With each passing day, it gets closer to the time when Mitt Romney has to make his choice for Vice-President. According to an article I read yesterday, they put the odds for VP as: Rubio – 20%, Portman – 18% and Christie – 7.5%. If you notice this does not add up to 100%, but those are the only three contenders they rated in the article. I imagine that the rest of the numbers go to other people in percentages less than 7%.

Let’s look at each of these candidates to see what they bring to the ticket and how they complement Mitt Romney. First, we will look at Marco Rubio. Marco Rubio is the pick with the most energy. Marco Rubio is highly articulate and when confronted with problems, handles them professionally. Marco Rubio is the Senator from Florida, so would be expected to bring Florida into the Romney Electoral College count. That is an important figure because Florida is the fourth largest state in terms of Electoral College clout. Marco Rubio will definitely bring the Cuban-Hispanics as his parents immigrated to the US from Cuba. Whether that translates into other Hispanic voting blocs is unknown. The one definite plus he would bring to the ticket is energy. The one thing primarily lacking in the Romney campaign to date is energy. Rubio would bring that in spades.

Rob Portman is the Senator from Ohio. He would be expected to bring that battleground state into the fold. Rob Portman is not going to bring energy into the campaign like Marco Rubio. Rob Portman can speak Spanish and that would help with Hispanic voters. Rob Portman is the perfect complement to Mitt Romney. Their views on almost every issue are nearly identical. If Romney wants a second self, Rob Portman is the man. If he wants energy and flash, he needs to look elsewhere.

Chris Christie is the Governor of New Jersey. He is the current darling of the GOP. He is a straight talking Governor that does not take nonsense from anyone or anything. If he is on the ticket, the energy could be almost unstoppable. The problem would occur because Chris Christie is used to being the top dog. Being a number 2 is not normally how he operates. This could cause some friction in the campaign. There is some question if Chris Christie could bring New Jersey into the GOP column come election time. He comes from a hard blue state.

From my perspective, Marco Rubio would be the best overall choice of the three because of what he brings to the ticket. Rob Portman is the “safe” choice. Marco Rubio is the choice that says you are out there to win. Rob Portman says you are trying not to lose the race. Chris Christie is the wild card. He is wildly popular with the center-right voters in the country. The problem is that he is outspoken and sometimes could put his foot in his mouth.

My personal favorite is Allen West. If Mitt Romney picks Allen West, he wins the Presidency hands down. The problem with Allen West is similar to the problem with Chris Christie. He is outspoken and blunt. This is admirable in a politician, but can get them into trouble if their comments are taken out of context. Even though I prefer, I can see that Marco Rubio is the safer alternative than Allen West. Marco Rubio has almost as many positives and fewer negatives as Allen West.

Whoever Mitt Romney picks will be an improvement over our current VP, Joe Biden. Joe Biden is a walking, talking joke. If you want a garbled statement or one that is guaranteed a laugh, Joe Biden is your man. If you want an intelligent comment that helps the overall discussion, you better look somewhere else. There is talk of dumping Joe Biden and putting Hillary Clinton on the ticket in his place. That is like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic after it hit the iceberg. Unless you also change policies, the change will not really make a difference in the overall scheme of things. That is why I think Obama will keep Joe Biden on the ticket.

On the news this morning, I heard that the Republicans are discussing what to do if or when the Obamacare bill is declared unconstitutional. The report said that some of the provisions in Obamacare are liked by some Republicans and they are trying to find a way to keep them in a Republican bill. That is like saying that I will not take all of the 5 chemicals that will kill me. I will only select one or two. They will still kill you.

The only way to re-do the Obamacare bill is to throw it out and start completely from scratch. The Obamacare bill was written in the dark and passed in the dark. Any bill so written or passed is not in the best interest of the United States. A new bill that has public input and much discussion is the way to go. The first and foremost thing on the minds of those writing a new healthcare bill is to remember that the free market is the rule. Keep government out of healthcare as much as possible. Any mandate for any service detracts from freedom of choice for consumers of healthcare.

My outline for a healthcare bill would include all health insurance is portable across state lines. That means that if I find a policy in Maine or some other state that is cheaper or better, I can purchase it and it will be valid in Arizona.

The second thing is that no provisions should be required as to what is included in a healthcare policy. That should be between the insurer and the insured, not the government. For example, my wife and I have no need for pre-natal care as we are both beyond child bearing years. So, we should not be required to purchase insurance that covers birth. All other provisions in healthcare should be similarly negotiated between the insured and the insurer. In practice, health insurance companies will end up bundling certain things like hospitalization, medicine and emergency room visits in all policies. But, that is up to the insurance companies to bundle those options together, not the government.

The insurance companies have to be able to protect themselves by requiring wait periods before full coverage kicks in on some items. One of the bad parts of Obamacare was the ability of a person to purchase healthcare insurance and be covered instantly. That would allow someone to contract a dread disease or injury and then purchase the insurance to cover it. If an insurance company wants to cover people in that situation, they should be able to, but they should also be able to charge them rates that would compensate them for that coverage. In other words, if I am completely healthy and purchase insurance today, my rate would be set at a low rate. If I had the disease or injury and purchased the insurance, my rate would have to be much higher to cover the higher cost of the insurer covering the disease or injury. That protects the insurance companies from paying far more in benefits than they could possibly recover in costs.

