Simple and to the point: Five Health Care Reform Solutions That Make Sense

Congratulations, Scott Brown. Job well done!

The libs whined that they couldn’t get anything done with the conservatives in power. They still whine that they were burdened with the damage done by eight years of Bush, even though they were in power during the last two of those years.

They wanted control of the house and we gave it to them — three years ago. They wanted 60 Senate seats and we gave them that too. And they’ve accomplished exactly what?

I hope Brown beats the pants off Coakley. I don’t care whether he gets anything done. I just want him to keep the Dems from doing more of what they’ve done.

It’s 01/02/2010.

Someone sent me this in an email. It couldn’t be simpler…

An economics teacher made a statement that he had never failed a single student before, but had once failed an entire class. That class had insisted that President Obama’s socialism worked and that no one would be poor and no one would be rich, a great equalizer.

The teacher then said, “OK, we will have an experiment in this class on Obama’s plan”. All grades would be averaged and everyone would receive the same grade so no one would fail and no one would receive an A.

After the first test, the grades were averaged and everyone got a B. The students who studied hard were upset and the students who studied little were happy.

As the second test rolled around, the students who studied little had studied even less and the ones who studied hard decided they wanted a free ride too so they studied little. The second test average was a D! No one was happy.

When the 3rd test rolled around, the average was an F. The scores never increased as bickering, blame and name-calling all resulted in hard feelings and no one would study for the benefit of anyone else.

All failed, to their great surprise, and the teacher told them that socialism would also ultimately fail because when the reward is great, the effort to succeed is great, but when government takes all the reward away, no one will try or want to succeed.

Class over. Any questions?

My importance to the world is relatively small. On the other hand, my importance to myself is tremendous. I am all I have to work with, to play with, to suffer and to enjoy. It is not the eyes of others that I am wary of, but of my own. I do not intend to let myself down more than I can possibly help, and I find that the fewer illusions I have about myself or the world around me, the better company I am for myself.

— Noel Coward, 1901-1973

For you non-mathemeticians, that’s analogy notation… i.e., tennis racquet is to bats as broom is to what?

Answer: chicken.

If you read my post from yesterday, you’ve already heard about the chickens taking up residence in the middle of our road. Today they were still here, so my neighbor herded them down to our front yard with a broom. Not sure why, but I’m thinking he was either really, really bored or didn’t want his wife to keep feeding them.

Well, truth be told — he didn’t. He started to but then he got distracted by the chicken going the opposite direction and they decided to spend some quality time together.

My neighbor calls a little while ago and asks “Is Tom home yet?”.
Me: “No, but he’s on his way. What’s up?”.
Neighbor: “You should call him and tell him if he’s not careful, the chicken police will come after him?”
Me: “The what?”.
Neighbor: “The chicken police. There are two chickens nesting in the middle of the road and with all the snow, you can barely see them.”
Me: “Uh, ok. They’re just sitting there?”.
Neighbor: “Yup.”
Me: “For how long?”
Neighbor: “All day.”
Me: “But it’s freezing out.”.
Neighbor: “Which reminds me… what are you guys doing for dinner tomorrow? By morning, we might have some frozen poultry that needs pluckin’.”

Don’t believe me? I’ll explain…

In the late 1870’s, Hawaii had more than it’s fair share of rats. So in 1872, a farmer — without thinking through the consequences — decided to import a few mongoose (4 males and 5 females, to be exact). Not only did the mongoose take care of a few rats, they also eliminated the snakes, lizards, crabs, toads and grubs. Despite warnings from experts, they imported more in 1883 and spread them to the other islands — without thinking through the consequences. The end result: the mongoose will eat just about anything and is more active during the day. So instead of preying on the nocturnal rat, they rid Hawaii of many of its native species and devastated the ecosystem.

Between 1979 and 1982, the U.S. Department of Agriculture introduced the multicolored Asian ladybug to selected areas of the midwest — without thinking through the consequences — to combat a pest problem. The end result: ladybugs won’t stay where you put them. They quickly multiply and migrate across long distances. In the spring and fall, my house is infested with them — it’s not uncommon to vacuum a thousand of these pesky creatures off a bay window on a sunny day.

Here in New Hampshire, we relied on the fisher-cat — without thinking through the consequences — to control the porcupine population. The end result: we still have porcupines, but the fishers have taken quite a liking to birds, small mammals, chickens, small pets, bobcats, coyotes and moose or deer from time to time.

Predators are by their very nature, opportunistic. Why should a fisher spend 30 minutes killing a porcupine when it can easily feast on poultry?

I think we’re going to learn all too late that the same will be true of the public option. Why would employers continue to provide health care benefits for its employees when it will be more cost effective to just pay the fines, forcing people into a so-called option they don’t want and making it much harder for private insurance companies to compete, resulting is higher costs for customers who are lucky enough to keep the insurance they’re happy with?

Our elected representatives have been given warning after warning, yet they’re determined to drive this thing home without thinking of the consequences. If they’re allowed to succeed, I believe this will be the single event that does the most damage to our economic ecosystem in this decade.

I grew up in the South. More often than not, my mother whipped up a batch of biscuits for dinner and she alway managed to time them just perfect so they came straight from the oven onto the plates… where we would immediately pile on the butter as if the boat-load of shortening in them wasn’t quite enough to meet our daily requirement of fat. And for dessert? Another biscuit with butter and strawberry preserves, of course.

I learned from my mother that a meal without bread and butter… well… it usually isn’t worth eating and never, ever as satisfying, and now I’m paying for it. I weigh 110 pounds, don’t have an ounce of fat on me, I have to take medication for high cholesterol and I still can’t give up that daily bread and butter.

But now I know the secret and I’m going to share my seven easy steps to bread heaven:

1. Go buy a bread machine. I have a Zojirushi and absolutely love it.
2. Go buy a copy of Rustic European Breads From Your Bread Machine.
3. Make up a batch of poolish (page 57), pour it in a large-mouth glass jar and put it in a place of honor on your kitchen counter to sit over night.
4. After the poolish has been doing its thing for at least 12-14 hours, dump it back in the bread machine and make up a batch of pain au levain (page 94). Put one cup of dough back in your poolish jar and bake the rest according to the recipe.
5. As soon as you take it out of the oven, cut a nice thick slice and chew off a healthy bite without stopping to butter it — it doesn’t need any. In between bites, pat yourself on the back for making the best darn loaf of bread you’ve ever tasted without a single drop of fat or grain of sugar.
6. Have another slice. It’s like potato chips — you can’t have just one.
7. Repeat steps 4 and 5 daily.