidential race is, for some reason, the three who work here — Jay, Vicki and myself — and our competitors, Charlie and Jeff Wagner, all seem to despise Trump,” Mr. Belling said in an interview. “We all just kind of came to this conclusion independently. I think it’s just that we’re not as stupid as some of the people that are falling for Trump’s crap.”

Rush is reading from this right now on air: It must be the OxyContin part that finally ticked Rush off

Materialist Kevin Williamson for National Review, here:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale [Trump] communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

Ted Cruz brags about his "poison pill" amendments to Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, says higher Gang of 8 bill cap on H-1B visas was "not nearly high enough"

Here: "It's my hope to put in place common sense immigration reform".

Ken Blackwell of Club For Growth is delusional: 47% of Trump's supporters won't vote for Cruz if he's given the nomination by the convention

There's that number again, 47%.

Of Trump's popular vote to date, that's only 3.7 million Trump voters rebelling against the Republicans.

Remember Rush's Limbaugh's "4 million stayed home in 2012"?

Ken Blackwell, quoted here:

“As far as my objective of forcing this into a contested convention, I feel very optimistic about it," said Ken Blackwell, the former Ohio secretary of state who is working with a pair of anti-Trump groups, including Our Principles PAC, which paid for the Wisconsin billboards. ...

Blackwell said he wasn't concerned about a Cruz convention victory splitting the party, as long as the process was “transparent.” He also said the party could afford to alienate new voters Trump is bringing to the party—Blackwell referred to them as “undocumented Republicans”—because the traditional base would be motivated to stop Clinton.

“Folks will get over it,” Blackwell said. “The prospects of Hillary Clinton naming a liberal justice to the Supreme Court, expanding our welfare state and furthering our incompetence in international affairs will drive out the old base that didn't come out for Romney.”

Monmouth poll finds 54% of Republicans say Trump should be nominee even without the necessary 1,237 delegates

Here:

"A majority of all Republican voters (54%) say that the party should get behind Trump as the nominee if he has the most delegates but not enough for a first round ballot victory. Another 34% would like to see the convention nominate someone else in this case."

Germany has a bigger "NPR" problem than we do

From the story here:

. . . the [ironic] message of the video appears to be that critics of multiculturalism must be shut down.

Regardless of equipment, or radio and television usage, all households in Germany must pay a blanket fee of €215.76 per annum which funds public broadcasters ZDF and Deutschlandradio, as well as the nine regional broadcasters of the ARD network.

Now that fascist Trump has kids pledging to HIM never to take drugs or smoke cigs, and go easy on the alcohol

The horror.

Here.

I wish Gavin McInnes would tell us what he really thinks about Michelle Fields

Here:

For the record, I think Michelle Fields is full of shit. I think Ben Terris placated her because she’s pretty and he’s a horny beta male. I think her bruises are self-inflicted. She didn’t look down at her arm in the video, which is the first thing you do when someone inflicts pain. I think she’s an attention whore who wants to dominate the news more than she wants to report it. She has a book coming out and all this hype is good for sales. She also has a history of histrionic complaints.

What, she's not a psycho?

Ted Cruz: "We should expand legal immigration, double the caps, and increase high-skilled workers"

Here.

Byron York walks the line of those waiting to see Trump in Wausau: 5 minutes of video later he hasn't reached the end of it

See it here.

And the venue was already half full.

Wisconsin's and Ohio's middle classes have shrunk the most since 2000, don't expect establishment types who support free trade and open borders like Cruz and Kasich to fix it

Wisconsin heads the list of states where the middle class has shrunk the most since 2000:

Wisconsin (Gov. Scott Walker 2011-), down 10.4%

Ohio (Gov. John Kasich 2011-), down 10.2%

New Mexico, down 10%

Georgia, down 9.8%

North Dakota (despite the oil!), down 9.7%

Vermont (Democratic Socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders), down 9.5%

Maine, down 9.1%

Nevada, down 9%

Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and Ted Cruz both stand for more disastrous wage-leveling job-destroying trade agreements

Scott Walker has no fire in the belly for tougher immigration enforcement in Wisconsin

Reported here:

Gov. Scott Walker says he doesn't think the state Senate will pass a controversial "sanctuary cities" bill, and he says he's "just fine with that."