Those are some basic free-market ideas that should be included in any healthcare law put out by Republicans. Democrats would scream that certain things are not being considered. But, remember that Democrats want a Nanny State, not a free market. If these basic ideas are followed, healthcare would become far cheaper and more efficient than it is today. That would be because you would be removing the government from the debate. Any time you do that, you improve the service to the public.

In the past week, it was announced that an oil field was discovered under Utah, Colorado and Wyoming. This oil field holds over half of the world’s known oil reserves. That means that we have more oil in the United States than all other countries combined. And that is not counting oil shale, which we have in abundance.

That was the good news. The bad news is that the vast majority of this new oil field is under federal land. If we had a responsible President who could understand how the world works, that would not be a problem. The problem is we have a President who believes that gas prices should be $10 per gallon and is working hard to achieve that goal. This announcement of all this oil has to greatly disturb the Democrats who are actively working for America’s destruction. With this current bunch in office, we can be sure that nobody gets to get a single drop of the oil under federal land. The EPA will make environmental rules so stringent that it makes it economic suicide to try and drill. Other land will be made a federal wilderness. That means that no mechanized vehicles can come onto the land. The end result is we have this vast oil reserve and no way to get it out.

There is a possibility of salvation. There is an election coming up in November. We have two candidates on the ballot who have a legitimate shot at winning. One will put this vast oil reserve off limits and insure America’s destruction. The other will understand the opportunity that is available to the United States to become the leading oil producing country in the world again. One will insure not one drop makes it to a refinery. The other will insure that we develop this oil field and create hundreds of thousands of jobs.

Of course I am talking about Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. Obama will stop any chance of making this discovery an opportunity for economic growth. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, will seize on the opportunity and allow oil drilling companies to have access to this oil. The result will be tremendous wealth for thousands and overall prosperity for America. If you couple that with some oil refineries the United States will have cheaper gas within a few years.

When you couple this oil find with the Bakken oil field in Canada and North Dakota, you have a tremendous opportunity to produce American oil independence. That has been an official goal of every President in my lifetime. Unofficially, most of them were perfectly happy with buying oil from our enemies. Developing these oil fields will finally allow America to become energy self-sufficient once again.

I know that oil is an old technology. But it is the technology we have today. We do not have the technology available today to rely on wind or solar power to produce enough energy to make any real difference. Nuclear energy has the potential to solve our energy problems, but people are so afraid of nuclear energy that it has been hamstrung in its development. Someday the world will not rely on oil to produce the energy we need to get things done. Until that day, we have to rely on oil and coal. When it becomes economically feasible we will have the needed technology to use alternative sources. Right now we just do not.

We have to recognize what is reality. One candidate will do that and develop this vast oil reserve the way it should be. That candidate is Mitt Romney. Why can I say that emphatically when the candidate himself has said nothing? Mitt Romney is a businessman. He understands what it takes to make a business successful. Energy is the lifeblood of business. In order for business to be successful it has to have relatively cheap energy. This oil field insures that the United States will continue to have that source of energy. It is a simple conclusion to determine the correct course of action if you want the United States to succeed. Mitt Romney wants America to succeed. The answer is just so easy to predict.

Last week it was announced that the Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett had contacted the State of Hawaii to have them verify that they do, in fact, have the birth certificate of Barack Hussein II. He made the inquiry 8 weeks ago and has not had a response. Ken Bennett said that if he does not get a response from Hawaii, he will have to leave Barack Obama’s name off the Arizona ballot.

Everyone is in a tizzy over this statement from last week. But, all Ken Bennett did was follow the procedure set out by the State of Hawaii to verify that they have certain information on particular individuals. In order to get this confirmation you have to be a state official that needs this information for your official duties. Ken Bennett did get one response from Hawaii asking about his need for the information and was he qualified to receive the classified information. That response came back almost immediately. There has been nothing else since that initial communication.

The reason that Ken Bennett was requesting this information is that Sheriff Joe Arpaio of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office said in a press conference that the birth certificate put out by the White House is most likely fraudulent. After that press conference, Ken Bennett’s office was inundated by people telling him to remove Obama’s name from the ballot. One of the people that called told him about Hawaii’s procedure to get the information without having to get the actual birth certificate. That is why he used their form on their website to request the information.

Ken Bennett does not need to see the actual birth certificate from Hawaii. All he needs, at a minimum is for Hawaii to tell him that yes, they do have the birth certificate on file in the state. That would seem to be a very low threshold for Hawaii to meet. But, for eight weeks they have not been able to even meet that standard.

In order to achieve fairness, if Ken Bennett does not receive the information from Hawaii, he might have to ask that all candidates for President submit a copy of their birth certificate. That way it will be up to each candidate to prove they are eligible to be President. It is possible that one or more of the other Presidential candidates might object to that request because it has not been a requirement in the past. All the candidate had to do was certify that they met the standards to be President. This would be a change, but it was brought about because one of the people running has a question about his qualifications and documentation.

