Man's Weight Loss Secret 'Exposed'

WARNING: This Weight Loss System Only Works for Responsible People Who Are Not Lazy

Little did I know when I made the decision to keep a stray puppy who showed up at my medical equipment store and chased away my customers for four days that the decision would ultimately turn out to be among the best I've ever made - at least as it pertains to my own personal health and fitness.

The puppy, who appears to be some variation of a golden retriever mixed with chow, originally appeared during the heart of winter, antisocial and severely malnourished. She would not allow people to come within about 30 feet of her, but for whatever reason hung around the store, which is located along a very heavily trafficked thoroughfare in Covington, Louisiana.

It's a miracle that she wasn't killed by a passing vehicle during those days before I was able to catch her. Well, turned out she was a runaway, almost certainly due to abuse sufferd at the hands of her previous owner. Extremely skittish, while not aggressive, she would snap in defense when anyone made any attempt at touching her - particularly her head, neck and face.
This made her "unadoptable". The Humane Society wouldn't take her, and I refused to bring her to the pound because I know what they do to dogs there (they systematically and methodically kill them). Thus, I decided to take her home with me and work on establishing a bond of trust with her in hopes of taming her enough to find her a good home.
Well, she grew on me, as I did her. While she still has her moments, and is still hyper-sensitive to any agressive talk or movements, she's come an awful long way for a dog that everyone else had left for dead (with many advising me to bring her to the pound and let them murder her).
She's also had a bit of an unexpected impact on me personally, and my relative degree of health and fitness, to be specific. You see, I live in a condo with no backyard in suburban Long Beach, Mississippi. Dogs occasionally have to "go". In fact, for those dogs that reside primarily indoors, they must be walked several times a day, 4-5 at the absolute minimum. They also have what to humans seems like an infinite amount of energy to burn off, which lends to the walks being very fast-paced, occasionally graduating into outright jogging.
I moved to Long Beach about 8 weeks ago. Prior to that, I had lived in a rural community where the dog had plenty of green space to roam about as she saw fit without any leash or restraint. With the move, I had inadvertantly taken on the responsibility of walking and exercising the dog.
When I moved, my clothes also fit me --- quite well in fact. That has changed so much that this past weekend I came to grips with the reality that I'm going to have to buy an entire new wardrobe. While fishing in the surf along the Mississippi gulf coast on a beach that while not crowded, is frequented by enough people that it is by no means isolated, and certainly not private.
One can imagine the thoughts going through my head after wading out about 100 feet into water about 4-6 inches below waist-deep. The first real wave that came along brought the water level to my chest, and my bathing suit to my ankles. This was a bathing suit that had fit rather well when I first moved to the area, so I had no reason whatsoever to suspect that the weight from the water added to the suit itself as a result of being wet was sufficient to prevent the shorts from staying in place. It was so bad in-fact that I had to literally hold them up by grabbing the waistline of the shorts with my fist and holding it around my hips. Luckily, there were no children around to witness the traumatic spectable.
The worst part was the walk back. I had to carry two fishing poles, a large tackle box and an ice chest, having to pause every few steps to pull up my shorts before they fell too far.
While certainly not a pleasant experience (briefly losing my britches in plain view of everyone on the beach), and without a doubt anything but a pretty sight (at least for most), the flip-side is that I'm in the best shape now that I've been in since my early 20's, and I have my rescued dog to thank for it. All those walks, runs and jogs have definitely paid off in terms of my health.
Sure, she's put a pretty big drain on my wallet, but I'll gladly trade the money it costs to feed and care for her along with the cost of my new wardrobe, not to mention being put in a bit of a compromising position for the better part of an hour in exchange for peak fitness.
So, if you're struggling to lose weight or have a desire to lose weight, are a responsible and caring person, and are not inherently lazy, you may want to consider visiting your local animal shelter and adopting a dog. This goes for anyone, including both men and women experiencing weight gain - so long as the individual is responsible and motivated enough for such a long-term physical commitment.
A pet is a major responsibility, and is not right for everyone --- especially those with anger issues, who lack empathy or who are downright lazy, narcissistic or irresponsible. However, if you do qualify as someone suitable to become a pet-owner, a puppy can be a wonderful way to improve your quiality of life, a loyal companion whose love is truly unconditional, and on top of all of that a pretty darn good way to motivate oneself to exercise and lose weight.
It sure worked for me. Just ask everyone at the beach whose vision was forever scarred by an untimely wave that left no room for doubt that I am in fact in far better shape than I was two months ago, with at least four inches gone from my waste that had been there as recently as February.

