I'm going to do some posts here which in no way reference Donald Trump but here's something that's on my mind. I keep hearing folks who want to stop him from getting the Republican nomination — and these are mostly Republicans saying this — that either Cruz or Rubio should drop out so that the other one can pick up most of their votes. This sounds backwards to me.

According to Nate Silver, who counts these things as well as anyone, Trump is "just barely" on target to rack up the 1,237 delegates he needs to have to lock up the nomination before the convention. Silver estimates that at his current pace of winning about 46% of them, Trump will wind up with 1,276.

That's enough but it's not a landslide. It's 52%. Not a lot of safety margin there.

It seems to me that neither Cruz nor Rubio stands much chance of topping Trump in delegate count. The most likely scenarios whereby he doesn't become the nominee all involve him falling slightly short of 50% plus one. Are you with me so far?

Now let's say either Cruz or Rubio drops out and most of their followers flock to the other guy. I'm thinking some of those voters would go to Trump, especially if he looked unstoppable. Remember that part of his appeal is this "I always win" mantra he chants. There are Republicans who after eight years of Barack Obama just want someone in the White House who is "one of them."

So if either Cruz or Rubio drops out, doesn't Trump pick up some voters and therefore some delegates? And might those some delegates be enough to push him over the 50% mark?

There's a lot of "opposition research" (i.e., mudslinging) coming his way before the convention, even before Democrats take their best shot at him. Suppose it drives his total down to, say, 1230. That still makes him the frontrunner and some will argue that he deserves the nomination because of it. But that's not the same thing as if he shows up with 1,237. And if Cruz or Rubio withdrew, don't you think Trump would pick up some more votes? Enough to get seven more delegates? What am I missing here?

By the way: As you may have heard, Ben Carson is apparently out of the race. Last night, I captured this Tweet and forgot to post it. It made me chuckle…

Matt Taibbi writes about how Republican leaders who were fine with George W. Bush in the White House are panicking over the possibility of You-Know-Who getting the job. I think Taibbi is a little harsh on G.W.B., which is an odd thing for me to be saying since I think he might well have been the worst president of all time. Nevertheless, I think Taibbi is onto something when he says, as others have, that the problem the G.O.P. establishment has with Trump is not that he's dangerous to America but that he's dangerous to them.

He's lost the all-important Ben Stein vote.

This is another one of those "if that person's on the same side as me, maybe I'm wrong" moments.

You know about this battle where the government wants Apple to help them unlock a terrorist's iPhone and Apple is resisting. I'm not sure how I feel about it, not because I'm in favor of the government spying on us but because I'm not sure how this is that different from the government tapping conventional phones or seizing and examining desktop computers. There's an inconsistency here that I'd have to sort through. As it turns out, Fred Kaplan has more on this.

I am told that WonderCon is very close to selling out. If you wanna go, get tickets now. Tomorrow may be too late.

I have a feeling you've all seen this but just in case…

So I guess what we're waiting for now is some game-changing revelation or gaffe — like there's suddenly actual proof that Hillary Clinton killed Vince Foster…or Donald Trump gets up to give a speech, has a brain fart and declares, "We have to bring back slavery and make poor people and minorities the property of people as rich as me!" Something like that.

If nothing that jarring occurs, Hillary's the Democratic nominee and Donald gets the G.O.P. nod. Or I suppose the Republican establishment could get together and say in essence, "Okay…Trump won by the rules so we're changing the rules." That would sure tear the party apart but so have a lot of things the Republican leadership has done lately. My point is it's going to take some massive change in the dynamic for this to not be a Clinton-Trump face-off. Maybe a big scandal. Maybe some candidate doing something really, really stupid. Maybe even some external news event like a major disaster or another 9/11. Given how wacko this whole election has been so far, I wouldn't rule anything out.

I don't have a particular preference for Sanders over Hillary or vice-versa but I'm sorry Bernie's not doing better. He's saying some important things and he does seem to be the only guy in the race with a positive approval rating and some respect from the opposition party. Even my friend Roger who would sooner go bunjee-jumping on a strand of linguini than vote Democratic thinks Sanders is the only candidate truly speaking his own mind. You wish that counted more than it does these days.

I admit I don't fully "get" the appeal of Trump. It has something to do with the fact that a lot of people are sick of politics as usual and that they buy into the notion — which seems clearly bogus to a lot of us — that Donald is tough and a perpetual winner. I think it also has to do with so many voters finding the G.O.P. alternatives lacking. Rubio's looking more and more like a kid who's in way over his head. Cruz is looking more and more like a ferret.

Left-leaning friends of mine are in despair and terror at even the slight possibility of President Trump…but I don't think they'd be any happier with President Rubio or President Cruz or even President Kasich. What some of them seem to want in a Republican nominee is what Republicans want in a Supreme Court nominee. They want no one this year. If I had more interest in it, I could probably make the case that Trump is the least offensive of many bad choices: Most likely to lose, most likely to surprise us with occasional liberalism if he wins.

