Half Sigma

NY Times top 1% map

This map is great. Thanks to the commenter for the link.

We see that very few of the top 1% work as computer programmers or engineers. Nope, management is the largest chunk of those in the top 1%, and after that doctors, lawyers, and even profession where you don’t expect people to become rich such as teachers and secretaries. They probably married into money; the chart is based on household income and not individual income. It's easier for a female teacher to become rich by choosing a good husband than it is for a man to earn his way into wealth through computer programming.

Boxing vs. poker

JP writes:

If the small man voluntarily gets in the ring with the big man, yes I support the right of the big man to beat him. Nobody forces dummies to play poker against smart people.

A fool and his money are soon parted. If dummies can't play online poker, they'll find some other way to squander their money soon enough.

And Gordon Gekko said that a fool and his money were lucky enough to get together in the first place.

But I think the difference between boxing and poker is that a small white man knows he will lose to a huge black guy with massive muscles and get hurt really bad in the process. However dumb people usually don’t understand how dumb they really are. A lot of people with average IQ go through life under the illusion that their betters aren’t really any smarter.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t necessarily say this is a reason to outlaw online poker. I think it would be good for society for those who aren’t that smart to be taught that they aren’t that smart.

What do the top 1% major in?

There’s a great article at the NY Times Economix blog with very detailed information about what the top 1% of earners majored in college.

No, they did NOT major in electrical engineering or computer science. It is as I’ve been writing all along, computer science sucks. A certain commenter has been feeding us misinformation about how easy it is for someone majoring in computer science to earn massive money.

The top one percenters majored in stuff that led to them becoming medical doctors, they majored in businessy things such as Economics, Finance and Accounting, and they even majored in Art History and Ethnic Studies. That’s right, a degree in Art History is more likely to lead to being in the top 1% than a degree in computer science.

* * *

Of the 1,052,450 people who majored in Computer Science, only 2.3% are in the top one percent, demonstrating that computer science is a bad major for joining the top 1%. It’s much better, for example, to major in History. Of the 1,351,368 who majored in History, 4.7% are in the top one percent. Better yet is Economics. Of the 1,237,863 who majored in Economics, a whopping 8.2% are in the top one percent.

The return of online poker

Online poker may return.

I’m in favor of this, because it allows those who are smart and disciplined (qualities I admire) to win money from those who are stupid and undisciplined. Theoretically, someone who is smart and disciplined should be able to make a lot more money working for some corporation than by playing poker online, but sadly that’s not always the case.

We let people gamble at state-run lotteries and slot machines, so why not online poker? But we need to make sure that people aren’t cheating through collusion, by using poker bots, or by hacking the software.

Newt’s debate performance

I didn’t watch the debate, but according to this news report, Newt Gingrich really kicked butt.

My explanation for Newt’s ninth inning performance is that he went into the debate figuring that he was going to lose on Saturday, so he might as well say what he really feels rather than worry about being politically incorrect and worrying about how liberals in the MSM might judge him.

But you have to remember that just because Newt’s a good debater doesn’t mean that he will be good at getting stuff accomplished as president, or at beating Obama. Mitt Romney is more of a proven executive, even if he doesn’t give rousing and emotional debate performances. And if Newt keeps telling us unguardedly how he really feels, eventually he will say something that the liberal MSM will find despicable.

* * *

“cranston” writes:

I think that Romney being able to limit was he says and does even when he believes in something is a good sign. There's no use having a Ron Paul wildman who's sincere but unable to accomplish anything. Like it or not, we need someone to work within the system. Obama is loathsome to us partly because he was so good at dissembling while promoting a leftist agenda. Of course, the far left is still unhappy despite the fact that no one even more to the left could get elected or get anything done. I can only hope Romney will govern as far to the right as Obama has to the left while pushing verbal pablum to the elites and the press.

Mitt Romney's book

I’ve read through the first three chapters of Mitt Romney’s book, No Apology: The Case for American Greatness.

I’m quite impressed on several counts:

(1) Romney understands the threat of Islam and the scope of the threat. He explains that Islam wants to take over the world, replacing worldwide government with a global caliphate, and Islam’s more immediate goal is retaking all territories previously owned by Muslims. He understands that this breed of Islam doesn’t want a two-state solution to Israel, it seeks the destruction of Israel and the return of that land to Islamic control.