I cannot think of a single reason why Hawaii is dragging their feet on this issue. It should simple to just go to the vault with all the records and look to see if the birth certificate is actually present. If it is, they can send out an email verifying that fact. If they do not have the birth certificate, they can send out an email stating that bit of information. That would be rather shocking to have Hawaii say that they do not have the birth certificate on file. But, either way it should not take much time to find out. The fact that it has taken this much time is surprising. I hope it all gets cleared up soon. We need to put this issue behind us and concentrate on the important ones regarding the economy.

If Obama is left off the ballot, things could get pretty interesting here in Arizona. But, Ken Bennett has to know that the information on Obama’s eligibility is accurate. He is just trying to verify that information using the procedures he has at his disposal.

Yesterday, a Catholic college announced that it will be stopping insurance for students because of Obamacare. They specifically stated in their announcement that it was because of the Obamacare mandate that the insurance was being discontinued. This is just the tip of the iceberg regarding the dumping of people from insurance plans in order to comply with Obamacare requirements.

Barack Obama, in an attempt to sell his monstrosity, said that if we like our present insurance, we can keep it. He also said if we like our current doctor we can keep him. Both are lies. Obamacare is designed to get companies to drop insurance because of expense. This puts people in line for the public Obamacare plan. It is a very small step from the Obamacare plan to a single-payer healthcare system. That is the ultimate goal of Obamacare, no matter how much the Progressives lie that it is not the goal.

Anyone who thinks that Obamacare will meet the goal of reducing the cost of healthcare while providing services to additional people is delusional. You cannot add approximately 30 million people to the insurance plans and not have demand for health services go up. The number of doctors is not expected to increase. If the number of doctors stays the same and the number of patients goes up, the cost of servicing the patients will go up as well. Rationing will also start because of a lack of doctors to provide all the needed services.

Approximately 46% of all doctors have said that when Obamacare is implemented they will retire or leave medicine. Those doctors will generally not be replaced. If they are replaced, they will not be replaced with doctors with comparable experience. This will result in a drop in the quality of services and further rationing of services to all people.

But, let’s get real about the goals of Obamacare. The goal of Obamacare is not to decrease costs. The people behind Obamacare do not care about costs at all. They are running up deficits over $1.5 Trillion and expect that to continue into the future as far as the eye can see. They do not intend for people to have quality healthcare. They know that adding all these people to the rolls will result in a reduction in the quality and availability of healthcare in the US. Their only goal is to get the United States on a single-payer healthcare system so that socialism/communism can be implemented.

Once you have healthcare under your thumb, you can decide who lives and who dies. You can decide who gets healthcare and who is denied services. Those that comply with your philosophy will be serviced with healthcare. Those that fight against your philosophy will be denied healthcare so that they will die out quicker. That way you can insure that your followers are better able to survive than those that oppose you.

The goal of Obamacare is not to improve things in the United States. It is to give more power to those in government so that they can control what the masses do and say. Once you control healthcare, you can control what everyone does and says because you can make health services dependent on meeting your guidelines. Those that do not meet your guidelines will be denied services. There is nothing good in Obamacare. If the Supreme Court knows anything about the Constitution, Obamacare will be declared unconstitutional in June. With Elena Kagan helping to decide the issue, you know that at least one will vote against the Constitution. I am sure there will be others as well. I expect the decision to be 5-4 or possibly 6-3.

Now, I don’t usually talk about myself in this blog. But, today an event happened that highlights an important point in my life and in every other person in Phoenix’s life. That point is how interdependent we are on the facilities that are available to us. When one part of the system goes down for any reason, the disaster that follows is as predictable as night follows day.

Today on the major highway through Phoenix, I-10, there was an accident near the 40^th St. exit travelling westbound. The driver of one of the vehicles was killed. His vehicle rolled over. The police responded to the accident and shut down the westbound traffic. This occurred in the early morning and was still going on at 9 am.

All vehicles on I-10 were shuttled off I-10 and sent to the 202 to continue their trip into Phoenix. Those of us, who left after the freeway was shut down, tried alternate methods to get to work. I left at my normal time. It normally takes between 25-40 minutes to get to work, depending on traffic.

Today, everything had changed. Even on bad days I can travel at or near the speed limit on most of the roads I travel to get to work. Today, that was not the case. It was bumper to bumper traffic all the way from Chandler until I arrived at Baseline and I-10. From there on into work, the Phoenix Police Department was manning the lights and so traffic moved fairly well. But, from Chandler to I-10 and Baseline, things crawled along at a snail’s pace. A pedestrian would have travelled faster than I did from McClintock to I-10 on Baseline. It was so bad that at one stoplight I was the third car and sat there through a green light. On the second green light, I was the last car to make it through the intersection. I did that by running a yellow light.

It took me nearly 2.5 hours to get to work today. That is a new record. The previous record was one hour. I thought the one hour trip was terrible, but this one was far worse. If things were like this every day, I would either retire or find another job. I could not handle a commute this bad every day. I was going stir crazy sitting in my car moving up a half car length at a time.

