James Carville is looking for bumper sticker slogans for Democrats. I am not very good at slogans, but I can recognize a good one when I see one.

One I saw at Rushlimbaugh.com was: Iraq – We’re winning, Let’s Quit. That is great. It makes the point that the surge is working in Iraq and we are winning. The Democrats are saying that even though we are winning, we cannot eventually hope to win, so we must leave. Leaving would be a disaster. President Bush made that clear this week in a talk to the VFW in Kansas City.

One other one I saw on Nealz Nuze was Run Hillary Run. It was to be placed on the front bumper for Republicans and the back bumper for Democrats. The meaning, of course, is that Republicans would love to run her down. I could never put a bumper sticker on my car that said Run Hillary Run. I despise that woman so much that I could not live with myself if even one person thought I liked her.

One other one at Nealz Nuze was: Vote Democrat, it sure beats working. That is for all the dead beats who will vote Democrat. Working people could never vote Democrat as the Democrats want to take all of the working people’s money and give it to those who do not work.

All of those would never be used by Democrats, they tell the truth. Democrats cannot tell the truth about what they believe. If they did tell the truth about their beliefs, they would have no candidates that would be victorious. The Democrat party has as its goal to turn the United States of America into a socialist state rivaling the old Soviet Union. They feel they can run it better than the old Soviets did.

They talk of a universal health system. They talk about it being “free”. It is not “free’. It will require a massive tax increase to fund this universal health system. Then it also will not deliver the standard of care that we are used to in the United States. We are used to going to the doctor when something goes wrong and having it fixed right away. We will not stand for long waiting periods. This universal health system will require months or years of waiting to get important surgeries done. Only so many of each surgery will be allowed each year. Any more would raise the cost too high.

The current system is not perfect, but it sure beats a single payer system of health care. Making the current system more market based would help alleviate many of the problems that plague the system today. We should be able to buy the insurance product we want. We should not have to buy an insurance product that is designed for someone else. Some states mandate so many things that insurance costs in those states are terrible. If it was possible to buy insurance across state lines, that problem would disappear overnight. There are other ways of fixing our current system. We do not need or want a single payer system. It may stop out of pocket expenses to see a doctor, but the wait for seeing a specialist would be intolerable. Just look at the countries that have some form of single payer system in place today. All are looking at ways to get away from the single payer system and into some form of market based system.

I wish there was some way of administering truth serum to Democrat candidates prior to televised debates. That would solve the problem of any Democrat winning. If a Democrat was required to tell the truth, they would have no chance of being elected. They would tell what they want to do to the United States to make it in to the Union of Soviet States. That would be something to see and hear. I can hardly wait for that to occur. I will not hold my breath.

Our educational system is going nuts over political correctness. A student was suspended for five days, reduced to three, for drawing a picture of a gun. There were no threats involved and none were written near the picture of the gun. This is just nuts. The absolute worst that should have happened to the student is for the teacher to tell him that drawing a picture of a gun was not acceptable.

I can remember drawing pictures of soldiers and guns all over my school papers when I got bored with school. If this political correctness had been the rage back then, I would probably have been suspended for the sixth grade. I turned out so terrible. I worked in law enforcement for four years and have never been accused of threatening anyone at any time. When students get bored at school, they draw all sorts of stuff. I would start drawing lines and then when they started to look like something, I would try to make them into something. Of course, I am the world’s worst artist and the teacher would probably never have recognized the picture for what I intended it to be.

When we have people removing toy guns off of plastic characters so they can be brought to school, things are out of hand. When we have people being suspended for drawing a gun/laser, we are completely out of control. These are not signs of students that are going to do something drastic, it just innocent at worst. A plastic gun attached to a plastic soldier is not going to hurt anyone, unless it is thrown at them. Removing the gun will not make the soldier any less dangerous. In fact, it probably makes it more dangerous. Drawing a picture of a gun without any comments is probably innocent doodling. If the picture of the gun were on a list of enemies, then it would be a cause for worry. On homework or other school work, it is just doodling.

Administrators at schools have to be realistic. If the object can never be a danger to anyone, the best course of action is to tell the student that it is inappropriate to do whatever. If the object is dangerous or the paper contains a hit list, then it is time to act with force. Acting with force over innocent actions makes students lose respect for the administration of the school. That is what is happening at the school in Chandler where the picture of the gun led to a suspension. The school is being held up for ridicule. Students at the school are laughing at the administration. The people involved with the decision to suspend the student look stupid. They thought they were acting on principle; they were acting out of stupidity.

Political correctness has brought us to this situation. Political correctness is destroying our ability to call a spade a spade. We are unable to call a terrorist a terrorist for fear of offending the terrorist. How stupid is that? We need to get back to calling things as they are. We cannot continue down this path to obscurity. If we cannot call things as they are, how will we ever know what enemies are against us? That is probably part of our problem right now. We cannot call Islamic terrorists, Islamic terrorists. We have to call them something else that is less offensive. That leads us as Americans to see them as less of a threat. If we call them a less threatening name, they must be a less threatening group.

