Good morning to you all. A bit foggy with the possibility of a few more showers this morning before the sun moves in this afternoon. We will be going out to see what is at our city farmer's market a bit later. Our favorite one hasn't opened yet but, if I remember rightly, it opened later toward the first of July. They usually have the first local corn. I saw a couple of plants in the gardens that will need to be moved. They simply aren't happy where they are. But most plants are doing very well.

***************************************************************************************

As ou can see, I didn't get back to the blog yesterday. It is now Sunday and we now have some cloud cover that moved in after a brief appearance of the sun. We are on the edge of the clouds as usual. It should burn off or move off later today. The entire week is supposed to stay in the 70s. We can handle that. I am getting some of the little gardening chores done a bit at a time. It is too cool to spend much time out there at the moment but the temperature is rising and should move into the 70 in the next couple of hours. I found several little tomatoes on three of the plants. I have pruned and tied up only about one-third of my plants so far. The have grown so much over the last few days. All of the plants have.

We did visit the farmers' market yesterday. It has grown over the years and should get bigger as the season progresses and after the downtown park that will be its final home is finished in August. I was looking for some new plants to replace the roses in the fence holders but I didn't find anything really suitable. I will go back to Home Depot Tuesday.

I have been avoiding most of the broadcast news lately. Yesterday after the second repeat of the asinine coverage of the Weiner 'story' and the idiocy of the spectators at the Casey Anthony trial I put on Syfy even though we had seen everything at least once. My complaints: the constant repetition without any new information, the hyping of rather mundane stories, the uncritical presentation of political opinion, and the spotlighting of sanctimonious political whores who adopt what ever position they think will benefit them at the time.

I agree, Lois. Nature has been and is giving us a beating. How long? If this is a shift from a normal, cyclical warm spell to a normal, cyclical cold spell it can last several hundred years. The last shift came around 1300 and lasted to the early decades of the 1800s. Thanks to a combination of famine (due to crop failures), epidemics (primarily bubonic plague but including other diseases), and warfare (the Hundred Years' War began around 1345 and lasted till 1453) the population of Europe dropped by about 50% in 100 years. If it is something even more catastrophic thanks to the effects of human action--no one knows. I remember an interesting statement from the PBS film 'Black Blizzard' about the Dust Bowl. Agricultural practices introduced in the 1870s which quickly spread across the Great Plains changed the weather patterns over the area deepening the drought. In other words, man's economic activity had a detrimental effect for the weather humans living in the area depended on. Those who claim that puny man cannot affect something like weather, or climate, or the atmosphere, or the oceans because they are simply too big simply have a selective acquaintance with history.

Chris Martensen has an interesting essay this morning. The first item that attracted my attention was his description of our modern economy as requiring infinitely expanding credit. Nothing can expand infinitely except in pure mathematics. The physical world has limits. The second item I found fascinating was his graph of the growth of the U.S. credit market since 1970. It has doubled 5 times in 40 years. The pattern is a nice parabola that mirrors the ideal exponential curve. As I looked at it I was reminded of the problem of trying to accelerate past the speed of light. As you get closer to that limit the energy you put into the effort produces less and less result. I would guess, as Martensen concludes, that all of the efforts made to increase the amount of cash available to lend has bumped up against the same phenomenon--no matter how much we put in the result will be disappointingly small. And something else comes to mind: if business and industry has no real expectation of resumed growth on the scale of the recent past, will they have any real interest in increasing payrolls? I think not. And all of the talk of reduced regulation and reduced taxes is just that--talk. I am quite sure that all of the industries and businesses lobbying for those 'reforms' are quite honest on one level: such measures would improve their bottom lines. But their promises of new jobs is nothing more than self-serving hot air.

Good morning to you all on this cool and wet Friday. More thunder storms rumbled through last night and we expect more later today and overnight. At least I won't have to water anything until Monday at the earliest. Everything out there is growing like the proverbial weeds. I will have to harvest most of my herbs. Several tomatoes need pruning. The squash need to be trained through the trellis which needs some low cross bars to attach the plants to. I may need to do the same with the melons. I can't believe the number of blossoms on the tomatoes and more of the peppers are blooming also. I guess I will definitely start those seeds as early next year as I did this year (late February.) (Update: We have sun!!)

Hey, Lois, I am glad you're back blogging again. I forgot all about the cookies and cache. I haven't had much of a problem with that for a long time.