But, it does show me and I hope the rest of you how dependent we are on each other and for things to work well. On a normal commute day, the freeway takes the bulk of the traffic and I can travel surface streets to get to work. This means my trip is about 30 minutes in length. When I come home in the evening, there is generally little traffic. I then take the freeway and get home between 20-25 minutes One little foul-up on the freeway and every other road into Phoenix becomes packed with vehicles trying to get to work. I am not calling a death a little foul-up, but it only impacted a small area. That small area of impact from the accident radiated out to include the entire East Valley. As a result, thousands of people were impacted by this accident.

Many years ago there was a movie about racing cars. In the movie, one of the characters was told that when there was an accident or other event that caused others to slow down, that he should speed up. That was how to win the race. Since that time, I have always been flabbergasted by rubber-Necker’s who slow down and try to see what happened. They just slow down traffic and cause problems for everyone. They usually cannot see much if anything and cause a lot of problems. This is exacerbated when the incident involves someone being killed. Then the rubber-necking is really bad.

Since Barack Obama “evolved” and supported “gay marriage” he has raised boatloads of cash from the entertainment community. He also has slipped in the polls and now is consistently running behind Mitt Romney between 4 and 8% depending on the poll. This includes polls that are normally very friendly to the left, like CBS. The left leaning polls have the lead about 4%. The more independent polls have the lead at about 7%.

The polling information is great news for Mitt Romney. That is before he gets his bounce from naming a running mate and the convention. There will be a relatively minor bump when the running mate is announced, unless it is some blockbuster type of selection. There will be a somewhat larger bump after the GOP convention. Of course, Obama gets his bump from the Democrat convention if all goes according to Hoyle.

You always want to have a lead. It is better to be leading in the polls than it is to be behind. That is because as the leader in the polls people take your candidacy more seriously. You get more “free” press because what you say has more importance to the public. If you are a Republican, if you are leading in the polls you also get more hit pieces on you than if you were behind. But with the good comes the bad.

Yesterday, Barack Obama put out a commercial hitting Mitt Romney over his work at Bain Capital. When Romney was at Bain Capital, they took over a steel company. After running it for a number of years, the company eventually went bankrupt. The Obama campaign is painting Mitt Romney with the failure brush for letting this steel company go bankrupt. The problem with their accusation is that while Mitt Romney was there at the beginning, he left Bain Capital two years before the steel company went bankrupt. That is enough time for any impact Romney may have had to be erased. The company went bankrupt because they could not adapt to a changing marketplace, not for anything Bain Capital did.

A couple of hours after the Obama ad hit the air, the Romney team had an ad that refuted the accusations that Obama was making. It took another steel company that Bain Capital took over. This one Mitt Romney was involved with from beginning to end. The steel company was spun off after a few years as a successful company. The number of employees went from 1000 when Bain Capital took over to 6000 when Bain Capital sold their interest in the company. This ad shows that Team Romney is not going to roll over and play dead every time Obama tries to make him look bad. The speed they responded to this unusual attack shows that Team Romney is able to respond to changing circumstances on a moment’s notice. This bodes well for the sprint from the convention through November 6.

To those who said that running Mitt Romney was just another losing effort, they better think again. Mitt Romney is in this one to win. He has assembled a top notch team. He just needs to add a high quality running mate for Vice President. A dunce like Joe Biden would totally destroy the cohesive unit that is Team Romney today. A strong Vice Presidential candidate can make this team even stronger. I hope they select someone that is of high quality rather than just the best political pick. Just because someone is from a particular state is not a good reason to select them for Vice President. They need to be able to add something to the team that will make it a winning team. The person also has to mesh with what Mitt Romney is trying to do during the election campaign. A bad selection can go a long way to destroy a campaign. Since this campaign is so efficient, I am confident that they will make the right choice for Vice President.

Yesterday was Mother’s Day. Since last Mother’s Day, both my mother and my wife’s mother have passed away. My mother died early last fall. My wife’s mother died just last week. Of our four parents, my wife’s mother was always the one we thought would go first. She ended up being the last one alive from her generation in our family. My mother was always expected to go last because she was by far the youngest of the four.

As a testament to the quality of our mothers, my wife and I have forged a good legacy during our time here on the earth. In doing so we have tried to honor and respect the values taught to us by our mothers. We have tried to pass those values on to the next generation. I am afraid that we were not quite as successful in passing on the values as our mothers were. Not all of our kids have turned out like we expected or wanted them to be. I am sure that my mother did not expect me to do what I have done over these many years. The same can be said for my wife and her mother.

Being a mother is the most difficult of all jobs that I am aware of. A mother is a mother 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year without a break. Even when you can get them away from their kids, they are still a mother because they worry about how their kids are behaving in their absence. If you go on vacation with the family, everyone has a vacation, except for the mother. She is still the mother and has to care for everyone and try to enjoy herself at the same time. For me, that would be an impossible task. Trying to keep up with my wife wears me out.

Almost any woman can give birth to a child. That may officially bestow the title of mother on that woman, but the title of mother is earned not given. I have seen many women give birth to children and not be their mother. I have seen lots of women not be able to have children, but are wonderful mothers to children they adopted or have in foster care. So, while society may see any woman with a child as a mother that is not really true unless the woman has earned the title. You earn the title by changing dirty diapers and waking up in the middle of the night to take care of a fussy child. You earn the title by giving love and attention to a child when they need it even if you are so sick you cannot stand yourself.