The bill, which passed the Assembly last week, would prohibit local ordinances or policies that keep police from asking about someone's immigration status.

Same as he ever was, except when he was running for president against Donald Trump. 

Since the 1990s 144,000 manufacturing and related jobs lost in Wisconsin due to free-trade agreements

Reported here:

Wisconsin has lost more than more than 68,000 manufacturing jobs since the mid-1990s and the first of several controversial trade pacts with Mexico, China and others took hold.

Additionally, the U.S. Department of Labor has certified about 76,000 Wisconsin workers in various fields as having lost their jobs due to either imports or the work they do being shipped overseas. ... 

Caterpillar has laid off about 600 of its 800-plus workers over the past two years because of a business slowdown. ...

Wisconsin’s heavy manufacturing sector, once one of the country’s strongest, has been taking a lot of punches in recent years. General Motors, General Electric, Chrysler, Joy Global Surface Mining and Manitowoc Cranes have all cut jobs or closed operations in recent years for a variety of reasons.

Hometown companies such as Kohler, the plumbing supply manufacturer; and Trek Bicycles have offshored jobs to India, China and Taiwan.

Meanwhile, Madison, the state capital, will lose 1,000 jobs over the next two years as the 100-year-old iconic Oscar Mayer meat processing plant shuts down. And just east on I-94 in Jefferson, Tyson Foods will cease operations at its pepperoni processing plant, cutting 400 jobs.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, experienced a temperature anomaly of 5.0 degrees F above normal in March 2016

Temperature averaged 40.6 degrees F, according to the preliminary monthly climate data. The cumulative reported anomaly year to date is +9.3 degrees F.

The very long term mean average temperature in March, however, is 34.0 degrees F using the full NOWdata, so NOAA is saying the normal average is 35.6 degrees F based on a smaller data set which does not incorporate the full record available. Otherwise the anomaly would be 6.6 degrees F, not 5.0. For the year to date, the anomaly from the long term mean is +13.9 degrees F.

Precipitation was 2.57 inches above normal, coming in at 4.94 inches. The very long term mean precipitation average is 2.46 inches in February, however, not 2.37, meaning precipitation was 2.48 inches above the long term normal.

Snowfall was 10.1 inches, 0.9 inches above the mean average of 9.2 for the month calculated going back to the beginning of the record. January is typically the snowiest month at 18.5 inches, followed by December at 15.9 and then February at 13.1. For the season so far, which is effectively over, snowfall has come to 51.7 inches, 11.8 inches below the long term mean average for the season so far (63.5 inches), or 18.6%. Snow is still expected in April.

Heating degree days in March at 749 were 21.4% below the very long term mean of 953. Cumulatively for the season HDD are running 1031 below the normal of 5857, about 17.6%, thanks to the El Nino.

Erick "kamikaze" Erickson attacks Trump's voters

Not unlike Romney attacking the 47% "takers" and Obama attacking the "bitter clingers".

Hey Erick! Try PERSUADING the voters instead of writing them off.

GOP delegate race update: No one can win except Trump, which is why the GOP should embrace him instead of fighting him

According to Breitbart here, it's going to take until about April 15th for the Missouri GOP primary results to be certified by the Secretary of State.

The Missouri GOP shows here that Trump won 37 delegates. Real Clear Politics credits Trump with only 25 from Missouri.

Add those 12 to Trump's current 736, and you get 748, which is 48.5% of the 1541 already allocated:

Trump: has 736 + 12 (48.5%)

Cruz: 463 (30%)

Rubio: 171 (11.1%)

Kasich: 143 (9.3%)

Carson: 9 (0.6%)

Bush: 4 (0.3%)

Fiorina: 1 (0.1%)

Huckabee: 1 (0.1%)

Paul: 1 (0.1%).