(2) Romney severely criticized Obama’s deplorable action in insisting that the anti-American guy who wanted to be president-for-life of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya be returned to power. This is something Obama did that really pissed me off. Obama consistently pulls the rug out from under our friends while bolstering our enemies. Romney wrote this book before Obama pulled the rug out from under Hosni Mubarak.

(3) Romney wrote a chapter on why nations fail, and gave examples of the Spanish, the Ottomans, and the Chinese (that’s the old China that failed and not the new China that’s rising). And he explains that America’s power is threatened by three threats: China, Russia, and Islam. This is what I previously wrote about China :

I think that people who smugly assume that the U.S. will always naturally be ahead of China are basing such assumptions on racism and not rational analysis. Chinese people are at least as smart as Americans, they aren’t diluting their gene pool with low IQ immigrants, they work hard, they respect value-creation fields like engineering, and the leadership of China wants China to become a great superpower while a lot of the American leadership feels guilty about America being rich and powerful.

No unfortunately, Romney doesn’t mention any stuff about immigration ruining our country nor does he have an HBD analysis. And unfortunately that won’t come out of any candidate today unless we, the HBD bloggers, spread the message first and make it palatable to the majority of Americans. But it’s clear from Romney’s book that he understands the last clause of my quote, that China wants to be a great superpower and a lot of the American leadership, such as Obama and other liberals, feel guilty about America being rich and powerful. Romney says that he wants America to remain the world’s superpower.

Huntsman drops out, good news for Romney

Huntsman has dropped out and endorsed Romney.

This benefits Romney because most of Huntsman's voters in South Caroline will either vote for Romney are stay home.

Romney might have something to worry about if Newt or Santorum dropped out and supported the other guy, and even worse if Perry joined in, but that's not going to happen. They may pretend to care about the voter, but the hallmark of politicians is that they care about themselves first, and there's no personal benefit to endorsing anyone besides Romney who is the most likely winner. And as I wrote last week, no one likes Newt well enough to endorse him, and Newt doesn't think that Santorum or Perry are smart enough to be president.

Dan Rather reports on American IT workers being replaced by Indian immigrants

Full report on YouTube. And I thought that Dan Rather was a commie liberal, but here he shows how Americans are being hurt by unfettered immigration from India.

In 2007, I wrote that a career in computer programming sucks, and boy was I right about that.

* * *

There’s a follow-up Dan Rather report about the rise of IT outsourcing in India. From close to zero twenty years ago, today $50 billion of outsourcing. IBM has more employees in India than in the United States. Also shows Obama’s visit to India, where he sold out American workers to the Indians.

The Highwaymen and other black artists

I was asked if there are any black artists. I recommend watching this six-minute YouTube video about the Highwaymen. They were a group of black Floridian landscape painters from the fifties and sixties. Their work is now collected, but at the time most of it was probably considered cheap junk like those mass-produced Chinese oil paintings you can find today at prole shopping malls.

The first black artist to make a living entirely from painting was Robert Scott Duncanson, who was half black and half white, and a member of the Hudson River School movement.

There is also the mysterious Joshua Johnson (1763-1824) who was also half black and half white, and who painted portraits in a “naïve” style. (Naïve is a modern-day art euphemism for bad.)

Today, black people have a stronger presence in chess than they do in landscape painting.

Prospect Park in the fall

A painting of Prospect Park in the fall. 8 x 10 in, oil on masonite.

Ultra-wide-angle lenses and society

I found the following very interesting comment at a photography forum written in response to a guy who asked if it was necessary to use an ultra-wide-angle lens to do landscape photography.

Over the last two generations the US has become an "attention-seeking" society. It manifests itself almost everywhere in our daily lives, our entertainment industries, etc.

When I was young, almost all quality scenic photographers worked hard at depicting the world as it was... creatively, but virtually without noticeable distortions of the truth. Their thinking seemed to be: if you can't get excited by the world as it is, well.... ?

Nowadays- especially in the world of digital cameras and computer magic- it's easy to exaggerate photography. Using extra-wide angle lenses is just one of the many ways of doing it.

I’ve observed the same trend. And I hate the gimmicky ultra-wide-angle lens look that has become commonplace. These photographs scream for attention, "Look at me! Look at me! I was taken with a wide-angle lens!"

