Tuesday--

There is so much wrong with this that I don't know where to begin.  I guess describing our officials as "vampires" is no longer a metaphor.  And as if that bit of obscenity wasn't enough, here is another from Alabama.  I have read several stories of these corporate vampires insisting that soon-to-be laid off employees train their off-shore, cheap replacements but to insist they be on-call for two years without pay pushes the definition of indecency to new lows.

Kunstler has another good analysis of our current slates of political candidates for the parties' nomination for president.  I am so totally underwhelmed.

As I read this piece by Daisy Luther I thought of a conversation we had at Walgreens this morning. We were headed to the checkouts and found one of the registers blocked by vases of flowers.  The clerk said that computer went down earlier so she put the flowers there to direct customers to a different register.  One of us wondered what they would do if all the registers went down.  Once upon a time pads of paper sales slips would be handed out, the clerks would list the items and the prices, tally the total and add on the tax, the customer would pay and leave.  Not any more.  The store would simply close.  First, there aren't any price tags on the items because the scanners would read the bar codes, bring up the item with its price and any discounts, deduct it from inventory, record the method of payment and print out the slip for the customer.  Second, the clerk may not be able to add the column accurately, figure discounts (if they remembered them), or calculate the tax.  Without the high tech point of sales software and equipment the stores would simply close losing however much money in the process.