Good morning, again, everyone.  We expect highs in the 90s with heat index about 100--so we are inside today.  I just finished watering everything and dead heading the marigolds.  Everything else can wait until Saturday when the temps cool down again.  The green beans I harvested yesterday were very good at supper.  I had planned to do up the tomato sauce but I think it can wait, also.

Glad you are back and able to comment, Lois.  After reading your comment I noticed that blogger had changed things and I am trying the new format out.  I rather like what I see so far.

The news this morning noted another aftershock in Virginia--one of more than 20 since the 5.8 quake.  My goodness, ya think God might be sending Eric Cantor a message?  After all, why should Crazy Shelley be the only one to interpret the will of God?  My interpretation makes as much sense as hers.

I don't know about anyone else but I am getting mightily sick of the psychotic dance in Washington.  The President's people talk to the Speaker of the House's people about scheduling a joint session of Congress on Wednesday night and the Speaker raises no objections--until the letter requesting the session arrives.  Then--OH, MY GOD we can't do that--we have the Repthuglican debate at the same time.  And then Boehner proposes Thursday night--opening night of football.  Let me see if this makes any sense.  We have a 'debate' among candidates to be the candidate for an election that is still 15 months away.  The first primaries are still 5 months away.  And of course we can't miss opening night of football--how utterly unAmerican!!  I haven't heard anything in the various leaks of aspects of what Obama will propose that is in any way new and I don't expect the package to pass given the climate in Washington today.  Nor do I see that anything the politicians can do will really help the jobs situation even if it did pass.  But, once upon a time, we would have given the PRESIDENT a respectful hearing.

I have seen this a couple of times over the last couple of days.  Frankly, I think a situation where a CEO of a company is paid more than the company pays in Federal taxes is disgraceful.  I wonder how much some of those companies got in tax breaks.  I won't say anything about the obscenity of paying a CEO 325 times what you pay your average worker.

This is hardly surprising unless you are a Repthuglican who thinks the market fairly prices in CEO pay (you have to pay for talent!!) but somehow the public employees have blackmailed the political powers into overpaying them for the little talent they have.  Right after Walker's union busting bill was rammed through public employees started bailing rather than take the financial hit.  Now more are doing so.  Maybe they thought public employees would suck it up for the good of all (but themselves) or that they couldn't do basic math.

Thanks to Chris In Paris at AmericaBlog for this bit of S&P obscenity.  It rather scotches the argument some had put forward that S&P downgraded the U.S. credit to bolster their own reputation for failing to properly rate the sub-prime mortgage instruments that helped sink the economy three years ago.  If they cared so much for their reputation why give a AAA rating to another bunch of bundled sub-prime mortgages?