Good Morning, all. The weather people tell us that the sun is going to shine today and the temps will get up to about 50. They also think that we may get an 80 degree day towards the end of the week. Yippee!!!! I looked at my little starter tray this morning and things look good there. I need to transplant the spinach and tomatoes. We were trying to figure out what to do with the tomatoes and peppers we plan to give my brother. The cottage cheese cartons we keep for transplants are too small. We are going to try cutting the top off the cardboard juice containers and putting the plants in them. I do like using what we have available rather than buying new.

HuffingtonPost linked to this article this morning and it should be enough to get anyone's dander up. Then again we shouldn't be too surprised that the insurance guys are parsing the health care reforms in such a way that they can continue to rake in the premiums and find excuses not to pay. My own feeling: we should treat banks and insurance companies as 'public utilities' and regulate them just like most areas do power companies. They have become necessities for modern life just like power companies did a hundred years ago. Some areas have tried to 'privatize' them but with little success. Most states regulate them so they can't arbitrarily deny service nor charge through the nose. We need to do something similar to banks and insurance.

Frank Rich has a good op-ed piece in the New York Times today that came to me by way of Susan Albert on Facebook. I think he nails this one on the head. Some 25 years ago I saw demographic predictions which projected a non-hispanic white minority in this country by 2050. It may come sooner. I don't think it is any accident that one of the stories last night and early this morning on the news covered FBI raids on a 'Christian militia' group that are alleged to have made plans to attack Muslims. We had better fasten our seat belts because this is going to be a bumpy ride. (Update: as of the Monday evening and Tuesday morning news the group planned to kill a police officer and then detonate IEDs at the funeral sometime in April hoping to spark a general uprising against the government.)

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Good Tuesday to everyone. Not too much has changed here. Still waiting for some warmer temperatures. Instead of gardening I have been doing some needlework trying to get a couple of the UFOs cleared out. I did get the lace trim attached on a table scarf and hope to get a table cloth finished over the next week or so. The only way I will get this sewing area cleaned up is to clear some of the backlog. Why is it so much easier to start something than to finish it.

Evidently the recently publicized position of the health insurance industry on covering kids with pre-existing conditions (see above) has caught the attention of the White House. According to HuffingtonPost, Secretary Sebelius plans to send a letter telling them that the regulations she plans to formulate will mandate that they do issue the insurance. I love the title: It's Over, You Lost, Stop Looking For Loopholes.

We have all seen the food safety recalls but this is one of the few stories I have seen on food 'fraud,' or selling a food as something it is not. It is interesting that the FDA really cannot deal with this because they lack the manpower and resources. As one spokesman noted 'if it doesn't kill people' they don't investigate. Major companies like Kraft and Heinz have to deal with the problem from two angles--they paid premium prices for a substandard product and they may take a recall hit it turns out to be dangerous to the consumer. Little wonder they are being more aggressive in the matter. The consumer--well the individual is likely to file the matter in his brain so that next time he won't buy that brand. Unless, of course, it damages his health. This is yet another example of the downside of globalization--one often doesn't know where the products one buys comes from, what they are made from, or what contaminants they carry with them.