The American Form of Government is an excellent video on the different types of government, and explains the various forms of government and political systems, and why America is not a democracy, but a republic. Do we really want a democracy? Please take a a few minutes to watch this and decide for yourself. The show is about 10 minutes long, so if you are in a hurry, wait until you have the time. They should show this in every American History and Government class in school.

I found a great little quiz about food mascots. It was fun to take. I got all but one right the first time and I missed that one just because I second-guessed myself. Does that mean I've watched too much television in my lifetime? Or perhaps it's just that I've watched too many commercials.

I cannot believe the audacity of some of the e-mail phishing scammers. Today, in my e-mail box, I received one that appeared to come from the IRS claiming that I had an additional tax refund coming. All I had to do was follow their link to fill out the claim form.

Thankfully, I'm smart enough to recognize a phishing scam when I see it, but there are a lot of people out there who don't know how. First off, there was a comma in the number amount where in the U.S. we would put a period instead. The other was the link pointed to an odd URL.

One of the biggest clues to a phishing scam is to mouse over the link they want you to click on and see where it goes. Don't actually click on it, just hold your mouse over it and look at the bottom of your screen (assuming you are using Windows) to see where it leads. If it's taking you to a place that has a bunch of numbers and not a web site that would truly be used by a big agency like the IRS, then don't follow it. They are just gathering information to steal your identity, or rob your bank account, neither of which you want.

Also look at the actual e-mail address the message is coming from, not just the "display name" that's listed. If it's coming from someplace with an msn, yahoo, gmail or some other free mail client site, it's probably not a legitimate offer. Legitimate businesses generally use their own dot com addresses, not free mail clients.

Bottom line, like with most things these days: if it's too good to be true, it probably is.

If you want to report phishing, or if you've been victimized by any other Internet-related crime, you can report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center, which is a partnership between the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center, and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click on the "File a Complaint" button. It will take you through a series of questions. The FBI agent I spoke to on the phone says it is really hard to catch these people because they are so mobile, but every complaint helps to pinpoint these jerks.

I honestly cannot understand how people can be so corrupt. I know it's sin, but it just blows my mind how people can be so bold as Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was arrested today on fraud charges. He was being investigated by the FBI for taking bribes for contracts with the state of Illinois and while in the cross hairs got caught trying to auction off President-Elect Obama's senate seat. Crazy!!!!

Have you ever known anyone who was so manipulative and corrupt? Did it make you mad that (s)he seemed to get away with it?

My husband led me to this driver quiz that tells if you are a bad driver. I got a B, which I was kind of disappointed in. He claims I should have had lower because he's always scared riding with me. He also claims I lied on the quiz, but that's not true.

Created by The Car Connection

No matter who is elected to the presidency on Tuesday, there are still some fundamental things that will still be true come Wednesday morning.

Our pastor showed us these wonderful truths from Romans 15:13-33 during the evening service Sunday. I thought I would share them with you. As Pastor Thompson pointed out, these are not in order of importance, but in the order in which they appear in Scripture.

1. Our joy and peace will still be in believing.
2. The Holy Spirit will still be the power that works in us.
3. We can still be filled with goodness, knowledge and admonition.
4. God's grace will still be active.
5. We will still glory in Jesus Christ.
6. We will still be able to preach the gospel.
7. Things still won't be perfect in the United States either.
8. We will still enjoy the company of fellow believers.
9. We will still be able to minister to one another.
10. We can still pray.
11. God can still deliver us from those who do not believe.
12. God will still be with us.

So if your candidate doesn't win, please remember that God is still in control. The Bible says that God still rules the rulers, no matter who they are; and whatever happens, it is part of God's bigger picture.

It is VERY important that every eligible Christian in the United States make it to the polls Tuesday and vote their Christian values. If you live in Iowa, the Iowa Christian Alliance has a chart that shows how the candidates stand on Christian issues. I didn't have time to look one up for the other states, but I'm sure there is one available. This one does have the presidential candidates on it, as well as the Iowa senators and representatives for the federal level.

A young couple moves into a new neighborhood.

The next morning while they are  eating breakfast, the young woman sees her neighbor hanging the wash outside.

'That  laundry is not very clean', she said. 'She doesn't know how to wash correctly.  Perhaps she needs better laundry soap'

Her husband looked on, but remained silent.

Every time her neighbor would hang her wash  to dry, the young woman would make the same  comments.

About one month later, the woman was surprised to see a nice clean wash on the line and said to her husband: 'Look, she has learned how to wash correctly.  I wonder who taught her this?'

The husband said, 'I got up early this morning and cleaned our windows.'

And so it is with life.  What we  see when watching others, depends on the purity of the window through which we look.

I will agree with most anyone that prescription drugs are way too costly in this country. The government thinks so, too, and in their feable attempt to "fix" the problem, has placed regulation on drug company marketing funds beginning January 1.

I discovered this on my way home from a Taking Control of Your Diabetes conference in Des Moines this weekend. I rode up with a health care provider from town who was going as well. She and I attended different morning sessions as caregiver and patient, and we shared some of the information we learned on the way home.

One of the things we talked about was that the health care folks are spending what's left of their marketing money great guns right now because come Jan. 1 they will not be allowed to do so. I like the fact that I won't be seeing nearly as many commercials encouraging me to "Ask your doctor about Drug X" without ever really finding out what Drug X is supposed to be for, but the new regulations is also drying up the samples that doctors often use to help those of us without insurance stay on prescriptions we could not afford otherwise.

