Don’t enforce the law or else!

So the other day I was working on a Ponzi scheme that has been operating across state lines when a Provo police officer tried to arrest me. "Not so fast," I exclaimed, "I am breaking a federal law not a state law, you have no right to arrest me." So he apologized for his mistake and let me continue breaking the federal law that he has no power to enforce. I am even considering filing a discrimination complaint with the Provo Police Department because that officer unfairly targeted me because of my skin color; I'm going to make him pay for his audacity to try and arrest me for breaking the law just because I'm a Scandinavian American, we have been persecuted enough.

On that note, Arizona just passed a law essentially saying if you are in the country illegally you will be arrested, jailed, and fined. What a shock, it is illegal to be an illegal alien. Now everyone is throwing a fit saying this law is unconstitutional and it will lead to racial profiling and racism. There are calls to boycott the state of Arizona, the New York governor is urging the MLB to move the All Star game this year out of Arizona, companies are cancelling corporate retreats previously planned in Arizona, and of course Hollywood has jumped on the "hate Arizona" bandwagon. My favorite thing I've read though was an article about illegal immigrants in Arizona who are leaving the state because they don't want to worry about the new law. The funny thing about the article was the people leaving was viewed as a bad thing. I thought that is what the law is going for, to get rid of illegal aliens.

Anyway, I have no problem with people coming to America if they are law abiding people. The problem arises with drug dealers, terrorists, and freeloaders coming across the borders. On a side note, I don't think the third category is that big of a problem, I am more concerned with the millions of freeloaders who are already here.

I am surprised a law like this hasn't been passed sooner. What does Washington expect Arizona to do? The state is being overrun by drug dealers and other illegals and the federal government has all but turned a blind eye to the problem. The issue could be solved very easily, make it a felony to hire illegal aliens. If there are no jobs then people won't come, or at least they will come legally.

Now I don't know how hard it is to get a migrant workers VISA and I'm sure it is pretty difficult; I am all for the process of coming to America being revised to make it more feasible for the poor to comply with the rules and come to this land of opportunity. Perhaps instead of spending billions of dollars on a fence that will never actually be built, and if by some chance it were built would never be that effective. Why don't we spend just millions on revamping the process of coming here and opening more offices in border cities allowing honest people to come to this country. If there aren't thousands coming across, perhaps we can then focus on catching the hundreds coming across the border who actually pose a threat to national security.

Anyway, I would like to hear your thoughts on this hot topic in society today. Feel free to post comments, whether for or against.

A lot on my mind

There has been a lot on my mind recently (as I'm sure you already guessed based on the title) and I've decided I need to just blog about it in a less than perfect blog rather than keep putting it off because I'm worried I wouldn't do the topics justice.

Issue number 1. Health Care Overhaul

I am vehemently opposed to this bill and it bothers me that there was essentially nothing I could do to stop it. I'm also bothered that popular culture has decided that anyone against it is some right-wing nut job who only cares about keeping "the white man" in power and therefore has to oppose anything the black president does just because he's black. People assume if you are for the new plan you are therefore a very giving person, if you are against it you are greedy and would rather keep your new boat and nice luxury car rather than give to charity and help the needy. Who is the more giving person, the one who wants the government to take care of everyone or the person who would rather keep that money from the government and give it directly to the poor. I could say more about this but I won't. I am bothered that one of the main arguments in defense of all the corruption, bribes, pork, and back-room deals needed to pass the bill was, "well Republicans would have done the same thing." Well then that would be wrong too, maybe their mothers' let them get away with saying, "well he started it" or, "he was doing it too" but mine never did because they are bad excuses. Don't automatically lump me together with everything the Republican party ever did, just because someone from that party did it doesn't mean I would have done it too. I thought it wasn't politically correct to stereotyping. That's another thing that really annoys me but I won't go into it now.

