I don’t know what Day By Day’s copyright standards are or I would have reposted it here but this pretty well sums it up.

Too bad it doesn’t really get you to the doctor you need or the hospital you want, or the drugstore….

Sorry to overburden you with Milton Friedman, but I think you might like this one. Some examples of how with the help of the Federal Government, Americans have more choices, lower costs, and a better and safer standard of living.

Just take a moment and watch from about 18:00 to 27:00.

It’s not only about what kind of social- meddling I would have to endure personally, but I think I would end up looking at my fellow human beings in a different light.

Would I want to pay for the health care of a chain smoker? Or someone who sky-dives? Would I want to pay for the health care of someone who eats Twinkies all day? When I go to Wal-Mart, am I going to think about how much money I am spending on all of the George Romero movie extras I see walking around, as opposed to saving a buck on my box of  lemon cream Luna bars?

Are we all going to be required to eat Lemon Cream Luna bars?

Now that’s a frightening thought.

This week some Red Chinese were working together to carry a giant peanut butter and jelly sandwich back to their colony, when one unbalanced member of the hive decided to assert his individualism and commit suicide, thus backing up the line and turning it into a scrambling pile.  Since an already established path was blocked by this obstacle, a good scout broke from the group and, with a patriotic salute, removed the impediment.  The lunatic was dispatched with efficiency suffering only injuries to his spine and second abdomen, and the sustenance arrived at it’s destination.

BEIJING —  Chen Fuchao, a man heavily in debt, had been contemplating suicide on a bridge in southern China for hours when a passer-by came up, shook his hand — and pushed him off the ledge.

Chen fell 26 feet onto a partially inflated emergency air cushion laid out by authorities and survived, suffering spine and elbow injuries, the official Xinhua News Agency said Saturday.

The passer-by, 66-year-old Lai Jiansheng, had been fed up with what he called Chen’s “selfish activity,” Xinhua said. Traffic around the Haizhu bridge in the city of Guangzhou had been backed up for five hours and police had cordoned off the area.

“I pushed him off because jumpers like Chen are very selfish. Their action violates a lot of public interest,” Lai was quoted as saying by Xinhua. “They do not really dare to kill themselves. Instead, they just want to raise the relevant government authorities’ attention to their appeals.”

Thus ends today’s lesson in how the psychologically unstable may efficiently remove themselves from Chinese society.   Regular Buffet readers may want to take notes.

My, how times have changed – No Obama bicycle helmet need apply

After you abandon our allies on missile defense, after you send Carrot Top to execute your foreign policy, after you want to engage “the moderate wing” of the Taliban, after you lick the boot heel of Bashir, after you seek to give Hamas a billion dollars, after you’ve capitulated on every conceivable front – they still want to expand by putting long range bomber bases 90 miles off of your coast.

Weakness invites aggression.  Wash, rinse and doomed to repeat.

Apparently the locquacious commie-in-chief in Russia doesn’t take the weekend off to galavant around to Chicago bistros with his bitter half:

Zhikharev, who is the chief of staff of the Russian Air Force’s long-range aviation, said, “If the two chiefs of state display such a political will, we are ready to fly there.”

We’re going to be staring down the next Cuban Missile Crisis while Comrade Urkel blithely observes “unhelpful” provocateurs preparing for bombing runs 90 miles off our coast.   Those bombers aren’t going to deliver humanitarian aid and they aren’t there to deter the looming Mexican invasion of Cuba.

It’s a threat that is going to go unanswered.

Keep it up, Pooty.  We’ll have that radical, rightwing President with his finger back on the button soon enough.

Death to Venezuela!  Death to Chavez! ‘10  Rain Hot Death on Raul Castro.

Now there’s some election slogans I can get behind.

Back to the “wimp” thing.  Politics as perception, etc., etc.   Bush might have been rocking the “Gorton’s Fisherman” look but no matter what side of the boat you come down on – this is straight-up gay.  All hands on the poop deck-type gay.

Putin’s in a judo outfit and catching salmon with his teeth next to a mountain stream while scolding a bear for standing too close and the Democrats give us Urkel on a bicycle and Kerry crawling around like the Neil Armstrong of test tube babies.

Symbolism matters.  Urkel on a bike is going to equal an as yet undetermined number of dead soldiers one day.