I do have to say that most women do earn the title of mother. Most mothers are cut out of the same cloth. They are caring, loving and would sacrifice anything for their children. Exactly how a mother handles herself is different in every situation, but the title mother says it all when you want to say what she has been doing.

If you only look at the surface, you would say that all mothers are different. That is because some mothers are rich. Some mothers are poor. Most mothers are somewhere in between those two extremes. Some live in cold climates and some in warm climates. So, on the surface being a mother is quite different. But in reality, being a mother involves doing a few things very well. They are taking care of children from birth until they leave the nest and fly on their own. But even then a mother’s job is not over. A real mother worries about the child she raised for the rest of her life. That is the mark of a true mother. It is the most difficult of jobs to do well. It is the most rewarding job in the world. There aren’t more than a handful of men who could do the job of mother half as well as most women. We are just not made to be mothers. But we have the opportunity to love the mothers of our kids and that is the greatest joy a father can have.

For the Democrats, this election will be a series of diversions. The latest diversion is Gay Marriage. On Tuesday, Gay Marriage had its greatest defeat 61-39. On Wednesday, Barack Obama says that he supports Gay Marriage. Then, he goes to Hollywood and holds some fundraisers. At those fundraisers, he manages to raise some huge amounts of campaign cash.

In the meantime, all the talk shows are talking about Gay Marriage instead of the real issues of the economy and healthcare. This will all blow over when the talk show hosts realize that they are being played for saps. Then they will start talking about the issues again. That will be time for the Obama campaign to trot out the next diversion and we repeat the process every week to ten days until the election. The Obama team hopes that they can divert enough people from remembering how bad things are now and how good they were at the end of the administration of George W. Bush.

There is a Rasmussen poll out today that has Romney at 50% and Obama at 43%. That is the first poll that has Romney at 50% or better and is also the largest difference between the two campaigns. This is definitely not good news for Obama. His diversions are not working very well. People still remember what the important issues are despite the diversionary tactics played by the White House. If this keeps up, Obama will be a one term President just like he promised us in 2009.

The unemployment rate is at 8.1%. That sounds pretty good until you realize that it is at that level because of the number of people that stopped looking for work. It is not that anybody really found work, they just stopped looking. When people stop looking for work, the federal government drops them from consideration in the unemployment rate. They still count for a total workforce, but not for the unemployment rate. The employed rate is at its lowest rate since 1981. That is a telling figure. Also, if you keep the number of people in the workforce constant, the unemployment rate has stayed at 14.5% for a number of months. That means things are not getting better, despite the White House’s comments that things are improving. Facts are stubborn things.

Things are still breaking for Romney. The economy is still in the tank and showing no signs of improving any time soon. Obamacare is looming on the horizon to destroy what economy is still left standing when it is slated to kick in.

I saw an article by Michael Savage that had the headline, “The Republicans are not trying to win the election”. That would have been true in 2008 because John McCain was happy just being nominated for President. Mitt Romney is a very different person than John McCain. Mitt Romney is the alpha male type that insists on being first. Mitt Romney will do everything he can to win this election. He will not pull punches like John McCain did in 2008. If it takes going for the jugular to win the election, the jugular will be slit with precision. Romney was characterized as a learning machine by McCain. He said that Romney might make a mistake, but he learned and never repeated the mistake.

The Democrats have pulled out some dirty tricks to try and make people not like Mitt Romney. They amplified an incident when Romney was in high school so that the person involved was “gay”, but “in the closet”. In other words, nobody was supposed to know if the person was gay or not. The people quoted as the source for the article are almost exclusively Democrat voters. That always starts to make people question their motives after all these many years of silence. Romney says that he does not remember the incident. If it happened as the Democrats say it did, I am sure Romney would have some memory of the incident. If it was something less than what the Democrats claim, then Romney would not remember the incident. But, this one is backfiring on them just like all the other dirty tricks. Obama says in his book that he hit a girl and made her cry when he was in school. Obama also used illegal drugs when he was in high school and college. Romney has no such set of problems on his record. This one is going to go in the trash can very quickly. In a week or two, nobody will have any memory of it at all.

First a note about some errors in my postings about the shootings by J.T. Ready in Gilbert, AZ. In my first blog on the topic, I said the shooting took place in Tempe. The actual location was Gilbert. They are not that far apart, but I should have known better. The second blog on the topic I called J.T. Ready, P.T. Ready. His real name is J.T. Ready. That was just an error in remembering his name. He is not someone I had followed or knew much about, so the name was unfamiliar. I still should not have made the mistake.

Yesterday in the primaries, Mitt Romney won all three handily. He is now incredibly close to the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination. Ron Paul has been picking up some delegates lately, but it will not be enough to secure the nomination. For all intents and purposes, Mitt Romney is the Republican nominee at this time. He just has to finish earning enough delegates to finally lay a secure claim to the title. I am sure that the Vice-Presidential pick is being held up until the nomination is secured. It would look unseemly to have it announced ahead of time. 

