How the Republicans can win in 2024 (part 1)

It would appear that no one fools with blogs these days. I haven't updated this one in over five years, in fact, and no one has noticed (I didn't even realize that sad fact until a few moments ago). So, it's safe to say that I can rant to a nonexistent audience. Fair enough.

So, the 2022 midterms are over and what have we learned? We know that Joe Biden is about as popular as anal warts (have a look at his pitiful approval rating over at 538 if you want proof) so it would seem the GOP was poised to crush Democrats in the midterms, right?

Well, that didn't happen.

Why?

Simply put, it appears that certain voters hate Republicans enough to vote for anyone running against them. There are two races that stand as evidence of that -- the senate race in Pennsylvania and the governor's race in Arizona.

Now, Pennsylvania was particularly eye-opening. While it's true that Republican Mehmet Oz isn't a great candidate, he ran against John Fetterman -- a shuffling goon with brain damage who has trouble forming a complete sentence. Does anyone believe that voters enthusiastically lined up to vote for a lummox who is more likely to show up in a hoodie and drool on the Senate floor than introduce any meaningful legislation for the people of Pennsylvania?

Nope. They didn't vote for Fetterman -- they voted against Oz.

As for Arizona, Republican Kari Lake faced off against Democrat Katie Hobbs. That is a particularly revealing race because Lake is an intelligent, well spoken individual while Hobbs is analogous to the color tan -- she's not particularly offensive, but she's not terribly bright or engaging, either. To make matters worse, she gives of a "cat lady" vibe and her voice is like nails on a blackboard. It's hard to believe that people would actually go out and vote for her -- people simply chose to vote against Lake.

It's safe to say that Republicans have an image problem that cost them the midterms and could cost them the presidency in 2024 unless they make some changes. And, yes -- I, the great Hawg, am here to advise the GOP on a few things it can do to appeal to voters and stop losing to horrible candidates like Fetterman and Hobbs. I'll do this in several parts and will add posts when I damn well feel like it.

Step 1: Get Rid of Trump

Don't get me wrong. I voted for Trump twice. If he gets the nomination in 2024, I'll vote for him for president. However, sticking with the Trumpster is a great way to see that Joe Biden or one of his surrogates wins the presidency in 2024. I've had enough of high gas prices, inflation, reckless spending and the other maladies inflicted on the international embarrassment that is Joe Biden. So, no thanks.

Here's the thing about Trump -- his approval was almost as bad as Biden's. That is just a fact and one can easily compare numbers on the aforementioned 538. Sticking with the guy is a recipe for failure. Consider this -- Democrats realize how much Americans hate Biden and there are calls for him to not run in 2024. Why on earth would the GOP rally behind a candidate who is almost as hated as the slug that is in the White House right now? That just makes no sense.

Want more proof of the public's negative reaction to Trump? He endorsed Mehmet Oz who -- as I've discussed -- lost to a lunkhead. He also endorsed Lake who, yes, struggled with the personification of the color tan. There are races around the nation where Trump was more of a hindrance than a help. Just look them up and one thing becomes clear -- the red wave was stopped and Trump was the dam.

I'll argue all day long that Trump was a better president than Biden. However, that doesn't matter. The Democrats have painted him as an insurrection-promoting fascist and that has worked for them. After all, all the Democrats couldn't tout their successes during the midterms because their haven't been any -- they could, however, declare that "Democracy was on the ballot" and that nonsense worked.

Trump for president? Why not?

Ever since Donald Trump announced that he was running for president, he's faced ridicule, predictions that the country will fall to pieces if he gets in office and all sorts of nonsense.

Here's the thing -- at this point, I figure about the only thing we can expect from the government is sheer entertainment. And, Trump is nothing if not entertaining.

Am I voting for the man? You'd better believe it. Has The Hawg lost his mind? I don't think so, but I'll let the two or three people who will actually read this nonsense decide for themselves.

The first thing you have to realize is that we voters have almost no power left thanks to lobbyists and a Supreme Court that seems content to let people buy influence at every level of government. Face it, junior. Your government doesn't give a damn about you, me or the guy next door. Our elected officials are more interested in what people will pay them to vote for instead of what is actually good for the nation.

In this environment, anyone who is interested in the government doing anything worthwhile is in for bitter disappointment. That being the case, why not go for someone who is simply entertaining? If the government will continue to take our money and not listen to us, at least we can have someone in the White House who will say outrageous things and keep things interesting. Honestly, entertainment is about all that we can expect anymore.

And, perhaps an entertaining government rather than an efficient, helpful one is about all we deserve. Think about it -- the past two presidents have gotten put in office because voters are more interested in spite than effective leadership. That's right. Bush voters wanted to irritate Democrats and angry Democrats responded by putting Obama in office. And those two, awful presidents were each granted two terms The only way to explain why such horrid leaders lasted so long is that their supporters were more interested in the "spite factor" than actual ideas or leadership qualities.

Why not, then, vote for someone who will be more entertaining than goofy and spiteful? Trump, then, might be a step up.

