In recent months, the buzz about Nevada politicians has been on Senate majority leader Harry Reid's uphill battle to win re-election. But a recent bizarre proposal from Reid's leading Republican challenger has shifted the conversation to chickens, health care and bartering.

GOP candidate Sue Lowdon has repeatedly endorsed the long-dead practice of bartering with doctors for care. "I'm telling you, this works," she claimed in an interview. "Before we started having health care, in the olden days, our grandparents, they would bring a chicken to the doctor."

Lowdon's steadfast support of the chicken-for-health care plan has attracted coast-to-coast catcalls, including a tongue-in-cheek takedown by MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. After showing clips of Lowdon defending her proposal, an incredulous Maddow follows Lowdon's thought process to its "logical" conclusion.

Fundraising dinner ticket? One cup of sugar. A meeting in the candidate's office? One prime heifer. An autographed picture? That will cost you one bushel of wheat. Guaranteed opposition to financial reform? Six pairs of tube socks, please.

Maddow dryly concludes: "Imagine what Sue Lowdon could do for the tax code."

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