Everyone's talking about...

...health care this morning.  What do I have to say about health care?  I say $372 a month for COBRA is INSANE!  (No, that's not an acronym, it just means fergeddaboutit!)  I say $150 a month for a frickin' $10,000 deductable and no office visits for $150 per is a waste of my time.  And Obama wants to tax me if I say, "Just let me drop dead"?  I think I have a sign for him somewhere...

Ah, there it is!  As a result, I'm not going to say another word.  I'll just put up some pictures.

Finally got Mr. Cardinal to pose.  (You didn't really think I was going to shut up, didja?)

"Kell Drilling"?  As hot as it was, I thought it said "HELL Drilling"!

The story here, I learned this morning, is that one of the wells they use for the irrigation sprayers went dry.  "Then they drilled another one," the guy from Purdue told me, "But they drilled it the same depth as the first one."
"So no water?"
"No water.  It's been... fun..."

More of the mess down "Dead Tree Road..."

New all natural guardrail over at the ravine.  Must have been an OSHA storm.

Here's a toll gate at the new trail.  "Pay yer health care penalty tax here..."

Just to show how big that tree that cracked in two on the ravine trail was...

We pass this every walk.  Makes you wonder what made it grow like that...

Sunrise over the ol' homestead

6:30 AM.  Nobody out but us and the birds.

Scrappy investigates a deer bed near our "secret entrance".

He's got a scent... probably his feet...

At last, SOMEBODY willing to pose...

Moon over the forest...

Here's Scrappy and a butterfly.  See it?

How about now?

Can you see me now? Good!

Then we ran into this guy.  Never saw one before.

An Eastern Kingbird.

So mean, their species name is Tyrannus Tyrannus.  Actually will beat up blue jays.

No wonder I can never get one to pose.  Hey, lay off the jays!

More pictures, but...

First I'll put my two cents in, briefly, about the Health Care Decision.

Point one, I reposted on Facebook a graphic about the hidden ways we'll be paying for abortion costs.  And I got challenged on it.  Did I respond? Not really.  The challenger would have had a cut-and-paste response for even the most well-researched response so I didn't bother.

So why am I against abortion provisions in this bill?  The same reason my challenger is against prayer in school and creches on courthouse lawns.  Because my belief system is against it, and I believe the Constitution-when interpreted PROPERLY- protects me against it. 

Point two- I believe that any law that will cause ANY employer to drop insurance totally in my lap is wrong.  I believe That ANY law that penalizes me for NOT buying a product which should be MY CHOICE is wrong.

Point three- I can envision a scenario where this causes a job divide between employers rich enough to opt out and those that have to skyrocket costs and cut pay to comply.  I'm 50 years old, just had my plant close, and re-enter the job market after 20 years with the worst job market since the 1930's and a President firmly in denial.  Which job do you think I'LL get stuck with?  I cannot afford a job that gives me the whole bill on health care, I sure the hell can't afford COBRA, and I have SERIOUS doubts that my situation won't be worse in the extreme with this law.

Point four- Obama spends all this time telling the public the mandate is not a tax.  The sources are out there, look 'em up.  Then he has his minions argue it AS an indirect tax before SCOTUS, because he knows it will fail otherwise.  If he talked out both sides of his mouth any more, he'd need two heads.

Point five- So the SCOTUS says, yep, if we don't view it as a tax, it is in violation of the commerce clause.  But as a tax, it's legal.  So yes, your Obama-ness, we'll call it a tax.  HOW THE HELL CAN IT BE BOTH?  If it's unconstitutional in ANY PART, it should be unconstitutional PERIOD.

Point six- the SCOTUS went so far as to say, it's not our job to determine if its a bad law.  We just determine if it's constitutional.  Well, guess what? YOU BLEW THAT, TOO!

Okay, I'm done. On with pictures, before that creep in the White House makes them unconstitutional, too.  First, early morning of the hottest day in my lifetime...

Gotta start out early, whilst you can yet survive.

Yeah, you can tell who gets sprayed every morning...

"The war machine springs to life, opens up one eager eye..."

We saw or heard six deer on this trip.  The first ran through the woods quickly, and gathered a buddy off the back trail before I could focus.  Another was well hidden along ong of the inlets near the IPFW main field.  At the top of the second field, we heard one in the brush that, for a moment, I thought would crash out right in front of us, but no such luck.

Add to this Scrappy peeing on a twig that was right against my ankle, and things weren't going well..

But I can always count on this dark doe to pose for some pics, God bless her!

Then we had two baby coons scamper up seperate trees.  Thanks to being aligned with the sun, having trouble focusing, and Big Chief-Piss-On-Shoe jerking around, I had little luck at snapping them.

"Well, hello good neighbor!"

The other deer was holed up in her favorite spot under the old bridge.  She reacted faster than me, so this is all I got.

The we met the fattest ground hog in the area...

I have been trying to get shots of Goldfinches, Cardinals, and Blue Jays (Because when it comes down to it, once you've gotten the Barn Swallows and Mourning doves, everyone else kinda looks the same), but they are actively uninterested in posing.  So combine fast moving bird, finger accidentally on the flash pillar which wants to come up, and doofy dog wanting to move on, and what do you get?

Psychadelia!

This morning, though, I managed to catch a cardinal unawares.

Ms. Deer wasn't under the bridge, but you can see she had a bed here...

And one golfinch finally decided to pose!

Today we added the fattest squirrel in the forest.

Showdown- two against one...

And our contestants...

What, me worry about health care?

Now that I am almost at the end of an unnecessarily long story, let me fill you all in. When we were called back to work in January, I let you know about the troubles I had getting reinstated on insurance. Over the succeeding weeks, as our (now former) HR babe Trish attempted various things to get everything back to hunky-dory, I repeatedly asked her to request me new ID cards as mine was quite worn. Actually, I found out, I should have gotten a new ID card last July, when most of my co-workers were mailed theirs. Trish, for her part, was having trouble even getting onto my page as plan administator (she said it actually kicked her clear off the system once), even though I could get on as a customer. She finally suggested I try to request one myself online. Of course, this was as she was drizzling down to her imminent (and now accomplished) departure, and I frankly thought the problem was more her than Blue Cross- Blue Shield of Michigan.

Though it still may have been somewhat on her, I'd like to take this opportunity to apologize.

After she left for otherwise gainful employment, I did request new cards. It seemed a simple enough thing. I checked to make sure the address they had was correct (it never stopped any other thing they wanted to mail me), which it was. I was informed that they would soon be winging their way to my house.

Today, I get a call about 4:10 from our plant mgr. in Ft. Wayne. The cards, it seems, had been sent to our home office in Bingham Hills, Michigan; from their they were sent to Ft. Wayne ( since the FTW HR babe, Teri, is watching over us abandoned ones in Kendallville until they hire the next Trish). He or his son will get them to me next week.

His son works in FTW but is helping us out with inventory the next week or so, and I told him about the ordeal. He told me that he (an employee) received his new card last year about a month before his father (a plant manager) got his. His father's response: WTF?

This then, is the finest health care system in the world, a system that our government wants to take over so they can mess it up worse. Reason #78 to oppose Obamacare: the system really doesn't need any more messing up.