There are some good things in this bill, or I should say I know of some good things that will come from this bill. A couple of them are some of my extended family will be able to get insurance now and people won't get kicked off of insurance once they become sick. But there are so many things that I feel are going to be no fun. One of the big things mentioned as a good thing coming from the bill is that insurance companies won't be able to set life time limits on benefits, well what if I don't want to pay for that coverage? Too bad for me because insurance companies are no longer allowed to charge different people different rates. Imagine if everyone in the country had to pay the same car insurance premiums, what kind of uproar would there be coming from the lower classes (and rightfully so) for having to pay much higher premiums to cover all the sports cars, reckless driving, expensive upgrades, etc. etc. Well, now I will have to pay higher insurance costs because someone else chooses to smoke two packs a day, eat fast food three times a day, and never exercise and will be visiting the doctor once a month, getting a gastric bipass surgery in a couple years, going to the emergency room for the common cold because wait times at the doctor's office will be months whereas at the ER it will only be hours. Tell me where the fairness is in that! I am not a prophet but I am going to make a prophecy; once people realize they are paying more money to cover for unhealthy people there will be an outcry for laws prohibiting unhealthy living, we are already seeing it today with proposed taxes on soft drinks, fast foods, trans fats, and smoking. Once those things start to get taxed and the government has public support for controlling what we eat and how we live then .... I haven't fully thought this through yet, but the first part of my argument makes sense in my mind. And if anyone doesn't think that will happen, please tell me why. A big thing touted by the Democrats in support of the bill is that taxes will only be raised on people making more than $200k, well how about the increase in premiums charged by insurance companies, that will effect everyone. Another thing mentioned to support this bill is that the health care industry in America isn't that great, Americans are the most obese people in the world and our life expectancy is ranked somewhere around 40th in the world. So how will through 32 million more people into the system possibly fix those problems? I have my issues with doctors in general, they are like mechanics in that they act like they know everything and don't consider maybe they are making mistakes. They make plenty of mistakes just like everyone else in every other industry; there can be improvements to the quality of care in the US but this bill doesn't do that at all. Doctors are very useful and I am very grateful for the quality of care we have here.

All of this leads me to the next thing on my mind.

Issue number 2. LDS General Conference
You may ask how these two are connected, I'll tell you. Ever since the health care bill passed I have been so frustrated about everything, some of the reasons I just mentioned. Going into General Conference I wasn't sure what I was going to get out of it; of course I was excited and I knew it would be great but I didn't have any clear questions in my mind. I realize this was my fault but I am very grateful to the Lord for still blessing me with a lot of instruction. The first major breakthrough for me was during one of the talks on Saturday (I don't remember which one without looking at my notes) I had the realization/inspiration that life is great so long as we have the Gospel in it. There have been plenty of people throughout the history of the world who have lived righteous lives and have since gone on to their eternal reward all while living in a much worse political situation than we are in right now. When I had that thought, or prompting, I felt so much more at peace with my life in this country than I had in weeks. All the stuff I mentioned above, I still feel. But I have been given back my ability to put it into proper perspective; everything going on in the country and even the world has no power to take away my ability to follow my Heavenly Father and to uphold my covenants with Jesus Christ. Other notable talks for me during conference were, the talk by Elder Oaks during Priesthood meeting about blessings was fantastic, rarely am I as surprised about learning doctrine as I was when I listened to his talk. My brother Ammon and I had very similar reactions, we looked at each other with shocked faces and asked each other if we knew that. I really need to reread his talk to fully grasp what he was saying. Also, I loved Elder Holland's talk as did so many people. He has a power when he speaks that so few people have, he could have been such a famous, powerful man in the eyes of the world if he had not been dedicated to the Lord his entire life. And Staci and I were both very impressed with how much of a focus on the family there was, it seemed like every other talk was about how to be better parents, and with the baby coming we were both very interested and eager to learn.

Which reminds me...