I have a keen interest in being self sufficient, especially now with America as we know it hanging by such as tenuous string.  I’m ashamed that due to the fact that I grew up in suburbia, just about as far from the Oklahoma dirt farm as one could possibly get, I never learned to do all of the everyday things my grandmother could do by the age of 7.  I have learned to grow things, to store things, and to shoot things (well, targets). But I’ve never killed a thing, and had never learned  to properly prepare a chicken from scratch. When I say “from scratch”, I mean the chicken starts out scratchin’ in the dirt and ends up sizzlin’ over the coals.  Yesterday my family was invited to a friend’s house to learn this valuable lesson. I decided to document it for all of you suburbanites out there.

Be forewarned.  Click on the following links at your own discretion.  The images are huge and colorful.  Personal responsibility, folks.

Here’s is a detailed lesson on one of the six meats. Actually, six roosters:

First select and catch your bird.

Second decide on how to properly dispatch him to chicken heaven.

Here are four methods:

You can 1) place his neck on a block and chop. Which is messy and more difficult than it sounds. 2) Grab him by the neck with one hand, and by the back legs with another, as if you were holding a very strange guitar, then quickly pull your hands in opposite directions. One of us tried this. It hurt the chicken unnecessarily without bringing about the intended outcome. 3) You can grab the rooster by the neck and with a whipping and twisting motion, snap it.  If you can do this on the first try, you should by given a prestigious Expert Chicken Whacker award.  This takes more practice than most men think they need. 4)The broomstick approach: Lay the rooster on the ground with a broomstick across his neck.  Grab his back legs and pull.  This is the method we used.  Just don’t pull too hard.

This is the point where he becomes a Democrat. I know this because every one of them called out to “BARRRAAACCK”  before he expired.

You know the deed is officially done when the chicken starts flapping uncontrollably. I know that sounds strange.  My son commented “Seems you’ve interrupted his nervous system.”  That’s one way to put it.

Once he’s done flapping, scald the bird in some not-yet-boiling water for 30 seconds to loosen his feathers, after which you hang him up and pluck away.    Once the bird cools the feathers are hard to pluck, so begin with the wingtips because those are the most difficult. After this step he should look like the beautiful specimen above.

After he’s is plucked, he needs to be bled.  Cut a slit from his neck to his breastbone, being careful to avoid the crop, and the dripping will begin.  If you broke his neck to kill him then most of his blood is in his head, so there really isn’t a lot of it dripping.  If you used the chopping method, then you probably look like a character in a horror movie, and you can skip the bleeding step.

After you have taken it down and laid it on flat surface (we used Death’s Door), you can begin to separate the crop from the surrounding tissues.  This requires you to use your fingers. When it looks like this, you can just snip it off.

At some point you will want to break the legs and remove them.

Guess what?!

Yes, you have to remove the bung hole and all that is attached to it without puncturing the intestines.  Imagine that the anus is the nozzle of a ghastly garden hose.  Cut all around the nozzle, put your hand in, break up all of the connections, and pull.  Then keep digging like you’re cleaning out a pumpkin.

Now you’re all done with the difficult stuff!  From this point on, the chicken is much like the kind you find in the grocery store.  Just rinse it really good and cut it up.

It is recommended that you freeze the bird for 48 hours before you cook it.  Due to rigor mortis, the meat is very tough if you cook it right away.  We wanted to try it though, so we marinated 4 roosters for an hour in some Worcestershire, soy sauce, garlic, oregano, thyme, and apple cider vinegar, then threw them on the coals.

Here’s the aftermath.

I can’t even warn you enough about the other aftermath. Think carnage in technicolor and then decide if you have the fortitude to withstand viewing it.  What I mean is that you really really really shouldn’t look at this.  Okay, ready?  Here’s the other aftermath.

That’s the part I forgot to ask about.  So if anybody has any good ideas about what to do with the offal (that doesn’t involve a visit by the secret service) please let me know.

Now that you’re a vegetarian, you probably don’t care whether you know how to prepare a chicken anymore.  But let me tell you, when all the money in your mattress is spent, and the food you have stored up is gone, and you’re placing those little chef’s hats on your housecat’s feet and trying to cram an apple in his mouth, you will wish you had a coop and some chickens.

Update: Thinking about having a pen in my backyard, and it looks like I’m not alone.

“The rising popularity of the feathered creature is due to the chicken’s ability to provide eggs, pest control, fertilizer and eventually meat.”

I’m not sure you can call them pets if you’re raising them for meat though.

Also I really want to thank the kind folks who put up with my family this Saturday, and taught us this valuable information.  We had a great time. And my daughter is handling her post traumatic stress disorder just fine.  I think some chicks would cure her entirely.