This weekend is the CPAC convention. It is the convention where conservatives get together and discuss the important issues of the day. Today, Rick Santorum, Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich will be speaking to the convention. By the time I am writing this, Rick Santorum is most likely finished and Mitt Romney is probably speaking.

Early on in the convention Mike Huckabee said that, “We are all Catholics now”. That is a statement used by Glenn Beck for the last couple of weeks. But it brought the convention to its feet. Everyone thinks that Mike Huckabee is great because of this statement. I agree the sentiment is great. We are all Catholics now that Obama has decided to declare war on the first amendment to the Constitution. But, I still have a bad taste in my mouth over Mike Huckabee. I bet if the Mormons were targeted instead of the Catholics, he would never have said, “We are all Mormons now”. He would rather die than say something positive about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

On the talks for today, I am sure that Rick Santorum will talk a lot about family values. That is his issue and he does well when he discusses family values. His problem is that he will never be able to ride that one issue to the Presidency. At some time he has to widen his discussion to include other topics. This speech to CPAC would be a great time to do just that.

Mitt Romney is not a great speaker. He is a good speaker, but not great. He can bring crowds to their feet, but generally does not. He needs to lie out why he is a conservative and what he intends to do to defeat Obama in the fall. He should not attack any of the other candidates. Let the other candidates hang themselves with their own words. He should target his speech to Obama and give the crowd the red meat it wants. If he does this he can come out of it with a very positive message. He might even be able to pull off a straw poll victory tomorrow. If he gives a stump speech he will be soundly defeated during the straw poll tomorrow. He needs to give the crowd what they want in a candidate.

Newt Gingrich is a great speaker. Unfortunately he has a thin skin and holds grudges. He most likely will try and skewer Mitt Romney and probably Rick Santorum more than he will attack Barack Obama. If he does that he will sound petty and diminish his showing in the straw poll tomorrow.

CPAC has a great opportunity to hear the three main nominees for the Presidency in one setting. This will allow them to evaluate and compare each candidate. They hold a straw poll before the close of the convention to get a sense of where the conservatives feel the party is headed. It will be interesting to see how the candidates do in the straw poll this year.

After Santorum’s victories in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri, he is now very much in the thick of the race. It remains to be seen how long he can hang with Romney as he is still grossly underfunded. That may change if people perceive him having a real chance, but at least for now, funding is his most pressing problem. That could hamper his ability to pull a miracle out of his hat.

The Obama administration telling the Catholics what to include in their medical insurance for their employees is not about women’s rights or abortion or even health. It is all about the separation of Church and State. The first amendment to the Constitution says that Congress shall make no law that establishes a state religion or interferes with an already established religion. What the Obama administration is trying to do is to tell the Catholic Church what beliefs they will have. This is, in effect, creating a state religion. If the government can tell a church what it can and cannot believe, we then have a state religion.

We do already have a “State Religion” right now. It is not called that, but it is one nonetheless. The State Religion is, “Secular Humanism”. The Obama administration in particular has been trying to get other churches to conform to the state religion since early 2009. Just recently they were rebuffed when they tried to tell a church who was or was not a minister of the gospel. The church had their rules and the government had theirs. The court said that the church rules prevailed. That would be correct if we have the first amendment to the Constitution.

The strong arm tactics that the Obama administration is practicing right now is an attempt to overwhelm a church with power and tell it what to do. The Obama administration did not count on the Catholic Church fighting back like they have. That is because so many Catholics ignored the danger signs and signed on to Obamacare when it was being foisted on the country. The Obama administration thought that if that many Catholics were willing to sell out for Obamacare, they would be easy pickings for this power grab. Unfortunately for the Obama administration, they were dealing with two different groups of people. The people that supported Obamacare were the liberal Catholics. The church leadership is far more conservative and protective of their mission. Any threat to that mission is dealt with quickly and severely.

Also, the Obama administration counted on other religions just thinking this was about abortion and not doing anything. The Catholics have received support from just about every other organized church in the United States. That again poses great danger for the Obama administration. A united group of religious people can pose a potent force at the ballot box.

As a result of this outpouring of support for the Catholics, the Obama administration has started to signal that it might be willing to compromise. Their first effort at compromise basically was no compromise at all. It just was a delay in the implementation of the Obamacare regulations. That will never be acceptable to the Catholics or others interested in keeping the government out of the church.

I am not comparing the Obama administration to Hitler’s Nazi’s, but the steps that the Obama administration is taking in regards to religion is remarkably similar to the steps taken by the Nazi’s after they assumed power in Germany. It took a few years, but before long Hitler’s picture was on every German pulpit. It happened because nobody stopped them in the early steps. This power grab by the Obama administration needs to be stopped. I was gratified to hear that John Boehner said that if the Obama administration does not reverse their field, the House will pass legislation requiring it to do so. With the Senate in the hands of the Democrats, I am not sure how far that would go. But even Catholic Democrats are upset at the power grab. We shall see what transpires over the next couple of weeks.