I for one am so sick of political correctness. I remember the beginnings of political correctness when I was in school. I thought we would never get to where we are. We are here on the edge of a cliff. We have to look at ourselves and say we will get back to telling the truth. We cannot continue this beating around the bush all the time. We have to be able to get to the heart of an issue without offending everyone. That is the problem with political correctness. Everyone is so ready to be offended we are afraid to call things as they are. There is some justification for this situation as you could lose everything you own by calling something for what it is.

Last night on the way home from work, I listened to Mark Levin on the radio. He repeatedly made a statement to the effect that liberalism is a refuge for the stupid. He backed that up with example after example.

I want to tie that to information that two-thirds of the American public does not know what goes on outside of our border. Also, one-third does not know what is going on in the US itself. Those people are prime candidates for liberals to get to vote for them. First, they are uninformed. Since they are uninformed they can be told anything by someone in authority and they would believe. That is particularly true if that someone is a believable person. The Democrat party would invest in cultivating a person as “believable” and then put them out to convince the ignorant that black is white.

If two-thirds do not know what is happening outside of the US, they can be sold a bill of goods that is false by any Democrat that can talk good. Of the two-thirds, half of them are in the group that does not know what is happening in the US. Since liberalism does not require any thinking or facts to remember, it is perfect for these people. They do not know anything and probably do not want to know anything. A Democrat comes along and says that they can vote for a Democrat and not have to know anything. How perfect is that. A Republican will come along and say that they should vote for them because of this list of facts and figures. The ignorant that do not want to be bothered with facts, just slogans, tune them out and go back to their music and TV. They will feel good about themselves because they voted. The fact that vote was to help destroy the US has nothing to do with anything. They will still feel good. The evil Republican wanted them to think. How dare he/she do such a terrible thing to them? They want to be left ignorant and the Democrat does exactly that.

That is why Democrat voters usually have passion. They are driven by slogans and one line issues. Republicans have to learn in depth about issues and become informed. It is much more difficult to support a Republican than a Democrat. You have so much more homework to do. You are required to be able to speak intelligently about all of the major issues facing us today. Supporting a Republican means you have to be able to take that information and put it forth logically to those who would support Democrats. You know it is a losing cause when they start giving you the one line statements that are obviously untrue, but you still soldier on.

The issues you support may not be popular with the main stream press. You do not see them reported on by TV newscasters or in the newspaper. The school teachers teach your children false ideas that you have to debunk when they get home. That is a constant challenge to me with my granddaughter. She picks up these stupid ideas from her liberal teacher at school. When she tells me the liberal idea, I have to have the facts and figures available at that time to teach her correct principles. She is sharp enough to tell which argument is true by judging facts. She is going to turn out fine. But I fear for the others that do not have someone teaching the truth.

I also heard a caller to a talk show call in and say that we need to teach the truth to our children. He had been a history teacher and got out of teaching because he was not able to teach the truth to the kids in his classes. That is sad. Teachers that know the truth should be able to stick it out and teach the truth to their students. This is the best country in the world. It is not perfect. It is our job to try to make it better. But, we should do so remembering where we came from and what has made us great. We should elect leaders who will lead us along the path of greatness. We should not follow leaders who want to change our country into some European backwater. We are the United States of America. We are supposed to lead the world. We are not to follow the failed policies of other countries. We are to find the path to greatness alone.

Socialism is a failed idea. Any candidate that is advocating socialism should not be elected. Based on the Presidential candidate’s statements in the primary season, all Democrat candidates want to embrace socialism. All of the Republican candidates do not. That is simple enough for the stupid to figure out.

President Bush went on the offensive against the Defeatocrats in Congress and elsewhere. He made is point that we are in Iraq to stay until the mission is complete.

The high point for me was that President Bush put the entire war against Islamo-Fascism in context, particularly how it relates to the Vietnam War. Osama bin Laden has referred to Vietnam in his writings about how we are a paper tiger. He states that when we start taking causalities, we will fold the tent and go home. President Bush said that we will not take our ball and come home. We are there to finish the job we started.

On the Laura Ingraham show I heard an interview with a Colonel who said that Vietnam got the top military people to say they would not get into a clandestine war again. So, for 30 years the US Army had no plan to fight an enemy that hid among civilians and did not fight in the open with tanks and big guns. It is much like the British Army in 1776. It was not prepared for the war we fought. We were not prepared for the war al Qaeda is fighting. We have learned a thing or two since the war began and are now starting to clean al Qaeda’s clock. As the Colonel said, we were the best at fighting in the open. We did not know how to fight a clandestine war. We learned how to do that and now we are the best in the world at that, too.

President Bush did say that we are killing or capturing over 1500 terrorists per month. That has to be putting some kind of damper on the ability of the terrorists to continue to supply men and arms for the fight. They can keep it up for a while, but sooner or later, the amount of losses they are taking will start to be felt in the field. If we are not starting to see it, we should see it by Christmas. We have killed or captured over 10,000 terrorists since January. Estimates have ranged from 30-40,000 terrorists in Iraq. That means we have killed or captured one quarter to one third of their force. No military can sustain those types of losses and still hold together as a military unit. Now, we do know that Iran is supplying men and arms regularly. As the surge moves on, we should see the fighting move more toward Iran if they are the primary source of terrorists in the field.

