Sen. Harry Reid’s Republican opponent —
Update: I’ve been trying to calculate how many chickens you’d need to pay for, say, an appendectomy. I found a website that says an appendectomy goes for $15,850, these days, on average. That seems low to me, but let’s go with it. I couldn’t find a price for live adult chickens, but you can buy baby chicks in bulk for about $1.60 each, according to one supplier I found. That’s 9,906 baby chicks for one appendectomy. Pretty soon, ol’ Doc can quit medicine and become a supplier for Tyson Inc.!
Or, you can go to the other extreme and pay with a chicken ready for cooking. Right now my local grocery has whole roaster chickens on sale for .99 a pound, and the circular says the birds run from five to seven pounds. Let’s round that up to a dollar a pound to make my life easier. You can give the doc 15,850 pounds of chicken, or 2,641 and 2/3 chickens, figuring six pounds to a chicken. Hope Doc has a big freezer.
Update: See “Chickens for Checkups.”
You have got to be kidding!
Real American Genius (cue Bud Light commercial music) I fully encourage this. Every time my cat Boris goes to the vet he always goes out the day before and catches a robin or something for her. She SO looks forward to these tasty treats it is the high point of her day. Although I admit it does creep me out to see her stroking it and saying: Precious, Precious, Precious.
You gotta love the GOP. Between this and Arizona what the fuck is going on out there in the desert? It must be the heat!
I like Atrios’ comment about this..
Beyond that, what I get are several appalling conclusions:
1) A fundamental misunderstanding of economics – what’s the difference between paying some ridiculously high bill with chickens or with dollars? Either way, the patient is being gouged. She doesn’t get the equivalance.
2) A fundamental unwillingness to face a tremendously broken system. Archaic solutions that might’ve worked for some during the really hard times of the Depression (or during the Middle Ages) instead of doing the hard work of facing stupid assumptions and the entrenched powers that profit from them. This is the best answer the GOP has to offer?
I don’t know anything else about Susan Lowden, but what a dimwit comment. It’ll be interesting if she sticks with it, or recants. What an embarassment.
If I had to carry baby chicks around in my purse, they’d poop all over my Chapstick. I’ll hang on to my ATM and debit cards, thanks.
To follow what Moonbat said — if the doctor gets paid in chickens, pickles and handiman jobs around the house, how’s he going to pay his OWN bills? Doubt the electric company, the bank, medical supply companies and the like are going to be real happy to settle for a crate of chickens.
Do you have to fail an IQ test to run on the Republican ticket?
If Repubs want literacy test to vote, how about when running for office? I’d give anything to hear her ‘insight” on new ways of handling the arms race, the war on drugs, global warming, and the energy crisis.
Good Lord, I’ve read where people want SNL to do a skit on her. I disagree. They should simply invite her on and interview her.
I suspect the Republican party selects b-movie actors, pinups and beauty contest runners-up as candidates just to distract the people who are serious about getting some work done.
From what I’ve seen, it sure seems to work. We do love to cluck about them.
Yes, that was an out-of-touch comment, to say the very least.
I do, however, think it’s worth pointing out that barter/exchange systems — based on alternative currencies — can be viable.
@ Muldoon
Suzie Q didn’t fail any IQ test. She has all the lack of empathy of her kind. She and her husband are worth $50 Mil. Wikipedia is a wonderous thing. She’s from NJ and that explains a lot. I spent the first 40 years of my life there and the smugness and feeling of being better than anyone else is kind of ingrained in you growing up. Also she’s had a Roman Catholic upbringing which does it share in molding your world view. I think the nuns beat that sense of guilt and shame into you something fierce. Go to wiki there’s more.
Lowden was born and raised in New Jersey, but later moved to Nevada and has lived there for over 30 years. As a teenager in 1973, she was Miss New Jersey and was 2nd runner-up for Miss America.
She earned a BA degree from American University, an MA degree from Fairleigh Dickinson University, and Honorary AA degree from the College of Southern Nevada.
Sue Lowden and her husband have in excess of $50 million dollars in stock holdings as filed to the Senate Office of Public Records, much of it in Las Vegas gaming companies
Shorter Bob K (if I may): another shallow, GOP beauty queen airhead. On the one hand 1) where do they get these people, and on the other 2) she should be easy to run against.
