Good morning everyone and how are you all on what looks to be another lovely day here in Northwest Indiana.  I haven't got out into the patio yet but I have a couple of little things planned.  'Tis the season for small things in the gardens--cleaning up, washing up, and putting away.

Pandora is on already.  It is only a bit after 7 a.m. but I have already blown a gasket with the news so it is off.  The news reader I was watching was interviewing some dumb-ass Repthuglican senator (from Wyoming, I think) about the Wall Street demonstrations that have now spread to most large cities.  He has decided that the demonstrators are being paid by the "Unions."  It is amazing how labor organizations have become the font of all evil for those idiots.  I was so pissed I could hardly get out a coherent swear word.

But I also found this little item on a link provided at Chris Martensen's Blog.  I wrote yesterday that the primary way we will get out of this economic quagmire we are in is through action on the individual and local levels.  I wouldn't move to Panama but downsizing has actually been on my agenda for several years.  The first round came when Mom and I moved in together and combined two households into one. Together we had just too much to fit in the new place.  Since then we have engaged in several more rounds.  Though we have accumulated some new stuff, over all we have considerably less than when we started.  But then such a course of action is definitely not what the commercial and financial powers-that-be want us engaged in.  Just think of all of the attention paid to 'consumer confidence.'  They want mindless consumers who still think that more automatically translates into better, are drooling over the next 'new' thing, and is willing to put it on credit to get it now.  Debt slavery is indeed back--the creditors just can't put us on the auction block.

Also yesterday, I wrote that we have been acting like Popeye's friend Wimpy for a good many years now--at least two-thirds of my life time: promising to pay for the hamburger we want to consume today sometime in the future.  Karl Denninger at the Market Ticker explains exactly how that works and why, for most of us, it was a no-win situation and thoroughly unsustainable.  And I think the prescription for the malady is on the money.  The same kind of hypocrisy that led to Tea Party signs demanding that the government keep its hands off the Tea Partier's Medicare while cutting government spending is mirrored by companies that benefit from special government protections which insulate them from their own folly.  Another case of moral hazard for thee but not for me.  I think the possibility of getting the government protections removed are about as good as the probability of a snow ball surviving in the kind of July we had this year.  And about as good as seeing the bankers who engaged in mortgage and foreclosure fraud prosecuted.

I saw a couple of references to this idiot's statement yesterday.  Here is a link to the Huffington Post piece I got by gmail.  Someone should tell this ass that in a capitalist economy, which he and his buddies tout, nobody has a 'right to make a profit.'  If enough of your customers are unhappy with his costs and move their accounts he won't make a profit.  He is betting they will stay put whether from a misguided perception of benefit or from shear laziness.  If they do move on, what is he going to do?  Force them back a gunpoint?  Sue them for his rights in court?  You have an opportunity to make a profit but you don't have a right to it.  Talk about an attitude of entitlement!!