Good Morning, Good Morning, Good Morning. We have sunshine and, for now, dry weather. It is supposed to change but you know the old saying: "don't like the weather--wait five minutes. We really haven't had much in the way of useable moisture. Most of the storms either fizzled out or went around us. Even the ones that did come through didn't give enough rain to do my gardens any good. I think, and this is only my opinion, that this year has had a schizophrenic nature. From January through mid-May we got enough moisture to make this one of the wettest years on record. Since we have got almost nothing.

I noticed a headline this weekend that set me thinking, always a dangerous thing. No, I did not read the article--I have a good idea of where it was going. It indicated that Republicans want 'neutrality' from any new justice on the Supreme Court. I strongly suspect the article never defined 'neutrality.' Nor would the reporter have been so rude as to suggest that Republicans define the term. No set of laws, including the Constitution, has ever been truly neutral. Don't believe me? Read any good history of the debates over the drafting of the Constitution to get a good idea of exactly how neutral even the notion of our now sacred document was. Did 'neutrality' give us the Dred Scott Decision, or Plessey v Fergueson, or, even, Brown v Board? I don't think so. They don't really want neutrality. They want a justice who will restore what they consider the natural order of things. Men over women, white over black (and Hispanic and Asian), business and government over the individual, and the presumption that those accused of crime are actually guilty of the crime. Neutrality, like beauty, is entirely in the eye of the beholder.

I wonder if this bit, posted by Archcrone at the Crone Speaks, is what Judge Sotomayor's critics mean by 'neutrality.' We should be very cautious and skeptical when anyone mouths some benign notion like neutrality as an absolute value. I am sorry if is sound cynical. I just have to ask who benefits from such absolute values and who is hurt.

Mom just saw an ad headline that gave us both a laugh. It touted a car that could 'make you look younger.' Really, I thought. What does it have--tinted windows so no one can actually see who is driving?

Also over the weekend, I got this in an e-mail from Elaine who featured it on her blog Elaine's Place. Bill Moyer's interview with Wendell Potter, a former insurance executive, is very enlightening. He confirms several of my own conclusions about the insurance industry as you can read in my past posts. The interview also confirms me in my conclusion that we need a single payer system, government run, that cuts the insurance companies out. By the way, this is what 'neutrality' looks like in practice. Or to resurrect that lovely little saying from the Wizard of Id comic strip: "The Golden Rule--he who has the gold, rules!!"

Tom Englehardt at Tomdispatch has a new post today by guest columnist Barbara Garson that is very interesting. If anyone thinks that REAL reform of the financial industry is going to happen any time soon, please read this. Worse, I think it doesn't bode well for any economic recovery that penetrates below the s**t floating on top. And by that I mean the financial manipulators who created all of that toxic mess we haven't really dealt with. Sometimes I wonder what those oh-so-smart boys in the government are looking at when they talk about the economy. And then I remember that Gaithner, Summers and several more came out of Goldman Sachs.

For more on this topic head over to Ronni Bennett's place at Time Goes By. I am glad to see I am not the only pissed-off pessimist on this topic. I don't know where this mess is going but I am sure that the ones who will get us out of it are not the bright boys who got us into it.

Bye for now. We have shopping and gardening to do. Talk to you later.