Ever had Nutella?

It's good, isn't it? What if I told you its origins were serendipitous?

During the war, ingredients needed to make chocolate were in short supply, so ... Pietro Ferrero began experimenting by mixing in hazelnuts to increase the volume, according to the company’s Web site. From this came Nutella, the chocolate-hazelnut spread that has been produced since the early 1960s and has been available in the United States since 1983.

Who would get your vote...

...for the greatest Canadian of all time? Alexander Graham Bell?

How about Wayne Gretzky?

Lorne Greene?

Yeah; Lorne Greene. You got a problem with that?

Well, in 2004, The Greatest Canadian, a television show, selected Tommy Douglas, the former premier of Saskatchewan. Who? (That's what I said.)

Douglas (above) is widely considered to be the father of Medicare, the Canadian health care system. Apparently, as recently as 2004, Canadians were so happy with the system they voted Douglas the "Greatest Canadian."

I'm reminded of all this by the news in the Times this morning of the death of Allan Blakeney. Again, who?

Allan Blakeney (above), the health minister of the Canadian province of Saskatchewan helped start North America’s first tax-financed universal health care system in 1962.

In 1946, the government of Tommy Douglas, then Saskatchewan’s premier, enacted universal insurance coverage for hospitalization. Mr. Douglas’s successor, Woodrow Lloyd expanded the program in 1962 to include the costs of medical care provided by doctors.

Nine out of 10 doctors responded by going on strike, people demonstrated in support of the doctors and newspapers editorialized in their favor. Mr. Blakeney, as the health minister in Mr. Lloyd’s government, became the main negotiator with the physicians. He succeeded in keeping the new system — partly by emphasizing its lower cost — but compromised to give doctors the right to charge fees for services, rather than going on salary.

Mr. Blakeney later called the brouhaha the “the greatest social conflict I was involved in.” By 1966, universal medical coverage had been extended to all Canadians. Opposition to the plan in Saskatchewan, however, helped the Liberal Party defeat Mr. Lloyd’s government in 1964.
___
 
Mr. Blakeney watched the United States’ debate on health care, which resulted in the Affordable Health Care for America Act of 2009, with keen interest. He called the American law “a painfully small step.”
 
(All emphasis mine.)

For more on Temple Grandin's visit...

...to Wagner Farm in Glenview, click here. (That's livestock educator Julie Tracy in the foreground.)

The chart of the day...

...is from Ezra Klein's blog post, "Our Fiscal Problems Did Not Begin in 2010."

The New Yorker cartoon of the day:

The latest Republican talking point...

...is, "We don't have a revenue problem; we have a spending problem." (If you haven't heard that by now, you must not follow politics closely. Either that, or you have a life.)

David Weigel, writing in Slate, explains where that annoying sound bite came from. (Hint: it was a certain Republican saint.)

But, honestly, isn't revenue the problem? Expenditures haven't changed in the last ten years (except for the wars, of course), but revenue has. Our current budget problems can be traced directly back to the Bush tax cuts.

Of all the disastrous policy mistakes during the Bush years (and there were a lot), the tax cuts may have been the worst.

What if Russ Feingold, former...

...three-term senator from Wisconsin, moved back to Janesville (Paul Ryan's hometown) and challenged the Republican congressman in 2012?