Who pays for the sick insured?

I think that is a good question to think about.
Last night, well this morning, the congress voted for a new health insurance make over bill. There are many many many problems with the bill. Most of all it doesn't do what the POTUS promises it does. He is leading us to believe that the bill will lower health care costs for all Americans, and for the government.
Tell me if cutting 500 billion from Medicare will lower costs for the elderly. Or if that will improve the quality of their care. What about the billions of dollars in tax hikes? Does that count as lowering costs? Or how about the requirement that every single person in this land purchase a insurance plan? If your boss doesn't provide a plan you have to buy it, or pay a fine. Or the fact that it is now going to be made law that no one can be rejected for having a preconditions.
Witch brings me back to my first question. Who pays for the sick that already have insurance? Well the answer is the NOT sick, or the well that are insured. Same with car insurance, the people that don't wreck pay for the ones that do. If you and I have the same provider and I brake my clavicle, your premium pays for my treatment. The more people that use up those premiums the higher the premiums have to go.
So... If everyone will have insurance, even those that have preconditions like cancer and heart problems and so on, that cost lots of money and that go to treatment often, what will happen to our premiums? I seen on the news today that a healthy person's, age 25-30, health insurance premiums will increase an average of 176%.
Add that to high taxes and the hundreds of bad things in this bill, and this thing becomes a complete joke. It needs to be killed in committee. Please help in opposing this bill. It is not helpful to any of us. President Obama actually said that he just wants a bill, and that he don't care what it looks like because anything is better than nothing. It seems that in Washington now a days the victory is in just passing a bill, even if it harms the country instead of helps it. For me the victory needs to be in passing a bill that works! This bill harms everyone, even my granola brother in law. In fact is will affect him and I probably the most in its bad ways.
"Kill the bill" to quote Howard Dean.

My latest gig.

I had a friend ask me to do their family portraits. I think they are turning out okay. I don't know for sure though. Here are a couple of examples. I hope that they like them. I told them the only way that I would do it was if they didn't even attempt to try and compensate me for the work. I am not confident enough in the quality of what I do to accept money for it.

What a raggedy summer

It's been a interesting summer.
We used to say our blessing from tithing was that we never had to go to the hospital. From the time Heidi and I were married we would hear couples near our age taking kids to the hospital. Or having some big medical issue them selves. We never did have one problem with us or our kids.
Well this summer has been a doozy.
I got ran over early this summer in Tooele, then four weeks later I broke a rib at work. I had a couple minor injuries with my back at work as well. Heidi had a major back problem, climaxing with it being necessary to take a ride in the ambulance to the ER. Plus we had Syeira.
This last week end I had a little oops on my dirt bike. I broke my collar bone right in half. Well today the doctor said it is in four pieces. So tomorrow morning I have to have surgery.
I don't know what we need to do to qualify for the blessing of health again but we desperately need it.

its funny how true this really is

I have joked with my hot wife for awhile now about how I don't even have a corner in this house I can call mine. Not even one spot anywhere in this house that is not crowded out by her stuff or the way she wants it. She tells me I have the garage, but all my stuff is on the ground because all her seasonal decorations are in totes on the shelves.
Well... I finally got something my way. I have slowly been remodeling the bathroom upstairs and a few weeks ago I got the shower put in. I quickly claimed my spot in the shower. I have 1 bar of soap, 1 bottle of shampoo, and 1 razor. I put those three items on the top shelf closest to the shower head.

It was just last night that I was thinking to myself while showering, "wow this is the first spot that has been mine in this house." It had been weeks and my stuff was still there

Tonight however I get in the shower and something has changed. Heidi has about ten or twenty things in the shower, and my three things have been replaced.

Im not complaining or crying about it. I thought it was worth sharing to illustrate to my wife how right I am on this subject. See when I joke with her about it, she cannot understand what I am talking about.
One of these days, even if I have to build a separate house, I will have just one room that I can do as I please with.

She Likes To Just Scream at Me.

This is what my little baby girl does to me when I hold her. Its every time... I don't know if she likes me or not. She just yells at me. Well actually there is no noise but still she just opens her mouth and scowls at me. Makes me laugh.

