In article >, Phyllis Stone
> wrote:

> Does anyone have a Rival stoneware slow cooker? I replaced my old Hamilton
> Beach with a nice new Rival. It had some features that I liked and some I
> didn't. I have used it about a year, maybe less and it died. It wouldn't
> turn on. I had to dig out my old 30 yr. old cooker, which still works. I of
> course can't find my receiptbut I am still going to let them know what I
> think about their slow cooker. I was wondering if anyone else has had a
> problem like this. I probably will avoid Rival stuff from now on.

The Rival I have is made in China and it's worked just fine for the
past couple of years.

On the other hand... for about a year I've been avoiding products made
in China for economic reasons, and lately for political reasons. Now I
have a case of buyer's remorse for having bought it. I guess there's
no use in crying over spilt dollars. Or is there?

=-=-=-=-= Disclaimer: very little about cooking follows =-=-=-=-=

Rant switch to the on position:

What most people forget or ignore is the fact that manufacturing is one
of only two ways to create new wealth, the other is to take something
out of the ground, like crops or minerals. Everything else is bean
shuffling.

We have exported the means by which an economy grows. Whatever we buy
that's manufactured overseas will be junk in a few short years (whether
5 or 10 or 15 years, that's the short term). What we exchange for this
junk is capital, and capital lasts forever. Not only that, but capital
earns interest, which we are finding out in spades since we now send
hundreds of billions of dollars in interest overseas each year. We
have made the worst bargain in history and the price for it will not be
easy to stomach.

I, personally, am getting ready for hard times. My father (d. 2003)
always warned me that we would have a depression as soon as the people
(like him) who remember the last depression have died off. Bernanke &
Co. have been expanding the money supply by 15% a year trying to avoid
a depression, or even the balance-sheet-type recession the Japanese
have had for a decade-and-a-half now. The currency has lost 1/3 of its
value since Frank Burns... er, did I say Frank Burns? sorry, George
Bush and his NeoCon wizards (NOT!) have taken over. And gold bullion
has quadrupled.

The answer to this is to buy gold... er, no, wait a minute, to get out
of debt and learn to farm whatever land you have available; learn to
cook what you grow or can trade your surplus to get. I'm on the
lookout, casually, for recipes and stories of coping from the Great
Depression.

I'm still hesitant to arm myself, although I must admit that I've
looked for a handgun. I carried the military Colt .45 in my three
Vietnam tours, so that's what I'm looking for since I know it will
knock a man right off his feet.

My father said that a modern depression would be quite different than
the last one. People today don't have or practice the values of old,
basically agrarian values of a century ago (be stoic in the face of
adversity, be accepting of your fate, don't complain, etc.). He said
that despite 25% unemployment (a government figure, the real level of
unemployment was higher), a person could walk down most streets in
America and feel safe. The next depression, he said, would bring out
the worst in some people, like family men who will do anything, legal
or not, to feed their families.

Sorry for getting off on a tangent. Like I said, a cornerstone of my
learning to cook is to be ready for hard times by being able to use
cooking's basic tools. And be able to cook things like beet tops,
bread, and borshch, because I may not be able to buy the kinds of meats
and other foods I've taken for granted in the past but do so less and
less all the time as I see prices go through the roof (they say we've
only seen the beginning of this).

My view is the price and availability of food and fuel will be issues
in _my_ future. Not the future I imagined. Not the future I went to
Vietnam for, either. I'm not happy about the government collecting so
much data about us either. Last year, the VA exposed my data on on a
laptop. Based on past and current experience, it's not a stretch to
say that when the government knows everything about us then everyone
will know everything about us.

Rant switch to the off position.