A good Monday Morning to you all. It was a nice quiet Sunday yesterday with plenty of sun and temps in the mid 50s. They say is will change by late Wednesday into Thanksgiving Day. It was a play day. Needless to say I have no real accomplishments--except taking Magic Match to level 21.

At least the U.S. Senate got off their collective butts and moved the health reform bill to the floor for debate. I think one reform needed by that body is to scrap this notion of a 2/3 majority to prevent filibuster. Move all bills to the floor and debate them openly there. Then we have those egotistical idiots like Liberman who is now saying he opposes the bill--after his colleagues bent over backwards to put in unpalatable provisions just to get his vote. By the way the headline was on Huffington Post.

Here is another Huffington Post entry that ticks me off. Microsoft is in discussions with News Corp to pay News Corp to de-link from Google and link instead with Bing which Microsoft owns. Why does that tick me off? I have tried Bing and I simply like Google better. I don't like what comes up on Bing and I don't like the navigation on Bing. So, to get a market share they evidently can't get by out competing Google (or can't get as quickly) they are going to resort to bribery?? Ah, the American way of business!!

For anyone who believes the pie-in-the-sky pronouncements from the financial 'experts' telling us that the recession is over, here is another dose of reality.

Anyone remember the furor over that motel manager who insisted his Hispanic employees change their names so they sounded more Anglo?? Well here is another, wider discussion of the theme. We forget sometimes just how ingrained some of our prejudices are. Does anyone remember an episode of Upstairs/Downstairs from about 30 years ago where the titled lady was interviewing a prospective maid and insisted, when she hired her, that the girl answer to a more plain English name instead of the fancy French name her mother had given her? The lady wondered out loud, in front of the girl, what her parents could have been thinking to give their daughter such an inappropriate name. In that case the question was one of class not race or ethnicity. Lower class or poor people shouldn't have such fancy names. I could multiply these kinds of incidents from fiction or history but the key here is the notion of prejudice (what we think is appropriate, what we think of the character of the individual we are dealing with) and a sense of entitlement (that our standards should be applied).

Here is an interesting pair of ideas from the Halifax Daily Herald--give everyone a carbon tax credit and then tax carbon emissions, and then put a carbon tax on all domestic manufacturing while placing import duties equal to the carbon emissions involved in the production of the overseas product. The author makes an interesting case with a bit of humor.