In the West Virginia Primary yesterday, Barack Obama almost lost. He did win with 60% of the vote, but the other candidate is an inmate at the Beaumont prison in Texas. The inmate did win 10 counties in the state. That Obama only took 60% of the vote against an inmate in Texas tells you a lot about how this election is going to go. I feel pretty secure to say that Barack Obama will not win the delegates from West Virginia in November.

Mitt Romney on the other hand is looking great. In every election, he looks better every time. The voters are supporting him, even if some of the Republican elite are having a problem. Ron Paul is doing well in caucus states, but that is a totally different parameter. In states with primaries, the total vote is the determining factor on who wins. In caucus states, the person who has the most passionate followers that turn out wins the caucus states. Ron Paul has very passionate voters. So, it follows that he does well in caucus states.

In the November election, right now it is anybody’s game to win, officially. But, Barack Obama is playing to vacant campaign stops in places that were overflowing with people in the 2008 election. For Obama, this does not bode well. If he has the election in the “bag” like they are telling everyone, then he should be repeating the 2008 election run. That he cannot get full campaign stops tells me that the bloom is off the rose. It also means that his re-election chances are dwindling as we speak. You have to speak to large groups if you want to have a repeat of 2008. Romney is not having that problem. He is playing to large crowds if you want to have any chance to defeat Barack Obama in November.

Another side note of interest is that Scott Walker received huge support in Wisconsin. He was selected as the Republican in the recall election primary. The Democrat is the same one he defeated for the Governorship in 2010. The Democrat vote was a lot lower than anyone expected. It is looking like the recall effort is going to go down in defeat when it comes up for a vote in November. That will be a big shot in the arm for reformers. If the unions and their thugs cannot unseat a good Republican by outspending him by a large margin, then they will have shown their impotence. More reformers will take their shots at solving the financial problems in their states. With this win in Wisconsin under their belts, the unions have shown that they are paper tigers. Things are looking up all over the country right now politically. I hope that continues for another few years until we wipe out the financial mess that unions and their supporters have caused.

It seems like the supporters of P.T. Ready could not accept the fact that he killed four other people, and then killed himself. Since they cannot accept the facts, they resorted to a made-up tale of the drug cartels killing everyone including P.T. Ready. Their justification for the story is that they believe the Border Guards are an effective group in keeping illegal drugs from entering the United States.

The problem with this fantasy about the drug cartels coming to the Phoenix area and killing Mr. Ready is that the facts do not fit the story. The 911 call is available in its entirety for people to listen to. The radio stations have played excerpts in order to keep the worst parts from being heard. The problem with that scenario is that it gives credence to the story of the drug cartels killing Mr. Ready. So, today on KFYI, Barry Young played the entire 911 call in all its graphic detail. Unfortunately for me, I got to work before he played the call, so I have to go off of Barry Young’s comments about the call.

According to Barry Young, the call has a very frightened Lisa calling 911. She says that P.T. Ready has shot up the garage door and is threatening to shoot again. Her call is cut short when shots happen in the background. You hear no more from Lisa. The girl that survived the killings also made a 911 call after the shooting was over. She went into the living room and saw all the dead bodies. She reported seeing the bodies and the blood on her call. Her call did not report where P.T. Ready was because he was not in the living room with the others. She is obviously distraught.

After the evidence from the 911 calls there is no doubt that P.T. Ready killed the four other people and himself. There was no other gunman involved or that would have come out on the tape. As part of the conspiracy theory of the drug cartel shooting everyone, the Border Guards said that military vehicles were on scene. If they were there, nobody in Arizona ever saw them. If the military had been on the scene, someone from the public would have seen the vehicles and reported it.

P.T. Ready was a bad man. He was a Nazi and a white supremacist. His followers did not want to believe that someone they placed great faith in could be so bad, so they had to come up with a sanitized explanation of what happened. Unfortunately for them, their version of the story is easily refuted by giving people the facts. The followers of P.T. Ready will not be swayed by the facts. They will continue to believe the story made up to make Mr. Ready look better. But, those people are a fringe group anyway, so what they believe is not really important.

With their leader gone, the Border Guards will most likely break up and disappear. The most sane of the group will meld back into society and try and become productive members. I suspect that this will not amount to more than one or two, at most. The remaining members of the Border Guard will search for another leader along the lines of P.T. Ready or other charismatic person. These people are generally not stable, so they have a need to be led by someone. Most of them hold extremist views and are not really part of any main stream group at all.

Obama opened his campaign on the campus of Ohio State University. He held the event in the University Field House, where they play basketball. The seating for basketball is 16,000 but for a political event like this, about 20,000 could have attended. According to the Obama campaign team the building was 70% full or it had about 14,000 people inside.

From pictures taken privately during the event, the upper deck is completely empty. Almost all the people in attendance are standing on the floor of the stadium. They were encouraged to go to the floor so that the event would look well attended on TV. Guessing attendance from the pictures provided is rather risky, but I would guess that a generous estimate would be 40% full or 8,000 people. Personally, I think a more realistic estimate would be closer to the 6,000 range.  Is this important? Not really, if you are considering all the issues. But it is important if you are trying to figure out who has the best chance to win in November.