I read that she’s not recanting.
moonbat,
No, no. That would take some sort of intelligense and common sense. No, she’s going ‘full-goose bozo’ for the ‘Putz’litzer Grand Prize for Political Idiocy!
I, on the other hand, would like to do a bartering system kind of like the Mafia did/does:
“You fix my f’in broken leg, or I break your f’in leg.”
“You fix my appendix on the inside, or you’ll be wearing yours on the outside.”
“You take care of my wife’s hysterectomy, Doc, or you won’t be a “HIS” the next time you attempt to fix someone else’s ‘terectomy!'”. Kapeesh? I toght so!”
Lowden also begs the question, which came first, the chicken, or the dingbat?*
*My aplogies to Edith and Archie, and to women everywhere.
What a dope! What a maroon…
MERRY CHRISTMAS, HARRY REID!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Now, don’t “f” it up! KAPEESH?!?!
Whole organic chickens go for $3.50-$5 a lb. in my neck of the woods. They weigh 5+ pounds. So that’s something around 650 chickens for an appendectomy.
This may be a George Herbert Walker Bush situation. Remember when he had no idea what the cost of milk was? When he was astonished at the grocery store scanners? She might think a chicken costs $10,000, or that doctors go for $5/hour. When you have $50m in your pocket, such small sums aren’t worth worrying about anyway.
During the Great Depression, my grandfather bartered auto repairs for chickens. He kept books. It works, when NOBODY has any money. As many said above, I can’t see a doctor taking agricultural products for services.
If I may please speak. What they look down upon as trailer trash now, was in an earlier time usually referred to as “White Niggers – Irish”. Like Santa – they really DO exist. Right now a Gypsy is typing to you. How did you come to such a lowly state? I am no better than I need to be. (Whatever that means) My family had a nice farm in Hungary. We were not rich – we wish we were but not every one can win the lottery. We got by. A few bad harvests and we got behind in our taxes. The breaking point came when a tree crashed through the roof of the house and that was all she wrote. Great Grandfather threw up his hands and said “Enough is Enough” or something like that in Hungarian. They packed up what was worth carrying and threw it in the wagon and away we went. In this country we do not know the persecution that has been put apon the Romany. In England they are called travellers. In this country they are called Gypsy. But you do not know what it means to be Gypsy untiil you are one. You reading this. Imagine that your house burns down. There is very little left. You pick up the most important things you can. You take them to your minivan. But you are an orphan – you have no living relatives – you have no friends to go to. Where will you go? Thieves, Thieves, Tramps and Thieves. We heard it from the people in the town. My Granfather used to brew bathtub gin. Until it killed him. My father worked in a triple C camp. One day a letter came edged in black. It told him his mother was dead. When he turned eighteen he left the triple C camp and rode the rails for a while. Later on he went overseas during world war 2. The really weird thing at this point of the story was the when he was able to buy a car – Anybody here when they were kids have to take taxis to go grocery shopping? No – I didn’t think so. When he bought a car it was always a Volkswagen. When his last Volkswagen was condemned (rotten frame) he was car shopping. The dealer found him to a nice Nissan. My Father said nothing doing. The dealer said why – you already own a German car? My Father looked at him and said. I don’t mind an German car because during the war none of them were trying to kill me. My Father the Thief/Tramp had been trained as an aircraft mechanic and he was the one that would load the bombs on the plane and then taxi it out onto the runway for the pilot to fly his mission. Yes I’m trailier park – that doesn’t make me less than Prescott Bush’s children. P.S. My Grandfather on my Polish side – had to leave the country because he worked in a factory where two managers were screaming at him for a mistake he made and so he grabbed them and cracked their heads together. My grandfather died before I was able to meet him but his blood rusn though my veins. Oh yeah while we’re here Maha what is with the duct tape over the mouth of my icon? Just wanted to know – cause you know – if I’m gonna go swimming with the fishes Mother Abbot – I just want to know ahead of time. :^)
I am utterly speechless. WTF? Bartering chickens for medical care? Holy cow!
