One Day or One Week

A bug has started to go through my family. It is a 24 hour stomach flu. Two or three of my kids have had it in the last couple of weeks or so. I make 4. For the last three it only takes 24 hours of resting your stomach from food and drink and then you can slowly add simple foods. For those that followed this prescription it only took about 24 hours until they could keep food and water down.

My nephew seems to have had the same bug. In his case he is only 2 years old. It is not pleasant to have an empty stomach. It is even less unpleasant to empty it. His parent kept giving him milk. That is was he was used to. He kept throwing up. It took about a week for him to get over his bug.

As I have been up since about 3 am, I have thought about this in relation to the health insurance bill the Senate passed on Christmas Eve. The way I see it, we can either convince our friends and family that they need to wake up and make their vote and dollars heard before this becomes law or we face a much longer battle to undo it.

I plan to find and detail exactly why this bill would be very bad for our economy and our health care. I also plan to suggest alternatives to this health insurance. But before we can even consider what is better we must stop this bill.

I think if all of us rise up and go to work we might have a few days or weeks of concerted effort. It may put us out of our comfort zone. It may be inconvenient or bothersome. Would you rather wait and see how this bill deteriorates the quality of heath care available to us? Should we just not worry about it because we are consigned that it is inevitable? Do you want to wait and see if it really will bankrupt us?

I choose not to wait. I am sick today. If I stick to resting my belly, after a judicious waiting period, I will be back to normal. I want the same for our health care system and economy.

For those of you ready to take action, send this to your friends. Contribute to ReverseTheVote.org, they are targeting 24 Democrats that voted for this. Take further action to reverse the vote so we don't have to repeal the deal.

Do what is takes to stop Obamacare

I have a good friend that has recently become more politically active. I am not sure what he might call himself but I am pretty sure he opposes the current health care bill going through congress.

Hugh Hewitt is urging Tea Party participants to help reverse the vote by trying to reverse the vote of at least 3 Democrats who previously voted for the bill. He suggest that we focus on the 24 Democrats targeted by reversethevote.org

Some of the Tea Party participants will want to grouse about what the Republicans did -- or didn't do -- when they were in the majority before 2007. Some will worry about being co-opted or about losing their influence or position within the media spotlight as 2010 begins to shift to the elections, which inevitably highlight the two parties. Still others will be dreaming "third party" dreams and won't want anything to do with the Party of Lincoln.
A test of the movement is directly ahead. To defeat Obamacare, it is going to have to team up with the GOP. The next few weeks will tell us a lot about the motives, and staying power, of the new activists of 2009.

Tea Party participants, Republicans, Libertarians, Democrats, none of the above, whatever you call yourself. If you really oppose the health care bill, now is the time to show up or amp up your effort.

Contribute time or money to reversethevote.org or work in tandem with them to focus on these 24 Democrats. Let's stop this bill. Only then can we begin to talk about reasonable solutions to health care insurance.

Five Steps to Stop Obamacare

My dad called me this morning with a Republican political survey in the mail he was upset about. I too do not like some of the mail I get that smacks of smarmy sales tactics.

I finished our conversation by talking to him about the health care bill going through the US Senate now. I encouraged him to contribute to ReverseTheVote.org. It is a group targeting 24 House Democrats who voted for Obamacare but who are vulnerable to a well funded Republican candidate in 2010.

I also recommend following Hugh Hewitt's Five Steps To Stop Obamacare. I want to focus my energy on those things that will bring actual change in this situation.

I read this morning from Hugh, Nelson Caves. So Will American Medicine Unless A Different Democratic Senator Steps Up Or Three House Democrats Change Their Votes. So perhaps sending a message to House Democrats is most important at this point.

I encourage you to take action and speak with your contributions. Even $10 would send a message that you care enough to let yourself be counted. Let your representatives and others know where you stand.

Avoid phony security popups

A while ago I got a phony security pop up on our family computer. Someone must have clicked it because the pop up kept reappearring with a scary noise. I ended up using Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware to remove it.

Unless you recognize a pop up as coming from the anti-virus software you installed, you should always just close the window. If keeps coming back it may mean that someone in the house installed the aggressive software by mistake.

One way we have reduced this risk is to add bookmarks to the sites we want our little kids to go to for our little kids . This limits them somewhat in the sites they can get to. I also have them use Firefox, mostly because it has Adblock Plus. It eliminates annoying, sometimes inappropriate, and more rarely dangerous ads.

We also use bsecure internet filter. I think it is work the money.

Here are some more guidelines to keeping yourself and your computer safe online.
Top 5 Internet dangers for kids: A resource guide
Think before you click
“Free Security Scan”Could Cost Time and Money

May We Never Forget

4 minutes to remember - 9/11/2001 tribute

Serious Health Care Reform Requires Serious Tort Reform

From Hugh Hewitt.

What's absurd about the effort is that every high-sounding call for the need to change and the crisis of health care is immediately understood to be hypocrisy because the speakers aren't demanding the sort of damage caps in medical malpractice cases that will have immediate and dramatic impacts on the costly practices of preventative medicine.

