The Pony Express

is comming to town next weekend. They will partake in an 8 hour horse ride from the far north west side of Pahrump the the Saddle West Casino in the south east. Pahrump will be holding the "Western Days" festival also. There will be re enactments, music, food and fun.

The ride will start at 8AM and end at 5PM. One of our freind here in Pahrump asked if I would be willing to take photos of her and her husband as the ride in the event. It should be a fun time.

Finally

the Prickely Pear Cactus, seen below, is ripe! Nancy cut a few off for us to eat.


Getting ripe:


Ripe:


Pricely Pear Jelly anyone??? Let me just sate for the record that they were pretty nasty!

My pomigranites will make up for it though. They should be ripe in another few months.



From Labor Day. Here is Shelby watching Carly watching me through the gun hole. Carly really freaked out when I peeked in at her through the gun hole.


From the cook out:


There have been many things at this house that left me thinking "What the f***?" when trying to decipher what the previous owners did. Nothing left me more suprised than finding this the other day:

It is a leaking gallon of used motor oil. Thats is pretty bad considering we have well water and it was about 20 feet from the well.


The well is the building in the back.

Well I suppose a little used motor oil never hurt anyone.......

The other day I took my camera over the hump with me to work. Here is a picture of the daily exedous from Pahrump:









My favorite diner...the dashboard diner. You should try it one day....I'll admit though, that the menue is somewhat limmited.

Tigger

is doing better. He tolerates his shots very well. Actually I don't think he even notices them, he just thinks he is getting petted....lol

For the dogs though, things have changed drastically. They now eat exactly they amount they are supposed to get, and no more. They eat at 7AM and 7PM. They get absolutly NO people food anymore, and they only get a small amount of treats at bed time. They actually seem to not mind much. Pooh and Tigger really enjoy getting breakfast now.

Already Tigger is not drinking as much water and he had only a small accident last night. Hopefully none tonight.

Soon all three will be fit and trim, them me and Karen get to go on our diets.....lol

Tigger

went to the vet today. When she saw him she said "Oh, its a boy!" he's probably diabetic then.

Normal blood sugar levels for a dog are much the same as for a human. 70-140. Tigger's was 2 points shy of 400!

He will now get twice daily injections of insulin, or actually Vetsulin. I doubt there is much difference, except maybe in price. The vet said that other than that he is very heathy. He has some abnormal blood work, but she said it should be "ok" once the diabetes is under control.

He is even fit and trim. A rarity in this house....lol

Based on what we paid today for the medicine and needles we figure it will be about $50 a month to care for him.

There is not doubt

who runs our house. It ain't me, and it ain't Karen!

Thats what we call the "stink eye". I know, deep down, Carly is thinking "Thats right bitch, this is MY house!"

Tigger normally sleeps on the bed at my feet. Since Carly moved in, he sleeps there at her pleasure.




The other day, she allowed Tigger to sleep on the bed. The next morning when I got up, I stepped on something sticky on the floor. I wasn't poop, thankfully! It covered about a 3-4 foot diameter area. As it was about 4:45AM and I was up for work, I just grumbled to myself and went about my business.

The next morning I woke up freezing! Tigger had urinated on the bed and he and I were both sleeping in it. Mind you, although Tigger has had MANY an accident, he has never went in the bed and then slept in it!

Our first reaction was "What the hell?" then we just thought it was a fluke. Then it happened again, and again, and again. Sometimes on the bed, sometimes on the floor. It really took us a few days to figure out
A. Who it was?(We have 3 dogs)Waking up in it decided that .
B. What exactly they were doing? Puking? Peeing? It was hard to tell.

We tried to think of anything that we had been doing differently? We remembered that we had seen Tigger act stiff lately. He is about 11 after all. We began to give him glucosomine for his joints. This all began at roughly the same time. We stopped his supplement.

The next night he had no accident. We thought, wow that was easy.

The next night, he had an accident.

We knew then that something REALLY was wrong. And so we watched....
We noticed that Tigger was drinking enormous amounts of water.
Obviously hes was having frequent, un controllable urination. We also noticed that his collar was getting way to big. Its one of those nylon adjustable ones. I tried to convince myself that it just became "un adjusted".