For those of you with nothing better to do – I found an interesting magazine today – its called the “Baffler” and it takes on baffling things like this in our weird world.
I like the idea that I can literally ‘print money’ in my back yard. I can build the fifteen story chicken coop. I’ll be flush my entire life. Can’t imagine the neighbors would like it much. They could buy me off to not build it, of course they would pay in chickens. How do we pay our taxes in a barter economy?
I read somewhere that a brothel (Nevada?) accepted chickens in exchange for services. Maybe that’s where she got the idea? She’s probably erased any records of her early work history by now….
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“I read somewhere that a brothel (Nevada?) accepted chickens in exchange for services”
What’s next? Furs and Pelts. Old taco bell wrapers, what will the poor folks use? Oh boy Sarah is gonna have to save us. Hey maybe if we barter and combine resources we could get elected and get a new cable show? I’ll shoot’em, you take their 401K’s! Then maybe we get a radio gig?
Why did I become an engineer?
@ Doug Hughes – You are right. Her wiki doesn’t mention that strip club or when she worked for the discreet escort sevice. have. Not SHE – whoever is working her campaign. If you read her wiki it does not say WHERE in New Jersey she was born. I don’t know what state you live in. But in Jersey they say “What Exit” If you live in Camden (which went to shit after Campbell’s moved – thank you Campbell family for abandoning the city that worked their fingers to the bone for you (Progresso Rules) your life is different than if you live in Newark which is better than it used to be (Mayor Corey Booker is what a politician should be) I once had a boss who lived in “Mendham” If you cut them the blood is red white and gold. I had another manager – Tracy Bauer I still miss you. That once said – “I’m tired of this “Oh you live in Mendham – you must be rich” thing. My mother was a waitress – we lived on the wrong side of the tracks. In short – Assholes live anywhere
From the comments above I guess that the chicken will become the new standard unit of exchange. I’ll have to find a conversion chart for the chicken against the Euro in case I have to do some medical tourism.
I have no worries with this system. I would like to trade a couple dozen dairy goats and a couple vintage Yugos for my next medical procedure. I am sure my doctor would snap that offer up. He will probably be kind of heavy in the chicken department by then.
snip…
This throws a spanner into the works regarding an insomnia producing question. I sat awake wondering if Michelle Bachman is crazier than Katherine Harris. Sue Lowden seems to make that question irrelevant.
That’s the spirit!
@ Goatherd
The snark is strong in this one. BOB knows there’s enough Frat boy humor out there. It must be used for good and not evil.
Your superior intellect is no match for our puny weapons!
We never have adull moment as long as the repugs are around. Im gonna start rasing chickens today. This will help start my day. It is an awesome discovery. We have found someone as stupid as Sara Palin.
I done left this here comment on the e-lecrtric letter fer Sue:
“I’m sure the good ol’ doc will be happy to pay his medical school loan and malpractice insurance with rutabagas and a hunk o’ chawin’ terbaccy, too. Have you been hittin’ the laudanum again, Sue?”
Land sakes, that woman is tetched!
I guess I got a little carried away about chickens becoming the standard unit of exchange. I do have chickens and pastured chickens have about a one in five survival rate, the same as wild birds. A stray dog or a red tailed hawk can seriously dent your medical savings account. Another problem that somehow eluded me. If chickens did become the standard unit of exchange, we would have to redesign all of our vending machines.
It was a nice idea while it lasted, but we were living, if only briefly, in a fool’s paradise. How about chicken vouchers? I am just thinking out loud here…
In fairness to George H. W. Bush, he had been Vice President for 8 years and was then President – I doubt if he had been grocery shopping for many years. I do most of the grocery shopping in my family and, for the life of me, I couldn’t tell you the cost of milk – it’s a staple and I just grab it off the shelf and head off for the next thing on my list. (That being said, I think the Bush family members are pond scum and have done great damage to our country, as well as the rest of the world.)
While I know it is all too tempting and fun to mock the absurdity of barter for health care what this really illustrates is how trapped in the past the Republican Party really is. This is something they consider reasonable, to address the realities of a 21st Century health care system with 19th Century solutions. That’s the Republican Party in a nutshell on just about all issues these days and that’s what we ought to be pointing out.