Romney in the lead in South Carolina

Latest poll has Romney 28%, Newt 21%, Rick Santorum 16%, Ron Paul 16%.

Now it would be interesting if Newt or Santorum were to drop out and urge their supporters to vote for the other guy. That might cause Romney to lose in SC. However, I suspect that the reason this doesn’t happen is because all of the not-Romneys feel that if they themselves can’t be president, then Romney is the next-best choice. It’s my impression that few who actually know Newt personally don't like him that much, and Newt is probably aware that he’s way smarter than Santorum and as much as he wants to stick it to Romney, he doesn’t want to drop out and support a dumb guy like Santorum.

Urinegate

I don’t care of our troops piss on the dead bodies of our enemies. Instead of apologizing for it, our leaders should hold it out as a warning to the world. Don’t mess with the U.S. or we will kill you and piss on your dead body.

NY Times says that Romney is tough on immigration

Yes, the liberal NY Times editorial board says that Romney is hard on immigration, and has "lurched to the extremist right." If the liberal NY Times hates Romney's views on immigration, this is a very good reason to support him.

The liberal media likes Newt because he is soft on immigration.

Arrest records and disparate impact

Pepsi Beverages will pay to settle a discrimination claim (hat tip Lawrence Auster). The theory of the claim is that Pepsi used criminal background checks to deny employment, and this had a disparate impact on black applicants, and there was no business necessity for the employment practice.

Remember my three-part review of Dale Carson’s book Arrest-Proof Yourself (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)?

It’s just as Dale Carson explained. Because of electronic records, an arrest is now a permanent black mark on one’s employability, even if that person was arrested by mistake. And blacks get arrested more than whites because blacks don’t behave politely to cops; they are more likely to commit crimes like consuming drugs in public while white do drugs hidden from the police; and blacks are more likely to be mistaken for a criminals and arrested by accident.

Now from Pepsi’s perspective, where they probably a lot more applicants for menial jobs than they have positions available, it probably makes business sense to reject all arrestees because they are too lazy to evaluate the circumstance of each individual arrest or conviction. But it really is unfair to the person arrested because he looked like someone who held up a store a few blocks away who now can’t find a job. According the article, “About 73% of major employers report that they always check on applicants' criminal records, while 19% do so for select job candidates, according to a 2010 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management.”

Unfortunately, the EEOC doesn’t actually care if white people are rejected for these reasons, they only care about the disparate impact on blacks. Pepsi will probably “fix” its hiring policy by continuing to reject white applicants for these reasons, but will be more lenient for blacks.

How long before the EEOC sues a company for using college degrees as a job requirement? Doesn’t the college degree requirement have a disparate impact on blacks? Or do the liberal college graduates who work at the EEOC hold college degrees to a different standard than everything else?

Intelligence and physical appearance

Slate article about intelligence and physical attractiveness:

At first, scientists wanted to know whether it was possible to read someone's intelligence from the shape of his face. In 1918, a researcher in Ohio showed a dozen photographic portraits of well-dressed children to a group of physicians and teachers, and asked the adults to rank the kids from smartest to dumbest. A couple of years later, a Pittsburgh psychologist ran a similar experiment using headshots of 69 employees from a department store. In both studies, seemingly naive guesses were compared to actual test scores, and turned out to be accurate more often than not.

Many such studies followed, and with consistent results: You can learn something about how smart someone is just by looking at a picture.

According to the abstract of the department store study, the correlation was 0.27, which is a pretty high correlation considering (1) the relative inaccurate grouping of IQ into only four categories, and (2) the people participating in the study were completely untrained in picking out the most and least intelligence. I think I could do better than 0.27.

However, I don’t buy into the theory that because of cross-assortative mating, the higher the IQ the better-looking, on average, the person. I think that reproductive fitness is highest at an IQ of 100-110, otherwise we would have evolved to have higher IQs. Above or below that level of IQ, attractiveness would decrease under my theory.

This is in response, or course, to the previous post in which I was trying to give some advice to some guy complaining that the women at Hopkins aren’t that attractive. I agree with commenters who say that part of the reason is that the Hopkins girls don’t dress slutty and don’t put forth the effort to wear makeup and bleach their hair and the various other things that less academically gifted young women are more likely to do to enhance their sexiness.

