Dick Morris argues that John McCain can beat Hillary Clinton in the general election and that Mitt Romney can’t. He’s implying that you should vote for McCain if you dislike Clinton more than you like Romney. That’s his opinion and he may be right. But he might also just be pushing his favorite.

I’ve said before that I believe voters and the country will be better served if we all vote for our preferred candidates and let the chips fall where they may. Anyway, I don’t see that much difference between McCain and Clinton. It will be disastrous if either one of them becomes president.
_______________

I voted for Ron Paul yesterday. I practice what I preach. I would have preferred that Romney beat McCain, but he didn’t get my vote because my first choice was Paul. I know I said earlier that I didn’t want a Mormon to be president, but neither do I want an arrogant fool to be president.
_______________

It’s interesting to note that McCain gets all 57 of the Florida delegates to the Republican National Convention even though 64% of the voters cast their votes for other candidates. It seems to me that those other candidates should get 64% of the delegates and McCain only 36%.
_______________

A lot has been said about the Democrat Party refusing to seat any Florida delegates at their convention as punishment for holding the primary election before Super Tuesday. But little has been said about the Republican Party taking away half of its Florida delegates for the same reason. Normally Florida would send 114 delegates, but this year only 57 will be seated.
_______________

Did you catch McCain’s shit-eating-grin moment at the beginning of his victory speech in Florida? At the same time, he thrust out both arms in a rigid thumbs-up salute to his own imagined brilliance. His handlers need to coach him a little on acting presidential.

It looks as if Congress will approve rebates of several hundred dollars each for most all Americans — whether they paid any income tax or not. These rebates are supposed to stimulate the economy and prevent us from having to endure a recession. Congress is assuming that everyone will run right out and spend all that money. They’re probably right.

I already did my part. A couple of weeks ago I bought a luxury motorhome. Looks like I’ll continue to do my part because operating that thing costs about 45 cents per mile just for fuel. That is, I’ll be doing my part to stimulate the economy but not to help us become energy independent.

I would consider giving my rebate to someone who needs it more than I do, but they’re getting a rebate too — and they probably don’t have a luxury motorhome to maintain and operate. Anyway, it looks like I’ll have to spend my rebate on repairs needed by my luxury motorhome, because it was born as a luxury motorhome over ten years ago. The previous owner used up a lot of the luxury.

It’s probably going to take all of my rebate, and my brother’s too, to pay for all the needed repairs. But that’s okay because he owns half of the luxury motorhome. We haven’t worked out which half yet. I thought about foisting off on him the half that includes the fuel tank but then I realized that half also contains the bedroom and bathroom.

In case Congress is listening and another rebate is considered for next year, we need to have a satellite television antenna installed on the roof of our luxury motorhome.

Dennis DeTurck, an award-winning professor of mathematics at the University of Pennsylvania, is calling for an end to the teaching of fractions to young students. He favors going all decimal. George Andrews, a mathematics professor over at Penn State, says that “all of this is absurd.” I agree with Andrews.

DeTurck thinks fractions should be taught later when students are better able to understand them — perhaps after learning calculus. I say that if a student can’t comprehend fractions he or she has no business taking calculus — or algebra.

How would someone get to a decimal value without understanding fractions? If told to add 1/3 and 1/2, would they know to add 0.3333 to 0.5 and get 0.8333, since they presumably don’t know how to get a common denominator and then add the numerators to get 5/6? Would they know that 5/6 is an exact result while 0.8333 is not?

If students can solve for the two possible values of x in this algebraic equation, 3x/4 – 1/x = 1, they should be able to solve this one, 1/3 + 1/2 = x, and get x = 5/6 rather than x = 0.8333. If so, they understand fractions — but they might not know it. If they don’t know it, they might get 0.9999 when asked to add 1/3 and 1/3 and 1/3.

No Dennis, I think we need to keep trying to teach kids to understand and work with fractions. If they have too much trouble with it they should consider going into music, art, athletics or politics.

I encourage anyone enamored with the rhetoric of the Democrat candidates for president, especially that of Obama and Edwards, to read this column by Thomas Sowell.

The Associated Press reports that a mother in Wisconsin tried to drown her newborn twin boys in a bathtub and succeeded in killing one of them. To me this is clearly a tragic event. But, philosophically, how different is this from partial birth abortion?

I watched the debate tonight — until I fell asleep.

Listening to those three you’d think America was the sorriest damn place to live on Earth.

For the first hour they talked about nothing that should be the concern of the federal government. But that might be because CNN was asking the questions.

Hillary wants to mandate that everyone purchases health insurance. John-Boy wants to mandate that every military veteran sleeping under bridges purchases a home.

Barack wants to put a branch bank in every community. I’m sorry Barack, but there are no corners left in my town for another bank. With a population of about 20,000 it has about 20 banks and branches. Is there really a shortage of banks in some parts of the country?

Barack said that by the time we’re through in Iraq we will have spent two trillion dollars. He said that is enough money to rebuild every road, bridge and hospital in America. But what about the banks, Barack? Don’t forget the banks.

John-Boy said that he grew up in small towns all across the South. I don’t remember his stint in my town.

He reminded us again that his father worked in a mill. His own rags to riches story underscores his lack of confidence in the ability of others to succeed on their own initiative with family support. Oh, that’s right. A lot of people today don’t have families.

All three of them obviously think most Americans are completely incompetent and irresponsible. They just cannot survive on their own amongst all those rich people. Damn those rich people! How did they manage to get so rich anyway? (Perhaps by selling books and suing other rich people?)

Liberal politicians and pundits like to chuckle or snort when conservatives talk about supply-side economics. Proponents of supply-side economics roughly believe that reduced tax rates cause the economy to expand to the point that the government will collect as much or more tax revenue as it would have at the old higher rates. There have been studies that verify this and others that dispute it.