Issue number 3.
I am getting really nervous about being a father. I am worried that I won't be able to take care of our newborn, that I won't be able to provide adequately financially for my wife and child, or lead spiritually, but most of all, I am terrified that something will cause me to lose my temper and I will take it out on my son. I am ashamed to even admit this has even crossed my mind. But I've seen too many news stories about a father or mother who couldn't get the baby to stop crying so they shook him/her and ended up killing or causing brain damage. I am so worried how I will act when I wake up at 3 in the morning and my son won't stop crying. I have had problems in the past with losing my temper but I have been doing a much better job these last couple years; however, I still can feel those tendencies inside of me. I just hope and pray that I will be able to always control my actions.

And now on a much lighter not,

Issue number 4.
We are buying a house! If you look at our other blog you will see a picture of it and we will be putting plenty of more information about it in the coming weeks. This isn't exactly an issue but it is on my mind. We have been looking for a house since August of last year and there were times I thought we would never find a house. We still haven't heard back about a couple short sale offers we made months ago. Almost everyone I spoke to about buying a house said that now is a great time to buy, a buyers market with historically low interest rates. While I totally agree with the latter, the former I disagree with. I think it is more a banks market, (yes that is a very cynical statement); most of the properties for sale right now are short sales. The banks take a long time to get back on offers, and they apparently don't care about taking a loss; but they do care about saving face and not letting people get a good deal. I say that because some of the houses we looked at were close to foreclosure and yet they still wouldn't come down in price. We tried to get one property for 7k less than the bank wanted and instead of coming down in price, the bank decided to foreclose on the property. The bank will lose a lot more money in the foreclosure process than 7k. The decision made no financial sense. Anyway, like I said, at times I thought we would never find a house, especially in time to claim the first-time home buyer tax credit, but we did and the house has almost everything we were looking for.

About the tax credit, some may criticize me for taking the 8k for various reasons; while I am opposed to most of the stimulus spending that Uncle Sam has been doing the last couple of years, I figure I might as well get back some of the money I will be paying in higher taxes for the rest of my life to the government because of the outrageous national debt levels . If I had the choice of not taking the 8k right now in exchange for a fixed income tax rate of 15% for the rest of my life, I would take that deal in an heartbeat. But since that won't happen I am going to take the money to make up for some of the taxes I paid this year.

I could probably ramble on for a couple hundred more words but I think I'll stop now, but I will try to post more often; I find this therapeutic.

Publicity Stunt?

I don't know how many of you guys have been following the Tiger Woods story with his recent press conference but I have listened to a number of different opinions about it and I feel like giving my opinion about it as well.

A little background: Tiger Woods has been cheating on his wife for quite a while (the details are not known, there are a lot of speculations and rumors involving call girls, waitresses, etc. etc.) and the story came out back around Thanksgiving of last year.

In his recent press conference he apologized for his despicable behavior, admitted to feeling like he was entitled to do whatever he wanted because of his fame and fortune, he read a bunch of stuff from a prepared statement in a rather monotone voice. His wife was not by his side but his mother was in the room. He also confirmed that he has spent the last 45 days in sex rehab and would be returning for an undefined amount of time.

Some of the more common opinions I have heard are, "because it was a prepared statement it wasn't sincere," "he doesn't owe anyone except his family an apology," "this was just a publicity stunt to try to recover his public image," "sex rehab is a fraud, people aren't addicted to sex, they're just weak," "he's only sorry because he was caught, if this didn't come out he would still be doing it," "everyone makes mistakes, who cares what he does in his personal life, he without sin let him cast the first stone," "why does he even feel so bad, he didn't break any laws, if he were single then he would be the Derek Jeter of golf, his only mistake was getting married so young."

Hearing some people's opinions on the situation casts a very negative light on the state of society. First of all, what he did is despicable and he is 100% percent responsible. Having said that I should also say that I believe in a Gospel of change and although he doesn't share my beliefs (apparently he's Buddhist, something else he said in the press statement) I believe the principles of the Gospel of Jesus Christ are all encompassing; although full forgiveness is only available through baptism by one with proper authority, a certain amount of forgiveness can be achieved by following most of the steps of true repentance. This can be seen through the success of Alcoholics Anonymous, a program that essentially teaches proper repentance. I find it easy to believe that Tiger Woods made the public statement as part of his addiction recovery, and because of his world-wide fame he felt it prudent to "apologize and confess" to the world, or at least to whomever cares and was listening. I don't know if that was the motivation for his statement, but I do think it is a plausible theory.