The Obama administration’s decision to override the 1^st amendment to the Constitution is baffling, if you look at it as if they want to be re-elected. The first reaction is, of course Obama wants to be re-elected. But, look at his actions, not what you think he wants. Catholics make up between 27 and 28% of the voting population. Hispanics are about half of all Catholics. Getting Catholics mad at you will almost guarantee that your opponent will win the election. You cannot give away 27% of the vote and expect to win. Even if only half of the Catholics are faithful enough to follow the church, that still leaves about 14%. Most recent elections are decided by less than 8% of the vote.

Also, the Catholics have received a lot of support from groups that are impacted less by these new rules. From an interview I heard yesterday, these groups are Jews, Protestants and Mormons. That amounts to another large chunk of the electorate. If Obama lets this go, then he has written off at least 50% of the vote and guaranteed a loss.

Since getting the Catholics upset is not good election strategy, what good is it for the administration? Remember there are a lot of radicals in the Obama administration. Obama has said that he wants to “fundamentally transform America”. What better way to transform America than to create a crisis. The Catholics are threatening to possibly march in the streets. That is their right. But doing that might just play into the hands of the administration. Leftist thugs could start riots when the Catholics march. The riots would be blamed on the Catholics. Of course, to restore order, Obama would have to call in the National Guard or the Army. Bringing in the National Guard or the Army would require that martial law be enforced. Since we would be under martial law, he would have to cancel the election as not being in the best interest of the country.

Now, the preceding is definitely out there and possibly just a conspiracy theory. But, it puts together a number of things that Obama has said with rumors I have heard. Also, Obama seems remarkably secure in the knowledge that he will still be President after November. He has to know something that the rest of us do not know. Since he just guaranteed his defeat by trying to strong arm the Catholics, there has to be some other plan in motion that we do not know about. This is just trying to put two and two together. I may have come up with five, but it does make some sense.

The big drawback to the plan is whether the National Guard or the Army would follow Obama in overriding the Constitution. My guess is that it would have to be a hand-picked group of individuals in order to pull it off. Most rank and file military people will uphold the Constitution and these actions are in opposition to the Constitution. My feeling is that most military people would not go along with this plan. They might be sold on stopping the rioting, but that would be about it. Once the riots were stopped, the other steps would not have military support if my reading of the military is accurate. But, in any group, you can find those who will support just about anything. A hand-picked group of military personnel might pull off the riot control. But the next steps would be really questionable.

Obama might try and pull a rabbit out of his hat and claim he knew nothing about the new regulation. That might have worked on day one, but now it will not fly. The backlash has been so vocal and sustained he has to know of at least the Catholic portion of the backlash. Obama owns this regulation and no matter what he does, the regulation sticks to him for all time.

Nationally there are events in Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri for the politicians running for President. Romney is way ahead in polling in Colorado. Santorum is holding slim leads in Minnesota and Missouri. Newt Gingrich is not even on the Missouri ballot. That is no way to run a campaign and be taken seriously.

Here in Arizona, the leading discussion is the bill in the legislature to allow firearms on college campuses. Predictably the debate has broken down into two camps. The gun control crowd and the 2^nd amendment supporters are dominating the debate.

For the gun control supporters the debate is simple. They believe that more guns will equal more crime and shootings on campus. The gun control supporters believe that allowing guns on campus will create a Wild West atmosphere and people will be shooting each other every day.

What gun control supporters fail to do is distinguish between law abiding gun owners from law breaking gun owners. The difference is critical. If all gun owners were law breakers then their analysis would have some merit. More law breaking gun owners would equal more crime and shootings. But that is not what the bill will do. The bill will allow law abiding gun owners to bring guns on campus. Law abiding gun owners will do just that, abide by the law. They will not commit crimes. They will not take guns out and shoot people for no reason. They are law abiding because they have a value system that will not allow them to do that.

In every city that made gun laws stricter so that gun ownership is more difficult, they saw an increase in all crimes. The increase was particularly noticeable in crimes that involve guns. In every city that relaxed gun laws to allow more concealed carry permits, the violent crimes decreased, particularly those involving guns. Did all gun crimes stop? No, but their rate decreased dramatically.

What is the reason for the decrease when guns are more available? Criminals have this condition called the will to live. If they know there are no weapons in an area, they feel safe. If they feel safe, they are more likely to commit a crime involving a weapon. If they fear that the people in the area are armed, they will be less likely to commit a gun crime. The reason is simply self-preservation. That is why states with the death penalty generally have lower violent crimes than states with only life without parole.

The Chancellor of our district says there are no studies showing that allowing guns on campus will reduce violent crime. That is most likely true. Guns are outlawed on every educational campus in the United States. When a gun is brought onto one of those campuses, even by mistake, everyone goes ballistic. But I am not aware of any studies that will determine if allowing guns on campus will reduce incidents of violence or whether they will increase incidents of violence. The only evidence we have are cities that have tried adding or removing guns and their results. That evidence should be transferrable, though the scale would be different.

The one thing this issue will not get is a rational discussion from the gun control crowd. They have their minds made up that guns are the guilty party and nothing anyone can show them will change their minds. The data that shows that crime goes down when guns are more plentiful will go right over their head. The data that shows that crime goes up when guns are restricted will also be beyond their understanding. So, we will be left with the usual debate, one side using logic and the other side responding with hysteria. Let’s hope that logic comes out on top this time.

