I don’t make New Year’s resolutions because they always get broken, but our entire household has decided a diet is in order and it’s easier for three to diet than one. We’ll see how far that goes.

I am sometimes too blunt and will attempt to be more thoughtful before spitting something out of my mouth. No guarantees there either.

I want to get closer to the Lord this year, learn more of His Word and His Will for my life. This is the most important thing to me.

I must finally give in and get those new glasses. The old ones have just about had it with me tightening screws daily.

I will find a candidate I think is suitable for the presidency. One with experience, a calm demeanor in times of crisis and who doesn’t try to change history just a few years after it happens.

Of the leading Republican contenders I think Mitt Romney is too slick by half and is running negative now. I don’t like negative.

Mike Huckabee is so inexperienced in world affairs and in federal affairs that I believe he would be a Jimmy Carter with an R after his name. He has also gone negative. Cross him off my list.

Rudy Giuliani seems to be sinking like a rock, although time will tell the story on that.

John McCain’s star is rising and except for his frustrating actions in the past I can go along with him. It’s the present and future I must look to, but the past shows what the future holds. I don’t want a party man but one who will be a man who will serve the entire country even if it means bucking his own party. His star is rising if you believe the polls.

If Fred Thompson had been making himself available throughout this campaign to tell us what he told us in his 15 minute speech trying to close the sale in Iowa, he would be a formidable candidate, and my heart is still with him.

Bottom line: I live in South Carolina and our primary comes right behind New Hampshire’s. Another small state that will have a big say in the nominees of the parties. If Fred is still alive in the campaign I intend to vote for him.

Otherwise it’s a tossup with McCain and Giuliani and there are faults with both of them. I am going to vote for the one I believe is the right one and not for the better of two evils. Then I’ll let God sort it out in the end.

I see no one on the horizon of the Democratic party I could possibly vote for. At one time I thought Richardson was a good candidate with experience but he stuck his foot in his mouth the other day when he suggested we force Musharraf out of office after the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. Not too smart.

Then there’s that dream vacation my husband and I have wanted to take to the West and see some of the National Parks. I want to go back to Hawaii but he wants to do the West tour first.

Other than that I just plan to be as good a Christian as I can be.

I’m having a crisis right now with a sick dog. Not just any dog, but my favorite dog.

Right now she’s in the hospital for vomiting and Monday she stopped eating. She has a history of cancer that has been in remission for over three years now.

Wednesday our vet is probably going to do exploratory surgery on her digestive tract to see if she can pinpoint the problem.

Depending on what it is and how severe it is she may be euthanized while on the operating table. We have been told we can go in there to be with her if that happens.

If we find an isolated tumor and chemo can take care of it we’ll probably do that, but no radiation as that burned her badly last time.

I’ll return when my head is back on straight.

In the meantime, Sue’s server is giving her trouble and she’ll post if she can get service. Guss will be aboard and has promised to write conservative as well as liberal posts. I may be here for commenting.

Some people just do not want to democracy. I think you gave it one helluva shot.

By the time he arrived in Prague in June for a democracy conference, President Bush was frustrated. He had committed his presidency to working toward the goal of “ending tyranny in our world,” yet the march of freedom seemed stalled. Just as aggravating was the sense that his own government was not committed to his vision.

As he sat down with opposition leaders from authoritarian societies around the world, he gave voice to his exasperation. “You’re not the only dissident,” Bush told Saad Eddin Ibrahim, a leader in the resistance to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. “I too am a dissident in Washington. Bureaucracy in the United States does not help change. It seems that Mubarak succeeded in brainwashing them.”

If he needed more evidence, he would soon get it. In his speech that day, Bush vowed to order U.S. ambassadors in unfree nations to meet with dissidents and boasted that he had created a fund to help embattled human rights defenders. But the State Department did not send out the cable directing ambassadors to sit down with dissidents until two months later. And to this day, not a nickel has been transferred to the fund he touted.

Two and a half years after Bush pledged in his second inaugural address to spread democracy around the world, the grand project has bogged down in a bureaucratic and geopolitical morass, in the view of many activists, officials and even White House aides. Many in his administration never bought into the idea, and some undermined it, including his own vice president. The Iraq war has distracted Bush and, in some quarters, discredited his aspirations. And while he focuses his ire on bureaucracy, Bush at times has compromised the idealism of that speech in the muddy reality of guarding other U.S. interests.

The story of how a president’s vision is translated into thorny policy is a classic Washington tale of politics, inertia, rivalries and funding battles — and a case study in the frustrated ambition of a besieged presidency. Bush says his goal of “ending tyranny” will take many generations, and he aims to institutionalize it as U.S. policy no matter who follows him in the White House. And for all the difficulties of the moment, it may yet, as he hopes, see fruition down the road

Story

Friday I received a note from my doctor giving me my blood test results from Wednesday.

Despite taking the fish oil tablets and the prescribed medication he had told me to take for my trigylcerides, my triglycerides were still almost three times what the top part of normal should be.

My good cholesterol was low while the triglyceride readings made it impossible to measure my bad cholesterol.

This is a new problem for me. I am a type 2 diabetic and know I should not eat as much starch as I would like, but I’ve done it anyway.

Friday night I asked the Lord to keep me alive so I could stay alive. What I meant was to let me hold on until I can get back on an exercise program and diet of mostly fish and chicken, lots of non-starchy vegetables and get some weight off that will bring the triglycerides and bad cholesterol down and the good cholesterol up.

My knees have made it impossible for me to use the treadmill any longer, but I can go to the local park and walk on a fairly level part of the walking trail, building up speed and distance as time goes on.

In the meantime, I can use my stationary bicycle, as a bicycle is supposed to be better on the knees. When you’ve had two operations to remove cartilage from one knee and you have bone on bone you have, by definition, arthritis in that knee. Therefore, you tend to use the other knee for climbing stairs etc. and before you know it you have two bad knees.

I talked to a friend from church and he told me he got his triglycerides down by using cinnamon. I asked where he had heard about it and he said he had read about it in a magazine or online.

I searched online and found that cinnamon is helpful to blood sugar and cholesterol, so I’ve purchased cinnamon capsules, which are nothing more than ground cinnamon in capsules. I take two a day and use cinnamon in tea and other things to flavor them.

Check here for the benefits of cinnamon.

I might add I had half my thyroid removed about four years ago and need to ask this doctor to do a test on my thyroid levels since he’s a new doctor for me. My throat specialist said I shouldn’t need thyroid medication and every test so far has shown he is right, but things change and I want to have it checked.

My sugar levels are good and my liver is good, so I’m not completely falling apart unless the grease in my blood vessels clogs up like unchanged oil in a car.

Please bear with me while I go through this change, as I may get grumpy sometimes because I’m hungry. I know I’ll be outside doing things to help keep the blood flowing, but that should be in the early morning (I’m not a morning person) or in the evening when the heat and humidity have lowered enough to be able to breathe outside.

If you’re a praying person I ask for your prayers, and if you’re at risk as I am I ask you to join me in trying to get healthier.

I wrote a story of Rosie O’Donnell insinuating our troops are terrorists, a story showing a congressman being emotional because Congress finally agreed to fund the guys who are fighting the war and allow them to get equipment such as vehicles that can withstand an IED explosion and numerous other posts and all I get is someone making a comment about how hypocritical Christians are and another one talking about a congressman being so emotional he needs counseling. Just as Durbin needed it when he cried in the Senate, I suppose.

Nothing commenting on the soldier found dead in the Euphrates or anything but potshots.

This will be my last post today. I’m tired, I’m grumpy and I’m not going to fight over things of this world.