About sex rehab and sexual addictions, people who say it is a fraud are just showing their ignorance on the topic, there are plenty of accredited studies showing that sexual addictions of many kinds are an actual chemical addiction, and people who have recovered from both cocaine addiction and sexual addiction have said the cocaine addiction was the easier addiction to overcome. However, that doesn't excuse the actions of addicts in the least bit; I do believe, however, it gives them hope knowing there is a possibility of recovery, that although there is something wrong with them, it can be fixed. It is not just the way they were made.

A lot of people seem surprised that he appears to be so motivated to save his marriage and get his life back in order when he still has millions of dollars in the bank and will still most likely be the best golfer on the PGA tour. Possibly, Woods is realizing that money doesn't buy happiness. So in his endeavor to find a truly meaningful life and be more than just the greatest golfer ever I wish him luck.

But in the end my opinion comes down to this; I don't care what he says, only what he does.

Additions

So I thought of a couple other things that bug me. To illustrate the first point I will tell a story.

As some of you may know, Staci and I are trying to purchase a house; we put in an offer on a great house in Pleasant Grove up on the hill with an amazing view of the valley, a great Trax deck, a rentable basement, and a great kitchen with an even better pantry/mudroom. We put in our initial offer on the house back in October and it took the bank (it is a short sale) until December to respond to our offer and come back with a firm asking price. We checked out the house again and decided it was worth pursuing and put in another offer 2 weeks ago. The bank responded much quicker this time to our offer but their response was absurd. The bank has decided to not negotiate any more and instead foreclose on the house. The reasoning behind that decision is lost to me. Why in the world would the bank decide to spend thousands of dollars to foreclose on a house and then try to sell it rather than accept a couple thousand dollars on a short sale. What the heck!! It bugs me so much. Now the current owners' credit will be even more shot, they will not care about the condition of the house any more, the house will most likely remain vacant for a while and it will get in even worse condition and the bank will probably end up selling it for even less than what we are offering. All well.

Doctors bug me. Not all doctors, but the doctors who act like know-it-alls bother me. They are like mechanics. Most of the things they say, the patient (or customer) has no way of verifying if they are right or making stuff up. Staci was misdiagnosed for 10 years by her doctor, and it wasn't until we suggested a procedure was it discovered that what her doctor has been telling her all this time was completely wrong. Argh! And there is nothing we can do about it.

So, if anyone knows of a good house for sale or of a competent family doctor in the Provo/Orem area, we are in the market for both. (We do feel good about her OBGYN, though).

Things that annoy me.

• People who expect you to let them pull in front of you when they are sitting in the middle turn lane (suicide lane). You're not playing frogger, wait for a gap in both lanes until you try to merge. Don't pull halfway out then expect other cars to slam on their brakes to let you in. (by the way, I am all about being a courteous driver,
  
• Athletes and celebrities who expect people to listen and give credence to their opinions about politics.
• Reality TV stars (and I use the term "stars" very loosely).
• Pollution
• Meteorologist: maybe I am showing my ignorance but how can a collective group of people be wrong so often and still get people to listen to them? Oh wait, that reminds me....
• Politicians: if the old "power corrupts" then how is it possible for career politicians to be anything but corrupt. They live their lives making laws and telling people what to do; they are like a parasite living off of everyone else in the country who actually works for a living. An honest politician is an endangered species. Please give us term limits on all Congressmen and Congresswomen, someone should not be a Senator for 30 years.
• 
• Taxes: I really don't think most people realize how much they are paying in income taxes every year because everything is automatically deducted from their earnings. And then on top of that we pay Social Security (which is a doomed program, I don't plan on ever seeing a return on that), and a bunch of other taxes that I don't feel like writing about right now.
  
