Newsbits for week March 3, 2016

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Marco Rubio’s path to the Republican nomination short of a contested convention has narrowed to nearly nothing as his campaign and allies reboot their strategy to prepare for months of guerrilla warfare to deny Donald Trump a clean, pre-convention victory. The math for Rubio is daunting. After getting thoroughly routed on Super Tuesday, Rubio is in so deep a delegate hole that he would now need to win roughly two-thirds of all the remaining delegates to guarantee his nomination ahead of Cleveland, according to a POLITICO analysis. That is an enormously difficult, if not impossible, climb for a candidate who has so far won only a single state

Rubio’s path to an outright win has vanished - POLITICO

Hannity said Rubio’s onslaught is “turning into a suicide mission.” He speculated Rubio “is being fed this” and was “probably promised a lot of money” to go after Trump this way and slammed a pro-Rubio super PAC for running an ad on Trump’s refusal to disavow the Ku Klux Klan. “Maybe it’s my conspiratorial mind,” Hannity began. “I think this is orchestrated, well-funded and well organized.” As for Trump, Hannity lavished praise on the billionaire real estate showman for his Super Tuesday victory speech.

Hannity unloads on Rubio - POLITICO

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The wild, wacky exhibit that has been the Republican presidential primary could be making more voters yearn for someone like the person currently sitting in the White House.  And that could be a big problem for the GOP. The public-opinion organization Gallup, which surveys the approval rating of the sitting president on a daily basis, found earlier this week that President Barack Obama's rating had jumped to its highest point in three years. His weekly average rating over the February 29 to March 6 period hit 50%, up five points from two months ago. For Obama, whose approval ratings have been stuck in the mid-to-low 40% range for much of his second term, it was a notable bump.

Obama approval rating could be GOP problem - Business Insider

Many of us have seen, felt, or experienced the division firsthand. Scientific research and public opinion polls show that it is indeed real. Many openly lament its existence, and wonder exactly how a country built on compromise reached such a sorry state. Increasing education rates and a tendency to choose likeminded mates have been offered as explanations, as has the technology-afforded ability to choose how and where we digest our news and information. But whatever the causes, there is a solution: science. Or, more specifically, a scientific way of thinking.

Science: A Fix for Our Polarized Politics | RealClearScience

Oklahoma senator James Inhofe, who now chairs the Senate environment and public works committee despite famously calling global warming “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people”, took a star turn on Thursday at the Heartland Institute, whose conferences function as a hub for climate deniers.

Republicans' leading climate denier tells the pope to butt out of climate debate | Environment | The Guardian

Economists are now discovering, however, that the broader benefits of free trade with some countries—China, in particular—are taking far longer to develop than they should. And they may never arrive. A new study by economists David Autor of MIT, Gordon Hanson of the University of California, San Diego, and David Dorn of the University of Zurich finds that China’s rise as a manufacturing powerhouse during the last 25 years has caused a “trade shock” in many parts of the U.S. economy that still hasn’t subsided. “Employment has fallen in U.S. industries more exposed to import competition, as expected,” they write. “But offsetting employment gains in other industries have yet to materialize.” Instead of finding other rewarding opportunities in “non-trade exposed” industries, many displaced workers suffer repeated bouts of unemployment and depressed lifetime earnings. That’s when they start paying attention to Donald Trump or Bernie Sanders.

Corporate America is doing itself in—while Trump and Sanders capitalize - Yahoo Finance

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Brooks’s narrative, however, founders on one problem: Substantively, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Cruz and alleged moderates like Kasich, Rubio, and Ryan. And none of them have policy agendas that are any more serious than Trump’s. Let’s consider what these “moderate” alternatives stand for.

David Brooks and the Depths of the GOP’s Delusions | New Republic

The problem for Cruz is that Florida and the rest of the calendar probably aren’t as favorable to him as the states that have voted so far. (Florida looks like a Trump state as Marco Rubio loses ground.) But Cruz does have a few things going for him. He’s tended to outperform his polling almost everywhere. He’s won states in all four major regions of the country. And he potentially stands to gain if Rubio and perhaps John Kasich drop out.

Ted Cruz Might Still Be Able To Stop Donald Trump | FiveThirtyEight

"Sure, the climate is changing … there has never been a time when the climate has not changed," Rubio said when a question from Miami's mayor was posed about rising sea levels causing flooding in the city. "Is there a law in Washington we can pass to change the weather," he said. "There's no such thing."

CNN's Miami GOP debate live blog - Business Insider