B.A.R.M. Being A Real Man.

I wrote a blog titled "unintended consequences" when I first started this blog. I thought it was genius. I really figured I had spelled it all out as to leave no question to the matter. A commenter proved me wrong, in fact my blog had quite the opposite affect on her. She asked a plethora of questions about the text. Most of which I believe are answered in the essay, but here is one question I felt was left unexplained.

"What is a real man? I would like to know this. Perhaps you can enlighten me. Does a real man have his own set of moral that he passes to his children or is he the man that takes what he wants when he wants it. It sounds to me that your suggesting that men cannot be responsible for their own cruelty and missuses of their own power. I don't know though."

I read this comment the day it was left and have been thinking about it sense. Its not an easy question to answer, because most the answers are really long and not p.c. (Politically Correct) But seeing that this sight is titled B.A.R.M. I figure it is a question that need the proper attention given to it.

Here is a BIG disclaimer: I AM NOT CLAIMING TO BE A REAL MAN, OR CLAIM TO BE THE EXAMPLE OF ONE. I don't know that any one man is a real man. But I know where I fall short and am trying to improve on a regular basis. Also, if any of you reading this and find yourself offended, its probably because you are guilty of some thing you are reading. Or that your husband or someone close to you is the guilty party. So... don't cry about it... do something about it.

I have been asking my wife to give me a definition of a real man for months now and she never did. She came up with a real man likes certain parts of the female anatomy (both start with the letter "B"). And that REAL men know how to barbecue. I have those covered.

Here's the meat.

A REAL MAN IS..............

Logical
Men have the genetic advantage of being more left brain than women are. If its an advantage or not we can debate on that, but its a fact that men don't think in abstracts as much or as well as women do. Being logical is making decisions based on data, not emotion. I know too many people that I just cannot talk to because all they think or talk about is how they or others feel about a subject. Take the current debate of the congress; universal health care. Its an argument based on pure emotion. Even I would like to see all Americans given top rate health care. But the facts are its not possible to do with out damaging large amounts of the health care and private systems.

Most of the bad decisions humans make are based on feelings not facts. A real man will learn to separate the two and choose to weigh his options carefully and make the sound judgments that will lead him and his family down a secure path.

Falling under logic, I believe, is honesty. To be a man you must always be truthful to everyone, even your self. There has been a temptation throughout time to justify ones actions to explain away all guilt. When a man has a flaw, he realizes it and takes action. As I alluded to in the open of this essay, men don't get offended, they just make the necessary corrections and get on with it.

Being honest with others is self explanatory. That means in all you do; work, play, money, and if you give your word that is what will happen. All of your dealings must be truthful.

Practical
Practicality and Logic go hand in hand. How many of us know someone that is not to good with their time or their money. Or any of their resources for that matter. It is up to the men to make sure that the priorities of the family are set straight. Which includes money not being spent frivolously, and time being spent in the right portions in the right places.

Men and women have a large variety of things they can focus their time and money on. A mans list should be in this order. 1 Family, 2 Work, 3 Church, 4 Self. Some metro-sexuals my argue that how can a person take care of family, work, and church if he don't take care of himself first. This is not being honest with your self, this is rationalizing bad behavior. If you hear something of this nature it is a boy trying to sway some guilt away he might already feel for lack of action.

Stoic
Don't take this to mean that a real man is not allowed to have feelings or emotions. Its just our job to appear that we don't have any feeling or emotions. Think of it as a professional duty. This quality is where I really fall short. I am a succor for a woman that is crying. I spent a very long time with a girl friend that i didn't like because I met her when she was crying. We broke up like 14 times before it stuck, because each time I broke up with her she cried. REAL men don't cry, at least so others can see them crying, and they are not a sucker for tears. That goes back to not making decisions on emotion.

I think that this section includes gossip, and that sort of talk. We just shouldn't do it... it makes us look and sound like girls. I read a blog entry from a sight called Confessions from a Mormon Bachelor Pad, and this place is just one big puke-fest. These so called guys just rant on and on about chatty chick stuff. It is disgusting. It looks like they found the slobbering diary of a gay teen still in the closet and stole it out from under his pillow, then published it. This sort of dribble my be attractive to some of you liberated women out there, but it is just not acceptable to digress like this then call yourself anything but a childish boy. (And if somehow one of your girly little toads read this, sorry to brake it to you this way but its true. Consider the above statements.)

