And the Nomination Race Begins!

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"He may be the first national politician in two generations who thinks we should use legal immigration to get our average up "

Wait, aren't people with university education already given preferential treatment? Considering how many politicians specifically target illegal immigrants, I would imagine that the idea of using legal immigrants to improve the state of the US (like it's been happening for centuries) definitely predates Mr. Romney's current campaign . Never mind how many of my former classmates who went to the US to get their university education stayed there...

 

I'm not sure how many illegal immigrants are benefiting from social programs in the US. Many of them have fake social security numbers (often times the original owner of the SS number is dead) so while they pay into the system, they won't be getting money back out. We also don't have a national health care system, so they aren't sucking any money there either. (The caveat there is that they can go to the emergency room. It is required by federal law that an ER accept all patients, irrespective of whether or not they have insurance or the means to pay.)

I'm not sure what you mean with people having larger families if there were fewer immigrants in the nation. Most people I know don't want to have more than a couple of kids, and the reasons go beyond monetary in most cases. And it's not like if there were fewer immigrants you'd see drastic salary increases anyway. Do you actually think the Canadian government would LOWER taxes? Probably not by a great deal. You might get $50 more per paycheck - certainly not enough to raise additional child(ren).

And I really don't understand how having fewer people in the workforce would solve a labor shortage. If you are only taking college grads, then necessarily you're taking fewer people than you are now. How is fewer people conducive to ending a labor shortage?. That aside, you actually mean that there is a labor shortage in Canada? Cripes. Unemployment in the US is still over 8%, four years into this recession. There still aren't enough jobs to go around. Although, to be fair, the chance of being unemployed correlates inversely with education. The latest job numbers had unemployment at 4% among people with a college degree, 13% with only a high school education, and 19% among people without a high school diploma.

I think the operative phrase is "in the last two generations". Immigration laws passed in the 1920s and 1930s greatly reduced the amounts of immigrants legally entering the US. That's when you started having caps on the number of immigrants per country that the US would take. It's only been in the last couple of generations where immigration laws have limited the number of immigrants. My grandparents for example were among the last major wave of European immigrants to enter the US. Which is - coincidentally - two generations ago...

 

Obama is the first sitting president to support gay marriage, according to news releases today.

 

Interesting, I thought that Obama was somewhat lukewarm on gays - he was supportive enough personally, but didn't go out of his way for it. I heard some opinions that Joe Biden's earlier comment might have caused Obama to speak more clearly, as it were.

 

Wasn't the DoMA signed into law by Clinton?

 

Pardon my ignorance, but DoMA is ...?

 

LKD,

DoMA is the reason why we have different rules for marriage in different states (ridiculous, IMO). DoMA essentially states that a state is not required to recognize a marriage performed in another state, even if the marriage is completely legal in that state. This prevents people who live in a state that outlaws gay marriage to travel to a state that does allow it, get married, and then when they get back say they are married. I can sort of understand it from that point of view, because in that case you are circumventing the law of your state.

However, what it also does is you can have two people who live in a state that recognizes gay marriage. They can get married, but if they later move to a state that doesn't allow gay marriage, all of the sudden you're unmarried. The other rather strange point is that since the federal government doesn't recognize gay marriage, a same sex couple will file their federal tax returns as single, but their state tax returns as married.

I think this mess will get sorted out this year, one way or the other. There is a pending Supreme Court case concerning the banning of same sex marriage in California. And the results of that case will likely determine the way it goes for the rest of the nation. The case challenged the California ban on the basis that it violated the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution - specifically the equal protection clause. If that assertion is confirmed by the SC, then it is likely that all other states that ban gay marriage would also be ruled unconstitutional upon a court challenge. If it is ruled that it is constitutional, then it would open the door to pretty much any state banning gay marriage.

 

Enough about the GOP nominee it looks like Obama has some competition

 

Not really that surprising coming out of West Virginia. I recall an article on exit polling in the 2008 presidential election. In West Virginia, 19% of those polled stated that they wouldn't vote for Obama because he was black. That's 19% that admitted this was the reason. The actual percentage was probably a lot more, but they didn't state that as the factor when interviewed.

I think it's safe to say that whatever map Obama hopes to focus his campaign on to get to 270 electoral votes, that map won't include West Virginia.