Good Morning, All. Well, it is now November. My how this year has flown by. We had a bit of sun yesterday. A tease really since it is supposed to be partly cloudy today. October did enter the books as one of the ten wettest and coldest Octobers on record. I am glad it is over because it was somewhat depressing for both of us here. Cold and wet weather just makes us want to hibernate. And the time change doesn't do much for us either. All those who rejoice at the 'extra hour' of sleep don't live with three furry alarm clocks who want their breakfast when their body clocks say they should get it. So instead of waking us at 5:30 the little monsters start yowling at 4:00. I still wish the powers that be would set the time and leave it alone. I say that every year.

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Yesterday was one of THOSE days. I had a lot of trouble with Google which made any blogging totally frustrating. As I tried to navigate through the blogs I normally read Google would suddenly fail to respond. I finally got through them all but I wasn't in any mood to write much.

I noticed an interesting item this morning on the news. The UAW is threatening to strike at Ford. They object to the company's suggestion of a freeze on entry level pay and other changes. This was on the morning broadcast news. What hasn't made the mainstream broadcast media is the fact, according to a headline on CNN, that Ford posted a surprise $1 billion profit. Silly me, I have to wonder if the two are somehow related.

Robert Kuttner has an interesting article on HuffingtonPost this morning. I didn't know that there is a move among budget hawks, as he calls them, to tie the creation of a bipartisan budget commission to the passage of an increase in the national debt. The commission would work much like the base closing commission did 25 or so years ago. The commission would make the 'hard' choices on what to cut out of the budget, centering on things like Medicare and Social Security, and then present the package to the legislators for an up or down vote. He makes a good case for why cuts in the so-called entitlements is a bad idea. After all, with unemployment up, wages flat or declining, and slow economic growth projected for at least the next two to three years, what do these cretins think will sustain consumers' buying power. And if the consumer doesn't spend what will replace their two-thirds of the economy??? What really burns me is that these were the guys who voted for funding two wars off the books and voted for anything George Bush wanted, no questions asked. And what I find most reprehensible about this scheme is what was so reprehensible about the original commission: it relieves the individual members of the House and Senate of the responsibility to make politically unpopular decisions for which they might be held accountable at election time. These guys have no guts.

Hey, everyone, I just found a new, to me anyway, site for pet info. If you are like me, you always like to find new sources of information on our furry friends. Mine are always doing something unexpected and every once in a while something comes up, like the tainted Chinese additives of last year, that we need to check out. Take a look at Green Dog's site. It is on Blogcatalog.