Handy
This is one more that my good wife thought of. She said that a man should have tools and know how to use them. She said that he need to be able to fix something. Not all men are blessed with the ability to just know how to fix things, but it is not unreasonable to ask that he at least know how to hammer a nail or fix a squeaky door. Something of that nature. In the movie Grand Torino clint eastwood said that any man worth half his life can fix most all that he needs with like a hammer vice grips and some duct tape. And really if you cannot fix something around the house, I bet your woman sees you as little less of a man. Chances are her dad could fix things and she thought that was just the best thing ever when she was little. So if you can't do it, learn how to do at least something.

Provider
Call me old fashion if you want but this is essential. Not only that, but it should be the top goal for a man. Look this is how me and my wife worked it. Before I asked her to merry me I told her that it was a deal breaker for me. I said I had a mom at home and my kids will too. I told her if it was important to her that she work then I would stay home with the kids till they went to school. But she had to make as much as I would so that we could afford to live like we wanted to. And about the school thing, I said its important that if you do get a job that when school is out and the kids come home one of us need to be there daily.

It is so clear to me that I need to do all that I can to make this happen. I will sacrifice a lot so that my kids have their mommy. I will work what ever I need to to make sure my wife can be at home. I am not going to have my children robbed of their childhood and be raised my a day care or the t.v. If we give our kids to a day care we are forfeiting the opportunity to teach them, lead them, love them, and learn from them. And by default we give that chance to the baby sitter.

It is the highest calling of a real man to be a provider for all the needs of his family. Not only money, but also the emotional needs of first his wife and then his kids. He needs to be the source of love to lead his wife and kids to happiness and the ability to stay together.

Strong
Being strong is what being a man is about. I have wrote before about the liberalization of women has caused a backlash against men and their natural desires. It is not p.c. to be a strong man any more. They have given it a name "the alpha male" and have demonized it. It is a problem that needs to be dealt with.

I don't mean physical muscular power. I mean the will to do what is right no matter what the cost. The right thing is what real men do. In the question at the top of this blog it was asked, "Does a real man have his own set of moral that he passes to his children or is he the man that takes what he wants when he wants it." So to answer this directly I would say a "real man" does not take what he wants when he wants it. Thats a silly questions, its a straw-man argument. If a man wants some thing, he finds a way to get it and he works for it and he earns it. Of course a real man would only want the things that are healthy for him and his family. Does He have his own set of morals? No he abides by God's set of morals and passes them on to their children with love and when necessary, reproof.

He would have the strength to stand up to his peers; his wife, kids, father, and yes his own mother. I listen to Dr. Laura and her radio show. The air waves are continually drowned with women that have week men that choose to make their mother happy rather than their wives. This is childish, selfish, and cowardly.

We should have the strength to be respectful and to all people. Our friends as well as our enemies. Its called manners. Although we really don't have enemies any more, the people that we don't like or that bug us should be treated just as well as our favorites. Now matter how much we want to be rude.

I work with all guys. It is rare to hear a guy where I work not refer to their wife as "the old lady" or some other derogatory term. I have to admit that this drives me absolutely nuts. My own dad rarely refers to my mom the way she deserves to be referenced. I want to hit him sometimes when I hear him talk about my mom in public. I am lucky that I went on a mission. If I wouldn't have gone, I would have never learned how good a "real man" can treat his woman, and still have the unmistakable air of strength and valuer. My mission president, President Bradshaw, treated his wife so well and it made an everlasting impression on me. I am grateful for his example. It has helped me treat my wife better than I would have other wise.

A couple random thoughts.
A real man does NOT wear "skinny pants" or those stupid canvas shoes!!!!
He can only hug his wife, daughters, grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and his sons (before the little boys hit puberty). Some times his mother-in-law on days like his wedding or times that are really extraordinary.