So, come on, folks. Join me in my decision to vote for Trump. You know you want to.

Humble suggestions for new mascots for Benton

Earlier this month, Benton Mayor David Mattingly unveiled a new mascot for our fair city of Benton, Ark.

The mascot, which cost $2,500 to produce, is simply named “Ben.” He is supposed to be a businessman who will be trotted out at various events and economic development opportunities (no, I’m not real sure what that means and I’m not sure that anyone else does, either).

I’ll avoid the argument that suggests folks in this town already identify with the Panther – the Benton High School mascot – well enough to render poor old Ben redundant at best. Instead, I’d like to suggest a few ideas for mascots that are about as inappropriate and creepy as a balding businessman with arms growing out of the sides of his head. Here goes:

* Ben Ton – he’s a big, fat guy that weighs 2,000 pounds. A ton. Ben. Ton. Get it? Heh, heh!

* Genghis Fonz – sure, he’s a bloodthirsty killer but he’s also also as cool as they come. He can thrill audiences by showing off his finely honed combat skills as well as jumping over parked cars at the Sonic on his horse on Friday nights.

* Black Hitler – the names says it all.

There you go, and I’m willing to license any of those mascots to the city for a mere $100.

DS9 is the finest ‘Trek’ series of them all and I’ll fight any man who doesn’t agree with me

When you get a bunch of Star Trek fans together, the conversation will often devolve into a bunch of squabbling over which series in the franchise was the best.

Such wrangling is pointless as we’re almost always talking about subjective opinions. Here’s the only objective opinion that carries any weight in those discussions – Deep Space 9 was the best series of them all. Don’t get me wrong – I’ll gladly agree that every series in the Star Trek franchise has merit. The original is simply classic, The Next Generation was the series fans had wanted for years and had a deservedly long run and who could resist the Gilligan's Island meets Lost in Space vibe of Boyager? Even Enterprise and that animated version of Star Trek and Enterprise had something to bring to the table.

Still, DS9 tops them all. Anyone who disagrees with me on this is simply wrong and begging for a fight. And we’re talking about a particularly nasty fight in a gravel parking lot.

What makes DS9 so great? The character development is incredible as is the continuity of the series. Yes, other Treks typically featured people wandering around space, dealing with creepy aliens for an hour, resolving some problems and then warping off to a new destination. In short, it was no problem missing a few episodes and then coming back to it later. That wasn’t the case on DS9 – they didn’t have to look for trouble as trouble came looking for them. Furthermore, the crew was generally in a static environment, so it was easy for recurring characters to stick around for several episodes.

Also, the location of the station was important. The thing was of Caradassian design and that sneaky bunch clearly wanted it back. Of course, the Cardassian station became the property of the Bajorans after that world booted the occupying Cardassians off their planet. The Federation came in to help administer the station and rebuild the Bajoran economy. It was obvious there were millions on Bajor that didn’t appreciate the Federation’s appearance.

So, there was more than enough resentment and political intrigue to go around. Complicating matters further was a stable wormhole discovered near the station and Bajor that made travel to the distant Delta quadrant a breeze. All sorts of species popped through that wormhole and the station played host to plenty of people wanting to travel through it and go to the Delta quadrant.

The wormhole itself was the home of an advanced race of beings that operated on, well, a higher plane. The Bajorans worshipped those aliens, thus bringing in the concept of gods that were demonstrably real and interacted regularly with those that worshiped them. Intriguing stuff.

Here’s another thing. The notion that the Federation was a perfect organization governed by optimism and fair play was tossed out the window during the season. The Federation spied on its own people, engaged in questionable moral behavior to win its generation-changing war against the Dominion (a race of shape shifters from the Delta quadrant.

In other words, the series was dark and cynical as apposed to touchy-feely and that was a refreshing change of pace.

Besides, DS9 was run by the coolest captain to ever show up in a Trek series. Avery Brooks is the man. Period.

There you go. Disagree with me only if you’re willing to get into a fight on a gravel parking lot.

The two best lawyer jokes of all time

Yes, the rumors are true – I, The Hawg, used to be a lawyer.

Now, I realize that’s rather like being an alcoholic in that you never quite live it down. To that end, I am a recovering lawyer and I will be for the rest of my days. I started a solo practice in 1995 and got a couple of law partners in 1996. In 1998, one of those partners filed went nuts, filed a ridiculous lawsuit against the plant in Benton County that makes Little Debbie snack cakes, didn’t show up for work one day and wound up dealing cards at some casino in Tunica, Miss. Hey, that’s a true story – you can’t make up that kind of thing.

In February 1999, my other law partner told me she had accepted a job at another firm. I shut down the office a week later and haven’t looked back. Could I have kept the office going? Sure. I made a comfortable living and was usually competent at my job. Still, being a lawyer sucked. I figured I put in my four years and that was enough.

What’s the point of mentioning all this? Simply put, attorneys hear the best lawyer jokes and I’m going to share my two favorite ones with you. Ready? Here we go…

Q. How do you get a lawyer out of a tree?
A. Cut the rope.

Hah! That’s a real rib tickler! A knee slapper! It’s simple but effective. The next one is a bit more involved but I like it better.

