Taking a deeper look at the massive $1T U.S. market opportunity for AVs
Mitt Romney had a good week, until he didn’t. Romney won all 20 delegates in Puerto Rico, and the vast majority of Illinois’ as he defeated Rick Santorum, 46.7% to 35% in the latter, with Santorum’s campaign once again failing to properly file for at least 10 of the 54 delegates in the Land of Lincoln.
And so we finished the week, according to the AP, with the following total delegate count.
Romney 563
Santorum 263
Newt Gingrich 135
Ron Paul 50
[The next primary is today, Saturday, in Louisiana…do or die in particular for Newt Gingrich, with Santorum needing to beat Romney badly.]
Aside from his campaign’s ongoing incompetence, Santorum didn’t have a great week because he insists on opening his mouth, which most candidates have to do at one point or another, and he has said some really stupid things recently. As Karen Tumulty wrote in the Washington Post:
“Santorum prides himself on the fact that he is an unscripted candidate who will answer whatever he is asked. He has even gone so far as to declare that ‘when you run for president of the United States, it should be illegal to read off a teleprompter, because all you’re doing is reading someone else’s words to people.’
“In Santorum’s case, however, even his admirers think that might not be such a bad thing to try, at least every now and then….
“Speaking off the cuff has proven treacherous for Santorum, undercutting his efforts to expand his base of support beyond social conservatives to economically stressed voters who might be able to relate to the former senator’s blue-collar roots….
“In fact, it can sometimes seem that Santorum swings at every ball that’s pitched. On Tuesday, for instance, he criticized President Obama for allowing his 13-year-old daughter, Malia, to take a spring break trip to Mexico, parts of which the State Department has deemed unsafe.
“ ‘If the administration is saying that it’s not safe to have people down there, then just because you can send 25 Secret Service agents doesn’t mean you should do it,’ Santorum said on a conservative talk radio show. ‘And when the government is saying this is not safe, then you don’t set the example by sending your kids down there.’
“However, there is no State Department warning for Oaxaca, where she reportedly is.”
And then Santorum went off on the subject of pornography, posting on his Web site that the Obama administration had “turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography.”
Oh brother. If I elect you president, I want you focusing on Iran and China, not Playboy.
Santorum also said, “I don’t care what the unemployment rate is going to be. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Then you had the fact he spent precious campaign time in Puerto Rico, with the result he got his butt kicked, and the strange case of the Missouri caucuses, where Santorum spent further valuable time, only the stupid process in that state doesn’t really end until June!
Jennifer Rubin / Washington Post
“Are you wondering what happened in Missouri yesterday? There were supposed to be caucuses. Rick Santorum went there a bunch of times. It sort of seemed like delegates were at stake. But what really happened was chaos. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported:
“ ‘In St. Charles County, which was to have been the biggest single prize of the day, the caucus was shut down before delegates were chosen after a boisterous crowd objected to how the meeting was being run, including an attempted ban on videotaping. Two supporters of presidential hopeful Ron Paul were arrested.
“ ‘At other caucuses, participants gathered outdoors as the appointed locations turned out to be too small to accommodate crowds, or waited for hours as organizers worked through procedural questions.
“ ‘Even before the day’s events took a rancorous turn, state Republican officials said the winner of the caucus would not be officially known until next month. But with the confusion surrounding St. Charles, and many more delegates available in a pair of caucuses next weekend, the primary picture for Missouri may have only become murkier Saturday.
“ ‘It was a joke. It was a complete joke,’ said David Nelson of St. Peters, who participated in the St. Charles County caucus.
“In fact, they were only choosing (or not choosing) delegates to another meeting. (‘They were selecting delegates who will appear at two larger meetings in April and June, who will in turn select delegates to the national convention in Tampa’). Got that?
“Well, Iowa, Nevada and Maine Republicans can breathe a sigh of relief that none of those caucuses will win the ‘worst-run contest’ title in the 2012 nominating process.”
Back to Santorum, he was asked on ABC’s “This Week” why he supported liberal, pro-choice Arlen Specter for president in 1996, to which he replied, ‘Well, you know, when your colleague is running for office, and, you know, I was his colleague in the United States Senate, he asked me to stand with him. That certainly wasn’t one of my prouder moments I look back on, but look, you know, you work together as a team for the state of Pennsylvania and I felt that Senator Spector stood up and supported me when I was running in 1994 and I did likewise.” As Jennifer Rubin wrote, “Yikes.”