“Guns on Campus” is a hot political topic in Arizona and on my Community College Campus. I have received two emails on the topic today. For that reason, I felt it necessary to rebut some of the false information that has been put out by our Chancellor.

Our Chancellor is a staunch gun control person. He believes that if you control guns then there would be no gun crimes. In his statement to the press, he said that there is no evidence to suggest that allowing guns on campus will decrease the chance that someone will bring a gun on campus to commit a crime. I will agree that this topic has not been specifically addressed in any studies. That is because college administrators have kept all guns off of campuses and therefore the topic has not been allowed to be studied.

But, there is ample evidence to suggest that if guns were permitted for law abiding citizens that criminals would not bring guns on campus to commit crimes. In every city where there are concealed permits for the public, the crime rate is lower than those cities where concealed permits are difficult if not impossible to obtain. Places where you know there will be firearms, such as police departments, have no incidents of people attacking to commit crimes. Criminals are not stupid. If you know there is a place where there are no guns, you know you are safe to take a gun there and commit a crime. You may get caught when the police finally arrive in 5 minutes to an hour, but you have the original time to yourself.

One thing gun control laws do not do is stop criminals from having guns. Gun control laws keep law abiding citizens from having guns. Since law enforcement is almost always not present when they are needed, you have to be able to take care of yourself first. If you have no defense at all, you are subject to the whims of any criminal with a gun who decides to be stupid that day. Whether you live or die depends on whether the criminal decides to kill you. If you had some means of self-defense, you might have a chance to stop the criminal from taking another life. The life you save might be yours.

One thing that gun control people always worry about is that law abiding people will go crazy and we will have Wild West shootouts on the streets. That never happens. Why? Because concealed carry permits are given to people who go through training and know what to do with a gun. These people are serious and can hit the target they shoot at. They will not go wild and shoot people for no reason. The people with concealed carry permits are your best and brightest. They will act only if it is reasonable to act and it is within the law. To suggest otherwise is slanderous.

People who have concealed carry permits should be permitted to carry guns wherever they are. That means on a college campus or restaurant or wherever. There are too many stories of people with a gun who managed to save the situation because they were armed and knew what to do. NRA publications have these stories every time they are published.

Will allowing concealed carry permit holders to bring guns on campus stop all gun violence on campus? No. But, the number of people killed in the incident will be greatly reduced because they were there. Having people know that guns could be present is enough of a deterrent to keep most criminals from trying their hand at shooting up a college campus. The worst imaginations of the gun control nuts will never see the light of day if the legislation is passed. Our campuses will be safer and everyone will realize that the gun control people are just trying to control our behavior. They were not really trying to reduce violence on campus. That is just an excuse to control behavior. So far, they have been successful. Let’s get some common sense back into the discussion.

On Saturday, Mitt Romney, as expected, won the Nevada caucus. He received over 50% of the caucus votes, which gives him a decisive victory over Newt Gingrich. Newt came in with less than half of Romney’s total votes.

The win in Nevada gives Romney a record of 3-1-1 in the five contests. I give him a tie for Iowa because he was declared the winner once, then Santorum was declared the winner. The “winner” won by only a handful of votes out of thousands cast. In my mind, that means it is a tie. Purists will say that you only have to win by one vote. That is true in a real election. In a caucus, votes are not the same as votes in a primary. It is complicated and each state is slightly different, so I will just paper over the differences with the tie.

Romney’s wins were all decisive victories. His vote totals were more than his two highest challengers combined. That makes them decisive victories. Newt’s victory in South Carolina is not like that. Romney and Santorum have more votes than Gingrich, when they are added together. That means it is a clear win, but not the decisive kind like Romney.

The next votes are Colorado, Minnesota and Missouri. Colorado and Minnesota actually choose delegates with their votes. Missouri is just a straw poll. The delegates will be chosen later in the spring. All this is leading up to Super Tuesday on March 6. It is already clear who will be the nominee, but that will cinch things for Romney. That assumes that he wins all or nearly all of the votes leading up to and including Super Tuesday. After that, it would be nearly impossible for another candidate to come back and win. They would be out of money and access to the press.

The speech Romney gave after Nevada was fantastic. He laid it on pretty think about Obama. If he keeps the heat on like that through November, he will win in a landslide. If he goes wobbly and soft, he will probably lose. Romney needs to keep reminding the public that Obama is a failed President, no matter what Obama says in return. Obama keeps giving him new ammunition every week and nearly every day.

Obama also committed a major blunder by picking a fight with the Catholic Church just over a week ago. The Catholic Church is one of the larger denominations in the country. If the Bishops get a backbone and do what they should, Obama cannot expect any support from Catholics. That is, except for those who are not active or don’t believe. Other Christian Churches are banding together to support the Catholics. They are using the logic from the time when they came for the Jews. I cannot remember the saying exactly, but it says that first they came for the Jews and I did nothing. Then they came for another group and I did nothing. After a couple of more, the writer then says, they came for me and there was nobody to stand with me. The religious community remembers that saying and is standing together on this issue. If they do not, the Obama administration will pick them off one at a time. By banding together on the first assault, they have a chance to stop it in its tracks. It will also mean that Obama can’t win re-election if the Catholics and other Christians stand together. They make up a large majority of the voting population. This is a fight that Obama can’t win and has already lost. It just remains to be seen how badly they lose.

