Good last Monday of August to you all.  Hard to believe how fast the year is going.  No gardening today.  We had good rain last night--only about an inch but slow and steady.  They are watching the hurricane to see if it will track into our area.  I didn't do much outside yesterday other than water the cuttings and seedling in the greenhouse.  They are all doing well so far.

Found this 24/7 Wall Street article by way of MSNBC.  I only read it to see if my gut instinct about what industries are 'most hated' and why were correct.  I guessed that banking and the petroleum industries would be at the top and I was right there.  I also figured right that the industries that were most necessary to our way of life and over which we have the least control would be high up there.  No brainer and no surprise.

Reading things like this rather pisses me off.  Especially when I remember Alan Simpson's famous quip that, for Social Security and others who receive government checks, the Federal government is like a milch cow with 310 million teats.  How many of those teats are feeding our 'capitalists' businesses?  What ticks me off more?  The fact that the lawsuit has been sealed in Federal court for the last three years and has only been unsealed since last Wednesday.

This intrigued me.  I wasn't aware that some U.S. Government Printing Office publications were available in e-book format from Barnes & Noble and will soon be available from Apple.  I looked at the B&N site and found what they have but I didn't find anything of interest to me a this time.

And this could get very interesting.  All those Repthuglican ideologues occupying state houses may have a local revolt on their hands.  Can only hope it is a prelude to an ouster in the near future.

During what passes for news on TV this morning we were expressing thankfulness to Isaac for shortening the 'reality' show called the Republican Convention.  And we don't really think any more of the Democratic Party's version.  We much resent the wasted time and the total lack of any enlightening information from this exercise in futility.  It seems we aren't alone in our attitudes.  Jeff Jarvis at HuffPo asks reporters why they are even in Tampa and what they can possibly tell us from there that they can't from their local areas.  Add the money wasted by the news organizations to the tally of some $2billion+ this damned farce is going to cost when all is (not)said and (un)done.

Paul Slansky's piece on Huffington Post this morning highlights Repthuglican hypocrisy.  I know.  I know.  We shouldn't be all that surprised.  But in a week which saw both Romney and Ryan (supposedly) try to persuade Akin in Missouri to withdraw from the Senate race because of his comments about female reproductive physiology and rape, and then the passage of a plank in the Repthuglican platform which proposes criminalization of abortion with no exemptions for rape, incest, or the health of the mother, one would expect the lamestream (s)news media to go apeshit.  Well, it hasn't.  As noted in Animal Farm--"All animals are created equal but some animals are more equal than others."  Depends on how big the pig is whether he gets slaughtered or not.

I saw this post on Cassandra's Legacy yesterday but thought I would link to it today.  We are naturally focused on our own drought but we shouldn't forget that a large swath of the planet is in the same boat.  Our (s)news media, unfortunately, helps mightily to reinforce that insularity.