Good Doctors vs Bad Doctors

In my experience growing up in a family that eats, sleeps and breathes healthcare and medicine (father owns several healthcare-related companies; mother is a primary care nurse practitioner and is also the owner of a Covington skin care spa; and a sister who is a MD (ENT, to be specific), I have a few thoughts about an article I came across at About.com about (no pun intended) how to distinguish good doctors from the not-so-good ones. I take exception to the title of the article, which is why I will refrain from using it here.

The article mentions a survey that was obviously conducted in such a way that doctors would appear to be dishonest creeps once the results were in. Not surprisingly, the survey was conducted by Massachusetts-based researchers, most affiliated with Harvard University.

I'd like to see the context and the way in which the questions were presented and phrased before taking any statistics from the study at face value. There surely must have been more information provided to the doctors surveyed than the minimal information reported in the 'Patients.About' article. No doctor would answer the questions supposedly asked without context. The author of the piece included a link to the abstract, but offered nothing by way of details in terms of the use "gotcha!" questions in conducting the survey.

"Good" Nurse Practitioner Pam Egan

That said, I somewhat agree with the 6-point plan for patients proposed as a solution to a problem the article claims exists (although this author has his doubts about the size, scope and nature of the problem, if it even exists at all). The alleged problem is doctor dishonesty, and the six-point plan suggests such things as seeking second opinions, trusting one's intuition and urging patients to not 'put up with arrogant doctors...'. To read the entire piece, see the above link (for more practical reading, continue on with this piece).

To begin, there is this thing called Google these days, and anyone in the civilized world can use it to access any information that exists in the world to be presented at the user's fingertips at the speed of light. Anyone taking a medication for which the person has any questions, it never hurts to do a little self-research to compliment the information provided by the doctor and/or manufacturer of the drug.

Additionally, intuition is an extremely important and often overlooked component of finding the best doctors. If you feel uncomfortable around your doctor, it's probably not because he or she is wearing a white coat and has loads of credentials that may make he or she appear to be some sort of authority figure to some patients. If one feels uncomfortable around his/her doctor, there's probably a good reason --- even if one cannot pinpoint the exact source of the discomfort.

Patients should always ask about treatment options. If a doctor does not provide all or at least most of the credible information available via the internet, it may be time to either ask the doctor the reason why he or she omitted one of more treatment options for whichever condition or disease the patient was diagnosed. If the answer is unsatisfactory, it may be time to find a new doctor.

I would take patient reviews of physicians with a grain of salt. As a business owner, I am well aware of the myriad of tactics, tricks and paid services businesses (inevitably including some physicians, clinics and other healthcare professionals) use to artificially control and/or manipulate their own respective reputations. This may come in the form of reviewing oneself under a different name, or exchanging friendly reviews with other businesses, professionals, etc. Other tactics include writing false negative reviews of competing businesses/professionals and paying companies to manage reputation. A number of companies have cropped up over the past 18 months purporting to specialize in "reputation management", for what its worth.

Furthermore, there are myriad reasons why a legitimate customer may leave a disproportionately negative review of a company or individual. Some customers, clients and patients lack the degree of honesty and integrity necessary to be credible when writing a review of a business, person or organization. Just look at this example of an incident involving a couple of scam artists and a used bedside commode.

I wouldn't seek a second opinion unless the health or medical issue/condition/disease was very serious, or if I intuitively felt as though the doctor was (or may be) wrong.

I wouldn't attempt to self-diagnose, which is essentialy what differential diagnosis is when conducted by the patient; but I would research the symptoms. If another condition seemed more plausible than the diagnosis issued by the physician, then it would be time to seek a second opinion.

One final means of weeding out bad doctors is to talk with them about nutrition. The days of reactionary 20th Century medicine are over. The amount of research that has been conducted involving the relationship between nutritional deficiencies and propensity for disease is staggering, and probably more than double the amount of such information available just ten years ago when vitamin D supplements contained a plant-based form of the nutrient that is not well absorbed by humans (vitamin D2, ergocalciferol), but which is cheaper to produce than the more bioactive (readily absorbed for use by the body) form used in most supplements today (vitamin D3, cholecalciferol).

