The two best ways to love your family and save a ton of money

1. Keep yourself fit.

2. Work on your marriage.

Seriously.  There are a lot of great money management ideas out there, but those two will make the most difference.

If you keep yourself fit — and I don’t mean tri-athlete fit, just moderate exercise/eat fairly well/don’t abuse alcohol and drugs type fit — you will save massive amounts of money on health care.  If you haven’t already figured it out, Obamacare will be a disaster for this country, with higher costs and worse care.  You can’t avoid some illnesses, but you’d be surprised how many things you can prevent.  Just do some kind of exercise/activities you enjoy and eat decently (eat a little less, eat a little healthier).

And you won’t just save money, you’ll be loving your family.  And you’ll feel better and work better.  Who would want to unnecessarily burden their spouse and kids with their health problems?

And if you work on your marriage you’ll prevent a divorce, which would cost you dearly. I was teaching a Sunday School class on the Fireproof movie once and asked how many couple have so much extra money that they could afford a second household.  No hands were raised.

And this isn’t just for young couples.  I have seen far too many couples divorce who had been married 20+ years.  If you get complacent things could unravel.  Plan ahead for empty nests and ensure that you still have common interests.  Ballroom dancing has been great for us, but it doesn’t matter if it is motor cycling, bowling, or whatever.  Just do something together regularly that you both enjoy.

So spend some time on your marriage and save big.  More importantly, that is the best thing you can do to show love to your spouse and your kids.

“If you like this, you’ll love Obamacare!”

The title is what I should have announced to the crowd as I left the Department of Motor Vehicles when getting my licensed renewed (we have to do that in person every few years). As you might expect, the lines were very long (2+ hour wait for a very simple process) and there wasn’t enough parking or seats.

And keep in mind that while most businesses have to work hard to predict how many customers will come in on a given day, the DMV has it pretty easy. What could be more predictable than renewals? And these are the same government organizations that charge you extra to pay online, even though that saves time, money and fossil fuels for all involved.

So the question for anyone in favor of Obamacare is, “What makes you think that your healthcare service will improve?” There will be no incentives for them to perform any better. Who cares if you don’t like your service? Where else will you go? And it won’t just be your time, it will be your health. They’ll give you what they want to, when they want to, and any complaints you have will be far removed from anyone with the power to do anything about it.

And if you don’t know that Obamacare will necessarily lead to “death panels” and forced abortions (“either abort or pay for 100% of the costs yourselves, in cash”) then you don’t know how these people work.

Friendly tip for the guy wearing the “Drunk as sh!t” t-shirt: Maybe you should pick out something else when you are coming to get your license.

Health care: Still not a right.

This is a great primer on what rights really are, why universal health care won’t work, how to get health care costs down, the problem of trial lawyers and more.

Roundup

From the shadenfreude department, some Darwinian on Darwinian verbal violence – aka, PZ Myers reaps what he sowed.

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Ten resources to help you defend the resurrection of Jesus as history

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If Canada’s Bill C-389 passes, transgenderism will be taught in kindergarten – coming soon to a country near you.  This is the logical consequence of turning sexual preferences into civil rights.  It is child abuse to teach kindergarteners that they aren’t “really” boys or girls.  These people should be in jail.

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New study links father absence to increased bullying – so when people want to reduce bullying in schools across the board – instead of just protecting their favored students – remind them how important stable one man / one woman families are.

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The top three books that helped change me from a mindless, irrational Darwinist into an ID proponent

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War and killing – excellent overview of the biblical view

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Union Fights to Force You into Obamacre While Getting Waivers for Itself – one more reason to dislike unions and Obamacare.  Unions fought hard to make you pay for this but are opting out themselves.  If it is such a swell program, why aren’t they excited to be in it?  If they don’t like it, why did they lobby for it?  This is politics at its worst.

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EPA Issues First Waiver For New Greenhouse Gas Regulations – shockingly, it goes to a major Obama supporter and a recipient of major government spending.  Where are the Halliburton haters now?

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Another thing you won’t get from the mainstream media: How The CDC Coverup Now Turns to Bureaucratic Panic when they were caught hiding abortion data.

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More Assaults From the Supporters of the Homosexual Agenda – be sure to eat more chicken (at Chik-Fil-A, a restaurant with excellent governance that treats its employees well).

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‘House of Horrors’ abortionist made over $1.8 million/year, now claims to be broke — apparently abortion pays pretty well for those selfless heroes.

According to the grand jury report, a search of Gosnell’s Philadelphia home uncovered $240,000 in cash and a gun hidden in a filing cabinet in his 12-year-old daughter’s bedroom.  Other than that, his income appears to be unaccounted for except for his assets and real estate investments. “The money’s unaccounted for,” District Attorney Joanne Pescatore told the Inquirer. “The only thing we know about is the money taken out of the house.”

According to the Inquirer report, Gosnell and his wife own seventeen properties, a motorboat, a Dodge Durango, a Ford F-150 pickup truck and a Ford Expedition.

Despite these assets, Gosnell now claims to be broke . . .

 

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Technorati Tags: Religion,Christianity,politics,pro-life

Looks like someone finally read that bill

Obamacare declared unconstitutional – Excerpts From Judge Vinson Obamacare Ruling | RedState.

This isn’t over, of course, but it is an encouraging sign.  I wonder how long it will take to get to the Supreme Court?  I wonder why Congress didn’t anticipate this?  It isn’t like they weren’t warned.

Roundup

Now here is a good use of taxpayer funds (seriously, we need more humor like this):

Hat tip: Biblical Christianity

That is almost as good as this old favorite:

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Abortionist distraught over killing wrong twin — He would have been fine if he had done it “right” and killed the child with Down Syndrome.  Such moral schizophrenia.

