Tuesday--

Shopping and errands today.  Won't harvest anything but I have spots that need clearing and cleaning up.

I wonder how soon this will come to our shores.  Takes spying and social/political control to a whole new level.

Wednesday--

Supposed to be clear, sunny and a bit warmer today.  I will see what I can get done in the gardens.

I have often remarked that some functions in our society should never be turned over to the capitalists.  Health care is one of those functions (along with education, prisons, and public utilities.) This piece in Naked Capitalism reaffirms that notion.  What really offends me about the situation is that the only aspect of the situation getting any "official" attention is fraud, i.e. enrolling the non-terminally ill in hospice care and then billing the public purse for their care.  I agree that should be investigated and punished--at least to the extent that we ever punish criminals of the "corporate person" type.  But what about the harm done to patients?  Why is that not an issue?

We generally try to use foods that are as little commercially processed as possible--as close to their native state as possible.  We get non-brominated, non-bleached flour, for example.  Grinding our own is not a realistic proposition.  We found a tomato paste that lists as its ingredients only tomatoes--no stabilizers, no added salt, no preservatives.  Some time ago we shifted to whole milk.  I always complained that the low and no fat varieties were tasteless and refused to use them.  Then we found that we had cut our consumption of milk by more than three quarters.  Mom's doctor has tried to encourage her to go with the low fat alternatives but we have resisted and this article rather negates his arguments.

Thursday--

It was nice yesterday so I did get a bit of garden clearing done.  Cut a bit of peppermint--just enough to finish filling my main dehydrator.  Emptied a large pot that had basil, rosemary, and sage planted in it.  The pot itself broke shortly after I got it planted and was moving it to its final position but held together just long enough.  I have already replaced it for next season.  I debated trying to dig out the rosemary and sage carefully enough to transplant into small pots and bring inside but decided against doing so.  I already have two nice rosemary plants inside and I simply don't have any room inside.  I already have a blueberry, St. John's wort, chocolate mint, lime basil and the two rosemaries on the window-side table downstairs and oregano, two lemon verbenas and the eucalyptus upstairs.  I have very little room to put anything else right now.  So the sage and last rosemary went into the dehydrator.  We should have good weather until sometime later this afternoon so I may take the rest of the peppermint for drying and clear that pot.

This is incredibly nasty.  The pictures alone are mind boggling.  Imagine living with it.

Mom commented on this yesterday when she found an article about the defeat of the Harvard Debate Team by a team from a prison.  My first response when she read the lead was "Why do we assume that because someone is in prison they are unintelligent?"  Evidently the reporter had a similar reaction.  Perhaps because we have been fed so many "stupid criminal jokes."  Or perhaps we really want to believe that the only reason people wind up in prison is because they are somehow subnormal.  Each strokes our egos because we aren't in prison.

Brutal assessment but absolutely right on.  Thank you, Orlov!!

The Westboro Baptist Church is taking their idiocy to new levels.  I can't find the words to adequately express my opinions on this.

I had a couple of thoughts about this article.  I can see the intelligence agencies looking at their entire process of gathering information with the aim of discovering what, if anything, they missed or dismissed or mis-evaluated that would have shed light on subsequent events.  But that kind of evaluation and analysis won't be accomplished by Congressional or Senatorial committees holding hearings.  Reading the account it occurs to me that our inglorious political leaders have misunderstood the role of the intelligence agencies and the "intelligence" they gather.  They provide the political and military leadership with information on which to base decisions and actions.  They may also provide possible scenarios with assessments of how those might play.  All of this is imperfect (we can't know everything with perfect accuracy) and entirely dependent on the cultural biases of the intelligence gatherers and analysts and of those who receive their reports.  It appears to me as though the Congress and Senatorial Critters want seers/diviners/prophets who can infallibly tell the future which the intelligence agencies are not--even under the best of circumstances.