Friday Open Thread [3.6.15]
The U.S. economy added 295,000 jobs to payrolls in February and the U.S. unemployment rate fell to 5.5%, Bloomberg reports.
“The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of 96 economists projected employment would rise by 235,000… The jobless rate was projected to drop to 5.6% from January’s 5.7%.”
It’s about as positive as one can reasonably expect. Net new jobs were up above expectations and the unemployment rate dropped.
OHIO–SENATOR–Public Policy Polling: Fmr. Gov. Ted Strickland (D) 45, Sen. Rob Portman (R) 45; Portman (R) 59, Cincinnati City Councilman P.G. Sittenfeld (D) 31
FLORIDA–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY–Gravis Marketing: Bush 23, Walker 22, Rubio 11, Huckabee 10, Carson 8, Christie 6, Paul 5, Cruz 2, Perry 1
FLORIDA–PRESIDENT–DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY–Gravis Marketing: Clinton 52, Warren 14, Biden 9, Webb 2, Warner 2, O’Malley 2
NATIONAL–PRESIDENT–REPUBLICAN PRIMARY–Quinnipiac: Walker, 18, Bush 16, Christie 8, Huckabee 8, Carson 7, Paul 6, Cruz 5, Rubio 5
Charlie Cook: “Acknowledging that much will inevitably change, at this point Bush and Walker each seem to have about a 1-in-3 chance of winning the nomination—call it 35 percent for each. There’s maybe a 1-in-5, or 20 percent, chance that the nod will go to any tea-party candidate, so let’s give Cruz and Paul each a 10 percent chance. The rest of the field gets the remaining 10 percent; right now, that’s what I estimate is the likelihood that someone other than one of the aforementioned four will win the nomination.”
Rep. Don Young (R-AK) offered a way to solve homelessness in his colleagues’ congressional districts: wolves.
Young, speaking at a hearing of the House Natural Resources Committee on Thursday, made the comments while he was arguing that gray wolves should be taken off the endangered species list.
“How many of you have got wolves in your district? None. None. Not one,” Young said. He called the gray wolf a “predator.”
“We’ve got 79 congressmen sending you a letter, they haven’t got a damn wolf in their whole district,” Young said. “I’d like to introduce them in your district. If I introduced them in your district, you wouldn’t have a homeless problem anymore.”
I guess because the homeless would then be killed and consumed by the wolves. Ah, Republican solutions. They are finally being honest about them.
The Hill reports that Democrats may in fact vote for Speaker Boehner should tea party Republicans launch a coup attempt against him.
“Democrats from across an ideological spectrum say they’d rather see Boehner remain atop the House than replace him with a more conservative Speaker who would almost certainly be less willing to reach across the aisle in search of compromise. Replacing him with a Tea Party Speaker, they say, would only bring the legislative process — already limping along — to a screeching halt.”
The Devil you know…
Matt Bai: “The accepted wisdom where Biden is concerned is that you can’t have two establishment candidates representing continuity from the same administration, so the best he can do is to wait on the sidelines, keep his options open and hope that maybe Hillary decides to do something else in the twilight of her life…”
“Biden’s instincts have to tell him something different, though. After 40-plus years in Washington, he has to know that no one ever really gets plucked off the sidelines when the opening arrives; you have to create the opening yourself. He has to know, too, that the insiders are almost always wrong, and the further out from an actual election you are, the more wrong they tend to be.”
“Biden is a better candidate than most pundits have ever given him credit for. Yeah, he’s sloppy and meandering and says some nutty stuff. But that’s all part of being genuine and three-dimensional, which may be the most valuable trait in modern politics and not a bad contrast to Clinton’s robotic discipline.”