I have been reading about this for a couple of months now. The drought that made such a spectacular appearance in Russia last year seems to have moved west. Add that to the report yesterday that the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture reported drastic reductions in the number of acres planted in corn, the projection of the number of acres of corn that will be harvested (actually more than the the reduced number of planted acres would suggest), and in the projected number of bushels to be harvested. CNN noted the story but most of the talking heads remarked on how 'bullish' the report was for the commodity market which saw the corn (and other commodity) prices bump up. 'Bullish' for investors but higher costs for the rest of us. Elaine at Elaine's Place had this link that illustrates some of the problem. Note the drought from Texas to Georgia/Florida. But also consider that the floods that hit several areas came at just the wrong time and the ground won't be dry enough to plant till it is too late to plant corn.

Karoli at Crooks & Lawyers has this little piece which reminds me of the conclusion: while the press focused on one 'dick' they were ignoring what another bunch of 'dicks' were doing; and that may have been the purpose behind spending so much time, ink, and hot air on such aninconsequential matter.

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalist answers the question I had yesterday about the real effect of the decision by the Treasury to delay the incentive payments to three too-big-to-fail banks over their abysmal performance with respect to the HAMP program. I thought it would amount something indistinguishable to nothing. I was right. Her comments are wonderfully, justifiably sarcastic.

Tom Philipot at Grist had this take on the dismal, depressing, (choose your adjective) employment numbers for May. That more than half of the jobs created last month resulted from McDonald's hiring push places the data onto an all new level of disheartening, dismaying, (choose your adjective) data.

Good morning to you all. There wasn't much to comment on yesterday. The Bears playoff game dominated our news and I think most sports 'news' is a waste of time. The loss is dominating this morning's news--an even bigger waste. Oh, well, that's entertainment.

It is still cold with periodic snow or other precipitation. Some areas south of us are expecting ice. Hopefully, we will miss that. But I notice that I am not the only one in the blogosphere keeping warm perusing the seed catalogs and planning the spring planting. My seed orders came in so I sat myself down and actually planned what I will plant and where I will put it. I checked out the plans yesterday to make sure I had a place for everything I had on my list and made a couple of minor tweaks to the plans. What's on the agenda, you ask?

Well, peppers, of course. I decided not to put in any sweet peppers this year. The farm markets are full of those. Top on the list is the False Alarm (very mild jalapeno style hybrid) and Zavory (mild habanero hybrid) both from Burpee. I added the Vietnamese Multi-color hot from Baker Creek (an heirloom variety). All are small and I want to pickle some as well as freeze a batch. The False Alarm has been reliably prolific over the last two years.

Then, tomatoes, and absolute must. I still have Fresh Salsa ) (Burpee hybridseeds so I will continue with them. They did the best of all the tomatoes last year and produced heavily. The Brandywine and Big Rainbow (heirlooms) didn't do nearly so well thanks to the heat wave that hit just as they were blooming and the sun damage didn't help either. I will start them and the peppers early under plastic tents and I plan to provide shade from the worst of the sun.

I will continue growing stevia, thai basil, lavender, and sage but will add marjoram, rosemary, oregano, and sweet basil.

I have a number of new categories this year: the Tigger melon, Dragon's Egg cucumber, Blue Lake pole beans, and Aunt Molly's ground cherry. These are all heirloom varieties from Burpee (beans) and Baker Creek (mellon and cucumber). The ground cherry was a gift packet from Jung with our order of the little greenhouse and a total surprise. I am very interested in how it will turn out.

Greens will include Bull's Blood beets, spinach and three varieties of lettuce. Actually, there are more varieties of lettuce because I will be planting the Heatwave mix from Burpee for the middle of the season. These didn't do well last year but I hope the results will be different this time. We do like our salads.

For pure decoration I am putting in the dwarf marigolds again along with Love-in-a-Mist, Black Peony poppy, and Teddy Bear sunflowers.

Though I love looking at the seed catalogs I find my enthusiasm often outruns my garden capacity. Everything looks and sounds wonderful. But I have a very small space so many of my choices are restricted to what plants that may fit in well in that space. The melons produce small fruit and I have several large pots that can be fitted with a trellis. And I have some pots that, I think, are big enough for the poppy and sunflower both of which grow to 4 ft.

On to other things. I don't find this New York Times story all that surprising though the time line does raise my eyebrows a bit. The story started unraveling about five years before the housing crisis hit. The rot in the mortgage industry is pervasive and cleaning it up will take a long while. The first step has to be a social attitude adjustment on two points. Ordinary Americans can't think of homes as 'investments' the way stocks are investments and count on them for a windfall return. Second, homeownership is not for everyone as it has been touted for the last thirty years. The we have to clean up the mortgage servicers and banking industry but not by turning the whole thing over to the big banks as some recent articles have claimed representatives of the industry are lobbying for the government to do.