A Hindu, a Jew and a lawyer were taking a road trip through the backwoods of Tennessee.

They had been driving all day and were tired, but there was no hotel to be found. They came across a farmhouse and decided to ask the owner if they could stay with him for the night.

“Sure, y’all can stay here,” the farmer said. “But the bed in the guestroom only sleeps two people, so one of you will have to sleep out in the barn. Don’t worry – it’s nice out there. I sleep there myself when the wife is mad at me.”

The barn sounded fine to the Hindu.

“You two fellows take the bed and I’ll sleep out in the barn,” the Hindu said.

The lawyer and the Jew were getting settled down in the bed when they heard a knock on the guestroom door. It was the Hindu.

“There’s a cow at there,” he said. “I’m not sleeping under the same roof as a cow.”

“That’s fine,” the Jew said. “You two take the bed and I’ll sleep out in the barn.”

The lawyer and the Hindu were getting settled down in the bed when they heard a knock at the door. It was the Jew.

“There’s a pig out there,” he said. “There’s no way I’m sleeping with a pig!”

“That’s fine,” the lawyer said. “Y’all take the bed and I’ll sleep in the barn.”

The Jew and the Hindu were getting settled down in the bed when they heard a knock at the door. It was the cow and the pig.

Now, here’s a funny story about that joke. When I was in my second year of law school, my ethics professor gave out bonus points for the joke of the week. I submitted the “Lawyer, Jew and Hindu” joke and he stopped me after class.

“I can’t accept this,” he said.
“Why not?”

“Because it’s racially insensitive.”
“What? How?”

“There might be a Jew or Hindu in class and they might be insulted.”

“Insulted how?”
“Because the joke makes fun of the beliefs of Jews and Hindus.”

“No it doesn’t,” I said. “It makes fun of lawyers.”

“Yes, but it also makes fun of Jews and Hindus,” he said.

“Really? How?”

“If you don’t know by now, I won’t be able to explain it to you.”

And, that was that.

Heh. Lawyers. Go figure.

Introducing Wikipedia Brown!

Yes, it's a sad thing -- The Natural State Hawg is looking a bit abandoned these days, isn't it?

Well there's a reason for that -- the bulk of my attention has been focused on FirstArkansasNews.net since April 2010. Why? That's more of a news site than this one is and, hey, I actually make a few bucks with that one.

Besides, there's something to be said for owning your own server space and installing WordPress on it. Ah, the joy.

At any rate, one of the things we've focused on at the aforementioned site has to do with original projects. For the absolute latest project, click here to listen to Wikipedia Brown, an original bit of modern audio theater featuring some actors from the Royal Theater here in scenic Benton, Ark. Fun stuff. We hope.Maybe....

A professional kite flyer?

My wife was reading the Thursday edition of the Benton Courier when she noticed the first Benton Kite Festival had been scheduled for Saturday at the old airport.

You can read all about the festival here, by the way.

One thing that struck me about the event is that a special guest, Robert Lassond, will be there. The Courier identified him as a professional kite flyer and reported that he goes all over the country to events such as, well, the Benton Kite Festival.

I can’t help but feel more than a bit jealous. How do I get that gig? How does one turn the enjoyable pursuit of flying a kite into a career? Why did I spend all those years in school to sit in a dull, drab office day after day when I could be getting paid to fly kites?

Seriously – what could be better than that? Earning a living by skipping rocks across a pond? Getting paid to drink beer or drive expensive muscle cars? Making cash money by taste-testing cotton candy or traveling throughout the nation watching major league baseball games?

My hat’s off to that Lassond fellow. Anyone who can turn kite flying into a profession has to be living right.

Playing guitar in church? You’d better get a capo, bub.

A few weeks ago, I was invited to play my guitar regularly in my church.

I was thrilled to do so, but I learned something in a hurry – piano players just love playing in keys that are completely unnatural for guitarists.

As odd as it may seem, piano players tend to love playing in odd-ball keys such as B-flat, F-sharp and, well, just strange stuff. Guitarists, meanwhile, tend to stick to conventional keys such as A, C, D, E and G. Why? Because it’s a lot easier to grab the chords in those keys than it is in say, B-flat (unless you’re playing barre chords, but those tend to not come out real well on a 12-string guitar like the one I bring to church on Sundays).

The solution to this problem is to get a capo. Yes, they’ve been slapped with the derogatory term of “cheater” over the years, but that’s not exactly fair. A capo allows a guitarist to easily shift to those wacky keys with ease. It’s the very device that allows pianists and guitarists to get along and I use mine extensively.

Here’s an example. Yesterday, we played “The Old Rugged Cross,” which is in the key of B-flat. Rather than throwing a fit about the key, I simply slapped my capo on the guitar on the third fret and played the chords for the key of G. The pianist didn’t have to bother with transposing chords and I was able to get through the song with ease. Everyone was happy.