If you have anything to add to this section or the rest of the blog, feel free to comment.

My old brand new truck.

In October of 2006 we went to Larry H Miller and got a brand new ram 2500 sport quad cab. Long story there but I wanted a mega cab and Jimmy forced me not to get one. (like i said long story) Well for ever I hated the truck until I finally lifted it and got some sweet wheels for it. Then I fell in love with the truck. Since it was the sport edition it was all one color, no chrome or shiny anything. It had white bumpers and grill, in other words, it was completely white. So I named it Cracker. Get it?

Anyway the truck came with a scary payment, so considering the recession and all I wanted to get a smaller payment. My salesman at lhm called me friday and told me the value of my truck had come way up and was worth enough for me to trade it in and brake even.

Talked it over with the family and even though all of us were in love Cracker we decided to trade it in. On one condition, that I came home with a smaller payment. Heidi stayed home and sent me out there to do the sad sad deal. She just said, if you do something stupid, you have to come home with a cheese cake from the cheese cake factory.

So what did I do? I came home with a 2009 Ram 1500.


Let me explain.... I went to LHM with a truck that had 24000 miles on in and was mint. I didn't want to come home with a junker, you know... So I was looking at all the half ton trucks they had on the lot and the only one I could feel good about coming home with had 50000 miles and was in good shape. But the problem was not only did the value of my truck go up so did all the half tons value too. They were about the same price as my trade.

Turns out this new Hemi was only 5000 more than a 2007 half ton truck with 50000 miles on it.

I drove it home and soon as Heidi rode it she liked it. And soon as she drove it she loved it. That is why it is my OLD brand new truck. Its not mine anymore. We are selling her nitro and she will just drive this. I have sellers remorse a bit because I love Cracker so much.

Anyone have a sweet name for my bright orange truck. I am stumped.

P.S. Heidi loved her cheese cake.

more rock creek

Great Surprise.

My hot wife thought it would be fun to go up to the still water damn today. I was a good idea. I had never been there before, and was not expecting to much. Dylan had told me that it was really cool but I was not expecting to see what I did. I was thinking it was going to be a cobble rock damn like most damns are. Well that is not at all what we found.
On the way home Dylan told us there was a cafe in the trees so we went and found it. I was GOOOOD. I recommend any one that loves the mountains and good home cooked food go do this trip soon while Rock Creek is running high. The restaurant was only about a mile from the damn so its like 8000 feet high. It was a cool day. Especially considering I called in sick today. The day took a good turn.

Deegans HERO

I have a good friend, he's one of the best guys around, first class. He is Deegan's favorite friend of mine. He is a fire fighter and had the truck out at a church activity spraying kids with the big old guns. He pumped out 1000 gallons in like 4 min. That gun shot a 2" stream of water like 150 feet. Any way he called me at 7:30 pm and told me to bring Deegan down to help him shoot the water and stuff. Then we fallowed him down the to station and Deegan got a hat, badge, and a sticker to put on his four wheeler. Here are some of the cooler pictures.
(Click to enlarge pictures, and feel free to wonder around the flicker page.)









Thanks Dylan! Glad to have you as a friend.

Pictures of Linnéa

Heidi had the cutest idea for a picture of our fat little baby.
Sucks that she didn't do what we wanted her to do.
When she get ready to cry sometimes she makes the most sad and sour looking face in the world. We wanted to get her with that face. Instead she is just fussy.
Here's MY little squishy girl.





For larger image, click picture then click the "all sizes" tab above the picture. Feel free to comment on any of my photos that are in my flicker photostream.

I said "we cannot not afford Obama"

Cap and Trade...
There was a poll taken by a national news outlet and it found that only something like 13% of Americans understood what cap and trade is just by the mention of the name. Which means education on the subject is not a priority of the white house. The president would rather slip this through without the public understanding just how outrageously left he is before it's to late.

Cap and Trade is a plan by the government to put a limit (cap) on CO2 omissions for companies that use carbon based fuels. When they exceed this cap they are taxed. The cap on CO2 will be set at levels as high as 20% of current levels. Cutting CO2 omissions 80% is impossible for any company.

