Good Morning, All, on this nice, bright, sunny Wednesday. After several days of dismal, wet weather it is nice to see the sun and anticipate temps above 70. The weather people have promised us some 80s by the weekend. All of the plants I have set out in the gardens are doing well and I plan to get some more things going later today when it gets a bit warmer.

The news media types are trying to make some sense out of the primaries of yesterday. The CNN headline this morning pretty much sums up the situation: "Open season on incumbents." Given the mood, which appears to be against both major parties, if the Tea Party could ever settle on a coherent platform they might be a force to scare the pants off everyone. I find it interesting how strong the anger over the bailouts has persisted. That played a big role in the results of last night.

Well, according to this story from MSNBC, the tar balls that washed up on some Florida beaches are not from the Deepwater Horizon explosion. My next question--where are they from? Evidently, the experts don't know yet. I have been constantly amazed by how much we don't know about this catastrophe: how much oil and gas are gushing from the leaks, what actually happened to cause this problem, whether there are plumes of oil and how big they are under the surface, who should bear the blame and the clean up costs? Almost a month after the primary event and we still don't have answers. Michael Klare, writing for Tomdispatch this morning, a nice succinct overview of the issues involved in our search for oil in hard-to-reach, environmentally sensitive areas.

An interesting little piece from yesterday's CNBC (I think) segments on the mortgage markets (mess): if it were not for FHA and cash there would be no mortgage market. For all the help the banks got they simply are not lending on home mortgages. And, why did the government give them all that help?