A number of major developments have happened in the past few days. The most long lasting and important one is where the Obama administration is requiring that all groups providing health insurance to include contraception and even the morning after pill. That is definitely an affront to the Catholic Church and their hospital system. It is also an affront to all religious groups that believe in life. They are being required to go against their beliefs to satisfy the requirements of the Obama administration.

The first amendment to the Constitution states that the government “shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. This requirement does not specifically establish a religion, so that is not in question. The second part of the statement is in question, “or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. This obviously interferes with the free exercise of the Catholic religion. They believe that life is sacred from conception through death. Anything that prevents that process is against their religion. Since this regulation is preventing life or even terminating life, this requirement is requiring Catholics and other religious people to violate their beliefs. That is not allowing the church to freely exercise their religion.

Watching the Glenn Beck show yesterday on GBTV, I heard Rabbi Lapin give a presentation on Baal. According to Rabbi Lapin, Baal was a force prior to Abraham. All of the requirements in the Bible are to not do things that would ensnare you in the worship of Baal.

What is the worship of Baal? In old days, it was worship of idols. Today, it is the worship of physical things. It is taught by taking our Father in Heaven out of the equation. For example: Baal followers would say that we started as unorganized chemicals and became human by chance alone. Followers of a Judeo-Christian religion would say that God placed us here. You can identify the followers of Baal by how they behave. Followers of Baal will leave areas filthy after they leave or even cause the filth. Followers of a Judeo-Christian religion will leave an area at least as clean as when they arrived.

According to Rabbi Lapin, the worship of Baal today has morphed into a type of religion called, “Secular Humanism”. That religion has been adopted by the Democrat Party and the government. The goal of the Secular Humanism religion is to remove all mention of the Judeo-Christian God from the public square. What better way to do that than require that members of a Judeo-Christian religion break their rules in order to live in society. That way the Secular Humanists can say that the Judeo-Christians do not really believe what they said they believed.

For Catholics, this requirement has taken them by surprise. Right now, many Catholics either are uninformed or do not know what to do. The first step is to become informed on what they are being asked to do. The second step is to start fighting to overturn this regulation. Those steps are not enough. As long as Democrats have leadership positions in Washington, D.C. Secular Humanists have positions of power in which to destroy their church. To send a clear message to the Secular Humanists, the Catholic Church needs to tell their followers that they should vote Republican in this next election to insure that regulations like this will never happen again.

After the huge message is sent, the Catholics that are Democrats need to work within the Democrat Party to break the hold the Secular Humanists have. This will be an extremely difficult proposition as the Secular Humanists have had a long time to dig their way into every nook and cranny of the Democrat Party. Secular Humanists have burrowed their way into almost every sector of the American society as well.

The only way to insure that Secular Humanism can never take over is for Americans to return to faith. I am not telling anyone to go to any particular religion. I am just saying that all Americans need to re-contact a church and start attending and participating. If we all do that one step, America can be saved. If we fail to do that one step, America will become a footnote in history of a failed experiment. I do not want it on my head that we fumbled the ball. If anyone wants a suggestion on a church to attend, I have some suggestions.

One thing that makes me wonder about people is those that buy vehicles in order to save the planet from global warming. For anyone to think that their actions in purchasing a vehicle will somehow “save” the planet is ludicrous. The actions of any one person will have no effect on the global climate. The actions of any one state will have no impact on the global climate. The actions of any one country will have very little impact on the global climate. The reason for that is the earth is huge and we as humans are rather small. Our impact is rather small, generally. There are industries that make a lot of pollution. There are areas that collect pollution, like Los Angeles, that enable a lot of people to produce enough harmful emissions to actually cause problems. But those are almost always local in nature.

Scientists that study the climate do not understand why the climate gets colder or warmer over time. We know that it does. We know some of the things that impact the climate. But, when we plug that information into a computer model, the result is wildly inaccurate. That indicates that our knowledge of global climate is still rather rudimentary. Until we have a greater knowledge of the global climate, we are at its mercy.

Whenever I get into discussions with people over global warming, they almost instantly start talking about pollution. That is a rather distantly related topic to global warming. Pollution may have some impact on global warming, we are just unsure exactly the impact it has. Pollution in and of itself will not impact the global climate in any way. Extreme pollution could impact the climate if you could enlarge the area enough to have some impact. But, generally pollution and the climate are not related. That is always a difficult point to get across to people that have consumed the global warming Kool-Aid and do not want to allow me to win any points.

