Take Two Aspirins and Call Dick Cheney in the Morning

Calhoun’s Cannons for March 29, 2012

All animals are created equal but some are more equal than others.

                George Orwell, Animal Farm

            I must fess up.  I’m of two minds about the upcoming battle in the Supreme Court over whether Obamacare will stand or fall.  Part of me wants to see the Affordable Healthcare Act pass constitutional muster and survive so it can be improved and expanded.  After all, why shouldn’t we all end up with the same health care plan as former Veep Dick Cheney enjoys?  For years, we’ve all been paying for his top of the line government paid health care, subsidizing the kind of  taxpayer-financed “socialized medicine” that Dick’s political party has been moving heaven and earth to destroy. So, I see no reason why sauce for the goose can’t be sauce for all the rest of us ganders. Medicare for all and/or Congressional Health Care for all.  That should do the trick.

            But, part of me, the childishly evil part, wants to see the Supremes knock the Affordable Healthcare Act out of the park.  Make it a total no-go.  DOA.  After all, polls show that nearly half of all Americans don’t like or don’t want the evil Obamacare. So, I’d like to see their wishes come true.  Poof!  Gone. 

            Within days, free of all price restraints, everyone’s health insurance premiums would spike as insurance company CEOs demanded higher bonuses because they needed more gold-plated toilet fixtures for their private offices.  Millions of people who had some minor malady would get a letter in the mail notifying them that their major medical had been canceled and they couldn’t buy more because they were now considered to be uninsurable because of some “preexisting condition.” Other millions, right in the middle of cancer treatment, would be notified that their policies had been canceled. And for all those people who got their health insurance at work, those price hikes would force their employers to downsize, so they’d lose their jobs; no job, no money, no health-care and now totally uninsurable. That’s just the plucky, Republican Party, Ron-Paulian self-sufficient independence all these freedom-loving folks have been fighting for—no more evil creeping socialism and government rules meddling in their lives! 

            Then, by the millions, I want these hardy souls to get sick.  Not lethal sick.  After all, I’m childlishly evil, not mean.  No, I want them just sick enough to really rack up humongous hospital bills, like, say, a two-week stay, plus some sort of surgery.  That should do it.  It’s unlikely the average person could pay that highly inflated hospital bill.  And so they would lose their house and would end up sitting on the curb with their meager belongings, their kids stuffed into the station wagon, with the family dog tied on top.

            And then I could drive by and sweetly inquire, “Are you happy now?”

            But then I remember a friend of mine.  She’s self-employed and healthy and, like most of us, has a very minor condition that has rendered her pre-existingly uninsurable. One minor accident, one illness, and she’d lose it all – her business, her home, everything.  Under the new Obamacare mandates, for the first time, she was able to buy group insurance from a newly formed pool and now has the security of knowing she’s covered against a medically induced financial disaster.  If Obamacare is defeated, my friend will be once again put in danger.

            I don’t want that to happen.  She’s my friend.  She’s a hard working, responsible American. And I can’t imagine why nearly half of recently polled Americans just like her want to put her (and themselves) back into harm’s way again.

            No matter which way the Supreme Court rules, that’s the one question that will remain unanswered.  Whether Obamacare is still standing to be modified and improved, or shot down totally, the state of our health care system is profoundly sick and will remain a national problem.  Many other advanced, democratic countries have figured out excellent ways to deliver cheaper, better health care to more of their citizens at a much lower cost than we do, and with better outcomes.  There is nothing in the world preventing us from cherry-picking ideas from any of their plans and adapting them to our country.  It’s not rocket science, but it does take some smarts, and a pragmatic rather than a rigid ideological mind-set. 

            And a willingness to keep asking and answering two key questions:  Should basic, non-profit health care be a right for all citizens, or should it remain a high-profit luxury reserved only for the privileged few?  And, Why is evil socialized government-administered medical insurance O.K. for our seniors, our vets, our congress and Dick Cheney, but not O.K. for the rest of us?      