It’s clear that people disagree on what the right tax rate is, but do you suppose they can all agree that neither zero taxes nor a 100% tax rate is the right answer? Probably not, but I think most will. Even fiscal conservatives agree that some amount of government is necessary. We need to at least maintain order and defend the nation. I think sane liberals (that excludes Dennis Kucinich) would agree that a 100% tax rate would cause our economy to collapse. Not many people would continue to work for someone else when they are taking no pay home. They would have to self-produce some of the essentials of life and barter for the rest.

So, if a sane liberal — or anyone else — actually does believe that a 100% tax rate will destroy the economy and result in reduced government revenue, that person believes in supply-side economics. They believe that a tax rate lower than 100% will result in greater government revenue.

The real disagreement then is not on the theory of supply-side economics but on what rate is the right rate. A theoretician might argue that the right rate is the rate that maximizes government revenue. Conservatives think that rate is lower than the current rate; liberals think it is higher. Unfortunately we don’t have economists smart enough to give us the right answer, so we are left with experimentation.

Two of the last four presidents have significantly reduced tax rates with favorable results. If the next president is a Democrat (heaven forbid) and she raises taxes, at least we will get a data point in the other direction.

In his victory speech John McCain was effusive in his appreciation of the South Carolina voters. He didn’t appear to be aware that twice as many of them voted against him as voted for him. He was focused on the fact that more people voted for him than any one of the other candidates.

But at least he didn’t read his speech and stumble over the words as he did in Iowa.

Consider this scenario: A football team is about to play in the NFL championship game after having lost its starting quarterback to an injury. The head coach is trying to decide which of the backup quarterbacks will start in the Super Bowl. An assistant coach points out that one of their defensive backs has had a great season and that they probably wouldn’t be in the Super Bowl without his heroic effort. He reminds the head coach that the defensive back played quarterback in college and suggests that they reward him by letting him lead the team in this important game as quarterback.

How much weight do you think the head coach should give to the defensive back’s performance in selecting his quarterback for the big game? He is qualified for the job and deserves recognition for his accomplishments, so why not let him move into the limelight for one game? Because he most likely isn’t the best qualified man for the job, that’s why.*

We have a similar scenario playing out in the race for president. It seems there are people who believe we should choose John McCain as the Republican nominee because he is a war hero. They must exist. Why else would we be hearing it all the time? To be fair, these people might believe that he is as qualified to be president as the other candidates and feel that his suffering as a prisoner of war in Vietnam should tip the scales in his favor. Some might even believe his war experience will make him a stronger defender of national security. Others might believe the opposite.

Whatever their reasons I disagree with them. The ability to survive torture in an enemy prison has little to do with leading this country. He should be, and has been, commended for his service to the country, but the ability to endure torture in an enemy prison has little to do with executing the duties of the President of the United States of America.

Words can’t account for the debt of gratitude we owe those who go to war for this country. I can say this because I am not one of them. I received a draft notice during the Vietnam war. During my processing I was offered and accepted a deferment because I was a civilian employee of the Air Force and a member of a team working on the development of a system that would give Air Force and Navy pilots the ability to detect and evade incoming surface-to-air missiles during bombing runs over North Vietnam. Though eventually used with some success, our product was too late or too little to help John MCain and his prison mates.

Although I feel that I contributed to that war effort and others during my career, nothing I did can compare to actually being in the line of fire. I thank John McCain and others who were. But that won’t be a factor in my vote.

*There’s also the little matter of the big hole that would leave in the defensive backfield, but that screws up my analogy because McCain wouldn’t be missed that much in the Senate.

First, let me say that I’m critiquing just the Republican candidates. The fact that I find most of them to be flawed doesn’t mean that I think one of the Democrat candidates might be a better president. I believe that despite their flaws any one of them would be a better president than any one of the Democrats.

I’m voting for Ron Paul primarily because I think he is the best candidate. But I’m also voting for him on the principle that we should always vote for the candidate we believe to be the best without regard to his or her perceived electability. Many political pundits seem to believe that you should vote for your second choice if you think voting for your first choice might help one of the other candidates win. I say this is hokum. How can we ever expect to get the best person in office if we continue to use that logic?

The reason Paul is considered by many to be unelectable is that his strong beliefs in minimal government and minimal foreign involvement seem radical when compared to the platforms of the other candidates. Well, perhaps they are radical but it might be what we need to get this country back on track. The Democrats talk a lot about change. You want change? Vote for Ron Paul.

What do I find wrong with the other candidates? None of them can decide what they really believe in terms of the government’s role in our lives. I’m afraid all of them would increase it. None of them are really clear on what they would do about illegal immigration. I’m afraid all of them would do too little. All of them say they will protect us from terrorists. I’m afraid some of them would get us involved in unnecessary conflicts that we can’t afford.

I don’t want a Mormon to be president. There’s too much about that religion that I don’t understand. I don’t want a Baptist preacher to be president. He has clearly indicated that his religious beliefs will guide his actions as president. That can be a big problem for those whose beliefs don’t coincide with his or those who don’t think religion should influence government. That eliminates Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee.

Rudy Giuliani’s politics appear to have dramatically changed since he was mayor of New York City, yet he wants us to vote for him based on his performance there. John McCain has never met a government power he couldn’t embrace. His sponsorship of restrictions on political speech is enough to disqualify him. Fred Thompson supported McCain’s political speech bill.

I hope enough people vote for Ron Paul to cause the established political machines to notice. If so, an “electable’ candidate who espouses at least some of Paul’s positions might be found for the 2012 race.