• and last (for now), but certainly not least, by bad attitude. I used to be a much happier person, at the rate I'm going I will be one grumpy old man. I suppose I now have a new year's resolution.
  

Cruel irony

As mentioned in my other blog, Staci and I visited the Mountain Meadows Massacre memorial in July and I had some thoughts I wanted to share, although I'm not quite sure where this train of thoughts will lead.

The basic history is this. After the saints moved to Utah the US government was getting reports that the "mormons" were building an army and were planning on going to war with the US, and were harassing and attacking settlers moving out west. So the government sent Johnston (I don't remember his rank) with a sizable army to quell the uprising. This started the Mormon War. There was much fear among the saints; they all knew that whenever they started building a temple persecution would come and lead to them having to leave. This had already happened three times coupled with violence, murder, theft, and other atrocities.

At this time there was a group of settlers coming from Arkansas heading for California. Among that group were some who had participated in the extermination from Missouri and boasted about it and talked about how they were going to do the same thing to the saints in Utah.

Some of the community leaders in Cedar City decided that preemptive action must be taken to protect the people in Southern Utah. A plan was devised where and carried out where the settlers were attacked by the local indians then offered protection by the utahns. A condition of them receiving protection was they had to turn over their firearms. While the utahs were accompanying the settlers to Cedar City they turned on them and started killing everyone old enough to be aware of what was going on. They killed men, women, and children.

That is so tragic, and the cruel irony part is that is almost exactly what happened to the Saints in Missouri. The very thing these men wanted to prevent they ended up doing themselves to other people. In Far West, Missouri after the mobs were ransacking the outlying towns everyone fled to Far West. The government of Missouri represented by the State militia guaranteed the protection of the Saints if they turned over all their firearms. After they gave up the only way of protecting themselves and trusted the government, the militia/mob was turned loose on the city and ransacked the city.

This makes me wonder how many other times this has happened throughout history. I have a habit of reading articles on KSL.com and also reading the comments. Without fail, when there are articles about anything about the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints the comments end up being a mormon bashing and anti-mormon bashing session. Now I am not going to get into all the different things that come up, just one. So many times someone will write, "well if you don't like living in a state with so many members of the Church than why don't you leave?" Now since when is it Christian to kick people out because they don't agree with you. It is really sad that all too often non members living in a LDS majority area feel in a sense persecuted for not being LDS. I understand that there are different reasons why that is, one being no one wants to date them because they want to get married in the temple. But we are smart people and can come up with solutions to these problems that don't have to always be "baptize them". Of course I love the Gospel and I believe it is led by Jesus Christ and that all can benefit from it, but I also have a feeling that right now is not the right time for every single person in the world to join the Church and just because someone isn't interested in the Gospel right now doesn't mean they aren't trying to follow Jesus Christ.

I guess a good summary is we shouldn't be extreme and fanatical. Hugh Nibley wrote an article titled "Zeal without Knowledge" in which postulated on the need to ever be learning, not merely acting. I believe this is why missionaries study so many hours a day, they have plenty of zeal (desire to do good things) but they are young so they need to increase their knowledge so they know what are the best things to do (and of course the more they study the Gospel they more they have the Spirit and the better they can teach so as to give people the best chance to accept the Gospel).

In conclusion, follow the Prophet, follow the Prophet, follow the Prophet, he knows the way.

And if I got any of the details wrong about the MMM I apologize and invite you to correct me as a comment. (oh and I warned you I didn't know where this was going)

Oh and what's with this Health Care Reform going on and the federal deficit forecasts, argh.

Decisions

Last night I was watching the Orlando/Cleveland playoff game and getting pretty emotional about it (I wanted Cleveland to win but they lost), it was getting late and Staci and I were planning on watching a tv show we had recorded before going to bed, also we still needed to read and pray. I had the realization when there were about one and a half minutes left in overtime that I was letting some game happening a thousand miles away control my life and get in the way of things I wanted to do with my wife. So I made the decision to turn off the game before it was over and go spend time with Staci instead. Mind you, this was a big deal for me, the game was still close and came down to the last shot; in the past I would have insisted on watching until the end but I chose not to. Also I resolved to not let some game control what I do with my time. I will not be opposed to watching games and enjoying it but I will most likely spend a lot less time doing so.