I'm not sure who the Big Winner was in the events of yesterday but I have a nomination for Big Loser: Chris Christie. Is there anyone who likes this guy anymore? When will Fox News offer this guy a good-paying show and end the self-destruction of his political career? (I caught him last night on some news channel saying, "If we work together, we can stop Hillary Clinton from getting to Washington!" I'm guessing that means more bridge closures.)

One of the odd things in politics is that every so often, you find yourself agreeing with someone you think is always wrong. It's like tomorrow, if Rush Limbaugh began talking the way I do about cole slaw, I'd find myself thinking, "Hmm…maybe that stuff is a lot closer to edible than I thought." In that spirit, we have Lindsey Graham saying, "You'll never convince me that Donald Trump is the answer to the problem we have with Hispanics. It will tear the party apart, it will divide conservatism, and we're gonna lose to Hillary Clinton and have the third term of Barack Obama."

Before he said that, that's what I thought I wanted. Now since it's him saying it, I'm not so sure.

Yasmin Nair writes about the pernicious practice of writers being asked to write for free for outlets which should pay. I agree with most of her points, though I can think of a few instances where I profited in non-monetary ways from things I wrote and I'm still glad I did them. As a general rule though, professional writers should know the difference between jobs which can and ought to pay and the other kind.

It's just like any kind of work where the default is that people are paid for their labors…but there are occasional instances where it could be appropriate to donate. Usually, they are not when the project is being done for profit and the person hiring you is drawing down a salary. And they're not when someone is trying to launch an enterprise they hope will be profitable for them and they want you to work for free so as to minimize how much they have to invest to get their project off the ground.

I will have more to say about this in the next installment of our Rejected! series. Or maybe the one after.

It's March so it's Creamy Tomato Soup Month at all outlets of the Souplantation chain, also known as Sweet Tomatoes in some areas. As I mentioned back here, I am not as enthusiastic about Souplantation restaurants as I once was. Last year, I paid about six visits to about three different Souplantations and was a bit disappointed every time. What I ate did not have quite the just-picked/just-made freshness I used to like about their soups and salad bar. Everything tasted a bit canned even if it probably wasn't.

Still, I like this particular soup which they only serve during March and for the occasional week later in the year. I'll give 'em another chance or two and report back here when I can. It is still better to have loved and lost a favorite restaurant than to never have loved it at all.

I always think of bagels being made by hand by little Jewish folks in old, cramped bakeries. The good ones, I suspect, still are but here's how they're made in the big factories…

I see a lot of articles and blog posts online complaining about the length of Sunday night's Oscars telecast. They're right that it was too long but a lot of them seemed to think that was some kind of accident. With the possible exception of Chris Rock's opening monologue, nothing during the show ran way longer than the producers could have anticipated. Nobody made an hour-long acceptance speech. The show ran as long as it did because the producers chose to include what they did…and the network surely knew how long it would run because they sold enough commercials to fill that time period.

I also see a lot of articles and blog posts noting how poor the ratings were and blaming (a) the length and (b) the host. To know if it was the length, we'd have to see the ratings breakdown for every 10 or 15 minutes throughout the show. There's no way of knowing how much Chris Rock had to do with the ratings but my own suspicion is that the host rarely matters much, especially after the opening and the one big comedy spot he or she seems to always do later on. The event isn't about the host as much as it is about the awards and there are many years when the audience just plain doesn't care that much who wins. Were there people really rooting for Spotlight to steal the trophy away from The Revenant? Or who had money riding on Leonardo DiCaprio? I sure doubt it.

The main thing I think the ratings tell us is that viewing audiences have grown more impatient…and also less afraid of missing anything. Once upon a time, if there was a truly memorable moment on a show like this and you weren't tuned in at that moment, you might never see it. Now, you know it'll be replayed on other shows endlessly and viewable on YouTube and so on. Not that long ago, you couldn't do what I did and start watching about an hour into the show and fast-forwarding through what didn't interest me. We simply don't watch television the way we used to. You no longer have to be there when it happens.

Several of the online sources that had previously reported the passing of actor Jerry Maren have withdrawn their postings. Very pleased to hear that. And I'm a little mad at myself for not checking as thoroughly as I usually try to do. My apologies to all, especially Mr. Maren, who is a delightful gentleman.

An hour ago, I posted an obit here for Jerry Maren, the veteran Hollywood actor. His passing has been reported a dozen different places on the Internet but I'm now hearing that it may be a hoax. In the hope that it is, I've taken the post down. Jerry was — and I'd like to think still is — the last of the surviving Munchkins from The Wizard of Oz…and boy, did he do a lot of great stuff after that.