On the radio this morning, Barry Young from KFYI said that the Chevy Volt looks better than the Prius. But the Prius does not catch fire. I have no problem with people buying those vehicles if they really want them. If you want an electric vehicle that looks good and catches fire, the Chevy Volt is for you. If you want an ugly box that gets good mileage, the Prius is your vehicle. If you are trying to save the world, try increasing the freedom of everyone and you would see the world improve dramatically. Buying anything to save the world is a lost cause. Nothing you can buy can help save the world. The impact from anything you could buy is so small that your attempt is worthless.

Also, the global warming community has been completely and totally discredited in the scientific community. The only “scientists” that support global warming either make their living from supposedly studying it or are politically motivated and have no interest in science. People that are scientifically up to date reject global warming as a hoax. In our science department we have one holdout. He is politically motivated and on this issue is not interested in the science. He is extremely far to the left and is not interested in any discussion that could possibly change his mind. Even if you show him that the leaders of the global warming community do not believe in global warming, he still puts his hands over his ears. I suspect that he will wake up one of these days when the textbooks we buy start reflecting the reality of no global warming. Until then, he is lost in his global warming world.

The textbooks we buy come from authors that are supposed to be up to date on their science. Since they are slow to adopt the realities of global warming being a hoax, I have my doubts on their scientific accuracy. In my mind, any textbook printed in late 2011 or later should reflect that global warming has been discredited. Those textbooks have not hit the shelves yet. The hoax was really exposed 3-4 years ago, so the textbooks should at least reflect that reality. That they have not reflected reality makes me question their goals.

Yesterday was the Florida primary. Mitt Romney won in a blowout. Romney got between 46 and 47% of the vote. Newt Gingrich got 32%. Rick Santorum got 13%. That means that Romney got more votes than his next two challengers combined. That is a blowout by any definition.

Newt Gingrich was not gracious in defeat. He did not concede Florida to Romney. That would have been the gentlemanly thing to do. Romney did that in South Carolina. Newt promised to carry on through the remaining states.

Rick Santorum and Ron Paul knew they had no chance in Florida, so they were long gone by the time the votes were cast. They were in Colorado and Nevada. Those are the next two states to hold events. The speed of the process speeds up over the next month until you get Super Tuesday where a large number of states hold primaries. By then the nominee will be determined, probably not by delegates but by momentum.

I read some blogs last night about what is next. I do not remember for sure who wrote this, but one speculated on what the loss means to Gingrich, Santorum and Paul. He said that even though the press people may not know it yet, they are likely to start leaving the campaigns of those candidates. He speculated that by the time of the Super Tuesday primary election we may not even remember the name of Rick Santorum.

The lifeblood of any campaign is press coverage. If the press stops covering the campaigns of Gingrich, Santorum and Paul, they are effectively over. The funding sources will dry up as nobody is going to give money to a candidate that cannot get his message out. They might still be running, but without money and press coverage they might as well be at home with the wife and kids.

After a lot of searching I finally found the victory speech by Mitt Romney. If he gives speeches like that all the time, Barack Obama will not win a single state. He was fantastic. He did fall into his usual campaign mode at the end. But, the first half or more of the speech was pure gold. He skewered Barack Obama numerous times with quotes from Barack Obama and Thomas Paine. When he got into the campaign speech portion of his talk, you could tell that the fire was not as bright.

If Mitt Romney means what he said in the victory speech in Florida and follows through with those commitments, he will be a two-term President. He will also go down as one of the very best Presidents in history. He said that he would make America a great place for entrepreneurs and businesses. If that happens, unemployment will be a thing of the past. We would have full employment. He also said he was going to make actual cuts in the budget. Not the fake cuts you get from Congress, but actual cuts that make the budget go down. That is something I would love to see. Just pulling that off would put him in the top 5 of all Presidents.

As a side note, I saw that Mitt Romney is now receiving Secret Service protection after the victory in Florida. That means that it is pretty sure that he will be the nominee. Nothing is guaranteed in this life, but this one seems like it will happen.

Yesterday I talked about how Newt Gingrich is a progressive. Some may say that Mitt Romney said he was a progressive when he ran for Senate in Massachusetts. That is true that he said he was a progressive. But, I am not convinced that Mitt Romney means the same thing that Newt Gingrich does when they use the term “progressive”.

Last night on the way home, I heard part of the Glenn Beck show on KFYI. They were discussing just this point in relation to the endorsement of Newt Gingrich by Herman Cain. Glenn and company were not convinced that Herman Cain knew exactly what a progressive was. That got into the discussion of how you can tell if a person knows what a progressive really is. They came to the conclusion that if you modify progressive with names or periods of time, you are absolutely sure to know what a progressive is. If they do not use the modifiers, it is probably that they use it to indicate that they are for progress.

Newt Gingrich indicated that he was a progressive like Teddy Roosevelt and Robert La Follette. Hillary Clinton said she was an early 20^th century progressive. Both of them use the modifiers and so obviously know what the term progressive means. They would qualify as a progressive in its fullest definition.

