THE CASE FOR MCCAIN
[Jack Kelly makes as good a case as can be made for John McCain. I remain afflicted with what he calls MDS. Yet I readily admit he makes a good suggestion for a vaccine. ---JW] The race for the GOP nomination for president is all but over, save for weeping and gnashing of teeth among conservatives. I don't think Sen. John McCain would be a good president. He lacks the temperament for it; he has virtually no managerial experience, and the economy is, as George Will put it, "a subject with which McCain is neither conversant, nor eager to become so." But there is a big difference between being a mediocre president -- as one could argue George W. Bush has been -- and being an awful one. Yet many conservatives talk about Sen. McCain as if he were Satan's first cousin. What Web logger Roger L. Simon calls "McCain Derangement Syndrome" is as irrational and unbecoming as is the Bush Derangement Syndrome that afflicts so many liberals.
AFTER FLORIDA, ON THE EVE OF SUPER TUESDAY
This is an endless a campaign of "what ifs." That is, a campaign prepares a strategy that presupposes a scenario which apparently will occur with 100 percent probability. Then, when things don't quite go as planned, the campaign strategists have an alibi. Somehow, externalities undercut a supposedly thoughtful and well conceived plan. The only problem with all this self-serving Monday morning quarter-backing? Events with a reasonable probability were assigned zero probability, because the strategy was ineptly created. It often assumed an optimum or best case scenario. Or it sharply or entirely discounted reasonably foreseeable events. Let's go through the what-ifs of the candidates in the wake of Florida and on the eve of Super Tuesday.
EMAIL SECURITY
Your email or "mail pop accounts" are out there in the naked with no protection. As it passes many hops and bounds on its way to its intended destination, it can be intercepted and sniffed by numerous people on its way. It's your data, you can do what you want with it, but it might be a prudent thing to think about your security. Further, just like there are wired network tools for snooping there are also wireless sniffing devices that can rob you blind. So, fellow TTPers, if you have a wireless network, and if you want to protect your email, please do this:
A SIGHT THAT WOULD MAKE MARTIN LUTHER KING CRY
Martin Luther King Day parade, Monday January 21, 2008, Corpus Christi, Texas, Channel 3 News: 
Brought to you by the National Education Association and America's Teacher Unions
HOW THE CLINTONS WILL DESTROY JOHN MCCAIN
The number of fellow Senators who think John McCain is psychologically unstable is large. Some will admit it publicly, like Thad Cochran who says, "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine." Others relate times when McCain screamed four-letter obscenities right in their faces in the Senate cloak room, like Dick Shelby, Rick Santorum, or Jim Inhofe. "The man is unhinged," one Senator told me. "He is frighteningly unfit to be Commander-in-Chief." That John McCain is clinically nuts is scary enough. What worries a small group of GOP Senators and Congressmen even more is a deep and dark skeletal secret in McCain's glorified past to which they are privy, and which the Clintons will use to blackmail him. They have been having discussions with a Russian whom we'll call "T" for Translator. T's father was the Soviet military intelligence officer who ran the "Hanoi Hilton" prison holding captured Americans during the Vietnam War. One of those prisoners was John McCain.
DEM DISASTER IN DENVER
All the smart talk seems to be about a "brokered" Republican convention, with the GOP in a confused mess all through the summer until somebody is finally chosen in Minneapolis in early September. Yet the odds for that are decreasing, and may drastically do so if Romney takes Florida away from McCain next Tuesday. Huckabee will be history, Giuliani wounded perhaps mortally, all the big conservative guns like Limbaugh will put McCain in the crosshairs, and Mitt Is It for the GOP. The big difference between the GOP and Dem primaries, particularly those of Super Tuesday (2/5) is that most of the former's are winner-take-all, while the latter's are proportional. Thus Hillary could "win" all the primaries from now to June and still not get a majority of delegates. In fact, with the vicious catfight going on between her and Obama Hussein, that's the likely outcome. It's the Dems who face a brokered convention, and it is going to be a disaster.
THE GOP RACE BEFORE FLORIDA
A good man has withdrawn from the campaign. Fred Thompson, as I predicted, withdrew from the campaign after his predictably disappointing performance in South Carolina. But he has surprised me by not endorsing John McCain...yet. Thompson hinted days earlier that South Carolina would be conclusive for him, but it was emotionally taxing on his wife. One thing at a time. He may yet endorse, although in a conference call to his maxed-out donors yesterday (1/24), he said he would not. Perhaps he is waiting to see whether McCain or Romney wins the very competitive Florida primary on Tuesday. Indeed, the winner of that primary has a real leg up on Super Tuesday. And for one candidate, Rudy Giuliani, it could be a life line, or the last gasp.
A STRANGE AND ORDINARY WASHINGTON DINNER PARTY
A couple of nights ago, I attended a dinner party at the Capitol Hill home of a friend of mine. There was good wine, good food, and good conversation. Every night there are dinners like this held all over Washington, the normal rationale for which is a guest of honor. In this case, the guest of honor was the leader of a political party in Pakistan, Imran Khan. This resulted in a quite strange yet equally ordinary evening in DC. The charismatic and strikingly handsome Imran Khan is one of Pakistan's greatest celebrities. While other countries go crazy over soccer, Pakistan's sport is cricket - so the entire country went delirious with joy when its national team won the 1992 Cricket World Cup. Imran Khan captained the team and almost singlehandedly won the final game. The Oxford-educated cricketer then married, in 1995, the daughter of one of England's richest men, billionaire Sir James Goldsmith - Jemima Goldsmith converting to Islam beforehand. The following year, with $8 million of Sir James' money, he founded his own political party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (Movement for Justice). As he spoke to us and fielded questions, attired in a Saville Row suit and with an accent of impeccable Oxbridge English, he was urbane, witty, charming, and articulate. He is also an airhead.
THE RON PAUL MOVIE CONTEST
I had my say about Ron Paul in No Paulista. Yet the good gynecologist from Lake Jackson, Texas, has a devoted following among TTPers, and it is in their honor that To The Point is holding a contest. And that is for the greatest Libertarian Motion Picture. What movie ever made, in your opinion, best celebrates individual freedom, private property, the loathing and ridicule of government tyranny, the glory of the individual human being, and which has the most fun doing so? There are a lot of choices. We think of Hollywood as an anti-American cesspool of liberal lunacy. But once you begin to look around, there's a wealth of pro-freedom entertainment.
THE SIMPLEST STIMULUS
When Democrats and Republicans agree quickly on something, it's usually either a meaningless gesture, or a raid on the federal treasury. The economic stimulus package agreed to by President Bush and congressional leaders will be more beneficial to politicians than it will be to our economy. The deal -- the principal element of which is to give income tax rebates to people who pay little or no federal income tax -- is driven by fear our economy may be going into recession. Since the definition of a recession is two consecutive quarters of negative growth, we're not in one yet, and neither the Congressional Budget Office nor the Federal Reserve thinks we'll go into one this year. But the economy is weakening, for two principal reasons.