In case anyone's interested, I've used Kyser capos for years and have had a lot of luck with them. They last forever (the one I've got for my electric guitar is over 20 years old and still working) and are very easy to use (one-handed operation for everyone but weaklings). If you've got a 12-string guitar, you want to buy a capo specifically for one of those. A standard, common capo for a six-string is too short for that wide fretboard on a 12-string and you'll have a lot of nasty buzzing on the high "E" strings (and perhaps the "B" string, too).

By the way, I got my 12-string back in February. My wife came home with a beautiful Fender acoustic 12-string guitar that I had my eye on for a few months.

Sure, she bought that because she got tired of hearing me make racket on my electric guitar. Still, that was a pretty cool move on her part.

Hangin’ with the CEOs

My, but it’s been a long time since I updated this blog.

I’m sure that one person – heck, maybe even two – has asked, “What’s that The Hawg been up to lately?”

Well, quite a bit, actually. I’ll get into some of that later, but I figure simply pointing out that I’ve been ridiculously busy lately reveals enough details for now.

One thing that has been going on in the past few months is the my wife (the beloved Marci Kay!) and I have found a church that we really enjoy. That would be Parkview United Methodist here in Benton, Ark.

The reason I mention this right now is that I had the rare opportunity to stand up in church and give the sunrise devotional this morning. The church has a tradition of picking a layperson to give the devotional and this year, for some reason, the pastor decided to pick on me.

Oddly enough, I’m used to public speaking but I was as nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs while I was standing up there at 7 a.m. To see the devotional I came up with, just click here and give it a read.

What’s odd to me is that I’m due to speak to just about all the county tax collectors and a few people running for office on Tuesday about how to put together an effective media relations plan. That doesn’t bother me. Standing up in front of my church and talking about faith and spirituality, however, bothered me quite a bit.

Strange.

At any rate, the crowd was fairly small at 7 a.m. What was funny to me is that a slew of people showed up for the 11 a.m. service. A lady who’s in church just about every Sunday identified the crop of unfamiliar attendees as CEOs – people who show up in church on Christmas and Easter only.

That’s absolutely brilliant.

I hope everyone had a great Easter.

We don’t make anything anymore and that’s a problem? Really?

I was watching the CBS News national report tonight and saw a story suggesting it might be bad that we don’t make anything in the United States anymore.

When such an obvious state of affairs becomes news, it’s pretty clear why – exactly – our economy is in the toilet. Everything’s made in China these days and even allegedly American companies like Ford are still waving the flag while manufacturing cars in Canada.

That’s an ironic thing about Ford. There are few more cars more distinctly American than the Mercury Grand Marquis, but that’s made in the St. Thomas Assembly plant in Canada (a plant that’s supposed to shut down at the end of 2011, by the way). It’s a messed up world, indeed, when my Toyota was made in Indiana while your Ford might have come from Canada.

It seems we’ve come to a point in time where we design and program things – do all the “high level” stuff that pays well – and rely on cheap labor in places like China to actually build what we need. The sheer irony that the largest communist nation on the planet is also home to the largest, exploited workforce in the world is something to be reserved for another time.

At any rate, the problem with the “design it here and build it there” concept is that that’s simply not sustainable. Want proof? Look at China. That country has become an economic powerhouse for the simple reason that the industrial base there is huge. That economic might and industrial based used to belong to the United States and we let it get away.

Besides, at what point will those countries that are manufacturing everything want to get in on the design end of the process, too? We’re already at a point where we don’t make much, but what happens when we’re not designing anything, either?

While it might take a few years to get to this point, one thing that is undeniable is that our economy is a mess. I was visiting with an economist a few months ago after Obama was going on about job creation this and job creation that in his State of the Union address. My question to her was something that Obama didn’t answer directly – where will these jobs come from? What segment of our economy is strong enough to pull us out of our mess and turn things around in the U.S.?

Her response was a very chilling “I don’t know.”

Sadly, that’s about what I expected. I grew up in a town that prospered in the shadow of two major aluminum plants – Alcoa and Reynolds. This county was a wealthy one, indeed, as long as those plants were running and most everyone thought Alcoa and Reynolds would always be here. However, declining profits, increasing tensions between management and labor and a host of other issues caused those plants to start sending jobs to bauxite fields in Jamaica in the early 1980s. After a couple of decades, those plants were all but shut down and now must of us in Saline County, Ark., climb in our cars and go to work in Little Rock every day.

Saline County never has quite recovered from those job losses and I can’t help but wonder if we’re not looking at the same scenario playing out on a national scale. If manufacturing is handled overseas, agricultural imports are on the rise, tech support jobs are sent to India, and companies like Anheuser-Busch are bought (and “streamlined”) by investors in other nations, where are all those new jobs going to be created?

Yes, Toyota will be fine

Yes, the news has been full of reports about Toyota’s woes these days.

As we’ve been reminded time and time again, Toyota has recalled a slew of cars because of accelerator pedals that might stick. The Prius suffers from rotten brakes and those have been recalled, too. Oh, and the steering could be faulty for those owning a late model Camry.

