Good morning on this very frosty Sunday.  The weather people last night showed statistics that indicate this winter has been among the 15 snowiest and coldest winters on record.  It certainly feels like it.  We are supposed to have sunny days even if they are cold.  Good.  It is so much easier to do needlework in strong natural light.  A couple of years ago we purchased a couple of daylight balanced fluorescent floor lamps hoping they would help.  They haven't really.  We work the projects that require good light when we have it and I do those that don't in the evening.

The news last night had an update on the salmonella situation.  In the middle, Mom exclaimed "Oh, God, turtles are on the list."  She had been given a box of the candies for Christmas and we just opened them yesterday.  In fact we had each just eaten them.  I doubt there is anything to worry about since the brand is not in any way associated with the recall.  But it does make you sit up and take notice.  We are also watching the pet foods.  So far our feline lords and masters are fine.  The recalls appear to be limited to the dog food isles.  I do feel for dog owners.

Donna commented yesterday on my post yesterday that we may never know the ultimate cause of the contamination but she thought it might be a Tyson style concentrated animal feeding operation.  CAFOs seem to have been nearby in at least one such incident (the spinach recall).  Grist had some stories on the increase in e. coli contaminations of ground beef associated with the beef feedlots.  Last night one lawmaker (sorry, I don't remember who) was on the news mentioning the lack of a field-to-table safety system in this country.  She is pushing for such a system.  Problem--how do we track the large amount of food that comes in from outside our borders?

Kay wondered how I stand MSNBC.  In small doses actually and with a good deal of skepticism.  But I do that with ALL news media, which, to my mind, have shifted from real news to entertainment.  They cover, incessantly but superficially, anything dramatic making sure that the drama (if not the information) is heightened as much as possible.  I go to MSNBC because I have, and have for years, had a hotmail account.  It has served me well so I haven't changed.  Every now and then something catches my eye in transit. But I always read with my skepticism antennae on high alert.  As far as FOX goes, the only thing we watch on that station is 'Bones.'  The 'news' pegs my irritation meter within seconds if I happen to get there by accidentally hitting the wrong button on the remote.

Patti Haskins has put some 'Pickles' comic strips featuring a needlework theme.  The exchanges remind me of a conversation with my husband at that time.  He complained that he couldn't quit smoking because he needed something to do with his hands.  I told him he should take up needlepoint (a craft I then indulged in).  Huffily he rejected the notion because it wasn't manly.  I pointed out that Rosie Greer, a retired football player, did needlepoint.  He merely commented that he wasn't built like Rosie Greer.

Dean Baker at TPM Cafe notes that the banks are coming back for more money after having burned through $350 billion with little to show for it.  He says it is enough and I agree.  I hope that the Obama Administration looks deeply and carefully into where the money has gone and takes serious names and kicks serious butt.  Especially if another the circumstances laid out in another couple of stories are in any way true.  A couple of weeks ago a '60 Minutes' segment detailed the working of speculators, many associated with some of the largest banks, in running up oil prices.  One expert interviewed (sorry, I can't remember the name) called Morgan Stanley 'the largest oil company in the country.'  Add that to this post by Raymond J. Learsy on the HuffingtonPost which claims that these banks used TARP money to speculate in oil and it is enough to get your, and my, blood pressure up.  Correct me if I am wrong, but I seem to remember that TARP was 'sold' to our lawmakers as a way to unfreeze the credit markets.  Methinks we have been sold a pig in a poke, a bill of goods, what ever other phrase that comes to mind to describe a fraud.

Robert Reich at TPM Cafe has an excellent term to describe TARP and other bailouts--'lemon socialism.'  Taxpayers, via the bailouts, 'own' the lemons while the 'capitalists' keep the good stuff and make even more money.  Sounds like the assessment others have made about our whole, allegedly, capitalist banking system--Socialism for bankers and capitalism, with all its penalties and few of its rewards, for the rest of us.

That is about all for today.  It is definitely time for breakfast.  Keep warm, everyone.

Several posts in the past I noted that I am a news junkie.  However, I also am a junkie who doesn't subscribe or otherwise buy any newspaper at all.  Mom and I stopped getting the Sunday papers (Chicago Tribune for me and Northwest Indiana Times for her) when we became unhappy with the coverage.  It wasn't worth getting out on a Sunday morning and driving to the store and forking over $4 for the two papers, and then having to throw away all that paper afterward.  This little blog from Eric Boehlert at Media Matters illustrates our disenchantment with the mainstream media whether print or broadcast.  Living within 50 miles of Chicago we, of course, got bombarded with the broadcast coverage of Jesse Jackson whispering that he wanted to emasculate Barak Obama.  We saw NO coverage of Senator McCain's comments concerning Social Security.  It seems that Senator McCain not only doesn't know much about economics; he doesn't know much about history either.  Surely such abysmal ignorance is relevant when voters judge the 'qualifications' of candidates to be President.

Going through my usual blogs this morning I noticed that Entitled To Know and AARP both carried updates concerning the votes Tuesday evening overriding President Bush's veto (of late Tuesday afternoon) of the Medicare bill eliminating the 10.6% cut in payments to physicians providing care for Medicare recipients.  The over ride votes passed, if I am reading the figures right, by larger margins that the original legislation.  It may be my imagination but it appears to me that the President and his cronys are increasingly desperate to secure as much increase to his constituents' (read the energy, finance, and insurance sectors) bottom lines as possible before he leaves office.  You know, just in case his pet successor doesn't win the election in November.  By the way, to continue the comments of the last paragraph, the veto override did not make the mainstream media. At least not yet.

Yesterday we finally experienced our second 90 degree day here.  Today and tomorrow are expected to hit at least the mid 90s.  We finally turned on our air conditioner for the today.  We decided that we will put it on about 11 each day and leave it on until between 5 or 6 in the evening.  We never have run it much.  We set the thermostat to 70  in the winter, only because the temperatures away from where ever the sensor is stays about 68-9.  Summer thermostat settings are 78.  We are always amazed by how early and how often our neighbors heat or air conditioning runs.  Each year we figure out how to refine how we use both the air and heat.  As a result our bills have remained the same or, in a couple of years, actually went down.

I had to move my tomato plants around because our little patio is like an oven.  even though most of the pots are light colored they still absorb a lot of heat and the plants looked a bit wilted.  The picture at the top are the plants as of a couple of weeks ago.  They are doing much better than the ones we planted last year.  I think the pots are still too small and next year we are going to put only two plants into a large 30 gallon tub we found.  I had to put foil on one because we converted a clear plastic container to planter and the dark soil in the container absorbs way too much heat.  This is something else we plan to refine over time.