Also for anyone not aware, I have a new blog that I'm sharing with Staci where we are posting the goings on in our life. My old blog will be just for posts like this one where I share random thoughts, and the occassional political greivance will be expressed. The new blog is jamonandstaci.blogspot.com

Cheers.

Question

Did you hear that the taxes on all tobacco products went up a lot last week? The federal tax on a package of cigarettes went from around .50 to about $1.10. This was done for a couple reasons, to fund health care for children, and to get more people to quit smoking. My question is how do you feel about this?

I don't like it, now I am all for people quitting smoking but I don't like the government vilifying a group of people and then raising taxes on them; and if the government really was concerned about our well being why not prohibit alcohol again, it certainly causes more problems than tobacco, how about pornography, a much larger plague on the world than cigarettes. I see this as just one more way the government is squeezing as much money out of the public as possible, and that I am against.

Life Accomplishments thus far

Instructions: Take the following list and bold the items you have completed or experienced.

1. Started your own blog

2. Slept under the stars

3. Played in a band

4. Visited Hawaii

5. Watched a meteor shower

6. Given more than you can afford to charity

7. Been to Disneyland

8. Climbed a mountain

9. Held a praying mantis

10. Sang a solo

11. Bungee jumped

12. Visited Paris

13. Watched a lightning storm at sea

14. Taught yourself an art from scratch

15. Adopted a child

16. Had food poisoning

17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty

18. Grown your own vegetables

19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France

20. Slept on an overnight train (I figure an overnight boat counts too)

21. Had a pillow fight

22. Hitch hiked

23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill

24. Built a snow fort

25. Held a lamb

26. Gone skinny dipping

27. Run a Marathon

28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice

29. Seen a total eclipse

30. Watched a sunrise or sunset

31. Hit a home run (whiffleball counts right)

32. Been on a cruise

33. Seen Niagara Falls in person

34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors

35. Seen an Amish community

36. Taught yourself a new language (it didn't last too long)

37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied

38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person

39. Gone rock climbing

40. Seen Michelangelo’s David

41. Sung karaoke

42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt

43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant

44. Visited Africa

45. Walked on a beach by moonlight

46. Been transported in an ambulance

47. Had your portrait painted

48. Gone deep sea fishing

49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person

50. Been on television

51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling

52. Kissed in the rain (hm, I need to do this soon)

53. Played in the mud

54. Gone to a drive-in theater

55. Been in a movie

56. Visited the Great Wall of China

57. Started a business

58. Taken a martial arts class

59. Visited Russia

60. Served at a soup kitchen

61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies

62. Gone whale watching

63. Got flowers for no reason

64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma

65. Gone sky diving

66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp

67. Bounced a check

68. Flown in a helicopter

69. Saved a favorite childhood toy

70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial

71. Eaten Caviar

72. Pieced a quilt

73. Stood in Times Square

74. Toured the Everglades

75. Been fired from a job

76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London

77. Broken a bone

78. Been on a speeding motorcycle

79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person

80. Published a book

81. Visited the Vatican

82. Bought a brand new car

83. Walked in Jerusalem

84. Had your picture in the newspaper

85. Read the entire Bible

86. Visited the White House

87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating

88. Had chickenpox

89. Saved someone’s life

90. Sat on a jury

91. Met someone famous

92. Joined a book club

93. Lost a loved one

94. Had a baby

95. Seen the Alamo in person

96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake

97. Been involved in a lawsuit

98. Owned a cell phone

99. Been stung by a bee

100. Totally copied a post from someone else's blog to your own

49/100

Some thoughts

I want to thank everyone for their thoughts from my previous post; I appreciated the advice and general support I got, all of it helped.