I am not all that surprised by this Reuter's story either although I notice that not much attention has been paid to the issue over here. We heard about Sarkozy's visit to the U.S. but not much at all about his agenda. Nor have we heard much about the rise in food prices world wide or about the increase in the commodities that lie beneath the rising cost of food. It is interesting that Sarkozy wants to go after 'speculators' and he may have a point in doing so. But speculation in the commodities market may be a smaller part of the problem than he thinks. We all heard about the heat wave in Russia last summer but only snippets about the Russian Government's ban on wheat exports which put a serious hurt on their major customers, including Egypt and Indonesia. We have heard about the floods in Australia which has devastated Queensland and is now proceeding into Victoria. But think about this--it is early fall down there and what ever crops were growing there are gone. We have heard absolutely nothing about the floods in Indonesia and Sri Lanka which have put a severe crimp in rice production or about the severe winter in Vietnam which has killed, reportedly, some 10k buffalo with the numbers rising. Southwestern China, a major grain growing region, suffered a severe multi-year drought followed by massive flooding and now severe winter snows and freezing. I haven't read a final tally for the American wheat and corn crop but both are down and reserves are at a multi-decade low while the Canadian wheat farmers took a big hit on the heat wave that hit there. Weather, it seems to me, may be a much bigger problem than speculators. Michael Klare at tomdispatch has a good post this morning which puts the whole issue in a very nicely balanced perspective. Speculation is only one leg of a very wobbly three legged stool supporting global commodities--decreased production (due to nasty weather or increased production costs) and increased global demand being the other two.

Good morning, everyone. I spent yesterday dealing with an equipment problem--no, not the computers. They are working very nicely, thankfully. Some time ago we suddenly started having trouble with our DVD collection. A couple of months ago, and with increasing frequency, the disks we viewed would hang up, the sound would become choppy and the pictures would freeze. I have rarely had to clean a disk so I figured that maybe it was time and cleaned the disks. But I looked at them first and I just couldn't find a smudge or scratch anywhere. Lately, the just cleaned disks stuttered and froze when we put them back in the player and newly purchased disks did the same. We weren't sure what was going on until I decided to put a couple of the disks into the computer. They played perfectly. So we decided that the problem was likely with the player. We don't know now how old that machine was--Mom can't find the receipts now. We did remember the struggle we had to set up the monster--at least three long calls between us and Best Buy (where we bought it) and/or our cable company and several hours figuring out how the connections worked. Remembering that struggle we have watched the transition from DVD to blu-ray with some trepidation. And we were not at all happy at the thought that the nice collection of movies we have would have to be replaced. But with the DVD player going out (after such a nice long life) we had to bite the bullet.

We considered two options. Hooking up our computers to play through the tv or replacing the player with blu-ray. The decision was made easier when the very nice sales associate at Best Buy told me that the blu-ray players all had to be able to decode not just blu-ray formatted disks but DVD and CD as well. Evidently that was part of the agreement that opened up the adoption of blu-ray. If we had read some more on the specifications of the blu-ray players we would have known that but we are like many people, I think, we use these things but don't really know all that much about their workings. And we run on past experience and our past experiences with such technological changes hasn't been very pleasant. This time, however, it has been quite uncomplicated and pleasantly surprising. We have lost the ability to play the tapes we still have but that isn't much of a loss. We have been gradually replacing the ones we wanted anyway. We were able to very easily hook up the blu-ray player and we found the navigation on the machine very easy. We tried out a couple of the DVD that had been giving us problems and they played flawlessly and, we think, with better picture quality. And, as an added bonus, the blu-ray player is internet wireless capable so we could, if we really wanted to, tap into Netflix (which we don't want at this time) and Pandora (which we enabled right off the bat.) The transition has been a very nice surprise. I just found Tosh McIntosh's blog thanks to Ronni Bennet at Time Goes By and he has a marvelously funny piece about elders and technology.

On to other things. Kay mentioned a few days ago that she was getting very sick of politics. I know how she feels. I often think a prerequisite for going into politics is that one would have to have the rational parts of one's brain shut down. What I hope is that the seemingly irrational tone of politicians today is really just an artifact of the 24/7/365 news cycle which has given way too much coverage to the nut cases, the irrational, and the over the top pronouncements. The problem for most of us is to find those politicians who are reasonable, balanced, and thoughtful. There is so much noise out there that that is, increasingly, difficult.