All together now: Fish, Barrel, Fire!
The wingnut medical plan:
A Bible, a bottle of asprin, and a roll of duct tape. That’s all you ever need.
Oh, and pork fat, don’t forget pork fat………….
I’ll ask my doctor if he’ll take some tree trimming as payment for a prostate exam, then I’ll haggle with him a bit, that might not be a finger he uses…..
Are barbers doing surgery again in Nevada?
Just wondering……
When all the chickens are gone (and the wife, the dog, house, shotgun, Hank Williams records…) can we barter with the children? Not slavery (er… yet) but some kind of indentured servitude? Teach em the Republican family value of good ole fashioned child labor. I know some neighbor’s kids who would make excellent chicken coop cleaners.
I don’t know how easy it will be to buy live chickens. There was a live-chicken place in the neighborhood I grew up in but it closed 40-odd years ago. (I do remember going into the store vaguely.) Will Islamic-halal chickens be acceptable to use? There is a place to get halal chickens in my current neighborhood.
You all may be interested in http://lowdenplan.com/ which provides a handy calculator for various procedures.
Who knew that, because I am one of the damned elitist foodies, I would be prepared for the future of GOP healthcare? About a year ago we got 5 chickens in our urban backyard coop for the eggs, but now I’m all set if I should need a flu shot.
Of course, more than a flu shot and I’m screwed, and I haven’t figured out where I’ll get my eggs once I’ve given my flock to the medicos, but there you have it.
It does make me wonder though… what if it’s AVIAN flu?? 🙂
I live in Nevada, and, indeed, there are rural communities where people barter for medical services, as I will guarantee there are such rural communities across the country and the world. Her comment was not without merit, in a local perspective.
The delicious irony is that SHE (a Republican) is complaining that Reid, Democrats, and other evil people everywhere, took her comment out of context and blew it into something it never was for political purposes as if the comment she made was not that exact thing, or that Republicans do not routinely do just that at every opportunity!
All I can say is: “Boo Hoo!” Millionaires look silly crying over unfair treatment any time, but especially when it is exactly what they are known for doing themselves…
Twit.
Purple Girl – Easy – Girl, you want easy talk to a Romany Gypsy. It is a little know face(t) of life that chickens wander our way all the time. True they have a hard time opening doors and need a little help finding their way out of the hen house, but we Romany believe that all God’s creatures were meant to be free. They greet us as liberators and where did you think “Chicken Paprika” comes from? I share with you purple girl my sister of another color. Thing to invent that will make you richer than you ever wanted. So rich you’ll have more gold coin than the average Glenn Beck viewer. Pork Bellies. You want to be as rich as Rush Hudson Limbaugh the fifth?
The inventress of Kosher Pork will be an awesome way to be remembered in posterity. One question – Is Purple your favorite color. You can be any color you want and it doesn’t matter. Some of my best friends are purple. All my conservative friends are red. Democrats are blue. Where we’re going the only thing that matters – will you share that chicken our eat it all by yourself? We need to update our thinking. That’s what it means to evolve. If that doesn’t matter than God has a laser like sense of irony. Don’t be creeped out if one day Morgan Freeman appears in a white suit behind Barrack Obama while he’s making a speech. Oh – you’ve never seen “Bruce Almighty” Then think of George Buns in a white suit (Don’t know movie – It also had John Denver in it.
Let’s ask Barbara she’s the closest thing to a sky pilot we have here
pees out
Big difference between North and South are the signs.
South – No Colored
North – No Irish
After we go to a chicken-based economy, I can just see being in line at the supermarket and hearing the checkout person explaining to a customer, “No, Mam, it’s double-COUPON Tuesday, coupon, C-O-U-P-O-N, not double-CAPON! So, you’ll just have to have your husband back the semi out of the lot, you’re holding up the line.”
“Next! No, Sir, no checks, just coupons or chickens.”
“NEXT! No, Lady! Sweet Jesus, no plastic! Didn’t you just hear me tell that guy ‘only coupons or chickens?”
I thought our economy had turned into chicken shit since Reagan came in, I just didn’t think it could turn out to be literally true…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChaNEmJFFrg&feature=related