Also I just wanted to write down a couple things I learned. Did you know that there are fewer stars in the galaxy then there are dollars in the national debt? To be fair it should be said the US GDP is a lot larger than the number of stars in the galaxy as well. It is so hard to comprehend how much money is being spent by the government. To give everyone an idea I have posted a couple pictures of various galaxies.
The picture on the right is of two galaxies colliding, the one on the left is the Eagle nebula, one of my favorite pictures taken by the hubble telescope.
I tried to find accurate numbers for stars in a galaxy but because of the size it is impossible to count but the numbers are estimated around 200 billion (for the Milky Way at least, I am assuming other galaxies are of comparable size). In my brief search I could find a specific number for the national debt either but I think the number is around $10 trillion, about 50 times larger than 200 billion. And another number of interest, there are apparently around 6.8 billion people in the world.

Why is life so hard?

Why does everything in life have to be so hard? Shouldn't answers to problems come easier? Why does the Lord stay his hand for so long? Why are some things so easy for some people and so hard for others? Can the reward really be worth all the anguish we go through in this life? I hope so.

WTF

I am sick and tired of the government. I posted a couple months ago how I was officially supporting President Obama as long as he did a number of things, used his brain essentially. Well he and the majority of the government are acting like fools, or deliberately trying to bring down capitalism and the American way. I just read an article talking about AIG and how the fed chairman, Ben Bernanke, said "I think if there's a single episode ... that has made me more angry, I can't think of one (other) than AIG,""We really had no choice" but to prop up the company because the consequences of failure could be disastrous. " Oh really, this is a company that cannot succeed on its own, why in the world should I be paying them to continue in their failing ways. No choice? You mean that the supposedly best financial minds in America can come up with nothing better to do than prop up a failing company? That is absurd.

And what is wrong with Obama, he is so full of it. He has said over and over how he will veto any pork that comes across his desk, that he will "call out" congressmen and congresswomen who try to pass wasteful spending bills and yet he keeps signing billions and trillions of dollars of pork laden legislation into effect. If all the proposed budgets and "stimulus" bills are approved, and there is no indication that they won't be approved, then by the end of the year our national debt will be roughly 60% of the nations GDP (gross domestic product). That would be like me working for a company that makes 10 million dollars a year and I get into personal debt to the amount of 6 million dollars, even though my personal salary is much much less than that. Another way to look at it is, total tax revenues approximate 1 trillion dollars a year, with how much the goverment will be in debt is comparable to someone making $50,000 a year being in debt $700,000. That is pathetic.

Some more pics

"I love my wife", that's what I'm thinking in this picture.

Isn't this a great candid picture of my wife and me at our luncheon.


We felt very fortunate to have our entire bishopric come down for our wedding, true they did get out of going to a leadership meeting for Stake conference but I like to think they would have come down even if they didn't get out of going to a meeting. They were so helpful also for our open house we had in Provo. We had the open house at our Bishop's house, (the couple on the left) and the other four were there helping out with refreshments. Bishop Buckner even posted a road sign to help people find the place better, they were very helpful and effectively played the role as sudo-parents for the evening.
We had some fun playing around with some of the pics.
This picture essential sums up our relationship, I goof around and she puts up with me. :)




Staci doesn't like kissing pictures, but aren't these great!!!



Here is a great picture of my roommates and my wife (isn't she HOT in this picture). These are great friends that I've had for a number of years, they are all folk dance originating friendships. I lived with Dave and Scotty (the two on the right) for about three years and they have always been great roommates, I've known Jed (the tall one) for about a year longer, we weren't roommates until this last year. Staci has been really good friends with Jed for a couple years also and she became really good friends with Dave and Scotty while I was still living in SLC. When I moved back to Provo I moved back in with these guys and they were the ones who can be credited for getting me and Staci together. I do need to thank them their great friendship and also for being very chill during my and Staci's transition from friends to dating friends to engaged to married. You guys rock!!!