The press has been breathlessly speculating about the downfall of Toyota as of late, too. Phooey on that. Toyota will be fine.

Let’s not forget that Ford once knowingly sold a car that killed people, Chrysler was so poorly managed that it had to be bailed out by the federal government and then had to be bailed out again 30 years later. At the same time Chrysler was getting survival money from the feds for the second time, GM had its hand out for a bailout, too.

So what happened? Ford recovered and is now the only viable U.S. car company left standing and Chrysler was applauded for turning around things so quickly after the Carter administration bailed it. Meanwhile, Chrysler and GM took their lumps after the feds had to zip and and save them – the public and press seem to have given both companies a second chance.

Did Toyota mess up a bit? Sure it did. However, the company is taking steps to correct those problem and – if history is any guide – all will be forgiven in time and Toyota will be just fine.

Of course, I’m highly biased. I’ve almost driven the wheels off of my 2003 Toyota Matrix and love the thing. It’s cheap, reliable and gets great gas mileage. My wife has a 2009 Toyota Siena which is expensive, reliable and gets almost tolerable gas mileage and we haul the kids around in style in that thing. Will we buy another Toyota? You’d better believe it. My 13-year-old son will get the Matrix in a couple of years and then I’ll probably be down at the Toyota lot picking out something new.

Why? I’ve driven Oldsmobiles, Fords, a Mitsubishi, a Subaru and a Chevrolet before I got my Toyota and I’ve not owned a car that lasts longer or stands up better to the sheer neglect and abuse which I inflict on all my vehicles.

Toyota will make things right and the company will be just fine.

One thing that annoys the hell out of me about Toyota’s troubles is that a bunch of lawyers have started filing class action suits against Toyota. Most of these things are from angry Toyota owners who are mad that recent reports of the company’s troubles have caused their vehicles to decline in resale value.

Seriously? I should have filed suit against Ford for the last few of those vehicles I owned that started losing value as soon as I took possession of them and drove them home. Only in America could a bunch of attorneys file a slew of ridiculous lawsuits and face no consequences.

You’ve also got some families that have been legitimately injured by faulty Toyotas who are suing for legitimate reasons. Good for them. Hopefully they’ll file product liability suits as individuals because class action suits are for suckers – the plaintiffs win a few bucks and lawyers get fat off of contingency fees in those things.

Meanwhile, Toyota will come out of this fine. If not, my mother has been extolling the virtues of Hondas for years and that new Ford Mustang GT looks great. Maybe I’ll look at one of those next…

Tell me Thursday – Brenda spends a day at the office

Yesterday, I posted the photo over to the left as my “Wordless Wednesday” entry.

My nine-year-old daughter, Brenda SueCarol, wrote that last week when she spent the day at my office. Why? She wanted to spend the day at work with me (for some reason) and I didn’t object. I’m glad of that – she rather livened up the place.

I learned a few things from my daughter last week. For one thing, the kid can have fun anywhere. I’ve never thought of the office as much fun, frankly, but she found some ways to pass the time. She played on the Internet for awhile (of course), but got bored with that in a hurry.

What did she do to pass the time? Made snowflakes, drew a heck of a lot of pictures, spun around in a chair, ran in circles, ran around visiting with everyone who had some time to spare and sang to us over the intercom system.

She also told us one of the rooms in the building was haunted and wrote a two-page story about it. She took her place at the podium in the allegedly haunted room and read her story to a couple of us.

“How long has that ghost been here?” I asked her.

“For 250 years!”

“Brenda, the building is only a year old.”

“Y’all built around the ghost.”

Yeah, that’s my girl. She’s got an answer for everything.

And so it went. She had a great time going to lunch with my friend Dave and me, telling everyone that I was growing a head sideburn (which, evidently, is that strip of hair that circles a large bald spot) and generally having more fun than anyone’s had in that office (or probably ever will).

Another thing I learned about my daughter is that she has a weird energy reserve. She chattered and ran all over the place from the minute she woke up until we stepped in my car to make that 25 minute commute back home. Before we were even 10 minutes into that drive, she fell asleep in the car.

To be able to run all over the place like a wild child for about 10 hours and then fall straight to sleep when the fun is over must be a great thing. I’m looking forward to my daughter’s next visit and I hope everyone else in the office feels the same way.

This entry is part of the soon-to-be-famous “Tell Me Thursday” event.

The wise optometrist tackles the issue of health care

My little brother is an optometrist, so you’d better believe he’s got an interest in the healthcare debate that’s raging across the country right now.

Now, my brother is the bright one in the family. Want proof? He’s an optometrist who makes a good living by contributing something to society (good eyesight) while I’m a public relations guy who doesn’t contribute one damned thing. When he comes up with a good idea it’s worth hearing.

In a nutshell, my brother has noticed that we’ve been spending a lot of time talking about health insurance reform rather than true health care reform. The whole issue boils down to dollars and cents – the goal appears to be to both make health care more affordable and get insurance to people who need it.

Those two expenses – the costs of health care and insurance – are rather intertwined. There’s a school of thought out there that suggests that dropping health care costs will make insurance more affordable.