Ted Kennedy and President Nixon's national health insurance plan

From Father John H. Taylor and Hugh Hewitt, I learned about the 1971 attempt of Richard Nixon to reform health care. Ted Kennedy regretted that he did not compromise with President Nixon.

The persistent Mormon academic criticism of ‘capitalism’

An interesting dialog of capitalism and its criticism and defense from a Mormon perspective.

The persistent Mormon academic criticism of ‘capitalism’

I agree with his short conclusion, "capitalism is the least worst system available to us — until Zion can be achieved"

NotSoSure.org

I just found out a friend of mine is starring in a couple political videos from NotSoSure.org about nationalized health care.



"In episode two, our friends discuss the importance of 'testing' something before you risk it all. This lesson is applied to the health care reform debate in Washington. See more videos like this at http://notsosure.org."

K-12 budget

I am putting some posts here on the K-12 budget

http://www.espressopundit.com/2009/07/governor-vetoes-k12-budget.html

$100 Billion instead of $1 Trillion

On Mon July 6 Hugh Hewitt interviewed Dr. Irwin Redlener of Columbia University. I think he was the most liberal of the three guests he had on that day.

HH: ...We’re talking about extending Medicare to the population, right?
IR: Yes.
HH: The cost of that is staggering.
IR: I know, Hugh, but it’s not exactly cheap to have 47 million people not in the system, who when they get really sick and show up in an ER, they’re getting charged, it’s costing unbelievable amounts of money for things that maybe could have been prevented in the first place.
HH: But you know it’ll happen. If we go Medicare for everyone, the government’s going to put the squeeze on reimbursements, doctors are going to begin to dump patients, and they’re going to begin to do, they’re going to have boutique and concierge practices, and the elite will be taken care of, the elite, and the rest will get in line.
IR: Yeah. Well, let me ask, this is what I would say to the people, let’s say, on the other side of the debate. What is the alternative to this horrible mess we have now where the insurance company clerks are prohibiting me and people I know from getting the health care they need?
HH: $100 billion dollars a year for community clinics, so that poor people get served. $100 billion bucks a year. It’s one-tenth the cost of what the Obama administration is pushing, and it will deliver hundreds of times the actual care.
IR: And you know, I don’t disagree with that. So the question is, it is a politically feasible reality? And this is the point I was making to you before. I don’t care how we get there. But we have to figure out how we’re going to control the costs, prevent these unbelievable numbers of unnecessary procedures and interventions and surgeries, and make that people are getting good, quality, comprehensive care that they need, that’s preventive in its orientation. If we could figure that out, I don’t think I have a problem with that. But how are you going to get $100 billion dollar a year program passed?
HH: Because the Republicans will spend that rather than the trillion that the government plan will spend.

$100 Billion instead of $1 Trillion. That is one tenth of the cost! The current reform being written is way too costly partly because it will drive competition out of the business. Then the only way to control costs is to ration our health care.
Listen to or read the complete interview.

Healthy Debate on Health Care

On Mon July 6 Hugh Hewitt spent three hours interviewing some knowledgeable about health care. Listen to or read the complete interviews.

Hour 1 - Robert Moffit of the Heritage Foundation
Transcript, Listen Now, Podcast

Hour 2 - Clayton Christensen from the Harvard Business School
Transcript, Listen Now, Podcast

Hour3 - Dr. Irwin Redlener of Columbia University
Transcript, Listen Now, Podcast

Health Care Reform Cost Visualization

The cost of the proposed health care is very large. This video uses pennies to visualize the cost of this plan in relation to the GM bailout and our what we paid our soldiers.

Obama Budget Cuts Visualization

A great video that puts the $100 million dollar budget cuts proposed by Obama in April in perspective.

1776 (the musical)

A great tradition I got from my wife's side of the family is watching 1776 a musical about how the Declaration of Independence came to be.



Here is a list of those in this scene.

Massachsetts - John Adams
Pennsylvania - Benjamin Franklin
Connecticut - Roger Sherman
New York - Philip Livingston
Virginia - Thomas Jefferson

Unemployment Rate With and Without the Recovery Plan

Here is an updated graph to the story I linked to earlier. I got it from Innocent Bystanders.

Romney talks about Government option health care

Hugh Hewitt interviewed Mitt Romney about the major changes being considered in Health Care Insurance. The crux of it for me is why providing a government paid option will be so bad for patients as well as doctors and health insurance providers.

Having a government option will turn into a single payer system like Canada has. Employers choose what insurance options to provide employers. They are going to pick the government option because it is tax payer subsidized. The government is going to eat up a lot of the money in red tape administration of the program.

The system may "cost" patients less out of pocket, but they are really going to pay in longer wait times and sometime unavailable services.

The Geography of Jobs

Here is an interactive map from TipStrategies.com.

It shows the job losses that happened as a result of hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the US car companies job losses that started in 2006. It continues to show the losses in other metropolitan areas that started to mushroom at the end of 2008.

"Obama repackages stimulus plans with old promises"

This is the title of an Associated Press article. I found the reference from Power Line.

