Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Good Morning, again. We had an absolutely beautiful day yesterday. Another (rare) day at or just above 80 degrees. The weather people are saying we will have a week of higher temperatures (near just or above normal) with afternoon thundershowers. That is a pattern we expect for early summer. But then nothing has been normal and the weather forecasts seem to change almost hour to hour.

There may be a limit to what the Federal Government thinks is too big to fail. According to MSNBC this morning California has requested aid and the Obama Administration has (for now, at least) refused. I can sympathize with California because I see the same problems in Illinois. We may be having the same problems here in Indiana but the news media we get comes out of Chicago so we actually get better information about what is going on next door. They are fighting about how to close a double digit billion dollar budget hole and no one in any political party has had the political guts to make any hard decision. The Republicans want to cut the so-called fat without defining what is or is not fat and don't want to alienate their constituents by supporting increased taxes. The Democrats want increased taxes without cutting the programs their constituents depend on which includes a lot of programs very vulnerable people who have already been severely impacted really need. Given the looming elections next year no one wants to do anything they might be held accountable for and so are doing nothing. There is also a question of fairness. After all, California does have one very large economy--large enough to impact the world economy. We bailed out AIG and other financial giants on the premise that their failure would damage the world economy and now we balk at helping California? Where does this end? As anyone who has stopped in here from time to time knows, I have always been skeptical of the stimuli and bailouts. One of the reasons is we don't know where it will stop and I seriously doubt that, now that we have started, it will stop. Until the country is bankrupt and has to stop.

Found this blog post this morning. It gets bad when companies shave an inch off of lasagna noodles but I am not surprised. About a month ago we noticed that the juice bottlers have reduced most of their containers. Instead of 64 ounces (half-gallon) they are now mostly 48 ounces. Of course, the price is still almost the same as it was for the old standard volume. We also were very unhappy to find that the cake mixes don't make the nice 9-inch square cakes any more. They don't even make a nice 8-inch square. We have gone back to making cakes from scratch since all of our recipes are old ones that haven't been downsized. And we are buying more frozen juices. Those make up 48+ ounces for half to two-thirds the price. I do hate being snookered.

Well, it looks like this is really catching on. First the Obama's at the White House and now Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. I seem to be in very good company.

Rain at Rainy Day Thoughts had a link to a color/personality test. Here is the results of mine:
Your rainbow is intensely shaded indigo, red, and brown.


What is says about you: You are a deep thinking person. You appreciate energetic people. You get bored easily and want friends who will keep up with you. Friends count on you for being honest and insightful.

Find the colors of your rainbow at spacefem.com.

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