Good day to you all.  Frosty and foggy this morning.  The temperature should go up to about 40F again.  Yesterday I peeked into my little milk jug planters and I think I saw a couple of little sprouts breaking the surface.  Since I started with potting soil the only thing those could be is spinach.  I didn't get much else done yesterday.  Kuma has been off his feed for the last couple of days.  He is 17 and such episodes are a major concern.  I didn't know if it was just a short term bug or something else.  But I focused in on the food because he threw up one can, had a nasty case of diarrhea with an other, and refused to eat another.  This is food he has rated readily for all his life so it was a bit of a surprise to have three days running like this.  I decided to change things up and get some other kind of food.  Well, he is eating again.  He went after the new canned food after having rejected the old all morning.  And he ate the new dry food even though he had a helping of the new canned available.  (Actually, he ate a bit of both.)  I also decided to change his water bowl.  I have remarked before that he is very insistent about drinking from puddles and run-off from the containers outside.  Well, I put ice in his water and put the it all in a different dish.  He immediately drank from it.  I wonder if something is leaching out of the old dish he didn't like.  He is now back to his usual self.

Sometimes these boys really do worry me.  Question: what faction do you arm?  Another question:  what makes you think what will come after Assad will be any better than Assad?  Third question: how much stability has resulted from siding with the rebels in Libya and why would Syria be any different?  Fourth question: wouldn't it be better to spend that money here?

Ezra Klein's Wonkbook post in the Washington Post this morning presents an interesting dissection of the four remaining GOP contenders' budget proposals.  Interestingly, Romney's proposals are so vague that getting a good estimate of what they will mean for the future deficit is impossible.  But all except Ron Paul's program would increase the deficit.  Also interesting: Paul's proposals would be only marginally better, on this one metric, that President Obama's.   Follow this link to a Washington Post story with more detail on the report.

Just when you think things can't get worse in Greece, it does.  Zero Hedge had this on a way to screw your workers: negative salary.  I guess we have finally come to the point where something really is nothing--or less than nothing.