But I think the important message here is that people with high IQs look different, and I think there is some direct biological connection between physical appearance and intelligence that’s not just related to cross-assortative mating. This is further evidence that IQ is a biological trait.

The purpose of college

A reader complained that the women at Johns Hopkins are not attractive. I wrote in response:

That's low future-time-orientation thinking. The women at Hopkins would make good wives who won't divorce you in five years and take all your money. Furthermore, the purpose of college is to increase your career options and not walk around campus with a hard-on.

“The Engineer” writes:

Good advice. Make that a blog post so it will get more visibility on the 'net.

OK, I will do that.

To understand what I mean about the women at Hopkins not divorcing you, read my previous blog post about the real divorce statistics.

Romney pulling away

Of course he was predicted to win tonight in New Hampshire, but what’s more important is that there was no surprise strong second-place finish for any other candidate, and no one brings any momentum into South Carolina except for Romney.

Ron Paul is not a threat to win any state. He has his core of supporters, but the other 78% of the voters would never consider voting for him.

Did Mitt Romney get a perfect 1600 score on the SAT?

Says so here. Is this really true? Is there a source for this?

The Myth of Japan’s failure

There was an article this weekend in the NY Times this weekend about the myth of Japan’s failure.

There seem to be a lot of people who benefit from the myth. Japan learned that it gets a lot more favorable treatment in trade negotiations when other countries feel sorry for her. And conservative economist types like to believe that Japan is a failure because they have socialized medicine, which is supposed to be a real economy killer. Japan helps preserve the myth of failure by using conservative GDP accounting while the United States uses very liberal GDP accounting in order to exaggerate our growth rate.

But the reality on the ground is that the standard of living in Japan has improved. People are living longer thanks to socialized healthcare. Infrastructure is better. People have the latest technology. The low birth rate means more space to go around as the population declines. And Japan continues to be a world leader in manufacturing, but Japan is moving away from manufacturing consumer products to manufacturing the tools needed to build factories that manufacture consumer products.

The secret of the Japan, which is not mentioned in the NY Times article, is that they don’t have any NAMs to drag down the standard of living and cause the country to decline.

Asian omega-male rage?

Asian man shoots two at fitness center, one man dead. Driven to rage by unrequited love (or lust)?

Masaki reportedly had been a member of the fitness club and also a “wannabe boyfriend” of McCombs, a witness told police. He even presented her with a gift at some point, but she was not interested, the witness said. The club had asked him to stop coming there because he had made “extremely aggressive advances,” not just toward McCombs but other women there, a police report said.

* * *

Photos show Yu Masaki as a very short youngish-looking Asian with a buzz cut and gangbanger-style clothing. It’s a rather unusual style for a nerdy Asian, but one hypothesis is that Masaki read some PUA stuff about women liking alphas, and then tried to overcompensate with the gangbanger style.

Alternatively, he was just some schizophrenic. Or alternatively, he really was a poorly behaved violent gangbanger Asian.

Romney has a commanding lead

Just noticed this news from last Friday. Romney is leading in the polls in New Hampshire, South Carolina, and in Florida.

After Romney wins a decisive victory in New Hampshire, that momentum should help him do even better in South Carolina and Florida.

Thanks to Romney’s 8-vote victory in Iowa, we could be seeing an historic GOP nominating process in which Romney wins a clean sweep of every state. Despite the fact that some bitter Republicans seem desperate derail the man who is the smartest and most accomplished Republican in my lifetime.

Newt hates Mittens

From today’s NY Times

Appearing on NBC’s “Today” show, Newt Gingrich demanded that Mr. Romney explain in more detail the impact that Mr. Romney’s firm, Bain Capital, had on jobs, saying that the former Massachusetts governor “owes us a report on his stewardship” of the firm.

“They apparently looted the companies, left people unemployed and walked off with millions of dollars,” Mr. Gingrich said. “Look, I’m for capitalism,” he added, saying that “if somebody comes in, takes all the money out of your company and then leaves you bankrupt while they go off with millions, that’s not traditional capitalism.”

A “super PAC” backing Mr. Gingrich revealed Monday that it plans to significantly amplify that attack on Mr. Romney in South Carolina, where it plans to spend $3.4 million to blanket the television airwaves with television ads.