I didn't realize this at the time but this dance that my mom and I are dancing in this picture is a Viennese Waltz, not only is it a great dance but it is also the very first dance my mom taught me as a youth. I am very lucky Staci let me pick the song to dance to (she was dancing with her Dad at the same time and had every right to choose whatever song she wanted), thanks babe, I love you. Oh by the way, the song we are dancing to is "Can I have this Dance?" from High School Musical 3, great song.


So this is a great picture of the bouquet throwing, it was a great bouquet and we were really hoping one of our nieces would get it, or Staci's roommate, but some random girl who had just walked into the reception who we didn't even know plowed her way through and snagged it, we were a bit bugged but luckily we had some extra flowers that we gave to our nieces.


I really like this picture of us cutting the cake.
"I'm number one" that's what I was saying when this picture was taken. Actually I don't remember why I was doing that. "one reception down, two to go", or maybe I was saying, "which way is the wind blowing?" If anyone has other suggestions I would like to read them in the comments.

Ha, I'm married!!!

So it has finally come, the turning point in my life, one could even say the turning point in eternity for me. From now on and forever I will be a married man, SWEET!!!!!

The wedding was fantastic, it really was an emotional roller coaster of a weekend. But more on that later.

This post will be mostly pictures with a few explanations. This first picture was right when we came out of the temple. The next four are pretty self explanatory.








































































Here is my favorite pic of Staci.
Here are some of our great friends, starting on the left going clockwise, Stephanie Calton, Jed Brown (also our photographer), Dave McMullin, Brian McMullin, Scotty West.And of course our parents, notice the missionary name tags on my parents. They had just arrived that day from Chile, we were very blessed to have them there with us for when we were sealed.

It's been a while

Because it has been such a long time since I last posted a blog I am going to have a very random compilation of thoughts, not the masterpiece that I usually post.

First on my mind was something that I saw on TV, Ben Stein was being interviewed about the upcoming Obama presidency and he said "Now that he (Obama) is elected I hope he's the best president we have ever had." He has a very good perspective on how we should view our political leaders. These past four years have been lined with how critical so many people have been of President Bush, so many people have been so quick to point out that he has one of the lowest approval ratings in history (yet they gloss over the fact that Congress has an ever lower approval rating). Because of this animosity towards a Republican president many republicans have mentioned how they are looking forward to opposing Obama to show the same animosity towards him as a sort of payback. I admit that I have had similar thoughts, looking with an almost longing to see the country turn to pot, figuratively of course, and then in four years we would be able to say that it was the biggest mistake to elect Barack Obama. But after further consideration, and hearing what Ben Stein said, I've come to realize that it is foolish, selfish, and prideful to hope for a bad presidency just to see someone fail who doesn't have the same political persuasions as you. So this is my official declaration that I support Barack Obama for the presidency so far as him helping improve the country, strengthening the economy through sound principles, strengthening the family through good social principles but more importantly through his example of how he treats his family, and keeping our country safe from terrorists, oh and of course through all of this I expect him to uphold the constitution and support our inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Instead of keeping this in cue for who knows how long I will post it now although I was originally planning on writing a lot more. Actually I want to get a couple things off my chest.

Why is it that Roland Burris is so adamant about becoming instated as the fill-in Senator for Obama's seat as soon as possible. Does he not understand why everyone is so concerned about making him a senator when he was named by Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich right after he was accused by the FBI of corruption by trying to sale the senate seat to the highest bidder? True Burris has not been implicated with any involvement in the scandal but why not slow down and allow the Democratic Congressional leadership become more comfortable over the appointment. Is he worried that no one else will see him as a good pick, from all I've seen on him, and admittedly it's not much, he is an adequate choice. Just calm down and let Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi get more comfortable. And what's with Caroline Kennedy being seen as a great pick to fill Hilary Clinton's seat, all I've heard about her is she has tried to stay out of politics as much as possible, and that makes her a good choice to become senator, why, because her last name is Kennedy? That's ridiculous.