I do not expect to see us actually get a military victory in Iraq. It is too early in the war to get a military victory. We should be able to get time for the Iraqi Army to become effective. When that happens, the Iraqi political situation would settle down. Then we would have real progress toward a free and independent Iraq. The terrorists cannot allow that to happen at any cost. That is why fighting will continue in Iraq for the foreseeable future. If Iraq ever becomes free, the rest of the Middle East will become unstable for their dictators. Freedom in Iraq would become freedom in Iran and Syria. Freedom in Iran and Syria would be freedom in Saudi Arabia and Jordan and so on. Eventually it would mean an end to the war against Islamo-Fascism.

The terrorists are well armed and have a fanatical allegiance to their cause. It will take some time to defeat them. A free Iraq is just the first step. Once that step has been taken, the rest will happen. My guess is that it will take a minimum of 10 years before we really can see the end to the war against Islamo-Fascism. There are too many and they are too scattered to effectively defeat them. We can only make it difficult for them to recruit new terrorists to their cause. Right now, it is easy to get new young men and women to join their cause. They are having some success and they can point to the success. We have to take the success away from them and make it bad to be a terrorist. Right now in some places it is a status symbol to be a terrorist. We have to make it so that to be a terrorist is to be hated by everyone. Then we can truly say we have won. Right now that is a long way off.

Reed Bryson, one of the founders of the University of Wisconsin’s Department of Meteorology, is quoted in World Net Daily as saying, “You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.”  He said that in relation to the impact that carbon dioxide has had on the earth’s temperature. He agrees that the temperature is going up, but man has had little or no effect on the temperature rise. The temperature rise is because of the increase in temperatures since the end of the little ice age in the 1800’s.

There is a new study out by the Brookhaven National Lab that estimates that the rise in average temperature by 2100 will be 1.1 degrees plus or minus 0.5 degrees. That is about the average difference between summer and winter. The report says that people are prepared to spend $billions, even $trillions to stop global warming. It will have no effect at all. The money spent will only affect the temperature less than 0.1 degree. That would not be a cost-effective way of spending money.

Global temperatures leveled off about 8-9 years ago. The average change in temperature has been almost zero since 1999. The problem with that bit of information is that it is too new to be incorporated into anybody’s PowerPoint presentations. The slight dip in the rise in temperature at the turn of the century will be hardly noticed by those blinded by global warming. They will still see the line getting higher and higher. Scientists are seeing the data and saying that we will not face the dire global warming predictions made by Al Gore.

One problem with this debate is that those that believe in global warming or global climate change are true believers. The facts in the matter are no longer in question. The true believers know that we are in for a dire future and will not be able to understand when those of us with eyes and brains will not understand. You hear the true believers saying that it is treason not to believe in global warming or global climate change. Exactly the opposite might be true. Those that believe in global climate change could be guilty of treason. They believe things that are un-American and designed to destroy the United States. Those that believe in global climate change are generally advocating changing the system of doing things in America.

At the conference, they believe that 2007 is a pivotal year for global climate change. They believe that its inevitable decline as an idea should begin this year. Or, we could go wildly after windmills and destroy the world economy in search of a needle in a haystack. Where we go from here is up to us. The evidence is mounting for those of us who do not believe in global climate change. That should make it easier to make converts to the truth. Unfortunately, making dire predictions of disaster if we do not do something is appealing to youth. That gets them believing in falsehoods and they take that belief and internalize it. Once they get it inside, it is difficult to get out, even with the truth.

Emotions and doom and gloom always are more appealing than the truth. The truth is not sexy. It is cold and unfeeling. That is not appealing for many. If they are truly curious, they will search out the truth and come to an understanding of the truth. Once they understand the truth, they will not be seduced by the siren song of the doom and gloom crowd over at global climate change. I am working on my 8 year old granddaughter to teach her the truth about global climate change. She is so smart; she soaks it up like a sponge. She is the group we need to work with. If we teach her the truth at her age, she can help bring the truth to others as she grows up.

It is amazing to me how blind the climate change people are. The evidence they rely on to “prove” global climate change is evaporating around them. But they stick to their belief that man is causing massive climate change when no climate change is being proven.

There is a story of a large number of people who got naked and had their picture taken on a glacier to highlight the fact that the glacier is retreating. The glacier has retreated in recent years. But, they discovered a mine about where the glacier is now. It is a silver mine. The tools are stacked at the entrance ready for the owners of the mine to come back in the spring to work the mine. The owners left before winter hit expecting to return the next spring. They happened into the “Little Ice Age”. That is where the earth cooled from the later 1700’s until the 1860’s. It caused massive displacement of people and wars and rumors of wars. Napoleon’s march from Moscow was during this time period and lots of his soldiers froze to death. That would not have happened to as many soldiers any time during the last 100 years.

We have reports from 1922 that the Arctic ice is disappearing. The report talks of rocks and soil appearing. It could have been written by an environmentalist today. The Arctic is still as cold as it ever has been. It always melts some in the summer and has water in places. If you look at the average temperatures, you find that the temperature is actually cooler than it has been. The same goes for the Antarctic.