What exactly is Newt’s point? That there should be government regulations preventing companies from firing employees, like we have in Europe?

Or is Newt saying that corporations should voluntarily choose to make less money so that unnecessary employees can keep their jobs? But doesn’t Newt want to screw government workers the way that Romney screwed private workers? Doesn’t he want to cut government spending and doesn't he support smaller government, which ultimately means getting rid of unnecessary government employees?

And wasn’t Newt just as greedy as Mitt, taking millions of dollars in consulting fees from Fannie Mae to push their anti-free-market agenda?

Greece like the U.S.

A few months back, I noted that poor Americans were returning to growing their own food.

Today there’s a NY Times article documenting how the same thing is happening in Greece, where even educated people with college degrees are returning to farming.

Yiannis Makridakis, 40, a Greek novelist whose work touches on themes of tradition and regionalism, represents a different strain of refugee, with a more political tinge. He said he moved from Athens to Chios in 2010 as an act of defiance against a global financial system he found unsustainable. He bought property with a well and grows his own vegetables.

“I came to the conclusion that I want to live this insignificant life of mine as one human being among others,” Mr. Makridakis said on a sunny afternoon, looking down from his balcony on the rooftops of his village, Volissos, and the blue sea below. “According to the old ways, where people work to secure their basic needs.”

Because all the jobs created by the industrial revolution and are either moving to China and India, and there are only a few good jobs in marketing and finance reserved for those of privilege, the majority of white people will have to return to farming.

Racist anti-Jon Huntsman ad

Watch on YouTube the "racist" ad created by Ron Paul supporters attacking Jon Huntsman for being a Sinophile.

Robert Frank's three-part essay on inequality

Read Robert Frank’s three-part essay about inequality. This is the Robert Frank who is an economist at Cornell University, and not the Robert Frank who’s a wealth reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

Part one
Part two
Part three

Here’s a sample from part one:

All parents, for example, want to send their children to the best possible schools. But a good school is a relative concept. It’s one that’s better than most other schools in your area. In every country, the better schools are those that serve students whose families live in more expensive neighborhoods. So if a family is to achieve its goal, it must outbid similar families for a house in a neighborhood served by such a school. Failure to do so often means having to send your kids to a school with metal detectors at the front entrance and students who score in the 20th percentile in reading and math. Most families will do everything possible to avoid having to send their children to a school like that.

But because of the logic of musical chairs, many are inevitably frustrated. No matter how aggressively everyone bids for a house in a better school district, half of all students must attend schools in the bottom half of the school quality distribution. As in the familiar stadium metaphor, all stand, hoping for a better view, only to discover that no one sees any better than if all had remained comfortably seated.

I disagree with part three where he recommends a “progressive consumption tax.” Just because Frank is one of the few economists smart enough to identify the problem doesn’t mean he has the right solution. A consumption tax isn’t any different than an income tax with a deduction for savings, and if we tried to implement that within the context of our income tax system, people would rightly criticize the deduction as regressive because rich people save more of their income than poor people. Nope, our income tax system with loopholes removed and perhaps some higher rates for the wealthiest Americans is the best way to take money away from those who have too much. And Robert Frank has done a good job of explaining why it’s a problem for the middle class when the rich have too much.

Robert Frank also doesn’t write about value transference, although the example he gives of a top-paid performer is interesting:

The trustees who recruited David J. Skorton as Cornell University’s 12th president in 2006 knew that his most important responsibility would be to head the university’s $4 billion capital campaign, which was then just getting under way. The hiring committee identified several candidates they felt would succeed in reaching that goal. They eventually decided, however, that none could have handled the task nearly as well as Skorton.

Having seen him in that role for the past several years, I find it easy to see why. Skorton, a man of great humor, warmth, and charm, is a distinguished research cardiologist and an accomplished jazz musician. Alumni adore him. If his compellingly articulated vision of the university’s future persuades them to donate only 3 percent more than the next-best candidate would have, he will have boosted the university’s endowment by more than $100 million.

I don’t know how much Dr. Skorton is paid. But many social critics expressed shock and outrage when it was reported that annual salaries of presidents of some private universities had passed the $1 million threshold several years ago. Leaders of David Skorton’s stature are in short supply, however—and because they’re so valuable, the real surprise is that they’re not paid even more.