But wait…there’s more! On Thursday, Santorum said, “You win by giving people a choice. You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who’s just going to be a little different than the person in there….If they’re going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future.”
Well, as Newt Gingrich tweeted: “Rick Santorum is dead wrong. Any GOP nominee will be better than Obama.”
But speaking of Etch A Sketch, Romney’s gaffe, or rather that of his aide, Eric Fehrnstrom, was even worse. During a CNN interview Wednesday morning, Fehrnstrom said the general election campaign will be “almost like an Etch A Sketch – you can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”
Great for sales of Etch A Sketches as Santorum, Gingrich and Obama aides passed them out or used them as props; unbelievably stupid on the part of the Romney team.
So the dysfunctional Republican campaign continues, though at least Romney picked up the endorsement of former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who called on Republicans “to unite behind Gov. Romney and take our message of fiscal conservatism and job creation to all voters this fall.
“We need a leader who understands the economy, recognizes more government regulation is not the answer, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism and works to ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to succeed,” Bush said.
--Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan released his latest budget blueprint, which includes a reduction in the corporate tax rate to 25% from 35% and reductions in the personal income tax to either a 25% or 10% rate. House Republicans also once again seek to overhaul Medicare and Medicaid.
Chris Van Hollen, Ryan’s Democratic counterpart on the House budget committee, countered: “If you’re Mitt Romney you’re going to love this budget. They provide a gilded path to prosperity for the already wealthy, while leaving working Americans and future generations behind.”
Bottom line, the Ryan budget would reduce spending over a decade by $5 trillion, while Obama’s latest proposal would increase spending by $1.5 trillion above the current baseline. And as the Wall Street Journal editorialized:
“Mr. Obama’s budget contains $1.9 trillion in tax increases over the next decade and raises income, dividend and capital gains tax rates. The Ryan budget outlines an ambitious tax reform, collapsing today’s six rates to two – 25% and 10% - while retaining the 15% tax rates on capital gains and dividends and eliminating inefficient tax deductions and credits….The Ryan plan isn’t a pure flat tax, but it takes the IRS code a giant stride in that direction and creates a tax system far more conducive to faster job creation and greater investment.”
--New York Republican Congressman Peter King held a hearing wherein we learned from various sources that Hizbullah has hundreds of operatives in America, just waiting to be activated. They’ve been blending in for ages…but they evidently love the used-car business to help them launder money.
--New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has been beaten up over his anti-crime, anti-terror policies lately. The other day he fought back, as the New York Post editorialized:
“A couple of City Council midgets tried to mix it up with Ray Kelly this week, and wound up wearing lumps all over.
“Kelly, New York City’s longest-serving police commissioner, has never suffered fools well, and he made no exception for council worthies Jumaane (sic) Williams, Robert Jackson and – especially – Melissa Mark-Viverito of Harlem.
“Quick as a win, the trio went right at Kelly during a budget hearing Thursday….
“When Mark-Viverito wanted Kelly to apologize to minorities for using stop-and-frisk tactics to clear guns from the streets, the commissioner shot right back:
“ ‘If we conducted stops according to Census data, half of all stops would be women.’
“Does stop-and-frisk discriminate against minorities?
“Said Kelly: ‘Ninety-six percent of the shooting victims in this city are people of color, 90% of the murder victims are people of color,’ said Kelly.
“And then he turned the tables:
“ ‘Who do you thinks lives are being saved?’
“The council went dumb as a stump at that, so Kelly answered his own question: ‘What I haven’t heard is any solution to the violence problem in these communities.
“ ‘People are upset about being stopped, yet what is the answer? What have you said about how do we stop this violence? What have leaders of the communities of color said? What is their strategy to get guns off the street?'
“The answer, of course:
“Absolutely nothing.”
--So, let’s see. When was 9/11? 2001? 10 ½ years later, work at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum is at a virtual standstill, as reported by the New York Post, even as costs spiral ever higher. Back in 2006, it was said the cost would be $700 million and it will end up being $hundreds of millions more.
Did you know that the space will dwarf the size of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington? That $4.3 million was dropped on a heating/cooling system for the parapet with the 9/11 victims’ names, “so it’s pleasant to touch in summer and winter”?
And the $700 million (and counting) museum, if it’s ever completed, will sit next to a $4 billion PATH train hub, meant to serve just 60,000 commuters.
