Well, it is New Year's Eve. We have very warm and wet conditions. The temps reached the mid 40s yesterday and will be in the mid to high 50s today. I am amazed by how much of our mountains of snow have disappeared over the last couple of days. We are expecting some rain and possible thunder out of that storm that gave so much of the west floods, mudslides, and blizzards. The east looks like it may be dug out in time to celebrate tonight.

I am enjoying the gardening catalogs that have arrived--two ordered and two a complete surprise. Those last two we think came because Mom got a free subscription to "Better Homes and Gardens" with her new mixer (which she loves) and the companies share the mailing list. We sent off our first order--a bay laurel seedling and a mini-greenhouse perfectly sized for a particular spot on the patio.

I guess this is one possible solution to the problem of potential seal level rise and global warming. But I do have to ask several questions--how much would such 'floating hotels' cost, how many can we afford to build, how many of our nearly 7 billion people (according to worldometers) can we accommodate, and who would be left behind?

Here is a mildly humorous entry from Firedoglake on the Republican plan to open the new Congress with a reading (aloud) of the Constitution. Might be a good idea for the idiots among them to be reminded of what the document actually says. We just had another interesting thought. There is a proposal to force each member who writes a new bill to include the Constitutional justification or authority for the bill. So we might be faced with the comedy of seeing 1200 page bills (which they don't read now) with equally lengthy legal brief attached. I feel sorry for the poor trees soon to be sacrificed in this futile exercise.

Yves at Naked Capitalist has this interesting item which takes the robo-signing scandal from the mortgage fraud realm into the credit card collections hell. Not only do people attesting to the validity of legal documents not have to be working at the firm for which they are signing the documents or examining the documents they are signing but they don't even have to be alive to do so. Once upon a time we were proud to say that we were a 'government of laws, not men.' We have now morphed to being ruled by a 'government of corporations, not laws.' If we had to change I would prefer we took a step backwards. Men can die, corporation don't.

Good Morning, everyone. Only today and tomorrow left in 2010. Although it hasn't been as bad a year as a couple of the last ones and I often felt the time was going way too fast, I am not sorry to see 2010 go. I have no idea what 2011 will bring socially, politically, or economically. And I am not very hopeful that the morass will be cleaned up any time soon.

However, I found this item among the blogs on the Google alert this morning. You wouldn't think that the final product came from something most of us throw away without a second thought. I wouldn't pay the price because I don't set much store by 'designer' products and I am in the process of making my own--crocheted instead of woven.

A lot of bloggers and others are making up their list of New Year's resolutions. Here is a cute blog post on the resolutions of a garden 'geek.' I don't think I qualify as a garden geek though my one goal (I stopped making resolutions many, many years ago) is to garden more and to increase my efforts at preserving what I grow for winter use.

Good Monday after Christmas to you all and hope you had a wonderful holiday and are recovering well. Thank you, Kay and Lois. We did have a very nice Christmas. Had dinner with Sister and a few friends and relatives. Luckily the snow was well timed for between the times we were on the road and was light. No travel worries for us. If the weather forecasts are accurate (which they often are not) a good bit of the snow on the ground will melt--temps in the 40s and even touching 50 Tuesday and Wednesday with some rain.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Happy Christmas Eve to everyone. Thanks for the e-mail, Lois. Although the political stories have been fast and furious I haven't really felt like commenting on them. And since my gardens are under several inches of snow and I am still cleaning up the sewing room I don't have anything to talk about on those fronts.

The news media and the politicians are celebrating 'the most productive Congress ever.' I hope they don't injure themselves patting each other on their backs. I am glad that 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' was passed. It only languished on the Hill for how long? I am glad that the new START treaty was passed and that is the only piece of legislation that was dealt with in a timely manner. Everything else had been held up for months while the different sides postured and pointed fingers. I didn't like the gridlock-on-steroids we had but if the last month represents 'bi-partisanship' I don't like it much either.

The morning broadcast news and HuffingtonPost both carried stories proclaiming Obama's plans to reorganize his people. (HuffingtonPost has a link to a New York Times article). I don't think that will do much good because from what I have heard he is looking at people who played a large part in previous administrations. And most of those have also been through the revolving door to Wall Street several times. He really needs authentic new blood--people who can think out of the box. That is a thought that came to me as I watched the CNBC report on student loan debt this last week. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appeared and spouted all of the non-sense the President and other members of the establishment have been on education--we have to regain the number one spot in terms of the proportion of our people who have college degrees. The reporter asked a question that I have been asking for some time now: college degree for what? Where are the jobs that really require a college degree? Duncan had no answer. There is no plan B.

