Good Sunday morning to you all. We had nice bright sunshine yesterday. It was the kind of day that makes temps in the 40s pleasant. Our patio thermometer registered mid-30s this morning and we expect a storm front later today. I am hoping for rain because that will wash away much of the remaining snow and I hope the snow predicted for tomorrow fails to materialize. I am so ready for spring. Next weekend I plan to start the tomatoes and peppers and maybe some other seeds. And I need to see if I can get the supports in for the plastic covers. Around the first of March last year I tried to work one of the containers and my spade bounced off the frozen soil. We'll see what happens.

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Well, it's now Monday--the start of the last full week of February. This year is passing as fast as last year did. As you can see I really didn't have a lot to say yesterday. The news was more of the same old, same old and the commentary was all in the same predictable vein.

William Astore on tomdispatch this morning has a very good post concerning the best ways to support our troops. He has a number of very good observations on the hypocrisy of our modern style of warfare--and on the futility and waste of it.

The Washington Post has a good article on the how the Tea Party and their Repthuglican allies have hijacked the national debate on various issues. You can see this process going on in the news coverage of the protests in Wisconsin. Most focus on the economic issues which are given the slant that greedy public unions whose members are coddled, over-paid, and the recipients of generous but unearned retirement and health benefits for which they pay far too little are bankrupting us. Completely ignored in this is the history of those same unions taking less pay for greater benefits and job security. Also completely ignored is the move to emasculate collective bargaining--after all what is left to bargain about if you can't include benefits and wages are capped at the inflation rate--which the government has claimed has been non-existant for the last two years? Nowhere does the fact that over the last 30 years private employers have successfully stymied wage growth and have converted pension plans to 401k (worth considerably less than employees expected) and reduced health benefits. I suspect that if you put up a graph of the decline in union membership against the decline in the number of employees with benefits and the stagnation (or fall, if inflation is considered) in wages you would get a revealing correlation.

For more on just how stacked the message from Wisconsin is check out this story from firedoglake. This is one reason why I don't rely on the mainstream media to give me either news or analysis.

We have been slowly coming to the realization that our government is failing to serve our needs--just as people in the middle east and north Africa are. It is nice to know that our legislators do consider the welfare of some groups as this story shows. (sarcasm alert!!)