Here is a bit of disturbing news that, as the writer of the article says, has flown under the news median radar for the last two years. It seems that many of our states could join Little Orphan Annie in singing Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you tomorrow.' They funded the increasing costs of paying for the extended jobless benefits by borrowing from the Federal Government. Now they have to figure on how to pay the first interest payments which are due this coming fall. In case anyone thinks that the financial bind on the states stems from the extension of benefits beyond the 'normal' 26 weeks originally mandated, the extended benefits were paid by the Federal Government. The problem for the states came in paying for the original 26 weeks because they had not fully funded the unemployment compensation 'trust' funds they were supposed to maintain.

So, the mainstream media has, at least in this case, discovered the connection between the weather, which has been very weird over the entire globe, and food prices. Although, the Tunisian situation only surfaced on our national broadcast news when this week, I have seen it simmering in the blogosphere and on alternative news sources for a while longer. Why do I follow such depressing stories? Self preservation. If I know what may be coming I can figure out how to deal with how it may affect me and what I might be able to do to mitigate the negative effects. I don't intend to die of a heart attack worrying about what might happen--but thinking about the implications of what is happening on what might happen gives me a chance to find alternatives before the crunch.

Here is a prime example of why I am so cynical about politics. At first I thought this had to be a joke but I was wrong. There really is a bill that has been introduced titled the 'Free Industry Bill' which would indeed specifically not include CO2, methane, perfluorocarbons, hydrofluorocarbons, nitrous oxides, and sulfur hexafluoride as pollutants. My first reaction--what the f##k else is there? My second reaction--how much have the 79 co-sponsors been paid by and/or how much stock do they have in which industries? My third--well, legislators did try, once upon a time, to define pi as equal to 3.0 so I guess this is just a little less hubristic. I guess the bill's title must be a short form of "Free Industry (to do whatever it damned well pleases) Bill." The rest of us can just go and choke on what they spew but, what the hell, we'll have jobs (maybe). For anyone who wants to look at this piece of crap it was introduced as H.R. 97.

Good Morning, Good Morning, Good Morning.  We had our first temps over 40 (just barely) yesterday.  But it is back into the 20s through Wednesday--unless the forecast changes.  You know what they say about weather here at the tip of Lake Michigan (and everywhere else I have lived).  Wait five minutes and it will change.

Passing through the MSNBC news page to get to my e-mail I saw the headline for this story.  Since executive compensation has been a sore spot in my psyche for at least the last 20 years, exacerbated by the latest round of excess, I couldn't resist reading and hoping it might be true.  I find it interesting that, while the financial institutions have been dragged by government pressure into trimming the excess, tech and other sector corporations are going voluntarily into programs to trim pay and establish, hopefully, reasonably criteria by which to judge executive performance.  I think it is especially interesting that one of the criteria they are looking at is long term sustainability instead of short term profits.  For at least the last thirty years the fixation has been on the next quarter not the next year or next five years.  I have wondered lately if the problem with business has been the shift away from true entrepreneurs, the people who build a business from scratch, to managers.  And they have done a very poor job of managing.

Totally Inept Balcony Gardner has a post updating the situation in Australia.  While we have had one of the 15 or 20 worst winters in history they have had an absolutely horrendous summer.  The story finally made our news media for a brief moment this last week.  I think it did so only because the heat has been joined by bush fires of the kind we expect each year in California and other points west.  Gardner indicates that one which destroyed some 20 homes was arson.  Again something we expect while hoping it won't happen this year.

Reportonbusiness.com (found by way of The Oil Drum) has an interesting article this morning.  This is the second report I have read in the last month which describes a new 'land rush' by countries with a lot of cash but little fertile land to acquire the rights to farm land elsewhere.  Anyone remember the old saw that came out of the oil crises of the 1970s.  Irate drivers here responded to the rise in gas prices by telling the Saudis and others to 'eat their oil.'  They, evidently, have an answer.  I'm surprised it took them so long.  I wonder what the rallying cry will be when they still have the oil and will be able to eat off our land while cutting out our middlemen.

I found this site, which I immediately bookmarked.  I am always trying to find ways to reuse materials that we normally acquire because of what we have to purchase.  I am keeping the gallon milk jugs for a while to make hot caps, or cloches, for my early plants.  I also cut strips of some earlier ones to make stakes to identify my plants and to make inserts to stiffen some coasters I am in the process of constructing.  I came upon the site by way of 5 Minutes For Going Green who reminds us that recycling is the end of the process not the beginning.  Reducing and reusing should be first.