With that in mind, here’s my brother’s idea – simply pass legislation that will allow medical providers the option of offering a discount to people who pay for services up front. That’s a simple suggestion, to be sure, but it could well achieve quite a bit.

Could doctors already do that? Well, not really. Just ask a medical provider who’s tried to get away with charging two separate prices for identical procedures when Medicare is involved. If a doctor wants to collect, say, $100 for an office visit, he might charge $300 in hopes of collecting that much from Medicare or Medicaid. And you’d better believe there will be hell to pay if that Medicare patient or someone carrying private insurance is charged $300 while someone who is paying at the time of service is charged $100.

What happens? Everyone gets charged $300 and health care costs have magically risen. My brother’s suggestion, then, is to break that cycle by allowing doctors the freedom to discount their fees if they so choose.

What follows from that? You’d better believe that health insurance providers – both public and private – start figuring out how to pay up front in order to avoid paying higher costs after services are rendered and insurance forms are filed. In theory, then, health care costs have just dropped and insurance rates ought to drop, too (if, of course, competition among them is allowed and encouraged – that’s another discussion for another time, however).

The question, of course, is would doctors choose to offer a discount. My brother seems to think so – he’d rather accept, say, $50 for an office visit rather than charge $200 and deal with the headaches of filing a bunch of insurance forms. Other doctors would, hopefully, feel the same way.

There’s a good reason to think they might. If doctors like my brother charged $50 up front for a visit, you’d better believe they’d see their businesses boom while others charging $200 for the same thing would watch their patients vanish. That’s called competition – something we used to value here in the United States.

While such market-based solutions may seem quaint in this day and age where the government is invited to poke around in our private affairs, such an idea may gain some traction with the public. Who do you trust more to do something about increasing medical costs? Insurance companies, the federal government or physicians?

Seeing how I detest both Congress and the medical insurance industry, I’d be inclined to listen to what physicians have to say about health care costs. Oddly, it appears that group is rarely consulted in the current debate.

An achievable New Year’s resolution

Yes, it’s another year and we’ve got a slew of people running around making resolutions they’ll never keep.

Ah, but not me. No, The Hawg has made a New Year’s resolution that I am almost certain to keep. Am I going to exercise more, lose weight, give it my all at work or anything like that?

No. I’m going to take it easy on myself this year. I, then, hereby resolve to watch even more television that I did in 2009.

Now, there’s a resolution that will take some focus and dedication. I’m sure, however, that I will be able to watch more TV if I just put my mind to it. That won’t be overly easy, of course, as the television is generally own and I’m in front of it unless I’m at work or sleeping.

There are a couple of things I can do, however, to achieve my goal. For one thing, I could sleep in front of an active television set, couldn’t I? There’s one in the bedroom, after all, and I did fall into the habit of falling asleep in front of the television and waking up in time to watch a rerun of Gilligan’s Island back when I was in college.

I could certainly fall back into that habit with little effort. Sounds like a plan.

Also, I do have some vacation time coming. Why waste it on doing things that would get me out of the house? Heck, I could simply take a couple of weeks off and spend them in my living room in front of that huge, flat screen television set that we bought last year.

Yes, we’ll see people fall short of their resolutions right and left this year. I, however, will be a success story.

Go ahead an enjoy the Boogie Boys video I’ve posted below. Not only does it have some dandy television references, it is also a song that could have only been recorded in the 1980s – my favorite decade.

Tell me Thursday – the kids get ready for Christmas

For my Wordless Wednesday submission yesterday, I submitted the photo over there on the left.

Those are my kids – 13-year-old Michael and nine-year-old Brenda – posing in the sanctuary of Parkview United Methodist Church here in Benton, Ark. That photo, in fact, is the one we used for our Christmas card this year.

Yes, I’ve mentioned my kids time and time again on this blog. They’re not the subject of this post. Well, that’s kind of true. Let me explain.

Earlier this year we joined the aforementioned church. That’s a fairly big deal as I’ve spent most of my adult life going to church here and there. Finding a church where I feel comfortable is a significant event, indeed.

And I’m proud of our little Methodist church. The folks there spend a lot of time raising money for – and donating their time to – efforts that help people in this community that need it. Thanks to their efforts, a lot of families have been fed and more than a few people have received a helping hand when they’ve needed it most. And those efforts don’t stop after Christmas is over – people are in need all year round and the good people at Parkview stand ready to help out where they can.

That – in my view – is exactly what Christians ought to be doing.

At any rate, merry Christmas to all of you fine folks out there.

Oh, and make sure to click on the Yogi Yorgesson YouTube video below to really get into the Christmas spirit!

This post is part of the grand Tell Me Thursday event – a chance for Tell Me Wednesday participants to tell the story behind their posts. Click here to see the other entries or (better yet) submit something of your own.

Best Christmas presents ever

So I went and posted something yesterday about how much I hate those plastic, see-through candy canes full of M&M’s.

People used to give me those things in spite of the fact that I’ve always resented them.