Another story that has gotten a good bit of coverage in the mainstream media is the price of gas. The national average topped $3 a gallon--the first time ever at Christmas. Oil topped $90 a barrel for the first time in about 3 years. My brother, who came by with a nice load of Christmas sweets (and some very welcome tamales), said that when he stopped to fill up Tuesday the clerk told him that by evening the price was going to go up by $.30 a gallon. The price at our favorite little station is just a smidge below $3. I laughed a bit at another group of talking heads on CNBC who claimed that OPEC countries will soon increase production to off set the hike. Most of the quotes I have read from OPEC ministers indicate they are quite happy with prices between $90 and $100 per barrel. Even if OPEC countries can increase production significantly (and there is considerable doubt on that score from various experts), I doubt they will. Anybody remember when Bush, Jr. went to Saudi Arabia to beg for increased production when the prices hit $140/barre.? We got a lot of relief then, didn't we? (sarcasm alert)

Little Homestead in the City has some pictures of the rains in California. Their place is in Southland--where some of those dramatic pictures of mud encased cars and homes that have appeared on the national news were shot. Luckily they say they are on high ground so their problems was dealing with all the water.

I found these pictures on Quilt Vine. Look closely at the pictures. I almost missed the detail.

Firedoglake posted this today which expresses many of my thoughts on the growing crisis in public pensions. Some talking heads on CNBC discussed this earlier this week and ticked me off royally. One of the men in nice, expensive suits said that people had to realize that states simply couldn't afford to pay those who had been 'over-promised.' Such a nice sanitary word. And total crap. Workers had been promised a salary plus certain benefits in return for their labor. Those who have retired delivered on their part of the promise. Now states and cities, as many companies before them, are determined to swindle the workers out of the promised compensation for that labor. And our legal system is letting them get away with the theft.

Good Morning to you all on this Friday before Christmas Eve. Hope you have all of your Christmas shopping done. We do--but then we don't do much. The news readers talked about the hopes retailers have of a good procrastinators' rush this year. For my part I wish we could drive a stake of holly into the heart of the beast we call a consumer economy. Consumption without production has always seemed to me a royal road to poverty.

It is always refreshing to see someone in government express a truth. Evidently the NSA has admitted the futility of trying to make its computer systems totally 'secure.'

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It is now Saturday morning. I didn't see much more that was interesting or worth a comment yesterday but I liked that story on computer security so I decided to keep it.

This story on MSNBC sounds all too familiar this year. Same story--different location. We hope that the snow predicted here for Tuesday holds off until the afternoon because Mom has an early morning doctor's appointment. But otherwise we intend to hibernate. Also we hope the snow for Christmas Eve is light because we are supposed to go to Sister's for dinner.

Newsweek (by way of MSNBC) carried a story which should come as no surprise to anyone who follows the developments in manufacturing and the labor market. Manufacturers have accelerated their use of robots and are producing the same amount or more with far fewer workers. That has been the story of the last 70 or so years. The notion that the new jobs will require more training and skills simply means that workers have to find a way to pay for more expensive training and education (often by going deeper into debt) or they will be priced out of decent paying jobs. The question is--will those jobs really bring in enough money for the worker to make the extra expense economically rational? But another thought also struck me--what happens when this level of automation hits China and India?

Good Wednesday morning, all. Everything is pretty well back to normal. The city did a great job of getting the streets cleared. We just have mountains of snow to remind us of our blizzard. The weather people say we got 9 inches officially. I think we got more. At least we didn't get the 30+ inches a couple of places south and east of us wound up with.

Here is a nice story from the New York Times by way of MSNBC. I love the comment from one of the cooks--she is making less money but having more fun with less stress. These are the kinds of people our government should be helping--not the paper sellers on Wall Street. Unfortunately, I don't think that $800+ billion package of tax cuts/stimulus will do much for them. And I am no longer a believer in the 'every little bit helps' adage. Too often the little bits are too little even in aggregate.

Treehugger had this video of a container garden on steroids in Berlin. I don't speak German but just watching the video is fun.