Mitt Romney said he was a progressive, period. That would indicate that his knowledge of what a progressive really is would be somewhat limited. People that have a limited knowledge of what a progressive is will call themselves a progressive and just mean that they are for progress. This confuses the situation because you have true progressives and false progressives both using the term progressive. It makes it difficult to tell them apart, particularly during a campaign. I am not sure if Mitt Romney knows what a progressive is. If he does, then he would be a true progressive. If he does not, then he is one of the false progressives. Since he did not use any modifiers, it would indicate a lack of knowledge. We have no way to determine it for sure at this time.

We do know that Newt Gingrich is a progressive in the truest sense. He is a historian who has studied that period of history. His knowledge of who these people are and what they stood for is extensive. That is indicated that he brought up the name of Robert La Follette. Robert La Follette is probably not known much outside of Wisconsin. That Newt Gingrich added his name to the list of who he identifies progressivism with is very telling. That is one of those obscure historical facts that a historian will know and the general public will have to look up. I will confess that I had heard the name, but had to look it up to be sure of my information.

Today, the voters of Florida will make their wishes known. Polling had Mitt Romney leading there early. After South Carolina, Newt Gingrich took the lead. That quickly evaporated and Mitt Romney is now back where he was before he lost South Carolina. About 600,000 votes have already been cast in the primary. Another 2,000,000 are expected to be cast today. That should give us a good indication of who really is the leader in the Republican field. Since the polls have Mitt Romney leading almost all the time, I predict he will win this race by at least 10%. That would have a chilling effect on the rest of the field. It would effectively eliminate all competition. Surely either Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich will get out of the race. The money has to start drying up for candidates that keep losing.

Tomorrow is the Florida primary. According to the most recent polling, Mitt Romney is holding a double digit lead. I have not heard any reports on the amount of that lead, but I would hazard a guess that it is around the 10-12% range. If that hold up, Newt Gingrich will be severely damaged and Rick Santorum would almost certainly be eliminated. Ron Paul is in the race to the finish line regardless of the outcome because he is not in to win, but to get out his message.

I have known this for some time, but on Friday I heard some quotes from Newt Gingrich that were troubling. The first was a quote where he says he is a Progressive like Teddy Roosevelt and Robert La Follette. Robert La Follette was the Governor of Wisconsin and a Progressive. He is one of the main reasons that the University of Wisconsin is such a basket case when it comes to politics. He also is one of the main reasons that Wisconsin is a basket case when it comes to politics.

The second quote was one praising the work of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt. Those are two of the most liberal progressive Presidents on record. To praise those Presidents means that you either do not know history or your agenda is not the same as mine. Since Newt Gingrich is a Historian by profession, he cannot claim ignorance of history. That would mean that his agenda is different than mine.

Barack Obama is a far left liberal progressive. Newt Gingrich is a conservative progressive. What is the difference? In the long term, there is little difference. Both want the government to control everything. Big government is the solution to all problems. The difference is one of speed. Liberal progressives want the government to control everything now or very soon. Conservative progressives are willing to wait for their goal of the government to control everything.

If we had a liberal progressive President from 1900 to present, we would already have had the progressive utopia some time ago. If we had a conservative President from 1900 to present, we would still have 100-200 years before the progressive utopia would be realized. Since we have had a mixture of liberal progressive, conservative progressive and non-progressive conservative Presidents, we are on the verge of realizing the progressive utopia. Four more years of Barack Obama and the United States that has existed for over 200 years may cease to exist. It would be replaced by the progressive utopia. That is commonly referred to as communism. Communism has failed everywhere it has been tried. It would fail in the United States, if it ever gets its shot. Unfortunately, the only way to rid a country of communism is to have a revolution. That usually does not end well.

There are many things about Newt Gingrich that I really like. But, those are short term type things. Newt’s long term goal is the one I question. I cannot support Newt and Obama’s long term goal because it goes in exactly opposite direction from freedom. My goal is to return this country in the direction of more freedom like this country had in 1791. That is a long-term goal that will not be completed for some time. But if that is the goal, the country will thrive in the period between the beginning of the journey and the final destination. Newt and Obama would cause depression and ruin for nearly everyone, except for a few ultra-rich individuals.

Medical marijuana is making the news this past week here in Phoenix. We passed a measure a couple of years ago to approve medical marijuana by a 50.13-49.87 margin. The critics of the measure said that it was just an attempt to legalize marijuana. The events that have transpired since passage of the measure have made those criticisms turn out to be true.

Of the approximately 12,000 people that have been approved to receive medical marijuana almost all are males between the ages of 18 and 40. Who are the highest users of marijuana in the United States? Males between the ages of 18 and 40 are the highest users of marijuana. The people we were told would get the permits to receive medical marijuana have not bothered to get permits. During the campaign we were told that the people getting permits would mainly be critically ill people and the elderly. Those people are nearly non-existent in the list of people to receive medical marijuana.

The single most common complaint named to receive medical marijuana is “chronic pain”. Chronic pain is something that cannot be tested for. The doctor either has to believe you or not. I happen to be one of those with chronic pain. I have no desire to ever obtain a permit for medical marijuana. I have a headache that started after nasal surgery in October 1996. No pain before that date, chronic pain after that date. But there is no test to determine if I actually have the pain. The only way to determine it is to study what happens when certain things happen to me. That takes time and documentation. I am sure that the people applying for chronic pain under medical marijuana have not taken the time to document the cycles of chronic pain they are having.