NASA has been reporting average temperature data for the US and the world for years. They were caught making statistical errors in their temperature data. When they corrected the data, the hottest year changed from 1998 to 1934. It had appeared that 6 of the hottest 10 years have come since 1998. It is now true that only 1 of the last 10 years fits in the top 10. The 1930’s have 4 of the top 10 temperature years. According to environmentalists, the earth has only been changing because of man since 1950. This blows up their arguments as the 1930’s were really before all the industrial development took place that “caused” global warming.

What is your neighborhood environmentalist to do? The “facts” they had were found to be invented. Now the facts are squarely on the side of man not causing global climate change. It will not make a difference to them. They are not really interested in the environment. They are only interested in bringing communism to the world. They are just using the environmental movement to push global communism. If you look at the leaders of the environmental movement, you will find almost all of them are or have been leaders in the communist movements throughout the world.

That is why logic will never work when discussing global climate change. Facts do not matter. It is the emotion that matters and they have mastered the emotional message. We with the facts have to get an emotional message that works. It is harder to get a factual message that is emotional. You cannot really be emotional when stating that man is not causing global climate change. We cannot predict great problems in the future if we do not do anything. We are stuck with the facts. How dull and boring that is. I would rather have the facts on my side than emotions on my side any day of the week.

Governor Romney is winning all of the straw polls. He won in Iowa, which was the first. He also won in Nevada and Illinois. Straw polls are the pre-season of politics. You can win all the straw polls and lose the candidacy. But, they do tell that he is much stronger than the national media gives him credit.

It amazes me that Mitt Romney set out what his game plan would be. People laughed when he said what he would do. Now that things are happening just like he said they would, people are chalking it up to luck. It is no such thing. Luck has nothing to do with Gov. Romney winning all of the straw polls up to this point. He is a driven campaigner. He knows what he wants and will work hard to get there.

One part of his campaign I really love is the “ask Mitt” sessions. In these sessions, people can ask him any question they want to. There are no pre-screened questions. There are no pre-screened questioners. It is just plain old politics as played in America for the last 230 years. I love the fact that he is doing just that.

The “Ask Mitt” sessions are in stark contrast to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign appearances. In her appearances all questions are pre-screened from pre-screened questioners. There are no surprises. There are no unexpected things to allow Mrs. Clinton to put her foot in her mouth. Mrs. Clinton may be smart. I have my doubts about that statement as she cannot think on her feet. But she can only work from a pre-planned script.

One way to defeat Mrs. Clinton is to get her into an unscripted campaign stop and have questions come out of left and right field. Those questions would require her to think on her feet and she would be easily tripped up. That would show she is not ready for prime time.

Put Mitt Romney in the same situation and he would easily handle questions from any point of view and any direction. He is quick on his feet and extremely smart. He is the smartest candidate running in this election, by far. He is also the best looking of all the candidates running, by far.

I think Mitt Romney is ready for the election season to be held. Fred Thompson is still being Coy. I think that is a liability. If he does not know if he wants to be President, how can he really run a good campaign? We need a good campaigner to run against Mrs. Clinton. Her handlers know how to run a tight ship. We need someone to run a better campaign. I think Mitt can do just that.

Karl Rove announced his retirement from the Bush administration this week. He has been instrumental in getting President Bush elected Governor of Texas and President of the United States. He also helped in the Congressional elections during the off year elections.

That Karl Rove has been successful is making an understatement. He has been an overachiever. Democrats hate him for that. If Democrats loved Karl Rove it would show that he was a failure. That they hate him shows how successful he has been. The most remarkable part of his success is his ability to remember the information about every congressional district in the country. He knows if it votes Democrat or Republican and if polls quoted for that district are accurate. That is quite remarkable.

Democrats have targeted him for jail for years. They have been unsuccessful because as a Republican, he played by the book. Of course, he wrote the book. But, he still played by the rules. Democrats believe to be successful in politics you have to break the rules. That is why they have gone after him with such vigor. It has been fun to see that they could not lay a glove on him after all their attempts.

What is the future for Karl Rove? For a while, he will take a vacation. He has been working at the President’s side for many years and does not really take vacations. This is his chance to take one. Right now, he is making comments on politics to reporters. These comments are right on the money. They are things that people have to say, but don’t because of political correctness. Karl Rove is beyond political correctness. He is in a position where he can call a spade a spade and get away with it.

After a month or two of “vacation”, Karl Rove will quietly get involved in somebody’s campaign for President. He will not have an official position as it would be a lightning rod for criticism against the President. But, his active political mind will be tapped by the campaign that the President thinks has the best chance of defeating the Democrat candidate.

The question then arises, who is that candidate? Officially, nobody knows who that candidate is. But, unofficially, many Bush supporters have signed onto Mitt Romney’s campaign. Many of Jeb Bush’s Florida political operatives are working for Romney. That to me is a good indicator of who Karl Rove will give political advice. Right now, Mitt Romney has a pretty good political plan and is working that plan to perfection. Karl Rove is the master of the change-up. Mitt Romney will need that master of the change-up in the campaign for President when the chips are down.