The fact that Barack Obama could not generate more interest than that at a college campus is very telling. There have been hints about the campaign losing steam with the young people, but this is definitely losing steam in a big way. If Obama does not start generating larger crowds at college campuses, he is in a world of trouble. He needs the young voters to turn out and vote for him. In 2008, this group came out in large numbers and voted almost exclusively for Barack Obama.

Mitt Romney has not had that sort of trouble at any venue that he has been at this campaign season. All of the participants have not been positive, but there have been a large number of voters in attendance at the events. That bodes well for Romney in the fall.

This election will turn on a number of things. Turnout of those in your base voting block is the biggest factor. If you can get all those votes, you should do well in the election. The second is the turnout in general. If the turnout is highest in areas expected to go Republican, the election will be won by Romney. If the turnout is highest in the areas expected to go Democrat, Obama will have an excellent chance to win.

Obama is running a campaign based on side issues. He cannot talk about the important issues because those all point to electing Mitt Romney as President. So, Obama constantly brings up fringe issues to try and distract the public from the real issues. If you can get everyone worked up over race or sex, they might forget that they are much worse of today than they were four years ago. For Romney, the path to the Presidency is clear. Just talk about the important issues every day from now until November 2012. If he does that, it will be difficult for Obama to defeat him. If Romney gets distracted on side issues for much of the time, Obama just might pull one out of his hat.

I think that Romney is disciplined enough to keep on message for the next 6 months. Obama will not be able to get Romney off message for even one day between now and November. John McCain said that Romney is a learning machine. That means that Romney is constantly learning how to be a better candidate. You can see that during this campaign season. If you look at Mitt Romney before any primaries and compare him to today, the Mitt Romney today is a much better candidate. He is more articulate and stays on message better. Obama will have all he can handle with Mitt Romney as the Presidential nominee.

A couple of days ago, there was a shooting in Tempe. A man got into a domestic dispute with his live-in girlfriend and killed her, her daughter, grand-daughter and her daughter’s boyfriend. After he did all this killing, he killed himself. What makes this newsworthy is who this person was. His name was J.T. Ready. He started the Border Guard organization. He was also a former Neo-Nazi. There was one witness of a sort to the shooting. The witness hid in a closet until the shooting was over. She did see J.T. Ready get into the argument, but did not actually witness the shooting itself.

Another thing that makes this event newsworthy is the fact that in his younger years he was befriended by Russell Pearce, a former Arizona State Senator. The news reports are trying to tie the two together, but a spokesperson for the Russell Pearce campaign said that they have not interacted for some time. Once J.T. Ready started on the Nazi kick Russell Pearce broke any ties with him. But, because they were connected all those years ago, the news media seems to think they still are. This is all assuming that the spokesperson for the Russell Pearce campaign is telling the truth.

I added the statement that all ties were broken if the spokesperson was giving us accurate information. Since Russell Pearce is in the midst of a campaign, it would not look good to have a former Nazi as a friend. J.T. Ready recently gave some campaign funds to the Russell Pearce campaign. The Russell Pearce people say that they were in the process of returning the money when this incident occurred. The donation was just last week, so this does have some credibility. There hasn’t been much time since the donation was given for the campaign to identify the donation and then return it. That always takes time because you have to follow those accounting rules that make all campaign giving difficult for the candidate.

The Border Guard group put out a statement yesterday that they were saddened to hear of the death of J.T. Ready. They said he will be greatly missed. My guess is that the Border Guard is a small group of less than 10 people. They are also known to be a militia type organization.

At the scene of the shooting, the police found hand grenades of the type used by the military. These are illegal for a civilian to have in their possession without a permit. There were also a number of other weapons that normal people would not have owned. As they said on the Barry Young show today, the weapons found at the home were enough to keep a small army from entering your home. Of course, they also might take out half of your home in the process of the defense.

Gun control nuts will call for greater gun control. This is the wrong answer to the problem. The problem was that J.T. Ready was going to kill this woman anyway. The guns just made it easier for him to complete the task. If he did not have any guns, he would have managed the killings with some other method, like a knife. The problem is not guns. The problem is a person out of control. You cannot determine when a person will get out of control. So, it is impossible to legislate any solution to problems of killings like this. Any attempt to legislate a solution will just result in a loss of freedom for law abiding people and a clearer target for the people that are not going to obey the law. Gun control allows the criminals to be bolder in their selection of targets. Right now in Arizona, criminals have to expect that nearly every home they enter will have one or more guns. That is enough to stop a large number of crimes from occurring.

Who will win the Presidential contest in November is an open question right now. If you look at polls, it appears that Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are neck and neck. Some polls show Obama in the lead and some show Romney in the lead. The general problem with these polls is that they just look at registered voters, not likely voters. That means a lot in a poll. A poll of likely voters should give you a result that will accurately reflect the votes cast on Election Day. So, the polls produced by the big polling groups right now are trying to inflate the votes for Obama.