21st Century physicians should not be averse to discussing the role of nutrition in the big picture of one's overall health. The information is readily available, and slowly but surely the stigma long assiciated with doctors, nurse practitioners and other healthcare professionals making claims regarding nutrition (or the lack thereof) as a contributing factor to disease are (or at least should be) long over. The peer pressure physicians face with regard to the role of nutrition in medicine has started to subside in recent years, and a genuinely good primary care, family/general practice doctor who is well informed will ask his or her patients if they'd like to have a blood test conducted to measure one's nutrient levels in order to identify any potentially harmful deficiencies.

Be very wary of those general/family practice and/or primary care doctors who either won't speak in depth about the role of nutrition towards overall health, or who pooh-pooh the notion that vitamins and supplements can help to prevent disease and/or other health maladies.

Following the advice outlined above should help patients find a good doctor who is trustworthy as well as informed.

New Orleans Home Health Care Nurse's Assailants Caught

About a week ago, there was a horribly tragic story in the New Orleans Times Picayune about a home health care nurse who was brutally gang raped while on her way to see a patient. The news shook the community, and the healthcare community in particular.
While there is really no positive way of looking at the crime that took place when that poor woman was victimized, there is one small bit of good news to the story.

The NOPD (New Orleans Police Department) has made an arrest in conjunction with the case, and appears to be hot on the trail of the others suspected to have been involved in the crime. All I can say is that I sincerely hope they catch every single one of them, and that they (if found guilty) never see the light of day again.

Home health care nurses routinely make visits directly to the homes of patients, where they do things like change wound dressings, bathe immobile patients, clean wounds and so forth. They are different from home health aids, which are more like babysitters for the elderly than an actual skilled RN.

Growing up in a household with two healthcare professionals as my parents, I can definitely relate to this poor woman's agony in a way not everyone can.

I hope the DA assigns his best prosecutors to the case, and I hope the defense lawyers aren't any better than they have to be, as if these guys actually did what they are accused of, they need not be allowed to interact with normal society again - every again.
For more on the arrest that was made, there's a pretty good article at the Nursing Ethics Network: http://www.nursingethicsnetwork.org/arrest-made-in-gang-rape-of-home-health-care-nurse.html.

Author's Note: The nurse who was victimized was not employed nor affiliated with my family's respective businesses in any way, although our hearts do go out to her and she is nonetheless in our prayers. Nobody should ever have to endure that. Ever.

Fat Lester Formally Endorses Newt Gingrich

The campaign of former House Speaker and current GOP Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich received a major boost today when internet / social media extraordinaire Fat Lester officially endorsed the former Congressman from Georgia.

Fat Lester, whose real name is Peter Egan, had not previously endorsed a candidate, citing favorable views of numerous candidates early on in the GOP nominating contest, along with the fact that he personally knows more than one of the candidates originally in the race as reasons for refraining from issuing an endorsement.

(Newt Gingrich consults with NOLA Tea Party leaders including Fat Lester)

However, when Herman Cain announced that he was suspending his campaign in light of a series of frivolous, racially-motivated attacks by several women on the left who were allegedly paid millions combined in exchange for levying the false and defamatory charges. Needless to say, these women were acting on behalf of the Obama Administration/Campaign (they're one-in-the-same), including at least one Obama Administration employee and the next-door neighbor of Obama's speech writer, it left Gingrich as the only candidate in the race with whom Lester has spoken with at length and in person regarding the challenges facing the country and the solutions required to get the nation back on the right track.

(GOP Presidential Candidate Newt Gingrich and Right-Wing Conspirator Fat Lester)

That said, personal affiliation with a candidate was not the sole criteria upon which Lester based the decision. Lester is also a strong supporter of former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, and identifies with Santorum's views on most issues, in particular the one nobody likes to talk about: the "A-word".

(Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich introduces himself to the VRWC)

This conflict made endorsing a candidate difficult even after Cain, whom Lester had helped raise funds via a Tea Party Rally with over two thousand attendees (back before he'd even announced he was running) at which Cain was the keynote speaker; announced that his campaign was effectively over and that he (Cain) would be endorsing Gingrich. However, after three states have held their nominating contests, with Santorum's victory in Iowa failing to translate into momentum going forward, Lester decided Gingrich is the candidate most likely to defeat Obama in a 1-on-1 match-up due to his unnaturally high IQ (he must have 50 IQ points over Obama and no less than 120 over former Speaker Nancy Pelosi) as well as his superior debate skills.

