Good morning on this frosty Friday. I saw frost on the garbage tote and I don't doubt that the car has a coating as well. I am glad I went to the library yesterday. I had to take the cover off the mini-greenhouse because the wind toppled it twice yesterday. When I put it back on I will have to repair a tear. Damn!! I think I need to rearrange the containers so I can put the greenhouse against the fence where it will have more protection from the wind. Not now, though. It is too cold to do much outside.

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Well, it is now Saturday. I didn't have much to say yesterday. This is the first article I saw this morning. I am not really all that surprised. I recently read an article which quoted Sarah Palin expressing the sentiment that she would do what she wanted until a court told her she couldn't do it any more. So I should commit murder until a court tells me I can't?? These guys have so much respect for the law until it conflicts with their programs.

And then there is this Huffington Post piece that reinforces what I have seen from my perspective on this economy. We do have two economies and the one in which I am located is not recovering. I was pleased to note that the mainstream media have finally noticed the fact that the big companies that have largely recovered from the recession have also been able to squirm out of paying most, if not all, taxes. Not just taxes on profits made overseas and not repatriated but taxes on profits made in this country. CNBC had Barney Frank on yesterday and I loved the way he took control of the interview and shredded the usual position CNBC takes--you know, that government should not regulate business because that makes it more difficult for them to do business, that they are so onerously taxed that they cannot hire more workers and bolster the recovery, and that the finance industry really didn't cause the economic melt down. In spite of the interviewer's strenuous efforts, Frank demonstrated that U.S. global companies created exactly zero jobs the last time they got a tax holiday on repatriated profits, that the companies that are lobbying for lower corporate taxes are sitting on trillions of dollars they aren't spending on jobs, and he placed the blame for the financial crisis squarely where it belongs--with greedy companies that cut corners, failed to do their research, and committed outright fraud. Bless you, Barney Frank.

On the continuing saga of the Gulf oil conundrum, Huffington Post tells us that the company whose soon to be abandoned well has been tagged as the source of the new oil slick is disputing that designation. Given that I don't trust either source of information, I will only say that the facts are up in the air on this one. Rocky Kistner links to Rachel Maddow who cited another Coast Guard theory on the source for the 100 mile slick--dead algae and plankton. Her quip is on the money--we have traded the BP oil slick for dead zones. That quip may be a very accurate description given the drastically lowered fishing yields.

I have often thought (and said) that Repthuglicans and their allies want to turn the clock back about a hundred years--back to times when labor unions were illegal and strikes were broken up by the national guard, the army or by hired thugs and back to when most children did not graduate from high school and no laws mandated school attendance or outlawed child labor. Maybe I was too generous in my estimate and this lends credence to my suspicion. According to Wikipedia, the U.S. outlawed debtors prisons in 1833 and the states quickly followed suit. Perhaps they would like to take us back 1500 years to the Roman world when debtors were sold into slavery (along with their families) to satisfy their debts. Barbarism on the rise in the 'land of the free'.