Pin the past overruns and delays on former Republican Gov. George Pataki; “Pataki’s Pit,” they call it. Completing the museum from here on, however, is now Andrew Cuomo’s responsibility, whether he likes this or not.
--So who is still a fan of Occupy Wall Street? If you are, did you know that members of the group in New York were caught on camera dumping a large trash container full of human waste onto the outside of a JPMorgan Chase branch? Did you know these same individuals dumped a container of human waste into the vestibule of an ATM? At least one arrest was made.
--Scientists at the University of Oxford have added to the research on the benefits of aspirin, finding that a daily dose could cut the risks from a range of cancers, with some benefits seen within a matter of months. Aspirin already helps guard against heart attacks and stroke.
The leader of the project, which was published in The Lancet and The Lancet Oncology, was Peter Rothwell, author of a previous landmark aspirin study.
“We showed previously that daily aspirin substantially reduces the long-term risk of some cancers, particularly colorectal cancer and esophageal cancer, but that these effects don’t appear until about eight to ten years after starting treatment.
“What we have now shown is that aspirin also has short-term effects, which are manifest after only two to three years. In particular, we show that aspirin reduces the likelihood that cancers will spread to distant organs by about 40 to 50 percent. This is important because it is this process of spread of cancer, or metastasis, which most commonly kills people with cancer.”
--Sweet! “A NASA spacecraft has found further tantalizing evidence for the existence of water at Mercury’s poles.” [BBC News]
Where there’s water, there’s life, sports fans! Perhaps a golf resort or two, though we have little evidence yet on potential real estate bubbles for properties surrounding the courses. But let me be the first to declare it so I can say in 25 years, “I told you so!”
Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.
God bless America.
Gold closed at $1661
Oil, $106.81
Returns for the week 3/19-3/23
Dow Jones -1.1% [13080]
S&P 500 -0.5% [1397]
S&P MidCap -1.0%
Russell 2000 -0.02%
Nasdaq +0.4% [3067]
Returns for the period 1/1/12-3/23/12
Dow Jones +7.1%
S&P 500 +11.1%
S&P MidCap +12.7%
Russell 2000 +12.0%
Nasdaq +17.8%
Bulls 48.4
Bears 23.6 [Source: Investors Intelligence]
And so we finished the week, according to the AP, with the following total delegate count.
Romney 563
Santorum 263
Newt Gingrich 135
Ron Paul 50
[The next primary is today, Saturday, in Louisiana…do or die in particular for Newt Gingrich, with Santorum needing to beat Romney badly.]
Aside from his campaign’s ongoing incompetence, Santorum didn’t have a great week because he insists on opening his mouth, which most candidates have to do at one point or another, and he has said some really stupid things recently. As Karen Tumulty wrote in the Washington Post:
“Santorum prides himself on the fact that he is an unscripted candidate who will answer whatever he is asked. He has even gone so far as to declare that ‘when you run for president of the United States, it should be illegal to read off a teleprompter, because all you’re doing is reading someone else’s words to people.’
“In Santorum’s case, however, even his admirers think that might not be such a bad thing to try, at least every now and then….
“Speaking off the cuff has proven treacherous for Santorum, undercutting his efforts to expand his base of support beyond social conservatives to economically stressed voters who might be able to relate to the former senator’s blue-collar roots….
“In fact, it can sometimes seem that Santorum swings at every ball that’s pitched. On Tuesday, for instance, he criticized President Obama for allowing his 13-year-old daughter, Malia, to take a spring break trip to Mexico, parts of which the State Department has deemed unsafe.
“ ‘If the administration is saying that it’s not safe to have people down there, then just because you can send 25 Secret Service agents doesn’t mean you should do it,’ Santorum said on a conservative talk radio show. ‘And when the government is saying this is not safe, then you don’t set the example by sending your kids down there.’
“However, there is no State Department warning for Oaxaca, where she reportedly is.”
And then Santorum went off on the subject of pornography, posting on his Web site that the Obama administration had “turned a blind eye to those who wish to preserve our culture from the scourge of pornography.”
Oh brother. If I elect you president, I want you focusing on Iran and China, not Playboy.
Santorum also said, “I don’t care what the unemployment rate is going to be. It doesn’t matter to me.”
Then you had the fact he spent precious campaign time in Puerto Rico, with the result he got his butt kicked, and the strange case of the Missouri caucuses, where Santorum spent further valuable time, only the stupid process in that state doesn’t really end until June!