Chinatown, Decoded

The main concern and industry of bureaucrats is not to rectify their mistakes, but to conceal them.
                                                                                       Simon Leys 

    For one of the best explanations of just how and why the Los Osos Sewer Disaster became the Great Los Osos Sewer Disaster, Ron Crawford has put it all together for you in an easily readable form at http://sewerwatch.blogspot.com     Let's hope Colin Rigley from New Times or Karen Velie over at Cal Coast News take a gander.  For sheer wasted public money, this puts Paso Robles' recent bungles and pay-outs to shame. And it's a hell of a story, but it has always been a very complicated one, which is why our media and so much of the public has turned away.  Well, no longer.  Here's the Reader's Digest Condensed version.  Simple. Clear.
     But ultimately sad.  There will be no accountability here.  The citizens in the PZ will be left to pay the bill, with 45 of them still branded as criminals and their homes under threat. Read it and weep. Your government at work here in . . . Chinatown.

Your Sunday Recipe

Passover and Easter are just around the corner.  I stumbled on a new (to me) recipe in an article by Adam Rapoport, editor-in-chief of Bon Appetite magazine for Matzo brei (rhymes with "fry"). When I made up the dish, which is beyond fast and easy, I couldn't figure out what it reminded me of.  Mr. Rapoport writes, "Just what is matzo brei?  Depends on who you ask.  Some prefer this mixture of beaten eggs and shards of matzo to resemble a crispy scramble -- a kind of a Jewish version of migas, the Tex-Mex tortilla-and-egg dish.  Others sweeten it with cinnamon, vanilla or raisins.   . . .  We Rappoports keep it simple:  eggs, matzo, salt and pepper, mixed into a batter and fried in oil till crisp and golden.  What emerges are crunchy, eggy pancakes that are completely irresistible.  As a kid, I took mine with syrup, although nowadays I also reach for good fruit preserves or jam."

So it clearly is a dish that can withstand some creative cookery and go savory by adding bits of sausage, peppers, cheese and ending up with a kind of Jewish scramble, or staying sweet, pancaky.  When I made a second batch and topped it with butter and maple syrup, it finally dawned on me what they reminded me of:  French toast!

As Mr. Rapoport concludes, "For whatever reason, I only eat matzo brei during Passover -- which, really, is as nonsensical as someone not eating it just because he or she isn't Jewish.  You don't have to celebrate Passover to celebrate good food."

Too true.  So, if you like French toast but don't like the mess of drippy bread slices and egg yolk dribbles all over the kitchen counter, try this incredibly fast, easy and yummy dish.

Matzo Brei
2 servings

Break 2 sheets of matzo into 1/2" pieces in a bowl.  Cover with hot tap water.  Let sit 30 seconds then drain off water.  Beat 2 large eggs in another bowl, season as you wish.  Add drained matzo.  Stir and mix well.  Scoop scant 1/4 cupfuls of the batter into hot oil or butter in a frying pan.  Cook about 1 minute, until golden, and turn once and cook until done.  Break out the pure maple syrup, add some spiced chicken sausage and fresh fruit and you've got a Feast of Spring-- Passover French Toast!

Yum!

Off To The Carizzo

The Nature Conservancy Legacy Club held it's annual field trip to the Carrizo Plain National Monument yesterday.  What seems like centuries ago, I and other volunteers often went out to the newly built visitor's center on work days to help landscape and plant natives around the area, including crawling around on hands and knees to put in plugs of salt grass, a staggering bit of botanical hubris, considering the scale of what actually needed revegetating.  But, miraculously, some of the seedlings have survived all these years.

 

The Legacy visitors were loaded on a bus for the drive up to the sacred Painted Rock.  This was a meeting place for both Chumash and Yokut tribes (among others)  both for trading and for ceremonial rites.  The rock is a remnant of sandstone outcropping from a prehistoric inland sea.  Its fragility (and historical and sacred importance to the Chumash) is one reason that since becoming a National Monument, a serious effort was made to repair, protect, restrict visitors.

 Years ago, when the land was in private hands, little care was taken of the rock.  Sheep were penned in its bowl-like center, generations of nincompoops carved or spray painted their initials on it, defacing the ancient pictographs within.  The Getty Museum restoration team assisted in the work to repair the rock and much of the more recent graffiti was removed and restricted use will protect the rock as well as the nesting peregrines and hawks (and an owl) that call it home.