(Naturally, the media was not invited to the closed-door session)

While Fat Lester had speculated back in June that Gingrich may ultimately represent the Republican Party's best shot at victory in 2012, he had withheld making an endorsement so early on in the campaign for obvious reasons, some of which are stated above.

Lester is not going to merely informally endorse the former Speaker by issuing a public announcement on one of his blogs. Rather, he will be putting his money (something he has very little of) where his mouth is, and will be making a financial contribution to both Gingrich and Santorum's respective campaigns, with Gingrich receiving roughly twice the amount that will be given to Santorum. Should the latter win any more states or do anything else that results in his building of momentum with the majority of states yet to vote, he will likely receive additional funding from Lester proportionate to any progress he makes in terms of gaining ground on Mitt Romney and Ron Paul.

(Newt Gingrich thanks Fat Lester for his advice and endorsement)

Fat Lester would like to encourage anyone and everyone reading this who cares about the general welfare of the United States of America to do likewise and make a donation to the Gingrich campaign using the link below. He would like for you to do this regardless of who you are, what your party affiliation is or which candidate you're supporting. Anyone can donate, regardless of one's income.

DONATE TO NEWT'S CAMPAIGN

America's Next President Poses with Fat Lester's Sister

If Fat Lester can come up with $100 spread out over a few months, so can you. It's time we take our country back, and we're going to need everyone to chip in whatever they can in order to save the nation.

The most important people were seated closest to the candidate

Another four years of Obama holding the office of the Presidency, and the United States will look more like Cuba than the prosperous one-time superpower where anyone who was willing to work hard could achieve success not attainable in most places throughout the world.

Fat Lester believes Newt Gingrich is the candidate with the best chance to take in 57+% of the vote required to win after the millions of fraudulent votes that will be cast by democrats are accounted for. In swing states, the real number needed to win could reach as high as 63-64%. In order to win this election, we will need to get 100% of the eligible voters in this country who want to preserve the freedom, prosperity and opportunity for which America was founded and will always be remembered (in the event Obama wins and the nation is disassembled or integrated into a North American Union). In order to do that, we will need to contribute whatever we can without losing our homes or failing to put food on our respective tables.

Please donate to Newt's campaign. If you support Ron Paul or Rick Santorum, donate to them as well. Fat Lester will be donating $120, $80 to the Gingrich campaign and $40 to the Santorum campaign. Please make one sacrifice on an item you can live without (as long as it's not something you're considering buying from Fat Lester or his affiliated businesses ;-), and instead use that money to help defeat the great American Saboteur-in-Chief.

---

On a totally separate note, it appears Mitt Romney's got some problems on the horizon:

Small Business Directory Inadvertently Opens Door for Competition

LOS ANGELES, CA - Like most everyone else throwing their two cents into the discussion over the 2012 edition of Merchant Circle versus the community we'd all grown to know and love, I'd like to personally take this opportunity to state on record my opposition to MerchantCircle's 2012 overhaul of the site design and functionality.

Merchants who contribute content should be rewarded for their efforts, and before January of 2012 they were. Now, our blog posts aren't even featured on our company homepage, nor are our products, photos or coupons. The fact that MC has shifted focus away from those creating content and towards those paying for placement is a move that will undoubtedly upset a number of business owners in addition to myself, opening the proverbial door of opportunity for competitors to move in on the space the old MC had occupied.

Merchant Circle's 2012 overhaul has angered users, opening the door for competitors to move in.

Instead of the 2011 profiles, which largely featured a merchant's contributions on his or her own small business' homepage on the site, those pages now have more ads to competitors' pages and websites, with only reviews displayed beneath the company bio on company homepages. The category links that once appeared on my Merchant Circle company homepage are now gone, as is the Google +1 button (although it remains on some of the pages that haven't yet adopted the new design).

Many formerly free features now cost far more than fair market value based on pricing for similar services at those few companies who do charge for them.