Jennifer Rubin / Washington Post
“Are you wondering what happened in Missouri yesterday? There were supposed to be caucuses. Rick Santorum went there a bunch of times. It sort of seemed like delegates were at stake. But what really happened was chaos. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported:
“ ‘In St. Charles County, which was to have been the biggest single prize of the day, the caucus was shut down before delegates were chosen after a boisterous crowd objected to how the meeting was being run, including an attempted ban on videotaping. Two supporters of presidential hopeful Ron Paul were arrested.
“ ‘At other caucuses, participants gathered outdoors as the appointed locations turned out to be too small to accommodate crowds, or waited for hours as organizers worked through procedural questions.
“ ‘Even before the day’s events took a rancorous turn, state Republican officials said the winner of the caucus would not be officially known until next month. But with the confusion surrounding St. Charles, and many more delegates available in a pair of caucuses next weekend, the primary picture for Missouri may have only become murkier Saturday.
“ ‘It was a joke. It was a complete joke,’ said David Nelson of St. Peters, who participated in the St. Charles County caucus.
“In fact, they were only choosing (or not choosing) delegates to another meeting. (‘They were selecting delegates who will appear at two larger meetings in April and June, who will in turn select delegates to the national convention in Tampa’). Got that?
“Well, Iowa, Nevada and Maine Republicans can breathe a sigh of relief that none of those caucuses will win the ‘worst-run contest’ title in the 2012 nominating process.”
Back to Santorum, he was asked on ABC’s “This Week” why he supported liberal, pro-choice Arlen Specter for president in 1996, to which he replied, ‘Well, you know, when your colleague is running for office, and, you know, I was his colleague in the United States Senate, he asked me to stand with him. That certainly wasn’t one of my prouder moments I look back on, but look, you know, you work together as a team for the state of Pennsylvania and I felt that Senator Spector stood up and supported me when I was running in 1994 and I did likewise.” As Jennifer Rubin wrote, “Yikes.”
But wait…there’s more! On Thursday, Santorum said, “You win by giving people a choice. You win by giving people the opportunity to see a different vision for our country, not someone who’s just going to be a little different than the person in there….If they’re going to be a little different, we might as well stay with what we have instead of taking a risk of what may be the Etch A Sketch candidate for the future.”
Well, as Newt Gingrich tweeted: “Rick Santorum is dead wrong. Any GOP nominee will be better than Obama.”
But speaking of Etch A Sketch, Romney’s gaffe, or rather that of his aide, Eric Fehrnstrom, was even worse. During a CNN interview Wednesday morning, Fehrnstrom said the general election campaign will be “almost like an Etch A Sketch – you can kind of shake it up, and we start all over again.”
Great for sales of Etch A Sketches as Santorum, Gingrich and Obama aides passed them out or used them as props; unbelievably stupid on the part of the Romney team.
So the dysfunctional Republican campaign continues, though at least Romney picked up the endorsement of former Florida governor Jeb Bush, who called on Republicans “to unite behind Gov. Romney and take our message of fiscal conservatism and job creation to all voters this fall.
“We need a leader who understands the economy, recognizes more government regulation is not the answer, believes in entrepreneurial capitalism and works to ensure that all Americans have the opportunity to succeed,” Bush said.
--Wisconsin Republican Congressman Paul Ryan released his latest budget blueprint, which includes a reduction in the corporate tax rate to 25% from 35% and reductions in the personal income tax to either a 25% or 10% rate. House Republicans also once again seek to overhaul Medicare and Medicaid.
Chris Van Hollen, Ryan’s Democratic counterpart on the House budget committee, countered: “If you’re Mitt Romney you’re going to love this budget. They provide a gilded path to prosperity for the already wealthy, while leaving working Americans and future generations behind.”
Bottom line, the Ryan budget would reduce spending over a decade by $5 trillion, while Obama’s latest proposal would increase spending by $1.5 trillion above the current baseline. And as the Wall Street Journal editorialized:
“Mr. Obama’s budget contains $1.9 trillion in tax increases over the next decade and raises income, dividend and capital gains tax rates. The Ryan budget outlines an ambitious tax reform, collapsing today’s six rates to two – 25% and 10% - while retaining the 15% tax rates on capital gains and dividends and eliminating inefficient tax deductions and credits….The Ryan plan isn’t a pure flat tax, but it takes the IRS code a giant stride in that direction and creates a tax system far more conducive to faster job creation and greater investment.”
