Good morning to you all.  We still have rain and high winds today.  Those gusts were high enough yesterday to send two shelf liners I had weighted down in the greenhouse frame flying.  I was afraid the weight I would find the weight (a large aquarium decoration we aren't using anymore) in pieces but it flew into one of the containers.  I will pick up it all up when the weather clears.  The over-the-fence hangers are still in place.  They just sway a bit in the wind.  The pictures of the 25 ft waves on the lake were stunning.  The police had to close the jogging and bike paths because of the waves.

This story produced a feeling of deja vu.  Last week the local (Chicago) news had a couple of similar stories.  Mayor Rahm Emanuel's proposed budget included a 50% increase in water bills and canceling the exemption (i.e., free water) for non-profits.  That last is already under fire from the city council and the suburbs that get their water from Chicago will probably scream because while they will get the increase they won't get any benefit out of it.  The increases are earmarked for a program of sewer and waterline improvements.  Some of those are 150 years old--some are still wood.  Unfortunately, that isn't the total of the infrastructure needs.  Some local politicians are trying to focus public attention on the problems of decaying bridges in Chicago as well.  Again--deja vu.  I saw the same kind of stories a bit more than 10 years ago when I lived in Missouri.

Just saw a lead into a story which cites a new poll.  It claims 50% of the respondents thought Obama didn't 'deserve' to be re-elected.  That doesn't say, however, that those respondents thought any of the Repthuglican wanna be candidates deserve to be elected.  I don't want any of those idiots in any office.

Tom Englehardt has a good post on his tomdispatch site and asks a very good question:  isn't it time to expand the notion of 'too big to fail' from the financial institutions that are most responsible for the current economic woes to the military/intelligence complex?  As I read the comments on how the 'troops' have become sacrosanct I thought about the last 2 centuries of the Roman Empire.  During that time, when the borders of the Empire collapsed toward the core and the economy shrank, military expenditures spiraled upward, one emperor after another came to power promising fat bonuses to their supporting troops.  And several were deposed by troops disappointed by what they received.  The same time period saw more military failures than successes and the troops turned against Roman citizens more often than against external enemies.  Makes you wonder where we are going doesn't it?

Ronni Bennett at Time Goes By addressees a feature of the business propaganda that has annoyed me as well.  Every time some reporter asks today's Big Business CEO or financial pundit or Repthuglican politician self-righteously demanding tax cuts for business, that the EPA be muzzled (if not strangled), that all undefined unnecessary regulation be eliminated the do so in the name of providing certainty for business so business will suddenly hire all those millions of people now out of work.  Ronni eviscerates the whole demand for certainty.  Given that the only certainty in life is uncertainty.  That is why we need support systems.  Unfortunately the current Repthuglican philosophy advocates dismantling any such systems in the name of 'fiscal responsibility.'  They advocate 'moral hazard' for the lesser mortals but not for their aristocratic friends and now certainty for those friends but not for anyone else.  And the ugly fact is that certainty won't produce jobs and they all know it.