Well, that all seemed a bit whiny to be posted this close to Christmas. Hey, Christmas is supposed to be fun and light, right? I can take up my crusade against M&M’s and the fascists who fling them at us another day.

During this time of year, however, we ought to be thinking of something a bit more positive. To that end, I’m going to mention some of the best Christmas presents I’ve received through the years.

First up is a plastic, pedal car Jaguar I got when I was five-years-old (it was much like the one pictured above, only red). I absolutely loved that thing and pedaled it all through my neighborhood when I was but a lad. Sadly, I outgrew it, got a Schwinn Stingray bicycle and haven’t seen my beloved plastic Jaguar in over 30 years.

That was the Christmas of 1975. The following year, I got another  treasured gift – a Wolverine Race-o-Rama pinball machine. In the mid 1970s, what was cooler than owning your very own, standup pinball machine?

There wasn’t a whole lot that was cooler than that, folks. I played that thing until I flat wore it out. It took a few years to tear up the pinball machine, but I managed it – playing with a fairly complicated toy on an almost daily basis will wear one out, seemingly. Truth be told, I wish I still had one of those things around the house.

About the only thing cooler than a pinball machine in the 1970s was,  of course, an Atari VCS (later dubbed the Atari 2600). My parents absolutely hated the idea of having one of those around the house. They were worried it might tear up the television or turn me into a video game-playing zombie.

Oh, I begged my parents for one of those starting in about 1978 when a friend of mine got one for Christmas – it was the Sears version of the 2600 and, as such, came packaged with Target Fun (the Sears-branded version of Atari’s Air-Sea Battle). The notion that you could buy new cartridges and play different games on the thing was intriguing, particularly since the only real video games available for homes prior to the Atari were various versions of Pong – you got one, hardwired system and a bunch of black and white variations of a very simple game.

All of my begging fell on deaf ears, sadly. Well, it fell on deaf ears until the Christmas of 1980 when I finally got an Atari. I was the happiest kid in town and wasted countless hours playing Asteroids, Space Invaders, Activision’s Tennis and a slew of other games.

It may have been a good thing that I had to wait a bit for the Atari. My original system died years ago, but I’ve got two working ones at my house and about 200 cartridges to go with them. By the way, head on over to Atari Age sometime – people are still making and releasing Atari games and will probably be doing so for some time. Long live Atari, huh?

By 1981, computers were all the rage and I wanted one. My parents  got me a TRS-80 Color Computer (CoCo) as they had read that the Microsoft BASIC in those things was the programming language of choice. They were right and I spent hours making up programs for that TRS-80 or copying them out of magazines and books catering to Color Computer fans.

The system was more than a bit primitive – you got an eight-bit, Motorola 6809E CPU that ran at about 1 MHz (that speed could be doubled with a simple command line or programming instruction, however). Most owners hooked them up to their television sets and stored programs on a convention cassette tape (yeah, reading programs was as fun as it sounds).

Regardless, I had a lot of fun learning to program on that thing and owned a lot of games that were loaded in to the computer’s cartridge slot (the famed ROM port that made the CoCo very expandable. The computer came with 16 kilobytes of RAM but I ordered a set of 64 kilobyte chips and soldered them in the system. Two years later, the CoCo went in the closet because I had a more sophisticated machine.

Yes, for the Christmas of 1983 I received an IBM-PC. Believe it or not,  that system cost my parents $4,200. What did you get for that price? One 360 kilobyte, 5.25” floppy drive; PC-DOS 1.1, with Microsoft’s advanced BASIC,  EasyWriter (the word processor); an Epson 9-pin, dot matrix printer; 128 kilobytes of RAM; a color monitor; a color graphics adapter; and a big, clicky keyboard.

The IBM-PC was the big deal back then and Big Blue really stuck it to consumers. A box of 10 floppy discs cost $100 at the time (how insane in that?) and anything with an IBM label on it cost and arm and a leg. It seems some people thought the PC represented the wave of the future – it turns out they were right.

I used that system all the way through high school and left it with my  parents when I went to college. Why? Mom used the computer for her office and – understandably – wanted to keep it. So I turned traitor and got an Apple //e in 1987. The funny thing there is that my parents gave me a choice – I could either get a 1981 Pontiac Firebird I had my eyes on (I dubbed the vehicle the “Male Machine” because it was more than a bit over the top and I thought that was cool) or take their 1981 Cutlass Brougham and an Apple //e. I went for the Oldsmobile and the computer. I still regret that a bit, even though the Apple served me well in college.

Oh, there have been some other great gifts through the years – a set of golf clubs from my parents when I was in college, a quilt my grandmother made when I was in law school and a good number of other dandy presents. I still get great gifts but they meant considerably more to me when I was a kid.

Why? When you’re a kid, you can’t just run out and buy whatever you want – you have to ask you parents for things and hope they pick them up for you. When you’re an adult making a decent living, you can pretty well spoil yourself by picking up items you want when you want them.

Hopefully, some of the gifts I’m giving my kids these days will be as fondly remembered as the ones I received for Christmas all those years ago.