The timing of the Karl Rove announcement stunned me at first. Then as I thought of the timing, I thought this was the perfect time to leave the White House. It would give him a month or two to take off and then get into a campaign when it heats up in November. That is how I see it at least. I may be a political novice, but I have been observing politics since I first voted in 1970. I realized that things happen in politics for a reason. There are no funny timings. They may seem so on the surface, but upon further reflection, the timing was usually perfect. This announcement by Karl Rove is another one of those “perfect” announcements in politics.

Global warming has been in the news lately. It seems like there is a news article from 1922 that states that the arctic is melting and the glaciers are disappearing. That is before the global warming nuts claim global warming started. Oops!

NASA has also been caught cooking the books. They were caught making mathematical errors that raised the temperature for the past few years. According to the previous NASA records, 1998 was the hottest year and 6 of the 10 hottest years were in the last 10. Under the revised and correct data, 1934 was the hottest year and 5 of the 10 hottest years occurred during the 1930’s. That makes a huge difference as global warming nuts claim that it was the post-world war two industrialization that put Carbon Dioxide into the air and caused the temperature to rise. That has now been proven false.

Countries in Europe that had fallen for the global warming nonsense are seeing the light. Most are trying to repeal laws they put on the books that are expensive and unnecessary. That is great. Algore has been shown to be full of hot air. His movie is a complete fraud. His talks have been based on false data and misinformation. I wonder when he will come out and say that he has been wrong all this time. We can probably wait until the earth falls into the sun for that to happen.

What does all this mean for us? Well, since global warming has been shown to be a fraud we need to look at the data and try to make sense of what it says. The look needs to be a “real” scientific look. We do not need a repeat of the false scientific look of the global warming scare. There some nut said the earth was warming and a large number of people said yes master. With the revised data in hand, we need to look at it and decide which direction we are headed. The information is most likely inconclusive and will need to be studied much longer.

Of course, the people that believe in climate change, notice not global warming, will still believe in climate change. The trick is to try to get them to see what is really happening, not what they want to believe. The leaders of that movement only want to control people. They do not care whether the temperatures are going up or down or staying the same. Their goal is to bring communism back into the world as a main stream program. Most of the leaders of the Democrat party subscribe to the tenants of the climate change leadership. If you compare the goals of the climate change leadership to those of Lenin and Stalin, you will find they match rather well. The leaders of the movement will just find some other way to fool the public into believing the world is coming to an end and they need to embrace communism.

My hope is that scientists will wake up and smell the roses. When it gets out that global warming is fiction, many scientists will bail (I hope). If that happens, then we can get some rational thinking into the debate. Unfortunately, that is probably a long way off, but NASA revising their data is a good start.

Yesterday, it was reported that the Democrat candidate for President, Mrs. Bill Clinton, played nurse for a day. That was sweet of her. The news media ate it up like it was candy. She was supposedly highlighting the fact that there is a nursing shortage in this country. Wasn’t that nice of her to spend some time as a nurse? She probably caused more people to spend time telling her what to do or babysitting her than any help she may have actually accomplished. Of course that would never make it to the news.

As an instructor of students that will eventually become nurses, I am fully aware of the nursing shortage in this country. There is a particular shortage of nurses that can speak both Spanish and English. I teach a course that nurses have to take in Biology before they can start their nursing classes.

In talking to the nursing students I teach, the problem here is that there is a waiting list of up to one year to get into a nursing school. Then when we get them into the schools, the schools pride themselves on how many they can flunk out before graduation. If half of the students that start a program together finish together, it is a major accomplishment. Most of the rest will finish their nursing degrees shortly after the rest of the students in their group. They usually just have to repeat one or two courses to finish up their nursing degrees.

In Arizona, we need to expand the nursing programs available to students. The problem with having nursing programs is getting qualified nursing instructors. Nurses get paid so well that it is difficult getting qualified high paid nurses to quit being nurses to become poorer paid instructors.

My school has discussed starting a nursing program for our students. The main roadblock has been the nursing instructor. We would also have to find the space, but that is a minor problem to finding an instructor. For now, we are partnering with a sister school in our district to teach our nursing students.

We have a bi-lingual nursing program that has students take their pre-nursing classes at our campus and the nursing classes at another school. To get into the program, a student has to be a US citizen and fluent in both Spanish and English. They get interviewed in both Spanish and English. They also take a written test in Spanish and English. After they qualify for the program, they are guaranteed a spot in a nursing class. This eliminates the one year waiting period that many other students are coming up against. It allows students to become Registered Nurses in two years. They do not have a Bachelors Degree, but are qualified to be Registered Nurses. If they want a BA, they can go to ASU or U of A to get that. That is a separate program. Most students that want the BA will do so after being hired by a hospital or other health organization. The hospital will usually pay for any additional education the nurse wants to obtain.