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From the “I am not making this up category” comes unisex restrooms for public schools.

Transgender students must be allowed access to the bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity or expression or, if they prefer, to existing single-stall bathrooms.

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Christian “music star” now lesbian — I might have put the quotes around Christian instead of music star, but whatever.  Sadly, she trotted out the lame shellfish argument, which is full of holes but is appealing to many because so few bother to study the passages. I address five serious problems with it in flaws of the shellfish argument.  I am so tired of the deliberate ignorance people use to distort Christianity and teach whatever they like.  It isn’t that hard to study the Bible.

She wants to dismiss Leviticus 18:22 (You shall not lie with a male as with a woman; it is an abomination), so does that mean the verses before and after are outdated as well? (“You shall not give any of your children to offer them to Molech, and so profane the name of your God: I am the Lord. . . .  And you shall not lie with any animal and so make yourself unclean with it, neither shall any woman give herself to an animal to lie with it: it is perversion.)

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Obama’s back-alley healthcare — not enough doctors, forcing un-qualified people to administer care, etc.

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Why would any church have Shelby Spong speak there, let alone “preach?”  Sadly, a United Methodist church is having him do just that.

A controversial bishop who denies belief in a personal deity will speak at a Madison church on Sunday. Retired Episcopal Church Bishop John Shelby Spong will lecture on the divinity of Christ at First United Methodist Church.

Spong, who has denied the deity of Christ as well as his bodily resurrection and virgin birth, plans to give two lectures on April 10th, as well as preach on April 11th. His views contradict the teachings of the United Methodist Church and of all traditional churches.

Bishop Spong’s former diocese in the northern half of New Jersey shrunk by 40 percent under his helm, a pattern of decline typical of ultra liberal churches.

What do you call an organization that brings in someone to speak on the divinity of Christ who doesn’t believe in the divinity of Christ?!  Non-Christian.

ObamaCare: Pro-abortion, not pro-choice

Make no mistake: Obama & Co. plan to have taxpayer funded abortions as part of their “health” coverage.  Why wouldn’t they?  After all, they already refer to abortions as “reproductive health.”  I suppose that euphemism sells better than crushing and dismembering innocent human beings, but I still find it to be highly inaccurate.

Go see Stop the Abortion Mandate and follow the instructions.

Anyone who favors taking tax dollars to fund abortions here or overseas isn’t pro-choice, they are pro-abortion.

I can’t believe we’re having this conversation (Obamacare)

As pointed out at The Bumbling Genius: An All Too Common Answer, those pushing so hard for health care reform typically just point out problems with the current system and jump to the conclusion that whatever Obama is proposing is going to fix the problems and not cause any new ones.

Anybody see the problems with that?

If the current system is too expensive, how will total costs go down by eliminating competition?

If the current system is too expensive, what data do they have to suggest that government ownership will reduce costs?

If the current system isn’t working well, what data do they have to suggest that government ownership will improve effectiveness?  Anybody been to the DMV lately?  How about Walter Reed Memorial Hospital?

If the proposed system is so swell, why won’t the proponents be subject to it?

If this issue is so important that it transcends politics, why isn’t it important enough for legislators and Obama to actually read the Bill?

Does the tone from Obama sound familiar to the stimulus bill debacle that wasted untold amounts of money?  You know, the “this is too important to be bi-partisan about or debate” language?

Why are people acting surprised that abortions will be covered and funded by taxpayers?  The pro-abortionists already use the euphemism “reproductive health” to describe abortions.  Of course they expect you to pay for the abortions of others.

The system has flaws, to be sure, but people get health care already.  Most of the uninsured are illegal aliens and those who don’t want to pay for insurance.

Will illegal aliens be covered in the new plan?  Why not pay for health care for the whole world and not just those who enter our country illegally?

Steve Forbes has some outstanding ideas on how to truly reduce costs and improve care.  Think about these:

Conventional Lasik eye surgery costs a third of what it did ten years ago. And there has been virtually no inflation in the prices of cosmetic surgery, even though there have been enormous technological advances, and the demand for these procedures has increased sixfold since the early 1990s.

Special hospital facilities in India, Thailand, Singapore and elsewhere that engage in medical ”tourism” have infection rates a fraction of those found in most U.S. hospitals. These positive results are driven by the fact that patients write the checks and are thus fully conscious of the costs, as well as by the fact that providers are under pressure to make their offerings more enticing and affordable.

Here are some helpful and constructive measures that can move us to a more genuinely free-enterprise health care system.

–Equalize the tax treatment of individuals and businesses. If the company you work for doesn’t provide insurance or you don’t like the plan offered, you are forced to try to buy a policy with aftertax dollars. If an individual wishes or needs to buy health insurance on his own, why shouldn’t he get a refund tax credit of, say, $4,000–and a family, $8,000?

–Allow consumers to shop for health insurance across state lines. Today it’s illegal for someone in Chicago to buy a health insurance policy that someone living in New York City can buy.

–Encourage the use of Health Savings Accounts. That way consumers–not government bureaucrats or employers–would control the purse strings, or at least a portion of them.

–Permit small businesses to form pools so they can increase their pricing leverage with insurers.

–Remove state-imposed obstacles to allowing routine medical care to be offered in, say, Wal-Mart ( WMT – news - people ) stores.

–Remove the obstacles that prevent entrepreneurs from setting up new clinics or hospitals. A number of states make this extremely difficult by demanding that such entrepreneurs obtain a certificate of need. In fact, in some jurisdictions hospitals must get permission to make major capital purchases.

Genuine free-market reforms in health care will slash the number of the uninsured and lead to the same kinds of innovations and efficiencies that are experienced in most of the rest of the economy.