The trade part is company's can trade carbon credits among one another by what ever medium they want.

Because businesses do not pay taxes. (They just pass the cost on to the customer. If they don't they cannot afford it and go out of business.) The congressional budget office estimate the increased tax revenue at 650 billion dollars. The CBO is most always wrong by about 5-10 times. But just for arguments sake lets say that they are right. 650 billion divided by every house hold in America that uses energy is about $3100 a year. That is not money we save of get back as a stimulious; it is extra money that we pay for power, and water, and gas, and natural gas, and propane.

Like I said in an earlier blog WE CANNOT AFFORD THIS PRESIDENT!

President Obama told the congress leadership that he wanted to push this through by august. Keeping with my earlier point, get it through without the public finding out about it. He and all the dems know that this is an economy killer. Get the word out.

Im sick of this

In 2007, the public debt was 36.8 percent of GDP,^[4] with a total debt of 65.5 percent of GDP.^[5] The debt of the United States is ranked as 12th in the world.^[6]. As of May 2009 the debt was 80.1 percent of GDP based on current GDP.

Okay everyone!!! Its time for each of us as to stop and think for a minute. I know that there is some novelty about there being the first black president, but please look what he has done to this nation in his first 100 days. He has successfully bankrupt this nation. The left is going to have to raise taxes on everyone just to keep this nation moving at an even slower pace than it is now. We need to come together no mater your politics and tell our government stop spending.

In 2001 when I left for a mission, the nations total budget was 1.7 trillion dollars. The national budget grew like a weed under president bush. He never vetoed one bill that came across his desk until the final moments of his 8 years. The right wing base called him out on his spending many times and condemned him for it. But in the first 100 days of this president, he has increased the budget from Bushes 2.9 trillion to a modest 3.8-4 trillion dollars. With an expected 1.8 trillion dollar deficit. Back up to the top of the paragraph, what was the total budget just 8 years ago? Thats right; pres. Obama's deficit is larger than the whole amount spent in 2001.

In the midst of this looming down turn in our economy the white house has decided it is a good time to saddle my brand new daughter with huge amounts of dept to pay. In the midst of this recession the white house has decided that it is a good time for all the liberal (huge government very expensive) pet projects to be enacted. Health care reform, bale outs for the unions, bale outs for banks, and bale outs for wall street. To accomplish this he has raised taxes on small business and big business, aka the people that give you and me jobs, health care insurance, and pay checks.

In Pres Bushes first term he tried to fix social security. He couldn't get the dems on board with him so he failed. The argument was that Bush was just trying to scare old people, and that everything will be just fine. But just today the fed reported that THIS year social security will take in less money that it will pay out. For those of us that pay our own bills what would this mean for us if we took in less money that we owed? It would mean drastic cuts in our lifestyle, would it not? But for the the federal government it means raising taxes, printing more money (causing inflation), and borrowing it from other countries and individuals.

But borrowing money for the USA is not as easy as it once was. With interest rates at basically zero, nobody wants to lend us any money, because the return on their investment would be so small at .5% it is not worth it. Also with our national dept going over the breaking point, the nations triple-A credit rating is falling. We have already slid out of the top spot among nations who are triple-A rated. So what does this mean for you and me. Well again taxes going up, not just on the rich but for everyone. It also means the fed will start to hike up the core interest rates to make lending to the government more attractive. So for the middle class things are not looking to good.

In fact one radio news report today said that the middle class will be pressured more in the future than it will be at the bottom of this recession. Where ever the bottom may be.

Look! Americans deserve better than what we are getting. Our president is doing all he can to establish power for the federal government. He is using the heavy weight of billions of dollars to force states to go along with is policies. Saying do this or your 6 billion will not come to your state after all. He is using the powers of the government to take away the rights of individual citizens. Do you really want the government running health care. Look at how it runs everything else, medicare for example, and tell me if that is who you want saying what kind of treatment you can or cannot have. The government fails at everything it tries, except for winning wars, and we are more and more willing to hand over our freedoms to it for what ever reasons.

Please help stop all this spending. Each of us need to come together for the sake of the future of this nation. The usa is a great country but it cannot afford the policies of the left any longer, and its only been 100 days. They have got the better part of 4 years left, how scary is that?

