America

Submitted by Richard Fernandez via PJMedia.com,

This is a neat story. Last year, Christopher Ingraham, a Washington Post reporter who writes stories based on what he finds mining data sets, did a piece on the best places to live. According to the data he was using, the worst place in America was rural Red Lake County, Minn.

When he called it that in the paper, people in Red Lake County were upset — but very polite about it! Someone invited him out to visit, and Ingraham went. It turns out that Red Lake County is a beautiful place to live. He liked it a lot. And then he got to thinking:

Last week, we learned that vehicle leasing as a percentage of monthly light-vehicle sales hit a record in February at 32.3%.

In other words, a third of the over 1 million cars and light trucks “sold” during the month were leases, according to J.D. Power.

This is indicative of what is now a long-term trend. Have a look at the following chart from WSJ, which shows that since 2009, the share of monthly auto leases as a percentage of vehicle sales well more than tripled:

Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

Narrow victories in the Kentucky caucuses and the Louisiana primary, the largest states decided on Saturday, have moved Donald Trump one step nearer to the nomination.

Primaries in Michigan, Mississippi and Idaho on March 8, and in Florida, Ohio, Illinois, Missouri and North Carolina on March 15, may prove decisive. If Marco Rubio does not win his home state of Florida, he is cooked, as is Gov. John Kasich if he does not win Ohio.

Frontrunners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will both face fresh tests on Tuesday, in their respective quests for their party’s presidential nomination.

Trump put on a respectable, if less spectacular performance on Saturday, prevailing in Louisiana and Kentucky but falling to Ted Cruz in Kansas and Maine. As Bloomberg writes, “Trump’s victories also were narrower than polling had indicated, suggesting that attacks on his crude language and ill-defined policies from 2012 nominee Mitt Romney and others could be having an impact.”

Maybe.