--New York Republican Congressman Peter King held a hearing wherein we learned from various sources that Hizbullah has hundreds of operatives in America, just waiting to be activated. They’ve been blending in for ages…but they evidently love the used-car business to help them launder money.
--New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly has been beaten up over his anti-crime, anti-terror policies lately. The other day he fought back, as the New York Post editorialized:
“A couple of City Council midgets tried to mix it up with Ray Kelly this week, and wound up wearing lumps all over.
“Kelly, New York City’s longest-serving police commissioner, has never suffered fools well, and he made no exception for council worthies Jumaane (sic) Williams, Robert Jackson and – especially – Melissa Mark-Viverito of Harlem.
“Quick as a win, the trio went right at Kelly during a budget hearing Thursday….
“When Mark-Viverito wanted Kelly to apologize to minorities for using stop-and-frisk tactics to clear guns from the streets, the commissioner shot right back:
“ ‘If we conducted stops according to Census data, half of all stops would be women.’
“Does stop-and-frisk discriminate against minorities?
“Said Kelly: ‘Ninety-six percent of the shooting victims in this city are people of color, 90% of the murder victims are people of color,’ said Kelly.
“And then he turned the tables:
“ ‘Who do you thinks lives are being saved?’
“The council went dumb as a stump at that, so Kelly answered his own question: ‘What I haven’t heard is any solution to the violence problem in these communities.
“ ‘People are upset about being stopped, yet what is the answer? What have you said about how do we stop this violence? What have leaders of the communities of color said? What is their strategy to get guns off the street?'
“The answer, of course:
“Absolutely nothing.”
--So, let’s see. When was 9/11? 2001? 10 ½ years later, work at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum is at a virtual standstill, as reported by the New York Post, even as costs spiral ever higher. Back in 2006, it was said the cost would be $700 million and it will end up being $hundreds of millions more.
Did you know that the space will dwarf the size of the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum in Washington? That $4.3 million was dropped on a heating/cooling system for the parapet with the 9/11 victims’ names, “so it’s pleasant to touch in summer and winter”?
And the $700 million (and counting) museum, if it’s ever completed, will sit next to a $4 billion PATH train hub, meant to serve just 60,000 commuters.
Pin the past overruns and delays on former Republican Gov. George Pataki; “Pataki’s Pit,” they call it. Completing the museum from here on, however, is now Andrew Cuomo’s responsibility, whether he likes this or not.
--So who is still a fan of Occupy Wall Street? If you are, did you know that members of the group in New York were caught on camera dumping a large trash container full of human waste onto the outside of a JPMorgan Chase branch? Did you know these same individuals dumped a container of human waste into the vestibule of an ATM? At least one arrest was made.
--Scientists at the University of Oxford have added to the research on the benefits of aspirin, finding that a daily dose could cut the risks from a range of cancers, with some benefits seen within a matter of months. Aspirin already helps guard against heart attacks and stroke.
The leader of the project, which was published in The Lancet and The Lancet Oncology, was Peter Rothwell, author of a previous landmark aspirin study.
“We showed previously that daily aspirin substantially reduces the long-term risk of some cancers, particularly colorectal cancer and esophageal cancer, but that these effects don’t appear until about eight to ten years after starting treatment.
“What we have now shown is that aspirin also has short-term effects, which are manifest after only two to three years. In particular, we show that aspirin reduces the likelihood that cancers will spread to distant organs by about 40 to 50 percent. This is important because it is this process of spread of cancer, or metastasis, which most commonly kills people with cancer.”
--Sweet! “A NASA spacecraft has found further tantalizing evidence for the existence of water at Mercury’s poles.” [BBC News]
Where there’s water, there’s life, sports fans! Perhaps a golf resort or two, though we have little evidence yet on potential real estate bubbles for properties surrounding the courses. But let me be the first to declare it so I can say in 25 years, “I told you so!”
Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.
God bless America.
Gold closed at $1661
Oil, $106.81
Returns for the week 3/19-3/23
Dow Jones -1.1% [13080]
S&P 500 -0.5% [1397]
S&P MidCap -1.0%
Russell 2000 -0.02%
Nasdaq +0.4% [3067]
Returns for the period 1/1/12-3/23/12
Dow Jones +7.1%
S&P 500 +11.1%
S&P MidCap +12.7%
Russell 2000 +12.0%
Nasdaq +17.8%
Bulls 48.4
Bears 23.6 [Source: Investors Intelligence]