This is the chart they are referring to.

Stopping Obamacare's Government Option Via The Blue Dogs: The List and Contact Information

The radical changes to our healthcare system need to be resisted. Hugh Hewitt has a list of contact information of Blue Dog Democrats in the US Congress.

I urge you to contact these beginning with those in your state. Pass this on to your friends and family.

"On The Other Hand..."

From Hugh Hewitt,

President Obama's causal argument today concerning equivalence between the Holocaust and the plight of the Palestinians was the worst part of a lousy speech, but I have a handful of e-mails arguing that it wasn't so bad.

OK, fill in the next paragraph:

"Slavery was a terrible scourge upon the men and women who suffered under it, and a deep stain on the American republic and upon every slave-owner and every American who was silent about its inherent evil

On the other hand...."

Sometimes there is no "other hand," and the attempt to create one today was deeply dishonest pandering by the president.

Find more info here.

Jon Stewart, War Criminals & The True Story of the Atomic Bombs

Here is a link to a video response to John Stewart's claim that Harry Truman was a war criminal for dropping atomic bombs on Japan.

See also the Wikipedia article for more facts about the bombings.

The Mittleider Method

My wife attended a gardening workshop on Tues. She is so excited and I am too. We already adjusted some on our soil so as to not drown some of our tomatoes. Click here to see the first half of one of "The Mittleider Gardening Course" book is online. Use the menu on the left to jump to the different sections available. You need to click on the menu items with the leaf icon to see the topics within.

This shows what soil beds look like

Growing vertically increases your yield

Here is a video showing the double ridges used in the Mittleider method

Keywords: Mittleider Method, garden, gardening

Instructions for creating watering system
http://foodforeveryone.org/pdf/MGC_Chpt_16.pdf

Tyrannosaurus Debt

I love School House Rock. I recently found one that shows what is happening with our national debt. At some point, just paying interest on the debt will be taking a very big chuck of our budget.



Hugh Hewitt also has a post on the forecast of the budget for the next ten years. The graphic shows how much we will be adding to the debt.

9 Principles, 12 Values

I found out about the 9-12 project from my wife and Glen Beck. He created "We Surround Them", a photo mosaic from pictures of people who agree with at least 7 of the 9 principles.

The Nine Principles

1. America is good.

2. I believe in God and He is the Center of my Life.

3. I must always try to be a more honest person than I was yesterday.

4. The family is sacred. My spouse and I are the ultimate authority, not the government.

5. If you break the law you pay the penalty. Justice is blind and no one is above it.

6. I have a right to life, liberty and pursuit of happiness, but there is no guarantee of equal results.

7. I work hard for what I have and I will share it with who I want to. Government cannot force me to be charitable.

8. It is not un-American for me to disagree with authority or to share my personal opinion.

9. The government works for me. I do not answer to them, they answer to me.


12 Values
* Honesty
* Reverence
* Hope
* Thrift
* Humility
* Charity
* Sincerity
* Moderation
* Hard Work
* Courage
* Personal Responsibility
* Gratitude

We the People (Tea Party)

I came across this on the Sonoran Alliance site.

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people." Tenth amendment of the US Constitution

The Price of Freedom

I saw The Price Of Freedom last Friday. It inspires gratitude in me for those who are willing to risk their blood to refresh the tree of liberty. (See Thomas Jefferson quote)

The Speech of Rush Limbaugh

Over a decade ago I cut my political teeth listening to Rush Limbaugh.  I don't particularly like his arrogant schtick.  My most listened to commentator, Hugh Hewitt clued me in to Rush's recent speech at CPAC.  Here is the video.  Here is the transcript.

I am now 20 minutes into the 90 minute recording.  Rush is an effective communicator of the economic liberty principles I believe in. 

K-12 Education Public Funding

My wife sent me this article about K-12 funding in the current AZ Legislature.  I have started to read some at respectforregularfolks.com.  This issue is very concerning to me.

We are in difficult economic times.  I work at CB Richard Ellis.  All of the US employees are getting a pay cut.  How do we deal with smaller public revenues in AZ?

There is a part of me that says that public school funding should be like insurance.  You pay every month with an assurance that if something goes wrong, you will still be able to pay your bills.  There is another part of me that says budgets must be cut when revenues go down.

I am no expert in personal budgeting let alone public ones.  I do have a couple of questions.  How will budget cuts be affecting charter schools?  Would they get the same cuts public schools get?  What else could be cut to replace the proposed cuts in education?

I would appreciate any insight.

The Next Two Years

I found this post at Sonoran Alliance announcing PoliticalAZ.com. It does not have RSS yet, which would make it an easy add to my reader.

Since the Nov elections, I have occasionally been thinking about what is next. I have resolved to become involved earlier in the election cycle for 2010. Support for candidates early in the election cycle mean more.

If anyone has any suggestions for who would be the best choice for US Senator for AZ, AZ Governor, other governors, AZ State Legislature or US Congress, let me know.

Freshman Congressman Sleeps on Cot

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