A fine actor named George Kennedy has died at the age of 91. I never had what I'm sure would have been the pleasure of meeting Mr. Kennedy but I came close. When I was working on Welcome Back, Kotter, its star Gabe Kaplan met him at some Hollywood function and Kennedy told him he always watched the show because his kids loved it. Gabe, figuring our show could do worse than secure an Oscar-winning actor as a guest star, invited Kennedy to appear in an episode. Kennedy agreed.

The staff quickly whipped up a script for him. Earlier in the season, a story had been developed about a gym teacher who engages in corporal punishment, hitting and slapping students in violation of the rules. The script was worked and reworked but no one was happy with it and it was abandoned. Then someone suggested that George Kennedy sure looked like a gym teacher so why not take just that premise — a gym coach into striking his students — and see what the newer writers on the show could do with it?

Everyone pitched in and the script was totally rewritten. In the new version, Coach Caruso (that was his name because that was the name of a gym coach Gabe had had in high school) slaps John Travolta's character in front of other students. He screams, "This is what you deserve for that performance you're going to give in a mini-series about O.J. Simpson forty years from now!" Okay, that's not true. I forget the real reason.

Anyway, the script came out pretty good. It was scheduled and sent over to George Kennedy who immediately decided he wouldn't do it. His stated reason was that his children would never forgive him he played a guy who slapped Vinnie Barbarino…but when our producer suggested we could write something else for another week, Kennedy said he was kinda busy or something that indicated he just plain didn't want to do the show. So someone else — an old-time western actor named Scott Brady — played Caruso.

We were all disappointed. I always thought George Kennedy was a superb actor — and for comedy as well as drama. I forget if it was before or after the Kotter near-booking but I saw him once in a production of Plaza Suite directed by Danny "Neil's Brother" Simon and co-starring Carol Burnett. I don't think it's humanly possible for a play to be funnier than that one was that night.

There was a time in his life when all George Kennedy wanted to be was a senior officer in the military. Some of the obits allude to him having made the shift from that to acting when he got some work as a stand-in on the Phil Silvers show, You'll Never Get Rich, more commonly known as Sgt. Bilko. Mr. Silvers once told me his version of it, which was that the Army had assigned Kennedy to their program as a kind of technical adviser on Army procedures. When the crew heard how little Kennedy's pay was in the Army, they decided to throw him some extra bucks by giving him extra work, usually as an M.P. Eventually, he got a few lines and then came the acting bug. He sure did well for himself.

Today is Leap Year Day. Back in 1952 when my mother was seriously preggo with me, I was expected to be born on 2/29/52. I somehow missed my entrance cue and a few days later, they went in and got me…but when I was eight and old enough to understand a concept I couldn't have grasped at age four, I was told, "If you'd been born when you were supposed to be, this would be your second birthday." Somehow, my relatives joked, that would have made me two years old instead of eight.

I understood of course that this was a joke but it was an intriguing concept with which to play. If it worked like that, when all my friends were eighty and close to passing on, I would be twenty and in my prime of life. Of course, think of all the birthday presents I would have missed over the years…and how about that long, frustrating wait for puberty? Or to be old enough to drive a car?

Speaking of driving a car, my knee has healed to the point where I've been doing some limited driving, mainly at times when traffic is likely to be at a minimum. It's now been four months since the second of my two operations and I'm doing that plus walking some decent distances. There's still the occasional time when I can't and it's still painful to get up from a chair…especially a low chair. But I'm pretty happy with the recovery process and fairly certain my mobility is better than it would be by now if I hadn't had the knee replacement.

I have stuff to do today more pressing than blogging but before I return to it…

Josh Marshall has a good article up on why the portions of the Republican party who want to stop Trump are unable to stop Trump. Sez Marshall, it's because most of what he's selling is the same stuff they've been selling to their constituents for years. I think that's basically correct. Trump's claim that the I.R.S. is auditing him because he's a "good Christian" is as clear a lie as we've ever heard from a politician — unless it's topped by Trump's claim of yesterday that he didn't denounce the Ku Klux Klan in that interview because he had a "bad earpiece." But the G.O.P. leaders can't denounce him for the Christian hooey at least because they've spent years telling Christians that everyone's out to get them and take away their religion.

Nate Silver says not to presume that everyone who calls themselves a Conservative will eventually back Mr. Trump. This election, it might be wise to presume nothing. I'm even skeptical it'll happen in November.

If you love Sondheim and do Spotify, this is the page for you.

The big "left out of the In Memoriam reel" controversy today seems to be about Abe Vigoda, though there are also complaints about the omission of Geoffrey Lewis, Martin Milner, Joan Leslie and a few more. I was glad to see they included Stan Freberg.

All right. I'll be back later…maybe. I dunno. Lots to get done today.