Rather than labor for the benefit of companies with the resources to pay to be prominently featured on my Merchant Circle company homepage that doesn't even link to my recent blog posts, photos, coupons or deals, I will instead most likely be spending more time on similar sites --- alternatives to Merchant Circle --- preferably sites that won't use bait-and-switch tactics to trick users to generate loads of free content, only to see the commercial benefit of said content be taken away from them.

One such site is called StoreBoard. At StoreBoard, you have a company profile, such as the one I have already created for Egan Medical. Like Merchant Circle, companies get their own blog, and can add coupons, list products in the marketplace, post images, classifieds and even links to their company's respective site-within-a-site.

The company blogs are superior to those at MC as the option to add photographs to posts actually functions properly, meaning the photo actually appears, and all text and HTML show beneath the photo also appears on the page for each respective post. As most users of Merchant Circle who've tried to add photos to blog posts without completely coding the entire page from scratch, the photos usually don't appear, and all text/HTML appearing beneath the photo does not appear either. I once lost more than an hour's work because I forgot to independently save a copy of my MC blog post on my own computer, and lost it when I attempted to include a photo in the post, only to find that all photos and everything appearing beneath them just gets deleted on MC blogs. StoreBoard blogs also give the user superior formatting options compared to those offered by MC.

Here is an example post by Egan Medical Equipment about a new line of products (maternity supports, to be specific) which now are available for purchase through the company's online store: Egan Medical Unveils New Line of Maternity Supports.

Obviously, the site is newer and not as powerful, so the benefit of your activity there won't have the immediate and meaningful impact being featured prominently at Merchant Circle once had.


In fact, each company gets its own links page, and as long as the links don't violate the company's terms of service, users can pretty much post anything they think their customers will appreciate, be it links to products, articles, news stories or whatever else might be useful.

Like Merchant Circle, all that is displayed on a given company's homepage is their bio and contact info (including website link). However, I haven't seen any ads for competitors either while logged in or out, so if they exist they're minimal and out-of-the-way, and you won't see your hard work serve to benefit a larger competitor with a bigger advertising budget.

While we're on the topic of new competitors to the Small Business Online Directory business, one not-so-new player is making a new and significant push to add features that might lure users away from competitors such as MC. Well known, established directory site Manta has added a number of features that will definitely appeal to merchants, and which are superior to the comparable features offered by MC.
Take for example this product page, which is more like a general category page about maternity supports (basically an orthopedic support for women during pregnancy) than a singular product page. The maternity supports page was recently created for a small business profile at Manta. Observe the large photo of the product, the ability to list either a singular price for a specific item or a price range for a class or group of items. Also, observe the length of the product description, which far outpaces the amount of space given by MC for product pages, and even then there were no links to the actual product page on the merchant's website. Manta has all that and more. While I'm no profit, it would seem a logical conclusion that Manta may be soon offering merchants the opportunity to blog directly from their Manta profile, which would get Manta up-to-par in terms of everyone else in the business with regard to the amount and extent of features available to merchants willing to spend their time creating content for the site for free in exchange for a small but sometimes meaningful bit of a promotional opportunity and benefit.

Unless and until Manta and StoreBoard "pull a MerchantCircle" and revokes the most appealing features of its site for the benefit of a handful of each industry's largest and richest players, I will likely be spending as much if not more time developing Egan Medical's presence within the StoreBoard community as I will continue to spend here on Merchant Circle.

I'll also stop paying for a certain Merchant Circle paid upgrade if said upgrade (they know to which one I am referring) fails to reappear on my company profile within the next 7 days.

Anyway, I hope someone at Merchant Circle is eventually made aware of all the displeasure among business owners and their respective employees about the recent overhaul of Merchant Circle's design and functionality, and I sincerely hope the big MC can get it together and make real improvements rather than changes that prey upon small business owners as much as they help them.

Drug Shortages in the U.S. Completely Unacceptable

There is absolutely no excuse for an absence of anesthesia drugs in a hospital in the United States of America preventing a surgery to be performed on schedule or as planned. I am not interested in hearing the various excuses being made by the responsible parties.

It absolutely incredible to me that criminals on the street have no problem whatsoever obtaining high-end pain relief drugs yet major hospitals in the U.S. have to issue their patients Tylenol because of these so-called "shortages".

It's not just hospitals that are finding themselves unable to obtain sufficient quantities of medicine to meet patient demand. Retail and infusion pharmacies are also finding themselves on the short end of the stick, unable to obtain the medicines their patients (customers) need.