This bi-lingual nursing program has worked well. It started out a few years ago with one group a year. After three years of one group a year, the decision was made to start two groups per year. That has caused a tremendous growth in students in our Biology classes here at my college. The growth has been great. We have had to dedicate one room for the microbiology classes and another room for the Anatomy classes. That is fantastic. The growth has allowed us to hire more teachers. The quality of teachers and students has improved in Biology over the past 6 years I have been at my school. That is a good development for my school and the Phoenix area.

My school is cranking out about 30-35 students per semester to nursing programs. That translates to about 70 nurses per year. That may not sound like a lot, but over time it does make a difference.

For the past week I have been at home doing “honey do’s”, as well as being sick. That has made it near impossible to find the time to post to my blog. My work schedule will have me work 6 days this fall that will enable me to post 6 days a week this fall.

My thoughts about Romney winning the Iowa straw poll, that he won was no surprise. I was glad he made a decisive win. I was hoping for a knockout type of win (50+ %). That was probably never in the cards. The victory assured Gov. Romney of being the front runner for the Iowa delegates to the convention. That is important as it is a victory. Victories tend to lead to more victories. Losses tend to lead to more losses.

Gov. Romney set out with a plan to win the nomination. He wanted to win the Iowa Straw Poll, now accomplished. He then wanted to win the Iowa delegates. His next stop would be a victory in the New Hampshire primary. He is leading the polling in New Hampshire. He would take the publicity of the two victories into South Carolina and Florida and make strong showings, if not victories. That would put him first in delegates going into the Super Tuesday elections. He would hope for a lot of people to vote for the person that was winning, not someone who had lost elections. That plan looks very good at this time.

Mike Huckabee moved ahead of the pack by taking second place at the Iowa Straw Poll. Many were predicting that he would end up third or fourth in the voting. Sam Brownback looked bad by taking third. He was expected to take second and spent a lot of money to take second. Mike Huckabee did not have much money to spend and had to rely on plain old energy, not money.

The fallout has begun. Tommy Thompson has dropped out of the Republican race for President. He is just the first of many. Those that did poorly in the Iowa Straw poll have to look at where they are and evaluate their chances. Right now, Mitt Romney has a commanding lead in Iowa. He is also leading in New Hampshire. Nobody moved close enough to him to declare himself a challenge. If you are not in the game in the early going, you are not going to have a shot. Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Fred Thompson can claim that they did not compete. Therefore, they are still competing with Mitt Romney for the Presidency.

Things are looking good for Mitt Romney right now. His plan is being worked to perfection. It is always good to develop a plan and then work it to perfection. That almost never happens. In war, as in other endeavors, the best laid plans usually need to be revised many times before the final winning solution is found. I am sure that Romney has done just that, but the overall strategy is sound and has not changed. That plan is get ahead in the early states and then use that to leverage votes in the later states. It remains to be seen whether he can actually pull it off. But, right now, he looks like a genius.

With all the good news starting to force its way out of Iraq, the left is in a tizzy. They are busy discrediting the left leaning authors as being closet right wingers. What is an honest liberal to do? If they are honest and see that things are improving, should they say so? Or, should they continue to hold to the line to the last minute until it is so obvious they are not telling the truth, that they have lost all credibility? I believe they should tell the truth. There should be a place in the left and the right for people to tell the truth. We have to be able to tell things as they are, not as we wish them to be.

That is a fundamental difference between left and right. On the left, if you have a position, you are expected to hold it regardless of evidence. On the right, if you have a position you can change it if the evidence shows that you were wrong. On the left you would be vilified for changing your position. On the right, you would be applauded for seeing things as they really are.

The left thinks that the right operates as they do. They think that we get our talking points from some central point and everyone talks the same. That is the way they do it on the left. It does not work that way on the right. We have our own opinions and are free to express them. So, when people on the right disagree on something, the left thinks we have a major problem. We think that it is making our position stronger by talking ourselves into the correct position, not the convenient position. When we talk among ourselves we get opposing points of view. These help us frame our positions better. It helps us understand what we support and why we support it. So, when we get in a debate with someone on the left, we usually have better documentation on our position. They usually resort to character destruction.

In every election cycle, the left comes out and decries character destruction in campaigns. Those of us on the right agree completely. But in any campaign situation where their position is criticized, the left resorts to character destruction. They do so, because they do not talk among themselves and come to logical conclusions. They take an emotional position and cannot defend it logically. Their only defense is to destroy the messenger, they cannot destroy the message.

This is starting to tell on Democrats in Congress. They are having a hard time keeping a lid on the good news coming out of Iraq. Jack Murtha, from Pennsylvania, slandered the two left leaning reporters who returned from Iraq and gave a glowing report on conditions there. One congresswoman left the room when the good news from Iraq was being reported. When she returned, she blasted the General making the report for reporting good news out of Iraq. They have invested so much time and energy into American defeat that an American victory would destroy them.

The Presidential candidates on the Democrat side are skipping a visit to the Democratic Leadership Council to attend a convention of the Daily Kos. The Daily Kos is a far left leaning constituency. They are vocal and do give lots of dollars in support of their position. They are also far from the mainstream of American politics. The DLC is much closer to the mainstream of American politics and would give them a greater chance to be elected President. The Daily Kos convention will make it more likely that they would be nominated for President. The Daily Kos people do vote. But they are a bunch of kooks and weirdoes. Anyone supporting their positions would have to be brain dead or simply simple. Their positions are not thought through. They are generally anti-American in their direction. Unfortunately for the US, they are American citizens and entitled to vote.

