Hello, again.  We still have ice covering most surfaces outside.  Our patio has about an inch.  We will be spreading some salt to start getting it out.  The plows have been working the streets and you can hear the ice crunching as they go buy.  Later we will see if we can clear our cars.  It is still overcast and I doubt we will get any sun before the next system comes through sometime tonight.  At least we do not have to go anywhere and can stay home.

Checking out my google searches this morning I found GardeningHelp.org which had a link to a two part Bill Moyers interview with Michael Pollen.  I sat and watched the nearly 40 minutes of it and enjoyed the whole thing.  It may be the time of the year, after all Christmas and Thanksgiving seem to revolve around food, but we have seen several programs dealing with food and where it comes from.  The History Channel featured Modern Marvels episodes on fast food, cold cuts, and the turkey.  They were very enlightening.  Earlier this year we stopped buying bologna largely because we finally got tired of buying something 'convenient' that we really did not like.  Watching the segment of the cold cuts show simply confirmed our decision.  It was disgusting.  The segment on the production of deli turkey breast was, if anything, worse.  After our experience this year with our home grown or farmers' market tomatoes and other veggies, we found ourselves wishing we had a local community garden where we could rent space.  We will just have to make do with containers on the patio.

Bob Geiger has another set of good political cartoons and a link to the ''Sock and Awe" game that has become popular on the internet this past week.  According to the site, more than 46 million shoes have hit the Dimwit-In-Chief in the face since the game went up.  I am proud to say four of them were mine.  Thanks again to Joe Sudbay at Americablog for the link.

Rep. Brad Miller has a good post today at TPM Cafe.  It says just about what I said yesterday and cited Thomas Freidman's essay in the New York Times in which he said that we need an 'ethical bailout' not simply a money bailout.  He also quotes Steve Pearstein at the Washington Post saying that two words were 'conspicuously missing' from everything the titans of Wall Street have said: "We're Sorry."  Not only are they not sorry.  They think they have performed so well that they 'deserve' bonuses.  And there are idiots out there who agree with them and justify their demands by claiming that the bonuses were structured into their normal compensation.  In other words, back when we had our previous outrage, last decade/last century, companies reduced compensation for executives but pushed what they lopped off into bonuses to hide what these overpaid gluttons were really getting paid.  Miller also notes that the 'Mexican strawberry picker' with little income and no English has replaced the black Welfare Queen in the pantheon of low income chiselers responsible for all our ills.  The poor little bankers were their dupes.  Yeah.  Right.  Maybe, they like Voldemort, should try for some repentance.  I doubt they have it in them.

I watched Obama's introduction of Hilda Solis as his nominee for Secretary of Labor and I liked what I heard a lot.  I liked, especially, her comment on the issue of health care.  I have said in previous posts that American industry AND American labor are both disadvantaged with respect to foreign industry and foreign labor.  And they are disadvantaged because our system insists on putting the costs of health care onto either business or the individual where nearly every other country provides at least a basic level of health care as a matter of social policy.  Business wants to get out from under an increasing burden.  Workers rightly complain that they can't afford it.  And government refuses to buck the insurance industry which is only concerned with its own obscene profits.  I fervently hope Obama and Solis can break this log jam.