This all took about 10 days to figure out. We only got 1 or 2 pieces of the puzzle over the course of a few days. He has an appointment with the vet tomorrow.

When we made the appointment the vet said, because of his breed and age, it was one of three things.
1. Urinary tract infection.
2. Incontenance.
3. Diabetes.

Diabetes can be a devestating diagnosis for a person, but even more so for a dog. A person can participate in their treatment, a dog cannot. Even well controlled diabetes can exact a heavy toll on a person, or a dog.

Many people opt to put a dog with diabetes to sleep. They view giving the dog shots twice a day as cruel. I think putting a dog to sleep who is still happy is cruel.

There are things that make me think its not diabetes:
1. He still eats everything in sight.
2. He has not slowed down one bit.

Hopefully it is one of the first two.

Health Care Reform

I have often posted about what I don't think we should do to reform health care in the U.S. I think I should post on what I thinnk we COULD do to reform health care.

First lets define the problem. Roughly 50 million people in the U.S. have no health insurance. But lets first put some context to that number. Lets subtract the following from it:
1. Illegal Aliens--15 million
2. People who could afford(make over $75,000) insurance but choose not to purchase it--10 million
3. People who are eligble for Medicare/Medicaid and do not sign up for it--10 million

That leaves about 10-15 million peopole who, through no fault of their own, cannot get or afford insurance. Some would claim it closer to 5 million.

Tort reform would be on the top of my list. It is easy to do. Estimates run from 3-10% of every dollar spent on health care goes to lawsuits. This does not even include the millions spent on defensive medicine. Remember though that tort reform is to limit puative damages, not compensatory damages. This means that a person injured by malpractice will still be able to sue for millioins of dollars, if that is what is needed to pay forthier medical care. They will only be limited in how much they can get in as punishment from the doctor.

Pre existing conditions are a tougher nut to crack. I know a person who bought a boat, but didn't buy insurance on that boat....until they day he crashed it. You can't wait until you get sick to buy health insurance. Unless of course you want the insurance companies to go out of business. The only way to get rid of pre existing conditions is to require everyone to have insurance. If we would go to this kind of model I think it should be based on people being required to have catastrophic insurance that pays after the first $5,000 or so of medical expenses. The government could subsidize people who could not afford this.
It goes without saying though, that insurance companies should NOT be able to rescind your insurnace when you get seriously ill becuase you forgot to mention on your application that you had acne when you were 20.

Insurance is part of the problem
If you have insurance, you are not the actual customer in the economic sense. You don't care what it costs. If your doctor wants a test every hour on the hour, you have no incentive to even question it. Think if car insurance covered oil changes, and regular maintenance.....how much more would insurance cost?

This is what I like about HSAs and other types of catastrophic insurance.
With High Deductable Health Plans(HDHP) you are put back in the economic equation, yet if you get seriously ill or injured, you are still covered.

Real insurance competition.
In the U.S. there are about 6,000 health insurance companies, yet Americans are severly restricted as to which ones they can choose by the state they live in. Open up the whole country to all of the insurance companies.

Allow insurance tax deduction
Allow insurance to be tax deductible. This will help to lower the costs of insurance.

Public Education, why not Public Health Care?

Lauren had asked me what I thought about the differences between free public education(k-12) and free public health care. She writes....

“I've been trying recently to figure out the difference between public taxpayer-bought education (k-12) and public, taxpayer-bought health care. Both have (or will/may have) flaws both in spending and results, and both are a public service that a libertarian could argue are unnecessary excesses of large government. However..."

It is an interesting comparison to be sure. Education, she pointed out, is something you can pay for your self. In fact many people already do so. She pointed out that public education is not perfect and it is likely that the health care reform will not be perfect either. The perfect should not be the enemy of the good. So why one but not the other?

Lauren further states.....

"Through government, the taxpayers now give all children a free education UP TO 12th grade, and though admittedly flawed in many ways, I doubt you'll find a whole lot of people who think the US should be without public education. If you want more than that (ie college) then you get to pay for it with money - which not all people have."