Things are changing in Iraq. The people in the US can understand that they are changing. Support for the battle in Iraq is gaining. If the trends continue, the Democrat candidates with their anti-war positions will be way out of where the public is. That is good for the Republican candidate. I believe that the Republicans will keep the White House and will regain the House. They will maintain their seats in the Senate and maybe even gain one (doubtful as they have most of the seats up for grabs). This prediction is made over one year before the election. It is probably made with rose colored glasses, but the way things are looking right now, it could happen.

Reports are surfacing all over the place that the surge led by General Petraeus is working. Vast areas of Iraq are seeing reduced levels of violence. The reason is that we still have troops in all of those areas. When our troops are in the area, al-Qaeda is not in the area. Informants are coming to our soldiers and telling them where al-Qaeda is hiding and building their bombs. Tribal leaders are supporting our troops and fighting against al-Qaeda.

Everyone who has been in Iraq in the last month has commented on how much better things are now. Troop morale is up and things are going rather smoothly. That is not to say that soldiers have not been killed. Some have been killed, but the number is declining every month. This is even with the increased troop presence and fighting. That has to mean that we are having some success.

We can expect that al-Qaeda will resort to some sort of counter-attack. That is standard operating procedure in wars. One side starts to push the other around and the other side counter attacks to stop being pushed around. How the counter attack is stopped is the difference in how the war will go.

In WWII, the Germans counter attacked in the Belgian forests. They pushed us a long way and the battle became known as the Battle of the Bulge. We stopped them and pushed them back. The result was defeat for the Germans.

In the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese put on the Tet offensive. We successfully put down the offensive with considerable loss of life. The press reported the Tet offensive as a victory for the North Vietnamese and it became so in the minds of the public. As a result, we ended up losing the war.

Al-Qaeda will put out a counter attack. How that counter attack is reported in the press will determine its success or failure. I am confident that our soldiers and marines will be able to stop any counter attack with a minimum of loss of life. If the press reports what actually happens, we should have it proclaimed as a victory and al-Qaeda will be another failed dictatorship that never happened. If the press lies and reports al-Qaeda attacks as victories and that we are being defeated, we will have a hard time holding onto our successes in Iraq. We might even be forced to leave Iraq before the work is complete, just like we left Vietnam. The difference is that we left Vietnam almost a year before the South Vietnamese collapsed. In Iraq, there is little hope that the current government could hold out for even one day, let alone one year on its own.

The left is invested in our defeat in Iraq. Harry Reid has already declared that we have lost the war over there. He has not even waited to find out if that is true or not. He made that comment before we had even started this surge that is so successful. Nancy Pelosi is not any better when it comes to looking out for our troops. Other voices on the left have called for the defeat of our troops by al-Qaeda. That is no way for an American to talk in a time of war. We should stand behind those who go fight so we can be free. That does not mean we should be Pollyanna’s and say everything is coming up roses. Everything will not go perfectly and we should have the good sense to say so. But, we should also remember that they fight so that we do not have to. They deserve our thoughts and prayers. They also deserve financial help through aid agencies. Not federal agencies, but private groups that help soldiers and marines. That way the injured soldiers can get the best of care right now. They should not have to wait for artificial legs or arms. They should get the best right now.

Since Congressional opponents of the war on Islamo-Fascism are really supporting the imposition of Sharia law on the US, they should be called for what they are. All Congressional supporters of Sharia law should be dubbed Islamists. Now, they will say that they are not supporters of Sharia law. But, they support policies and practices that will lead to an imposition of Sharia law in the US at some future time. Is that not supporting Sharia law? Someone who does not want Sharia law imposed in the US should be doing everything he/she can to stop it from even being considered. Congressional opponents of stopping Sharia law are doing everything they can to allow Sharia law to be imposed.

They will counter that they do not believe that the Islamo-Fascists are really dangerous and that they will stop fighting us when we pull out of Iraq. That is stupid on its face and ignorant when you dig deeper. Everyone knows that if we pull out of Iraq without defeating the Islamo-Fascists, the country will be torn by violence. Thousands, if not millions, will die from being killed by the Islamo-Fascists. Even the New York Times has admitted that this will take place. After Iraq is made into an Islamic state, they will start working to export their terrorism to the US.

After the terrorism is exported to the US, the same people that are afraid to fight the terrorists in Iraq will be afraid to fight them here. If we do not fight them here, we will find ourselves conquered by the Islamo-Fascists. When they conquer us, they will then impose Sharia law. After Sharia law is imposed all hope for the US is lost. The time to fight Islamic Fascism is now, in Iraq and Afghanistan. To quit now is to surrender in the long run. We cannot give up now and fight later. It is fight now or be made slaves.

I am not suggesting that surrendering in Iraq would lead to surrender in the US the next week. But, if we surrender in Iraq our friends will start surrendering one by one. Eventually, we would be left alone and be forced to fight on our streets or surrender. The people that surrendered in Iraq would also want us to surrender at that time. They do not believe that the US should fight in any war whatsoever.

