Good morning, everyone.  We have nice, bright sun for now after a wet night.  More clouds and precipitation predicted for later and over night with possible snow over the weekend.  The weather people said that November as a whole was 5 degrees above average.  The plants in the gardens are still doing well though the mums and lemon balm are showing some stress from below freezing nights.  The blueberries, German thyme, and roses look very good.  The lawn care people came around to clean up the leaves a couple of days ago.  They didn't find much on my patio.  The first half of the leaves went into the compost bin and the second half I swept outside the fence gate (because I didn't have room in the compost.)  Next year, if my experiment in overwintering is successful, I will use more leaves as a mulch.  Didn't think of it this year because I had three packages of cedar chips.

Forbes has a good article on the Repthuglican race this morning.  I don't agree with much of Ron Paul's proposals but I do think someone who hews to principle a bit refreshing.  Few of them could say, as did Lillian Hellman before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, that they "cannot and will not cut my conscience to today's fashions.'  They have no principles or conscience to cut.  Yeah, Kay, they do make Tricky Dick look honorable.

Time leads off with the headline that the Senate approved a $662 billion defense spending bill.  What is buried in the story is the fact that the bill goes another step toward creating a military/police state and the Constitution is one more step toward toilet paper status.

The economics talking heads have been enthusiastic this morning about the employment numbers just released.  MSNBC posted this story.  Skeptic that I am I noticed that the unemployment numbers went down because the participation rate went down.  In other words, more people have left the job market.  Also that a large percentage of the jobs created were in retail, restaurants and hospitality, and health care.  In other words, in the areas that provide a large number of low paying jobs.  And that the retail and 'hospitality' jobs are seasonal jobs.  In other words, here today and gone in January.  I also wonder how many are part time.  The 120k jobs are nice but that doesn't even keep up with the population growth.

A couple of Indian farmers have a truly wicked sense of humor in designing their protest of allegedly corrupt tax officials.  I think their 'gift' was totally appropriate.