 Most of the remaining pictographs are tucked under some of the overhanging rock where they were protected from the elements.

And,  standing in the center of the rock and looking out into the valley, it's easy to see why this became a very special place to so many. 

And, of course, no visit to the Carrizo would be complete without visiting its keystone species, the famed, endangered Kangaroo Rat.  The rains have been late and/or nonexistent at his point, so the vegetation around their "precincts" was pretty scant.  When the rains are abundant, the rat family cuts down a swath of grasses about 3' feet around his burrow (which territory they ferociously defend against another rat family with their nearby 3' circle.)  The cut grass dries and as needed, the seed heads are dragged into the burrow for din-din.  Recent aerial surveys have discovered that these circular precincts extend over a far wider swath of the plains than had been previously believed.  Which is good news for an endangered species. And further research of this kind is also revealing just profound an impact the little grass-cutting critter has on the overall  health of the plains and the other animals whose lives depend on that environment.  Including the lovely kit fox who depends on the K-rat for food.  Hence the rat's designation as "keystone."

At the center of the plains is the great Soda Lake.  Since the rains have been so poor this year, there's lots of soda, very little lake. 

  

But what would the Carrizo Plains be without the great Soda Lake.  Since the rains were missing, the vast sheets of wildflowers were either still asleep or had already given up the ghost, or, if the rains come today and tomorrow, they may start their life cycle again.  But the Carrizo dressed up in it's finery or sere and dry, is still a very special place of abiding. of endurance and great beauty.

 

Waltz Me Around Again, Willy . . .

           When your police chief is accused of going out drinking with her officers and she ends up allegedly dancing on the bar, you know you’re in trouble.  When the same chief is accused of hot-tubbing with her officers while on a tax-payer financed “retreat,” and is accused of sexually harassing some officers, and putting quotas on ticket writing, and there are claims that because of budget cuts, the reduced staff ends up ignoring real crimes, then, you really know you’re in trouble.

            And when the city manager, Jim App, the police chief’s boss, refers to her as Rita, the Lovely Meter Maid and refers to himself in official emails as “PBG phat bald guy,” you just gotta know that trouble’s heading your way.  And, as Cal Coast News reports, said city manager sends out a too-cutsey-by-half note about a social function: “To all staff re: Saturday nosh: ‘Roasted bean squeezing’s, [sic] bagels und phruit in a dam, sammies, rabbit nibblers, phinger-sweets mid-day.  Nuf fer 35, Dig? J.” – phruit?  Phinger-sweets?  Really? – well,  you just  KNOW you’re  in for it now.

            Some $250,000 worth, which is what said police chief walked out the door with after promising that nobody would sue anybody. Or I should say, $250,000 worth and counting as the scritch of legal pens on legal-sized paper start churning out lawsuits and counter suits.  All hands on deck.  Let the killing commence!    

            Meantime, the City Manager is still in his job, which means the good people of Paso Robles, who are gonna be left to pay for this Big Phat Mess of Roasted Bean Squeezings, now need to ask one  simple question:

            -- Where were the City Council members?  Their primary job is to make sure the City Manager, who they hired, is doing his job properly.  And when they get a whisper of somebody dancing on bar-tops, it’s their job to start asking questions. And if they don’t get a whisper of same, their job is to unstopper their ears, get off their soft comfy City Council Chairs and make sure they’re walking around in their community with their ears to the ground in order to make sure they’re the FIRST people in town who hear about bar-top dancing.

            Sigh.  In this County, nobody learns anything, so we get to waltz around again, some more. Get out your wallets, Paso Robles.  This time, the dance is on you.  

Shane! Shane! Go Away, Shane!

            There will be a lot of ink spilled and TV time spent on an endless discussion of the shooting of an unarmed black teenager, Trayvon Marin, in Florida. Tears will be shed, hands will be wrung, brows will furrow with earnest discussion.  It’s all a waste of time.  Nothing will change here. The case is a simple one:

            Trayvon Martin was guilty of Walking While Black in a land where every armed nincompoop thinks he’s Shane. 

            That’s it. And that’s exactly the way we like it. It’s the American Way. Nuf said.