Some of these people want us to become socialist first. They are working to make the US one of the failed socialist states around the world. Every socialist state in the world is having trouble meeting its obligations. The other countries have either had to raise taxes or cut benefits or both. The socialist health care system that socialists love is not working. People are waiting for long periods of time to get routine health care. Extra ordinary health care is put off until after the person dies. Canada is trying to reform their system to make it more like ours. Socialized medicine costs a lot of money. Taxes in socialist health care countries are extremely high. The quality of health care received is usually pretty low.

Becoming socialist before being confronted with a big terrorist threat will just weaken us. Socialist states are weak. For evidence, I suggest looking at the socialist states in the world today. Are there any strong socialist states in the world? The only one would be China. But, also look at the extreme poverty of the majority of the Chinese people. There are a lot of socialist states that are militarily weak. Look at Germany, France, Spain, England, etc. We do not want to follow in their footsteps. We need to follow in our footsteps and try to keep capitalism alive and well.

We need to be strong to withstand the Islamo-Fascists. Any sign of weakness will be a crack they can exploit to destroy us. The only way we can remain strong is to remain as free as possible. We do that by throwing off the burden of the federal and state governments as much as possible. We need to get back to the freedom of early America. Then we will be strong and impossible to defeat.

After seven months in office, the Democrat party has shown what it is good at in running Congress. It is good at investigating a Republican President. It is poor at getting legislation passed. It is even poorer at getting things passed and signed. It has no direction and no leadership. It rails against everything that is good in society and praises everything bad in society. What is good is bad and what is bad is good.

Whoever voted these clowns in should have their heads examined. They are patterned after the gang that couldn’t shoot straight. Now, I admit I do like not having things coming out of Congress. A do-nothing Congress is to my liking. I would prefer a Congress that repeals the mistakes of the past, but a do-nothing Congress is almost as good. They cannot screw things up any worse if they do nothing. They can only screw things up for the country when they pass laws. Fortunately, the Democrat party does not know how to pass laws. That is good news for everyone. Even the stock market has taken note and set new highs.

They have set new highs in investigations. Tony Snow, the President’s Press Secretary, added up some of the costs of the investigations and it was astronomical. If the Democrat party spent one tenth the time on trying to make this country safer as they do on investigating the President, we would be completely safe from all terrorists. An investigation into anything a President does is a waste of tax dollars and a waste of time. One of their biggest investigations has been into the firing of Federal Attorneys. These can be fired at any time for any reason by the President. Bill Clinton fired the attorney that was investigating him and nobody cried foul. These attorneys were not investigating corruption fast enough and so they were fired. The Democrats got their knickers in a bunch and figured they had a scandal on their hands. It is no scandal and never has been a scandal. It has wasted a lot of time of Congress and the President.

The other thing Congress is wasting time on is funding the military. If they want to cut off funds for the military, they should do so. If they are not going to cut off funds for the military, they should give them the money they need. All of these all-night meetings and endless voting and the like should be put off. The military keeps us safe. They deserve our support. Is the military perfect? Of course they are not perfect. They are staffed with human beings. Being a human being is by definition someone who will make mistakes. But, the military is our best and brightest and should be accorded the respect they deserve. The disrespect they get from the left is disgusting. Our military is the best in the world and the best there has ever been. It is the best educated military ever. It is the best trained military in history. They will never be defeated on the battlefield. They will only lose wars in the halls of Congress with yellow backed Democrats and round heeled Republicans that should be voted out of office.

Since at least the Civil War and probably before, the Democrat party has been identified with defeat. The Democrat party wanted to declare defeat all during the Civil War. President Lincoln stood firm and stopped them from destroying our country. As a result, we have our United States today. In every war since then, the Democrat party has been the party of defeat. In the War on Islamo-Fascism, the same is true. The Democrat party is crying for defeat when our men and women are earning victory on the battlefield. The surge is working. All of the reports out of Iraq say the surge is working. With the surge working, we should support the troops and provide them with more men and materials to complete the job. We should not be talking about leaving. Al-Qaeda should be the ones talking about leaving the country. Their time in the country is coming to an end and they know it. Unfortunately for us, the Democrat party is unable to understand that victory is possible. They can only understand that Republicans can be defeated. People in foreign lands are unable to be defeated by Democrats. Now, don’t tell me that FDR and Harry Truman defeated Nazi Germany and Japan. That is true, except that all of the important leadership posts in fighting the war were held by Republicans. FDR would not trust Democrats in any leadership position in running the war. Thought I would add a historical fact to stir the pot and get everyone’s blood boiling.

We should stop this whining about not being able to win the war. We should decide that anyone not supporting our troops should be voted out of office in the next election. This includes round heeled Republicans and yellow backed Democrats. Victory in the War against Islamo-Fascism is the most important issue. Where someone stands on taxes and other issues is secondary. They have to get this first issue right. If I am deciding between two who get the first issue right, I will decide on secondary issues. Right now, I am still backing Mitt Romney. Rudy and Fred are close seconds.