My case in point, I had a terrible time controlling my blood sugars. Even on the generic meds, I could not seem to get them below 150. Granted, my lifestyle needs some serious changing, too, and we are working on getting that exercise squeezed in there. However, the doctor put me on Actos, which is a new type of drug that's only been around about 10 years, which triggers my muscles to absorb more of the glucose in my system. This drug has no generic as yet, and costs $250 for a 30-day supply. There is no way I can afford this with the other medications I am on, so the doc has kept me supplied in samples for the past 2 years. She has also been able to keep me on samples of Lipitor, which runs $80 per month and also has no generic. Samples of both of these are drying up.

There have been rumors for a few months now that Actos will be available in a generic form sometime in 2009. This was confirmed at the conference this weekend. It's going generic because Takeda, the drug manufacturer, is coming out with a new drug for diabetes next year and will allow the Actos to go to the generic manufacturers. The doctor and I were hoping to stay on the samples until it went generic, but when I called her yesterday for a refill, she said she hasn't anymore and isn't going to get anymore.

So, a program that physicians have used to help patients is now discontinued because the government wants to regulate their marketing, not thinking that those samples are part of marketing.

The good thing for now is there is one other drug in the same category of Actos, and the doc has samples of that left. So we are going to try Avandia for a while and see how that goes. If she runs out of the samples, Avandia is only $140 per month instead of the $250. It's steep, but still better than the other. I will start on the Avandia tomorrow and see how it works. If we run out of the samples before the Actos is available, then at least the Avandia is $110 less than the Actos. Hopefully it works too. It's supposed to do the same thing with the triggering the muscles to accept more of the glucose. Actos is supposed to be better for your heart than Avandia, but like hubby said, I am relatively young yet and don't have any heart problems at the moment. I'm hoping for it to be a stopgap until the generic is available.

I just wonder how many more things the government is gonna mess up in their attempt to reform health care in this country.

I wish McCain's ad showing other people claiming to be Joe the Plumber would go further to explain how Obama's plans will hurt small businesses, which employ more than half of the workers in the United States. While there are big corporations that hire thousands of people, there are hundreds of thousands of small businesses like mine that employ the majority of Americans.

I planned on not blogging much about politics, but on this one, I just feel like I have to help inform others. Obama claims that he will not raise taxes on small businesses "making" less than $250,000 a year. He's very careful in not stating whether that's net or gross, but it turns out he is indeed referring to gross.

We have owned our business for nearly 13 years now. Last year was the best year we have ever had, and we just cleared the $500,000 mark on our gross revenues. What Obama, the attorney, doesn't understand, is that the majority of that revenue goes right back out the door to pay for the cost of goods sold, payroll, utilities and rent, the cost of leasing equipment, etc. I think the most gross profit the business has shown at the end of the year has been $7,000.

I need to clarify that John and I consider ourselves employees and we do cut ourselves paychecks, which comes off the gross profits. Even still, we manage to live on (I hope my husband forgives me for making this public) $48,000 a year between the two of us. We cannot afford to buy our own health insurance now because of health issues we developed back when we were making even less per year, let alone be forced to pay for health care for our other employees, too. In the past few years, we have managed to add Aflac to the benefit at work, which is better than nothing, but still not a true health care plan. It would cost us over $500 per month per employee to get each of them on some kind of real health care plan, and that doesn't include their families. Group health care requires 75% participation from employees. When there is only 4 of us (we had 7 at the beginning of the year), that means that we all have to participate because John and I are married.

Republicans have been trying to get a Small Group Health Care Plan going for years now, unfortunately, the Democrats would rather see universal health care. Ask the people in Canada and the United Kingdom how great socialized medicine is. Most of them will tell you horror stories of not being able to get decent treatment, waiting months on end for an appointment with a specialist while your disease progresses further and further, etc.

I don't think either of the candidates has a health plan worth tooting a horn over. I think we'd be far better off to bring down the costs of seeing the doctor and paying for prescriptions than we would be to have the government pay for everyone's. I pay my own way at the moment, paying $100 here and $50 there on some of our bigger medical bills. It would be a whole lot easier to do if doctors couldn't get away with charging $500 for an emergency room visit that they didn't even spend a total of 15 minutes with you. That doesn't include the hospital or lab bills that came along with it, too.

I think I've blogged too long, so I'll step off my soap box for now.

Tonight we found the kind of reality show my husband can really get into. He has put up with me and my fanship of "Survivor" and "The Amazing Race" and even "Rich Bride, Poor Bride." Tonight was the premier of Hulk Hogan's Championship Celebrity Wrestling, definitey my husband's kind of show. It was kind of funny. I half-heartedly watch his WWE programs, he half-heartedly watches my reality TV shows, but tonight, we both watched CCW.

The premise of the show is that they take washed up celebrities (like most celebrity reality shows) who learn to wrestle from "retired" professional wrestlers. Hulk Hogan, his old NWO partner Eric Bishoff, and wrestling manager Jimmy Heart judge how well these wash-ups perform the moves. The team who does the best has immunity, the other team has a member voted off.

Tonight, former teen pop star Tiffany went home. Danny Bonaduci and Trischel from MTV's "Real World: Las Vegas" actually did pretty darn good in the ring. Their moves looked really great.

I suppose we'll be watching it again next Saturday night.