The voting pattern of when the votes came in is also interesting. Early mail ballots went largely for the measure. The later mail-in ballots went against the measure. Ballots cast on Election Day went against the measure. That shows that as more people learned about the measure the worse it fared. Early returns were based on the feel-good voting and the late returns on knowledge based voting. Knowledge based voting always is better than feeling-good voting because you get more logical laws.

With the medical marijuana law in place it puts our public officials in a difficult spot. If they enforce the State Law, they put themselves in jeopardy of being prosecuted for violating the federal law against marijuana. According to Bill Montgomery, Maricopa County Attorney, the federal law trumps the state law. People obeying the state law are just making prosecution of the federal law easier by creating a paper trail for the federal prosecutors to follow. Now, our current administration has sent out a message that they do not intend to prosecute marijuana laws. The next administration might not have that same policy. The federal laws are on the books and so Bill Montgomery has put out a memo forbidding any Maricopa County employee from obeying the state law. That is just to keep all county employees safe from prosecution.

There is talk beginning of putting a new ballot initiative out to repeal the medical marijuana law. Since you cannot enforce the current law, there is no reason to have it on the books. The only question is whether a new ballot initiative could repeal an old ballot initiative. Smarter legal minds than mine will have to decide that question.

Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary on Saturday. He had 40% of the vote and Mitt Romney had 28% of the vote.

On the way to work, Rush Limbaugh was saying the reason that Newt is rising in the polls is not his debate performances, but his ability to articulate conservatism. Rush has predicted for years that anyone who can cheerfully articulate conservatism cannot be defeated. Newt is currently riding a wave where he is doing just that. Newt does have a problem where he embraces many hard left ideas like global warming and single payer health insurance. Those will need to be explained, if possible. So, Newt has many chances to implode between now and the convention.

Romney was poised to knock out his opponents with a win in South Carolina and a follow-up win in Florida. That is not going to happen now. In fact, Florida is currently polling for Newt by a narrow margin. That contrasts sharply with the polling that was taken prior to South Carolina. Voting has already started in Florida. The current votes were cast when Mitt Romney had a commanding lead in the polls. That should mean that the early mail-in ballots would be strongly for Mitt Romney. Polling that happens from now on will be with the changed circumstances. I heard that there have been about 250,000 votes already cast in Florida.

The Republican establishment is not happy with the developments out of South Carolina. They wanted this entire election wrapped up by November 2011. That it has gone on this long is giving them fits. South Carolina guarantees that the season will last until late in the spring. The only one of the four remaining candidates that is in real trouble is Rick Santorum. He needed a better showing in South Carolina to have a chance at lasting much longer. He has been operating his campaign on a shoe string since day one. That will not change after these results. In fact, the funding sources could start drying up on him and cause him to get out if he does not do better in Florida.

Ron Paul came in a distant fourth in South Carolina. For most candidates that would indicate that they should drop out. For Ron Paul, it just means he will keep going. But, like I have said before I do not believe that Ron Paul is really in this race to win it. I think he is in the race to get his message out and incorporated into the Republican planks at the convention. Winning the nomination is something that Ron Paul would like to do, but it is not a primary goal of the campaign. Ron Paul wants to have some clout at the convention to impact the planks in the platform.

The race is basically Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney. Mitt Romney is the establishment candidate. He has done everything the establishment wants to win the nomination. Newt Gingrich is not the establishment candidate. He has to win over the voters in order to have any chance at the nomination. His big problem is his past. Even in his latest book, which just came out within the last year, he wanted to put in a chapter on man-made global warming. He took the chapter out at the last minute because of public outcry. He also was for the individual mandate before Obama was for the individual mandate. Newt has made disparaging remarks about other Republicans that are trying to cut the budget. He has had three wives. Having three wives is not a problem if you handled yourself with decorum in each case. Newt committed adultery with wife 2 before divorcing wife 1. He did the same with wife 3 before divorcing wife 2. One time and I might be forgiving of the indiscretion. Two times and a pattern has developed. If you cannot keep marriage vows, how are you going to keep vows to keep the country safe? Those questions need to be answered between now and the time the nomination is secured. Hopefully they are answered sooner, rather than later.

The South Carolina primary is tomorrow. The polls have narrowed considerably since last week. Some of the polls show that Newt Gingrich is in the lead by a very narrow margin. It will be interesting to see how the interview with Newt’s second wife impacts the vote on Saturday. It cannot help Newt’s vote total. Her assessment of Newt’s character was devastating. But, the sexual infidelity is something that a lot of people will allow these days. It wasn’t so long ago that any hint of adultery and you were not electable to any public office. Today that is different.

In my mind, what disqualifies Newt Gingrich from being qualified is his denigration of the free market system that has made us the most prosperous country in the world. I know he did it to try and bring down the front runner, but the economic system is something that all Republicans should support. If they cannot support that, then they are not qualified to carry the Republican banner. They would be qualified to carry the Democrat banner because Democrats hate freedom. But Republicans are supposed to support freedom. Tearing down freedom, even to attack your opponent, is not acceptable.

