Hello, again. Getting chillier here and it is wet. We are slowly getting the patio and gardens cleaned out. We don't have a lot to do all at once. I have found a few weeds that escaped me this summer but none too many or too big. I do have one note to myself that I shouldn't plant cosmos in the containers--unless they are the only plants in the container. I pulled the three I had planted and found their roots had invaded every part of the container. No wonder the peppers and lettuce I had in that container failed to thrive. When I tried to pull the cosmos I almost pulled the soil out and moved the container (with all the dirt!!) a couple of inches. The only way to get them out was to cut through the roots with the trowel. I hadn't grown cosmos before and had no idea of how they would do. They do extremely well--so no more. I would rather the poblano peppers had less competition.

MSNBC reports this morning that our national legislators are close to a deal to extend unemployment benefits. I noticed that the Republicans are crying that they need more time to study the bill. I also remember that they never needed much time to study any proposal the Bush Administration put to them. Of course most of what he put forward were half-assed wars carried off the books, tax cuts for the rich, gutting the regulatory agencies, emasculating FEMA, and bailouts for the banks. They didn't have to look very hard at those proposals did they?

And for anyone who thought the mortgage mess was behind us there is this story about trouble at FHA. But, hey, only a smidge over 500k people lost jobs last month--an 'improvement' of about 30k. Damn, what wonderful news!! I wonder how many had FHA insured mortgages.

Robert Reich has posted an excellent assessment of what the last 10 months have yielded from Washington and why so little has resulted. And why so much of that little benefits the few at the top or is totally ineffectual.

Like almost everyone else we heard the news that President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The first two time it was mentioned in the news programs we were wondering what the punchline was--it had to have been a joke, right?? Well, it wasn't. I am glad for Obama but--what does this award say about the world situation today? A Nobel Peace Prize that seems to have been awarded more on hope of what is to come than on concrete achievements paints a rather bleak picture. And if it was awarded as a slap in George W.'s face, as one report maintained, that is also rather dismal. I hope Obama can deliver on the hope.