The worst Christmas presents on the planet?

The thing that’s horrible about being a kid is that people make assumptions that may or may not be correct.

Take Christmas, for example.

“Oh, it’s Christmas,” people will say. “Kids love chocolate. What could be better than a cheap, plastic tube full of M&M’s?”

That line of thought, apparently, led to people giving me horrible tubes of NastyCandy® during my childhood. Yes, I’d often wind up with one of those plastic tubes full of rancid milk chocolate covered with the same candy shell that is sprayed on Drixoral tablets.

The chocolate mess that’s in the tube may carry the Hershey’s or M&M’s label. It really doesn’t matter – it’s all pretty much the same filthy slop.

I well remember the first time I got one of those things. I was about four-years-old and was pretty happy to have a huge tube full of red and green candies. In my young mind, color meant flavor when it came to candy. Red could be anything from cherry to peppermint while green could be anything from a cool lime to a pleasant mint.

So I ate one of the candies (it was either red or green – can’t remember). It tasted like cheap chocolate covered by a hard, sugary shell. I ate one of the other color and it tasted like – cheap chocolate covered by a hard, sugary shell. There was absolutely no difference between the two colors. Yes, I had been given a tube of lies.

I’ve hated M&M’s ever since.

It’s office photo time…

The folks in charge at my office went and decided that we should post bios and photos of all the folks in the business to our blog.

I established and maintain that particular blog. That being the case, I figure my photo should be extra special.

Now, I’m a former reporter, recovering lawyer and current public relations guy. In other words, I tend to only consent to my photo being taking when it’s necessary – like when I’m being interviewed by a local television station or something along those lines.

So my first choice for a photo of me is the one at the top of this post. That’s right – it’s Johnny Ramone. Not only was the man one of the founders of the Ramones, he was instrumental in defining what punk rock sounded like and he was a diehard Reaganite, to boot.

There’s a lot to respect there.

It seems my idea was rejected, sadly. The photo must actually be of me rather than just someone who is undeniably great. Fair enough. I’ll play ball.

So I came up with two more photos to post. Here they are:

Now, the first one shows my unwavering dedication to organizations as a whole. I figure that any company would be thrilled to have an employee who acknowledges the delights associated with slavish obedience to the selfish whims of the powerful.

Should someone be offended by the Hitler photo, I’ve put the second one together. Why? Because KISS is cool.

I wonder if either photo will be accepted. I doubt it.

Now, just for fun, here are the mighty, mighty Ramones in action:

Tell Me Thursday – hair cut and a rifle

For my fantabulous Wordless Wednesday entry this week, I posted the photo over there on the left.

Yes, I know exactly what you’re thinking – this photo was taken in my beloved Arkansas, right? No, no it wasn’t. Not as far as I know, anyway.

The thing about this barber/gun shop is that it kind of reminds me of the type of thing one might see around here. Arkansans, it seems, just love to blend businesses that – on paper – just don’t look like they should be paired.

A great example of what I mean can be found in Fayetteville at this place called Soap-N-Suds. It was a laundromat and bar all rolled into one. Yes, when I was a student at the University of Arkansas, I enjoyed heading down there, doing some laundry, knocking back a few brews, shooting pool, playing video games and just generally being distracted from the drudgery that comes with washing clothes.

Now, a laundromat/bar might look odd on paper, but it worked well. Perhaps the same is true of a barber who also sells guns.

On a somewhat related subject, there was this place here in Benton called Popplo’s Pizza (or something like that) that went out of business years ago. It then became kind of a tamale and cheese dip restaurant and that didn’t last long.

Once the tamale place failed, it became a taxidermy shop. That closed a few months ago and the place is now a barbecue joint.

Yeah. That’s right. A former taxidermy shop is now a restaurant. Ick.

I don’t think I’ll be eating there. It would be as bad as ordering up a meal in a restaurant that was once a funeral home. It might actually be worse, in fact.

This post is part of the grand Tell Me Thursday event – a chance for Tell Me Wednesday participants to tell the story behind their posts. Click here to see the other entries or (better yet) submit something of your own.

"Because you suck..."

My wife is a wacky, wacky woman.

We've got this office Christmas party planned for this week at work. I called my wife today and told her about it.

"I need to get a gift," I said. "Our limit is $10."

"OK. I'll pick something up for you," she replied.

"Why don't I just go buy something?"

"Because you suck."

Yeah. You read that right. Mean!

However, she explained what she meant. Bear in mind that my idea for a gift was to frame a photo of a former coworker who "retired" last year and throw it in the gift pile. Last year I got lazy and brought in a six pack of Woodchuck Cider (I think I just left it in that black, plastic bag the liquor store put it in and stuck it under the Christmas tree -- can't remember).

My wife, then, said she would buy an "office appropriate" gift because most of the ones I've purchased in the past have been horrible, inappropriate or downright mean. This year she's assumed responsibility for sending me off to work with a gift that (I suppose) doesn't suck.

Perhaps this is why she makes sure to drop hints about Christmas presents she'd like throughout the year.