I heard about this inanity on the part of banks last night on the evening news.  I wonder if it will be a flash in the pan.  The New York Times cited an AP investigative report which said that major banks, including many which had received bailout from TARP, increased their requests for visas for foreign workers by a third over the previously even as they were laying off their U.S. employees in droves.  Thanks to Chris In Paris at Americablog for the link.

Loraine at Me and the Cat has a nice little Q & A tutorial on the true meaning of economic stimulus payments.  She also mentions the few businesses you can patronize that may still locally owned, operated and supplied if you choose carefully.

Archcrone at The Crone Speaks sums up my view of the legislative combat Republicans and their wanna-be Democratic allies have engaged in over the last couple of months (since the November election actually.)  It is purely and simply obstructionism.  Or as she says 

"I can’t help but voice my concern that republican obstructionism is based on continuing a failed Bush/Reagan economic policy of giving the rich more and screwing the poor. It is time for Dems to wake up and smell the coffee, and divorce themselves from this asinine idea of bipartisanship. "

Republicans and conservative Democrats don't want bi-partisanship.  They want to rule the roost by whatever means possible.  

Talking about weird weather here is a report from the BBC about the recent snow that paralyzed London.  Although the 20 centimeters cited in the story only amounts to a bit less that 8 inches, when you are not used to it that is a lot.  Even if you are used to it it can be a major pain.

If another story from the BBC is any indication, I would say that shoe throwing has become a new and popular form of protest.  This time the Chinese Prime Minister was the recipient of a shoe that fell well wide of its mark.

On that note I will say bye for now.

According to the news this morning at least four tornadoes touched down in that storm that rolled through here Monday night.  There may be more because investigators have yet to visit some other sites.  On Monday of last week Mom and I started a walking regimen which we reluctantly broke yesterday because of the weather.  We got back on schedule this morning.  We saw some tree damage and a few signs littered the nearby street.  Otherwise our part of town was not affected much.

It looks like today will be the second day of news covering John McCain's trip to the Michigan nuclear power plant to push his plan to encourage the building of up to 45 new ones by 2030.  I almost choked last night when touted his 'experience' with nuclear power while on board an aircraft carrier.  That was no experience at all.  He did not work with the power plant.  He flew a damned plane off the flight deck and landed it again.  I definitely do not want to see new plants built until three crucial, to me at least, questions are answered.  The safe operation of the plants is really the least of the issues.  I have read some accounts of new designs developed in France which have both a longer life than the first generation of reactors which are now at the upper limit of their life expectancy and have an extremely safe operating history.  However the problems for me comes at the beginning and end of the process: how the fuel is mined and processed, and how the spent fuel is disposed of.  I have read too many reports of workers, many Native American, who were lured by the promise of good pay into jobs which destroyed their health and the health of their families.  Many are still fighting for medical benefits.  Worse is the problem of ground water contamination in the southwest from the processing of uranium.  I want to see very strict health and environmental standards in place with very high escrow accounts from the companies to prevent the past practice of declaring bankruptcy and leaving the problems for others to clean up.  On the other end, we have never come up with a good way to handle waste that will be deadly for centuries.  Even if the government finally managed to open Yucca Mountain (now 10 years behind deadline) I doubt that it would handle the waste from 45 new plants plus all of the old ones.  For some of the problems, including allegations of fraudulent geological studies, start with Wikipedia.  Also consider the problems of transporting the spent fuel to the site.  The news has covered several train crashes since 2000 alone where people living nearby had to be evacuated because of toxic chemical spills.  Do we really want the equivelent of 'dirty bomb' rolling through our towns and cities?

By the way, take a look at C.A. Rotwang on TPM Cafe today.  He says the same about the problem of nuclear fuel waste and has a nice link to Paris Hilton's response to McCain anti-Obama ad featuring her.  Love the satire and didn't think she had it in her. 

My now deceased ex-husband had what became a tiresome and trite comment for whenever someone seemed to be indecisive or dawdling or simply wasn't moving fast enough for him: "Do SOMETHING, even if it's wrong!!!"  The news coverage of the candidates' energy policies has brought it back to me.  The candidates seem to be responding to a similar attitude among the American public.  I get the impression that my fellow Americans want someone to do something to fix whatever is wrong and they want it NOW.  They don't care if it won't work at all, or if the fix is only temporary, or if the fix will in fact make things worse.  It is a kind of snatch and grab mentality much like the 'I've got mine; f**k you' mentality I mentioned a couple of posts ago.  McCain reads this mood and proposes everything under the sun without any thought to the hows, whys, or even the oughts of his proposals and the news media cover Obama's alleged shifts on off-shore drilling as though he was a weather cock in a gale.