The debate last night was a debacle because of the ineptitude of CNN. CNN failed to ask questions of importance to Republicans and the country. So, the candidates had to spar over the usual Democrat talking points that are selected to make Republicans look bad. That said Rick Santorum probably looked the best in the debate. But, when you boil down what he said you are left with nothing. The same thing can be said for Gingrich. He did well, but when you think of what he said you are wondering just what positions he holds. Romney came out of the contest with an acceptable performance. Debating is not Romney’s strong suit. So, his performance was about as expected. Nobody made any hits on him and he did not score any hits himself.

The debate probably will have little or no impact on the vote Saturday. That is a shame, because a good selection of questions could have made a difference. The juvenile questions asked by CNN did not give the candidates a chance to show their knowledge of foreign affairs or even the economy. Since those are the two biggest issues in this campaign, it was a missed opportunity to inform the public on where these candidates stand. So coming out of the debate, if you were for a particular candidate, you still are.

In other campaign news, Gingrich is trying to pressure Santorum to get out of the race. Santorum’s debate performance last night shows that he has no plans to get out of the race until the race is pretty well decided. That is bad news for Gingrich and great news for Romney. It keeps the non-Romney vote split and allows him to pile up win after win. Whether Romney can pull out a win in South Carolina is still iffy. He is close to first. The latest poll has him in a statistical dead heat. That means that he and Gingrich are separated by a margin that is less than the margin of error in the poll. That means that every vote counts tomorrow in the South Carolina primary. The big question is whether Rick Santorum can poll well enough to take the victory away from Gingrich. Also, the impact of Rick Perry’s exit has not been measured in any poll. You would think that Perry’s votes would go to Gingrich or Santorum, but one of his top people in South Carolina went to Romney. That means that Perry’s exit might not help Gingrich as much as he hoped.

Another development is that the Virginia governor endorsed Mitt Romney for President. Romney is piling up endorsements right and left. Virtually all elected officials that have endorsed candidates have endorsed Romney. That endorsement edge has to have an impact sooner or later.

According to news reports, Rick Perry is set to announce that he is suspending (ending) his campaign. The reports also say that Perry will endorse Newt Gingrich. That would be obvious to anyone who was listening to the ads that have been running the past few weeks. Perry and Gingrich have ads that are essentially interchangeable. According to Barry Young on the Nearly Famous Barry Young Show on KFYI, this is a poke in the eye with a sharp stick to Romney.

That Rick Perry is ending his campaign is no surprise. He has been polling in the single digits since Iowa. The polls have not been trending up at all. His endorsement of Gingrich will help Gingrich, but not by much.

That leaves four candidates for President on the Republican side. They are: Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul. Realistically only Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have a realistic shot at winning the nomination. If Romney wins in South Carolina and Florida, the funding will dry up for everyone except for Ron Paul. That would effectively end all the campaigns except for Romney.

Other news this morning is that the Iowa Caucus has been reviewed by the state GOP. After their review, Rick Santorum is leading by 34 votes. That does not mean much because the results of 8 precincts have been lost. The Iowa GOP declared that the Iowa Caucus was a tie between Romney and Santorum. Either candidate can claim that the missing 8 polling places would have resulted in their achieving a victory. Nobody will ever know the entire story.

In South Carolina, Mitt Romney has been leading in the polls. At one point Romney was said to have a lead of up to 21 points. That is back down to the 5-10% range that has been typical during most of the polling. In 2008, Mitt Romney came in 4^th. Also Newt Gingrich is from the general area. Any victory, no matter how small, will be game changing for Romney. It would springboard him into a gigantic lead in Florida and the nomination. A narrow loss would not hurt Romney much as South Carolina is considered a difficult state for him to win. Gingrich has to win South Carolina convincingly in order to have any chance at winning the nomination. A narrow victory by Newt is better than a loss, but not by much. Newt is essentially on home field. He has to win in order to maintain credibility.

Florida has many voters that moved to Florida from the Northeast. They would be natural Romney supporters. This is showing up in the polls in Florida. The last poll I heard about had Romney up by 12%. That is a poll from about a week ago, so the information probably changed. Winning South Carolina would cause those numbers to jump even further. The decisiveness of a 15-20% victory in Florida would effectively end the candidacy of all the rest of the challengers, except for Ron Paul.

Ron Paul is not really running for President. I believe that he is running to get his message out to the public. The longer he is in the race, the more his message gets out. Ron Paul wants to have some clout at the convention so that he can have some impact on the party platform. I believe that winning the Presidency is not why Ron Paul is running. If he were to win the Presidency, he would love it. But that is not why he is running for President.

For all the candidates except for Mitt Romney, things look bleak. They are looking at defeats in South Carolina and Florida. The desperation is showing in their ads. Gingrich is throwing away his conservative credentials to try and pull out a win. Rick Santorum is running smarter ads, but does not have the campaign cash to set up the campaign infrastructure needed to actually win the nomination. Romney already has the campaign infrastructure set up in all 50 states. Nobody else has much except for South Carolina and maybe Florida.