Ronald Brak

Because not everyone can be normal.

Sunday, March 26, 2006

American Health Care!

Some Americans are concerned that rich and elderly people often receive expensive health care that does little or to improve or extend their lives while many children and poor people miss out on much cheaper treatments that could dramatically improve their lives. Of course there are some Americans don't see this as a problem. They merely regard it as nature's way and point out that in the wild lion cubs rarely receive adequate medical treatment while rich and elderly lions are always hogging the MRI machines.

Now some people might think that the U.S. would obviously benefit from some sort of national health system, but I'm afraid the U.S. can't afford this on account of how taxes had to be cut in order to improve the sale of treasury bills. However there is one fairly simple thing that could be done to help even out access to medical care that would be revenue neutral to the government. Put a tax on medical treatment and then redistribute income from it to every American in the form of a "Health Savings Account" that can only be spent on medical treatment.

This would give every American some money for medical treatment which hopefully would improve the lives of the poorer half of the U.S. and result in more healthy years of life gained than are lost due to rich people having to pay more for very expensive treatments.

Of course there are details to be worked out. How high should the tax be? Should newborn babies get a lump sum? Will guardians be allowed to use their own health accounts for their children's benefit? And so on. Also, to prevent too much money being blown on old people who are going to die soon anyway, old people could give what's left in their health accounts when they cark it to other people. For example they could give it to family members or donate it to charity.

If the Bush administration implemented this policy, I am extremely confident that they would mess it up beyond belief and make the vast majority of Americans worse off except for a few corrupt cronies who would be rake in cash hand over fist; quite possibly with giant, combine harvester like, nuclear powered, mechanical rakes.

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

Chris McNicol of Concerned Families and Friends uses Unpatriotic Foreign Statistics!

I got another interesting little pamphlet in my letter box today. It is from Chris McNicol of Concerned Families and Friends and says that removal of discrimination against homosexual couples caused a 47% increase in family breakdown in Norway over an 11 year period. Now this might be an appropriate use statistics if Norway happened to be the name of an alternate universe Australia that was identical in everyway to the Australia in our universe except for the legal status of homosexuals and also assuming that it was a 47% increase over the rate of family breakdown in our own Australia. But that's not the case.

Fortunately I am much more patriotic than Chris McNicol and have no need to resort to using filthy Norwegien statistics. No, I will use fair dinkum, honest, Australian statisics and none of those filthy, shifty-eyed foreign statistics McNicol hangs out with.

Using Australian statistics I find that in an 11 year period from 1967 to 1978, a time when Australian society was much more anti-homosexual than it is now, divorce went from less than 10,000 cases a year to over 60,000 cases a year. A more than 600% increase in family breakdown! After 1978, in a period in which homosexuality become more tolerated, divorce rates declined from their peak. The only logical, scientific conclusion to reach from this infomation is that bum banditry is vital to save Australian marriages. So I'd like to say to all the poofters out there, roll one on and get stuck into it for marriage! Our hetrosexual relationships depend on it!

I would also like to take this opportunity to make an offer of free marriage counselling to Chris McNicol. I really think he needs it. I mean if he believes that he will actually love his wife less and be more likely to divorce her because some fags have the legal advantages of marriage, then I feel sorry for him. If his marriage is that shaky then it's the least I can do.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Help Family First jail your family in 2006!

Well it's almost election time here in South Australia and those wonderful people from the Family First Party have gone and put some lovely propaganda in my letter box. How kind of them! However, I am a little confused. You see, they call themselves Familly First, but one of the main planks in their platform appears to be the criminalization of cannabis use. They seem to have overlooked the fact that almost every single cannabis user in Australia is a member of a family. And while I agree that locking up a quater or more of the workforce would do wonders for the economy and create many new employment opportunities in prision construction and correctional services, I can't really see how it would actually help familes. Perhaps it would be a little more honest of them if they changed their name from the Family First Party to the Lock up Dopeheads First and Screw Families Party.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

John Howard is a Cheeky Chappy!

On Wednesday the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, said in an interview:

"We have a declining population. We are all getting older and the nation is ageing, and we have to handle these issues."

I dunno, but I think that it's a bit late to be worrying about this now. I mean it's a bit rich to struggle for years and years to keep filthy refugees out of the country and then whinge about the declining population. You know, I think I can see a way here we could have killed two birds with one sinking refugee packed boat.

And it's also a bit much to complain about a declining population after going on and on for years about traditional family values. You see most Australian women grew up in traditional families and as a result they know that traditional family values suck. My own mother would have a cup of coffee and read the newspaper everyday. If she wasn't doing that and was conscious, then she was doing some sort of work. Non stop. It doesn't take young women a lot of brains to realize that isn't an especially attractive deal. I've known several women who want to have children but probably won't because they think they have to be married first. It's the 21st century, for Buddha’s sake, isn't it about time we had a Prime Minister who was against traditional family values?

Thursday, March 02, 2006

I want you to return that fish by next Friday.

I went to the supermarket today and saw little signs at the dead animal counter saying, “Fish for Lent.” Now call me crazy, but why would anybody want to borrow a fish from the supermarket? Now generally when people take a fish away from a supermarket it’s for the purpose of eating. You really don’t want people returning fish after it’s been digested. That would be quite unpleasant. And even it is some sort of returnable fish that isn’t for eating, do we really want to be encouraging bad grammar such as, “Here’s the fish you Lent me last week.”

So I googled “Fish for Lent” on the internet to see if I could learn just what was going on here, and I discovered that Lent actually refers to a bizarre Middle-Eastern/European religious practice of not eating much for a month. It seems the practice originated in the good old days when everything was better than it is now, except for the hunger, disease, war, poverty, wife beating and beating in general. It seems that there wasn’t much to eat at the end of winter so to take the edge off their hunger people decided that semi-starvation brought you closer to god. Well, I guess starving to death would definitely bring you closer to the afterlife.

There is another Middle-Eastern custom called Sawm that resembles Lent and is usually known among English speakers as Ramadan after the month it occurs in. Although it happens at a different time, it seems to be much the same sort of thing as Lent. However, one common theme running through Lent and Ramadan seems to be giving stuff up, so I think it would be more appropriate for supermarkets to have an empty shelf with a sign saying, “For Lent,” or “For Ramadan,” rather than trying to use an imported custom that many Australians don’t even understand to sell fish.