Good morning to you all. Plan to do up some stewed tomatoes today following up with tomato sauce tomorrow. Then I should pick some of the green beans. Should be an easy schedule. See what else I can put in here and there. The errands we planned (less one we put off for later in the week) took all morning and part of the afternoon so nothing else got done here. But we did get a couple of irritating shocks. We picked up some Roma tomatoes (to stretch what I have from the garden which are mainly slicers) and glanced at the sweet corn--$5 a dozen. That is more than double what it was last year. There are some cheaper sources out there but those are still much higher than last year and the quality is pretty poor. It makes me wonder if our weather has put a bit of a dent in the supply. The second was how hard it was to find a simple, plain cold cereal. Almost everything out there was highly sugared and had all kinds of faux fruit additives. We could only find two--old fashioned cherrios and some shredded wheat. There may have been some corn flakes but I have never really like them--they get soggy too quickly. A third surprise was how much they have shrunk the refried beans section. So much that we want is disappearing in the supermarkets.

It would seem that the stealth price rises we have noticed at our supermarket is a far more common pattern and even Wal-Mart is engaging in the practice. We noticed two weeks ago an increase in the cost of the cat food we normally buy. The normal price had been between $0.47 and $0.49 with sales taking it down to between $0.42 and $0.45. The new tag read "10 for.." and we though 'Oh, great--a sale!!' But then we read further and saw it was "10 for $5.00" which is no sale at all. I wonder how many people never got past the "10 for" part of the tag. Hey, retailers--how about some straightforward honesty here. I would appreciate it as would others I am sure.

I don't know about anyone else but I am getting tired of the hype surrounding and leading up to the coming 10th anniversary of 9/11. I don't think there has been a day without some maudlin piece on the 'news' concerning some aspect of remembrance. I wish this country would move on instead of being stuck wallowing in the amber of the past. Unfortunately, we seem to have learned all of the wrong lessons from the event much like we did from the debacle that was Viet Nam.

So Missouri's senators are pissed off with FEMA because some payments for tornado recovery in the Joplin area are going to be slowed or suspended to help the agency deal with the immediate aftermath of Irene. Perhaps Blount and McCaskill should talk to the Senate Minority Leader McConnell and that pin-head in the House, Cantor. Where is the money supposed to come from if Cantor's demand is met that any disaster relief be paid for by cutting elsewhere? And, perhaps, they should have a word with Ron Paul who has recommended the elimination of FEMA because all states and localities should deal with such disasters from its own resources and not expect any help from more distant parts.

Gaius Publius at AmericaBlog had this item this morning. Monsanto's GM corn that poisons corn root worms that have the audacity to munch on the crop may be facing a variety of root worm that is resistant. The new bug has only been found in four spots in northeast Iowa but how long will it take to spread. Probably as long as it took Round-up resistant pig weed to spread out of fields of Round-up resistant commercial crops. Already Monsanto is looking for new genes that will give bugs tummy aches. Of course that is a strategy which will ensure future profits when the bugs develop resistance again.

Job Jones has a right on point commentary on all the crazy Christianist idiots (read Bachman and her ilk) taking God's name in vain.