Can pharmacies sue drug manufacturers for failing to fulfill demand?

It might be time to begin exploring the possibility of instituting fines for pharmaceutical companies that fail to meet demand. Another option would be to coerce them into entering binding contracts which would hold them liable for compensatory damages in the event their supply fails to meet demand.


Whatever the solution, this entire fiasco is reminiscent of paragraph in George Orwell's 1984 about razor shortages and shortages in general, and for this to be happening in the United States is surreal in addition to being completely and totally unacceptable.


This is America, and if the existing pharmaceutical firms aren't able to get the job done, then it's time for a new competitor to emerge who isn't afraid to create enough of a supply to meet an ever-increasing demand.

Regarding Senator Vitter's Proposal to Drug Test Welfare Recipients

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 06, 2011

My favorite U.S. Senator, David Vitter, R-LA, recently published an editorial at USNews.com arguing in favor of random drug testing of federal welfare recipients. While I do not necessarily disagree with the Senator's premise or logic, I do believe that the proposal outlined in the column does not do enough to sufficiently address the monumental waste of taxpayer funds as it pertains to drug addiction.

I most definitely believe that Senator Vitter's heart and mind are in the right place with this proposal. I certainly do not want my tax dollars being used by welfare recipients to purchase illegal drugs.

However, I would like to know what the relative cost would be to put welfare-recipients who are addicted to drugs through treatment versus simply continuing to support their lifestyle? I would be willing to be that the latter actually costs less to the taxpayers.

I believe that any such program should include a provision mandating that anyone arrested for possession of illegal narcotics be sentenced to drug treatment rehabilitation instead of serving time in jail/prison.

The cost of incarcerating non-violent drug offenders far outweighs the cost of their monthly welfare check. If we're serious about reducing wasteful expenditures of tax dollars, let's invest the money currently being used to incarcerate drug addicts into inpatient detox and rehabilitation. This will (by my estimation) more than quadruple the savings as individuals currently incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses could become taxpaying citizens themselves rather than having their entire lives destroyed permanently on the taxpayers' dime.

I'm all for the testing of welfare recipients, but I will reiterate that if the proposal's real intent is to reduce wasteful government spending at both the state and federal level, any such legislation should also seek to reform the criminal justice system in such a way that nonviolent drug offenders receive treatment instead of jail time.

Why I Will NOT Be Voting for Ron Paul in the GOP Primary

The only way he'd get my vote is if his opponent were Barack Obama, and even then I'd pull the lever holding my breathe that those classified security briefings he'd receive would bring about a 180 in terms of his foreign policy views and initiatives.

The one area which the United States federal government has undisputed constitutional authority to spend taxpayer money is on the military and defense, and Congressman Paul's foreign policy views are simply too wrong for me to vote for him against any other Republican.

Ron Paul and the other GOP candidates for President debate

I like Ron Paul. I'd like him w whole lot better if is position on foreign policy and the role of the United States military in maintaining global order while eliminating threats to the Constitution and the republic wasn't so badly skewed.

The thing about him that is so maddening is that on just about every single issue foreign policy excluded, he is right-on-the-money, and towers over the other candidates in the GOP primary in terms of his positions on the issues and his rationale for said positions. However, when it comes to foreign policy, Rep. Paul has convinced me that were he to be elected President, he'd either very quickly realize how wrong he has been all these years in light of the classified security briefings new Presidents receive; or he'd transition the United States into a new Russian territory (like Cuba, for example).

It's easy for Americans to get caught up in an illusion that lends to a belief that the world is run by sane, rational and civilized people who share the values most Americans hold dear. Unfortunately, this is simply not the case.

Communism will always be a threat to this or any republic. The only thing standing in the way of another world war that would make the previous two pale in comparison in terms of the devastation it would unleash is the United States military, and the brave men and women who serve our country and defend our constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Rep. Paul's stated desire to adopt an isolationist foreign policy while slashing the size and potency of the military, including but not limited to the withdrawal of troops from strategic locations around the world, is what makes him a dangerous candidate, and one for whom I would not vote unless I had absolutely no other choice (meaning if he were to actually win the 2012 GOP nomination).

Since Herman Cain dropped out of the race, I have yet to formally endorse a candidate, but plan to do so in the near future in an upcoming post.