Will Nikki Haley hang in there until Super Tuesday on March 5?    She is behind Trump 58% to 32%   in her home state of South Carolina on February 24. Even before that,   Trump will get all the electoral votes   on February 8 because   Haley will not even be included in the Nevada caucus, which is the only way to get support in that state . The way the Republican primaries/caucuses are designed, Donald Trump will be selected as the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on July 18.  Take California, with 169 delegates.   Any candidate that gets more than 50% of the votes gets 100% of the delegates .  This poll as of today has Trump at 69% and Haley at 19%. Here is why the Republicans are weeping.  The latest  Quinnipiac University poll: Biden holds a 6-point lead over Trump, but this narrows to 2 points with the three most logical third party candidates, and much of those court trials are yet to come. Haley leads Biden by 5-points in a hypothetical head-to-head match, and age will

Before science day, a couple of news items: Nothing to seriously worry about, but  our U.S. Congress has to act by 11:59PM Friday night before government funding runs out .   First, there is an announced compromise, which is shaky, and there seems to be no way for the full Congress to act until next week. Anyway, this stopgap measure is only until very early March, when they need to pass another stopgap bill. But not to worry anyway, for  since 1976 the Congress has had 22 funding gaps . Each time, the nation survived. Congressional leaders  met with President Joe Biden  today in the White House, and tried to work out something to combine immigration with Israel/Ukraine war funding. Easy to blame Republicans for what is happening. Let's see if Speaker Mike Johnson survives this mini-crisis, for he committed the cardinal sin of actually working out a deal with Democrats, and will need them to actually pass the needed legislation in the House. About that circus called the Republican

Got to start with Donald Trump.  There are so many court cases pending that I've lost count.  Here was one I did not know even existed.  I'm a bit confused, for New York Attorney General Letitia James has a wide-ranging non-jury lawsuit against Trump and his family, which is scheduled to start anytime soon.  But Judge Arthur Engoron ( right ) somehow made a pre-judgement, I think.   Read this article.   Maybe you can better comprehend what exactly is happening. About that second GOP presidential debate yesterday, nothing much happened.  Here is NBC News' take on the  five biggest moments .  Or,  Time's  assessment of the  biggest moments.   I  once visited  the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation Library in Simi, California, as my attire shows:  Air Force One jacket and cap, which I bought when I was there. Who won the debate?  Maybe Donald Trump in another successful boycott. I'm nearing the end of my Thursday Covid summary, for there were only  148,860 new cases

Checking Worldometer, there were 122,971  new World Covid cases this past  week , 84,153 for just the USA.  This probably means that many countries are just not reporting anymore.  Japan and South Korea had for the past few months always been at or close to #1.  They must have given up keeping score. The World on 21 January 2022 had 3,847,291 new cases, just on that date. On a daily basis, the world new cases/day dropped by a factor of 219 from the peak last year.   The deaths/day fell to around 700,000 around mid-December of last year. I can count eight to ten waves, with the final one this summer unworthy of being included. The USA had 108,386,688 total covid cases, with 1,174,847 deaths. Thus 32% of Americans have been infected. Actually, probably closer to one in four, for many got it more than once. There was only a 0.3% chance that you died from covid if you were in the U.S. The mortality rate was 1.1% Since the beginning the World had 695,250,823 total cases, with 6,915,134 tota

From  Worldometer  (new  COVID-19 deaths yesterday):           DAY    USA    WORLD      Brazil      India      South Africa 2020 June     9     1093     4732         1185        246       82 July    22      1205     7128         1293      1120     572 Aug    12      1504     6556        1242        835     130 Sept     9      1208      6222       1136       1168       82 Oct     21      1225      6849         571        703       85 Nov    25       2304    12025        620        518      118 Dec     30       3880    14748       1224       299      465 2021 Jan      14       4142      15512       1151         189     712 Feb      3       4005    14265       1209       107      398 Mar      2       1989     9490        1726       110      194 April     6        906    11787         4211       631       37 May     4        853     13667        3025      3786     59   June    1        287    10637         2346      3205      95  July    7         251      8440        1595        817