Dems Pyrrhic victory; Buffet's winning choices; Wearing my gas mask first

Pyrrhic victory:
Democrats may skip procedures to push through health care legislation.  Read more here.  They won so they can do what they like and ignore more than half of the nation.  Why are they acting like that in an election year where there are 435 House seats, 36 Senate seats and 37 Gubernatorial seats that are up for vote?  They may win in ramming this into a law but lose everything because of it.  Perhaps, it does not matter;  because, they might be getting some form of reimbursement that is worth the loss of their political careers - must be nice and big.

Buffet's choices:
From the book:  Warren Buffett's Management Secrets: Proven Tools for Personal and Business Success, his investment choices are based on companies that:
have a consistent upward ten-year trend in earnings per share,
have less debt than its competitors or on average less than five times net earnings and have high gross margins e.g. Moody's rating service, Burlington Northern Railroad, and Wrigley Gum are all > 50%.

My gas mask first:
In an emergency the procedure is to help myself with the gas mask before attending to the kids - common sense.  So, looking out for number 1 is not always selfish.  When my beloved wife wanted to visit her mom for the new year celebrations, I was wheezing with asthma so I told her to just go by themselves as I may not be able to handle driving to NJ in the bitter cold.  I did find rest and relief but their absence was debilitating.  Anyway the point was, one needs to love oneself first - not overly but enough and that's not evil.  If not, one can burn out and be resentful.