As I stated in my quick reply to her comment, I don't think you can lump all "government" together. One of the characteristics of our government is that is a federal style of government. Think of a cake with three layers. One the top is the U.S. Federal government. Below that is the State governments. And on the bottom are the local governments. Now you still don't really know what kind of cake you have....it could be a marble cake where the federal layer reaches down into the state level and the state level mixes into the local level.

When you think about how our government was formed, it was from the states agreeing to give the federal government certain duties, and those only. The state itself was formed from local governments who relinquished certain rights to the state and in turn local governments were formed by the people giving certain powers to the local government. This way the most power was retained by the people, not the governments.

Personally I think we have a marble cake. I can only hope all three layers are chocolate!

Regardless of which view you take, each layer of government has specific areas of responsibility. The Federal government is limited in its powers by the U.S. Constitution. The U.S. Constitution specifically reserves all powers not enumerated to the federal government to the states and or the people.

This is part of the reason why the Federal government does not run education. Education is run primarily by local school boards that are elected by the people they serve. Yes, the Federal government does play a part in education, but it is a very limited one, but like all things that government does its role is increasing. Over the last decade, federal spending on education is up more than 50% from roughly 5% to over 8%. I'll just add that the quality of our education system has not gone up 50%. In fact most people might agree that our education system is in big trouble despite the near doubling of federal money. Hint, hint.

Lauren goes on to say:

"Right now, when I try to translate the US's health care system into public
education, it seems like NOBODY has a "right" to be given the opportunity to
learn to read or do basic math. If there's someone in your life to teach it to
you or your family has enough money to pay for a private school, good. If not, looks like you're going to be illiterate and unable to do basic math like balancing a checkbook, and you'll probably be broke and undereducated for your entire life. Which is something that I know some people would argue in favor of. I wouldn't be one of those people."

Most states require, by state law, attendance to some type of school. Children and parents alike can be issued citations for not attending school. In fact the Nevada State Constitution directly addresses education in its "Bill of Rights". Here is a relevant section:

"Sec: 5. Establishment of normal schools and grades of schools; oath of teachers and professors. The Legislature shall have power to establis [establish] Normal schools, and such different grades of schools, from the primary department to the University, as in their discretion they may deem necessary........"

In my old state Michigan, the Michigan State Constitution also mandates "free public education" as shown here:

2 Free public elementary and secondary schools; discrimination. Sec. 2. The
legislature shall maintain and support a system of free public elementary and
secondary
schools as defined by law. Every school district shall provide for
the education of its pupils without
discrimination as to religion, creed,
race, color or national origin.

I doubt there is a state that does not address education.

I think that translation fails because of different powers granted to the federal government and the state government. It would be more appropriate for a State government to require health insurance and several already have. All states already mandate insurance for cars.

That is the best reason as to why a national "universal public health care" plan has never evolved in this country.

That leaves the issue of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. These are three programs that are federal and universal.

Lets begin with Social Security. In a nut shell Social Security was originally designed to keep older poor or disabled people from starving. Although many people consider it a retirement plan, they will find it very lacking in that regards. You get enough to survive.

Where I used to work we had people that pulled in over $100,000 of earned income a year, collecting Social Security!!! That is just not right. It should be for people who cannot take care of themselves. I think that would fall in line with the U.S. Constitution.
Personally, I would like to see Social Security severely restricted though. Financially, it is a disaster. By the time I will be able to retire, you will need to be 90 years old to collect it and will be lucky to get $.50 for your trouble. The eligibility age keeps going up. That's how they try to solve the financial mess that is Social Security. They also lower benefits and raise the FICA tax.

With respect to Medicaid/Medicare they also increase premiums, raise the cap on earnings subject to Medicare withholding. And lets not forget that they also plan to cut reimbursements to doctors, hospitals and such. That's where the $500 billion in savings to pay for "health insurance reform" comes from. Medicaid is in way worse financial condition than Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid, unlike Social Security, target specific groups like the disable, poor, and elderly. That makes it easier to see them as part of a federal plan.

Anyways, I hope some of this made some kind of sense.