That leaves just 931 available, of which Trump needs 489 to get to 1237, or 52.5%:

Trump: needs 489 (52.5% of 931 . . . 1.1 times his current level of support, still very likely)

Cruz: needs 774 (83.1% of 931 . . . 2.8 times his current level of support, nearly impossible)

Kasich: needs 1094 (117.5% of 931 . . . 12.6 times his current level of support, impossible).

The only thing Cruz and Kasich are doing is possibly keeping Trump from making it to 1237.

If they want a needlessly and horribly divided GOP going into the convention, they should continue to play the spoilers. If they do that, they'll be to blame for the catastrophe.

But if they really want to have a chance against the Democrats in the fall, they should unite NOW around Donald Trump.

If Wisconsin is so critical in the GOP race, why have all three candidates traveled away from it this week?

Byron York wants to know, here:

MILWAUKEE — The Wisconsin Republican primary is so critical to Donald Trump that, after having pledged "I'll be here all week" to his supporters, Trump promptly departed to Washington and other destinations for a couple of days off the trail prior to next Tuesday's vote.

The Wisconsin GOP contest is so critical to Sen. Ted Cruz that he took off to California for some fundraising and a guest spot on Jimmy Kimmel, in addition to a stop in North Dakota for its delegate convention, before returning to Wisconsin for a few more days of campaigning.

The Wisconsin primary is so critical to Gov. John Kasich that he headed to New York, where his highest-profile accomplishment was to be photographed eating pizza with a fork.

Students for Trump has 200 chapters in 38 states, began with a Rand Paul supporter

The LA Times reports here:

Students for Trump began as a Twitter account in October in a dorm room at Campbell University in Buies Creek, N.C. Ryan Fournier, a freshman and early supporter of Rand Paul, was drawn to Trump's blunt rhetoric and policies on border control and employment. ... More than 5,000 students in 200 chapters in 38 states are publicly on board. Fifteen chapters have taken hold in California, on campuses including UC Santa Barbara and USC.

Rush has a daydream: The energy out there for Cruz is equal to Trump's

Today's narrative on the show, which is designed, like some of the polling, to make it so, not measure it.

Brad DeLong pretends that taxing the crap out of people isn't an ideology, and blames the voters for disagreeing

Here, where you observe a liberal economist admitting that there is a price to be paid for free-trade:

It is not difficult to see where the blame lies [for what ails America]. As Mark Kleiman of NYU’s Marron Institute points out, the Republican Party’s rigid and die-hard ideological opposition to “taxing the rich [has] destroyed, on a practical level, the theoretical basis for believing that free trade benefits everyone.” ... The responsibility lies instead with politicians peddling ideology over practicality – and thus with the citizens who elect them, as well as those who don’t bother to vote at all.

Now if we could just get the libertarians to admit it.

Erick Erickson's Israel-firster pal Steve Berman thinks everyone who supports Trump should be shunned

Here, where the cultist projects his own cultism onto the real estate magnate:

"Every Trump supporter should be ostracized–especially those in politics, the media, and leadership. Failing to stop the cult of personality is as bad as swearing allegiance to it. Those who play for influence, cater to the Trumpkin crowd to acknowledge their anger, or otherwise make nice with the budding despot must be shunned and called for what they are: cult-enablers. Those who support Trump must be treated as cultists."

Here is an example of the fever from which Steve Berman suffers:

"As Christians, we have a calling to support Israel because it’s God’s desire. As Americans, we have an obligation to support Israel because they represent a free society in a part of the world dominated by oppressive dictatorships. Most importantly, we must support Israel because doing so is walking in the light.  We must walk in the light because we are in Christ."

Mollie Hemingway decides Trump is intentionally sabotaging the pro-life movement

Here.

A version of the argument that Trump is working for the Democrats to get Hillary elected.

Mollie views those who kill their unborn children as vulnerable, weak, victimized mothers:

If Trump knew anything at all whatsoever about the pro-life movement, he would know what the movement thinks about abortion and whether mothers should be punished.

Don't you have to give birth and mother a child to be a mother?

This sentimental view of women in an age of equality insulates women from criticism and consequently from responsibility for their actions, a view most recently on display in the case of Michelle "Corey pushed me almost to the floor" Fields.