Regardless of how well Dr. Skorton does his job, thereby increasing the income of his employer, he’s not creating value; he’s just increasing the transfer of value from donors to Cornell, and transferring some of that to himself in the form of a high salary. Dr. Skorton is a salesman. He might even be destroying value if the money donated to Cornell would otherwise have been invested in a value-creating industry.

* * *

I am a mostly a libertarian; I don't think that taxing the rich is anti-libertarian. I just understand that inequality is an inefficiency of a completely unregulated market that needs to be reined in.

Can’t require a high school diploma

The EEOC says that an employer requiring job applicants to have a high school diploma can be discriminatory, under the ADA, against applicants with “learning disabilities.”

Half Sigma on drugs

Because I am no longer a pure libertarian, and I believe in HBD, I now understand the following two facts: (1) sometimes it is the proper responsibility of government to protect people from themselves; and (2) people with low IQs or addictive personalities (both inherited personality traits) are unable to look out for their own interests.

But I still believe that the government has gone too far in the “war on drugs.” I think that the cost of the “war” and the collateral damage to freedom and liberty is greater than the benefit of keeping drugs out of the hands of the irresponsible.

It seems to me that the “drug war” only prevents responsible middle class people from buying drugs. I wouldn’t know where to get illegal drugs if I wanted to. But somehow, all of the poor and stupid people, those who need the most protection from drugs, all know where to get the stuff despite their illegality.

The drug war has also failed in that college kids commonly do drugs, and in fact there’s an aura of uncoolness among those who have actually obeyed the law and never partook of illegal drugs. Even President Obama admitted to using marijuana and cocaine. I think the acceptance that violating the law is a “cool” thing to do is indicative of our nation’s moral decay independent of drug issues, but that’s a different topic.

There’s an argument to be made that our country would have been better off had there been a successfully prosecuted drug war, but I think that it’s time to admit defeat and move on.

Why is it that prohibition lasted only a few years and was repealed by constitutional amendment (which requires strong super-majority support) but this war on drugs goes on forever? Clearly, government programs have a lot more inertia behind them today than they did in the 1920s and 1930s.

Rick Santorum is Catholic

It just hit me. He can’t grab the evangelical Christian vote as a Catholic. And neither can Newt who converted to Catholicism. The evangelicals don’t trust Catholics; Catholics are not one of their own.

* * *

Based on this religious revelation, I predict that Santorum will fade and Rick Perry, the only non-Catholic non-Mormon non-libertarian-weirdo guy left, will make a comeback in South Carolina.

* * *

By the way, Santorum would be horrible for America. Read this:

Santorum shares the concerns of many younger evangelicals for the poor and vulnerable. He worked with President George W. Bush on funding to combat AIDS in Africa, has worked with Bono on the ONE campaign, and criticized presidential candidate Herman Cain's “9-9-9” tax plan for the negative impact it would have on the poor.

“More than any other Republican candidate (and even more than some Democrats), Santorum speaks openly and passionately about his concern for poor and vulnerable people in the U.S. and around the world,” LaTondresse wrote.

Gary Marx, executive director of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, an advocacy organization representing the concerns of social conservatives, told The Christian Post on Wednesday that LaTondresse makes a fair argument regarding Santorum's appeal to younger evangelicals.

“He's been more on the side of talking about the poor and compassionate conservative concepts and that is something that does bridge out to younger evangelicals,” Marx said.

He sounds like the next George Bush.

Fox vs. CNN

I seldom watch TV news much (I get my news from the Internet) except for CNBC. So I don’t usually get into the Fox vs. CNN debate. But I did watch two news events during the last year, and about one year apart:

(1) The revolution in Egypt. On CNN, every moron talking head was talking about how the uprising in Egypt was a secular call for Democracy. Only on Fox news was there anyone who cautioned that this might be a win for the Muslim Brotherhood. Today, the Muslim Brotherhood controls the Egyptian Parliament, and the even more radical Salafi party controls another quarter of the parliament. Win for Fox.

(2) Iowa Caucuses. Both networks had talking heads that were very excited about Rick Santorum’s strong showing. I couldn’t see any difference between the Fox coverage and the CNN coverage. Both networks appear desperately eager for there to be a big and exciting story about Santorum challenging Romney rather than a boring story about Romney cruising to a early and decisive win in the Republican primaries.