They used to say "we cannot drill our way out of this" when energy cost were so high. Well now that we are in a recession I say "we CANNOT SPEND our way out of this!"

Syeira's Photo Shoot

Tons more pictures that we took that are cute. I am just not done with any of the rest of thim

Wife=Guinea Pig?????

Just one more before and after.
I just wanted to go as far as I could and still make it look somewhat real. I love my good wife for letting me just be crazy with her face. This is actually a picture that Heidi took of herself. She posted it on her blog here. She called it her thinking face. It is just a picture at the top of her post to illustrate she was having a dilemma.




I was really bored with the day this sunday, so I decided to make a scrap book page in photoshop of some of the photoshoped pictures I had done this weekend. Scrap booking is a girl think I know, but I believe here at B.A.R.M. there is room for this and still being a real man.



Click for larger images.

Statue

Heidi purchased this while we were in mexico last year, but didn't want any one to know she was preggo so she never put it out. I guess chicks get those kinda hints. For the men reading; see there are four figures? well that means that you have two kids, not that the statue was just cool looking.
I took this picture and edited it tonight cuz i was bored. I liked it and thought I would share it.

New Photoshop Stuff

Heidi was really really nice and let me take a picture of her to experiment with. She is also going to be ticked that I put the original up next the the doctored photo. Sorry Heidi. But considering only 5 or 6 people look at my blog no big deal right.? Any way I really enjoy photoshop, so if anyone would like me to play with one of their pictures and send it back to them e mail me the photo. The better quality the picture the better (more mega pixels). Hope yall think I did as good on this as I do. Click on the image to go to a larger better image. Also when you get to the flicker account, above the picture there will be an icon that says "all sizes". Clicky that for a clearer look. Thanks Josh

Click picture for the larger full image

Another way I know The Church of Jesus Christ is the truth

I once thought that my sister was strong in the church, with her own testimony and great faith. But then she so easily fell away. So I decided that her faith was more my parents than her own. After all how could one so strong fall so far so fast.
However, this week I read a scripture, seen a tv spot, and had a thought that changed my mind again.

TV SPOT



THE SCRIPTURE

Alma 24:30 And thus we can plainly discern, that after a people have been once ^aenlightened by the ^bSpirit of God, and have had great ^cknowledge of things pertaining to righteousness, and then have ^dfallen away into sin and transgression, they become more ^ehardened, and thus their state becomes ^fworse than though they had never known these things.

MY THOUGHT

My sister is gay. Not just gay, she is not content to live a gay life and let others live a traditional life. She decided to swing that way, and now is involved in activism of all types. She goes to political rallies, parades, staffs campus booths, and who knows what else.

The depth and greatness of her fall, coupled with the above scripture, is just another small testiment to me that the Church that I am a member is true.

I know there are several gay women in my extended family, all of witch are happy being themselves. None of them see the need to try and force their lifestyle on us all.

what we do when we have nothing to do

After watching like 4 movies today, deegan and I decided to make a little movie. We also went to the cabin and hunted coyotes and heidi took deegan sledding down a little hill at the cabin. But here is the movie.

Just Today

Today was a good day. Started off to be the first time I slept in for a long time. Was going to get up and just remodel the upstairs bathroom. But instead I asked Deegan if he wanted to go snowmobiling. He said yes. So here are a few pictures.
Look how small our little guy is. He is so smart that sometimes I really do forget that he is just a little guy.

My Good wife got me the sweetest birthday gift ever. It is a little program that allows me to produce pictures other wise impossible to do. Like this one. I took it today. On our way home from sledding wife noticed this patch of sunflowers... So at sunset I went back to take a few shots. I know that it looks fake. I did that on purpose. I think it looks more like a painting, and I like it. But it is for reals just a photo. Click on it to see a full and larger image of it.

my 3.5 year old gymnast

I know this is crappy cell phone video but its cool anyway. I came home from work today and walked down stairs to deegan just running around in circles. Then out of the corner of my eye I catch him jumping of the couch with a full twist and landing on the luv sac.