Some groups try and predict the outcome based on polls produced from each state. I have not heard whether the polls are based on registered voters or likely voters. Polls based on registered voters would give you results that are inaccurate when actual votes are cast. But, running polls in each state should give you are more accurate picture of who would win the Electoral College vote. The polls using this method show an election that is extremely close. In fact, they show that it is nearly impossible for Mitt Romney to overtake Barack Obama in the Electoral College.

One thing we have to remember about polls is that the news media is trying to provide cover for Barack Obama. They will do anything they can to boost the candidacy of Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. So, when you look at the details of some of the more recent polls, you get a slightly different picture than the one painted by the headlines.

When you listen to people who have followed politics closely for years, they paint a different picture than the one painted by the polls. Most people that watch elections for a living are saying that the signs are there for a Romney landslide win. The most recent analysis was by Rush Limbaugh. He said that Barack Obama is polling about 45% favorable right now. In almost every election for the past 50 years, the incumbent does not pick up votes at the end over his favorability rating. That would mean that if Barack Obama has a 45% favorability rating, he would only garner about 45% of the vote. Doing the math, Mitt Romney would then receive about 54% of the vote. There are always votes for third party candidates, so that is why I did not have Romney + Obama equal 100. A vote that is 54-45 is considered a landslide in modern day politics. This does not look at the Electoral College, but a vote with that margin would surely be catastrophic for Obama in the Electoral College as well.

I have no polling data to back me up. I just have my gut feeling that I have honed over my many years of watching politics. I too feel like this election is not going to be a close one overall. There may be a state or two where it will be close, but overall it will be a landslide. My reasoning is like this, the economy is bad and not getting any better. People are out of work and there are no jobs. Obamacare is looming like a menace to destroy what is left of the United States. People are generally unhappy about where the country is headed. The vote will end up being a mandate for Mitt Romney to “fix” the problems caused by Barack Obama. Most of the people voting for Romney are not going to vote for Romney because they are so excited they cannot wait to vote for him. Most of the votes Romney gets will be because the person voting wants to vote against the policies of Barack Hussein Obama. In other words, this “mandate” will be easily lost if Mitt Romney blows it. If he does bring things back from the brink of disaster he will earn his own mandate and the keys to a second term. I would not be surprised if Mitt Romney gets 330+ Electoral College votes. That should be enough to shut up the leftists, Marxists and communists that are planning a post-election surprise for the country.

Barack Obama just took a surprise visit to Afghanistan. He took the visit on the anniversary of the day we got Osama bin Laden. Obama went to Afghanistan to sign some agreement with Afghanistan that supposedly covers the involvement of the United States for the next 10 years.

The trip was troubling on a number of levels. First, Obama talked incessantly about the fact that “he” got Osama bin Laden. This is an end zone dance for gaining a yard. The people that were on the ground during the operation are upset that they are not given any credit for their efforts. There is a memo from Leon Panetta that gives permission for the attempt based on the information given to Barack Obama. Any deviation from this script would require new permissions. Anyone who has ever participated in a military attack knows that everything works great until you come into contact with the enemy. This memo was a CYA. It was Obama giving permission, but making sure that if it failed none of the fault would fall on him. Admiral McRaven was given responsibility to carry out the activities. If the attempt failed, all of the blame would have fallen on Admiral McRaven. So, Barack Obama may have given permission, but it took him a long time to make the no-brainer decision. One report says that he was given all this information in December 2010. He made the decision in April 2011. It should have taken him approximately 1.5 seconds to make the decision, assuming his mind was not concentrating clearly.

Second, this agreement with Hamid Karzai appears to be nothing more than fluff. It does allow American involvement in Afghanistan for another 10 years, but we do not know much more than that. From the early reports, this agreement could have been made between two third graders it was so detailed.

Third, every time Barack Obama uses the military as a photo-op someone ends up getting hurt. Shortly after Obama left Afghanistan there were a number of bombings in Kabul, Afghanistan. There are a number of possibilities on why these bombings were carried out. The most likely scenario is that the Taliban wanted to show that things are not as under control as Barack Obama wants everyone to think.

Barack Obama keeps going around the world and making agreements with other countries. These agreements require that we trust our government, and particularly Barack Obama, to have our best interest at heart. With the amount of distrust I have for the Obama administration, I have the feeling that nothing good can come out of the agreement with the Afghan government.

I read an article by Hugh Hewitt today. He was recounting an interview he had with Mike Mukasey, a former Attorney General. In this article he pointed out that it disturbed Mr. Mukasey that Eric Holder was not shown in the pictures of the situation room on the day that Osama bin Laden was killed. According to Mr. Mukasey, Eric Holder should have been consulted on the legality of the move across national borders. Having Eric Holder missing from the room begs the question, did the Obama administration even ask whether it was ok to go across national borders to get Osama bin Laden? That also brings up other questions on whether the Obama administration cut any other corners in their attempt to “get” Osama bin Laden. With all the joking about the event by the participants in the administration, you get a feeling that they were not involved. They were just viewing an event taking place like in a movie. That comment is based on something Hillary Clinton said in an interview about her expression in the famous picture.

The Obama administration always raises more questions than it answers. That is because you can never take what they say at face value. There is always something going on unseen that changes dramatically the meaning of what is said or done publically.