Good morning, All.  Sunny so far this morning with temperatures in the 50s expected.  So some gardening is on the agenda.  The whole week should provide nice weather bouncing between the 60s and 70s with dry patches.  On one of the weather segments on a local news program the weather person quizzed his colleagues on where they thought the April temperatures stood in relation to the norms for the month.  They all guessed between 5 and 10 degrees below normal.  Actually, April was just about 5 degrees above normal.  We were so thoroughly spoiled by March that April's weather felt like a return to winter.  Well, May will be here shortly and the temps are going up a bit and it is time to get serious about finishing the soil prep and start on the planting and transplanting.  How are your gardens doing?

I noticed the other day that I have put up 1000 posts here.  And I have been doing this for nearly five years.  My goodness, how time has flown.  It has been an interesting five years.  Back then I was looking for a new job and we were watching the economy, news, politics, and Bush's two military screw-ups.  It feels like we have been mired in amber on so many fronts.

• We still have troops in Afghanistan and Iraq but on the whole I don't see that we are really any more secure, at home or abroad.  
• Two years before I started this blog, I was still working at a small party supply shop and finding that the price of gas was getting painful.  A gallon then cost me the equivalent of between half-an-hour to forty minutes of work (taking taxes and other deductions into account.)  The price today is considerably higher.  The job I found just after I started writing here lasted four months.  I will be thoroughly honest--it was the only job I ever had for which I was totally unsuitable and abysmally unsuccessful.  Looking back, I am surprised that I lasted as long as I did.  But two-and-half years later I was still unemployed with a string of rejections (when I got a response at all) and one interview which really ended after five minutes when the manager commented on how over-qualified I was for the position.  I am still unemployed but now I can call it "retirement."  Thank FDR for Social Security and a pox on all the Repthuglican, Teapublican, and other assorted assholes who somehow think it would serve the 'public good' if it were privatized or eliminated.  I have news for you, pinheads--it wouldn't serve this public at all.
• At the time I put up my first musings here (and for a several years before) we watched the soaring housing markets and asked (as very few others did even among the so-called experts) when the collapse would come.  We just couldn't see how that mess could be sustained and we were right.  And then a good bit more began to go to hell--AIG, Lehman Brothers, the bank bailouts, soaring unemployment, the sub-prime mortgage crash.
• The political atmosphere was absolutely poisonous and has only become more toxic with time.

So, you might ask, what has changed?

• I have more gray hair.  I haven't seen the inside of a hair salon in about five years.  But I haven't missed the salon and I am fine with the gray.  I have earned every one of those gray hairs.
• I don't have as many clothes and shoes in my closet and most of those are jeans, sweats, tee shirts and other casual items.  I don't dress up much any more.  Goodwill got the rest.
• Five years ago we had three cats and a few decorative fish in a small tank.  Today we only have one cat.  Don't be sad though.  The fish lived long lives for their types.  Sawagimasu and Damarimasu were 19 and had provided good companion ship for the entire time.  They came with me from Colorado through Missouri to here.  They are missed just as their predecessors (Captain Hook, Gilraen, Fang, Galadriel, Grayboy 2 and Grayboy 1) are.
• About the time the party supply store job ended (when the shop closed) Sister gave Mom a potted tomato.  We had forgotten how good a homegrown, vine-ripened tomato tasted.  And, about that time, our landlords put in a fence and extended the cement patio.  How are these events related?  Well, we re-acquired our taste for home grown veggies and got a secure space in which to have a few container gardens.
• We have also become far more conscious of what products we are consuming (edible and otherwise).  We have eliminated almost all processed or prepared foods.  We don't buy much in cans anymore.  We have found the local farmers' markets and patronize those.  And we do the processing ourselves.
• As you can probably tell from that last we have also become far less trusting of our commercial system.  We no longer assume that what is out there for sale is safe and wholesome.  I don't know that we ever really assumed that but now we think about it more.
• And we are also less trusting of our political system.

Ah, well, enough reminiscing.  Let's see if there is anything worth commenting on.

I found this Burning Platform post by way of Chris Martensen's Blog.  I think it quite accurately assesses our economic 'progress' over the last five years.

I can totally relate to this post by Joe Nocera at the NY Times.  I didn't plan to retire.  Whether I could 'afford' to retire or not I did not have much choice: two-and-a-half years unemployed, savings gone, no job prospects.  Combine that with a long history of minimum wage jobs, a long marriage to a man who never saw a penny that didn't burn a hole in his pocket to get out and made sure any savings I managed to make got spent also, and long periods preparing for jobs that managed to disappear before I was fully ready to compete for them.  A 401k??  A pipe dream.

This MSNBC article makes me ask: if a government has to go to these extremes are the Olympics really worth the trouble?

Crooks & Liars can always be counted on to highlight the political idiocy that has been passing for a legitimate 'campaign' and karoli gives us the new and improved Mittens.  Unfortunately for those asshats I may be a senior citizen but I don't have dementia and my memory is fine.

This article provides a sad commentary on our economy.  It would be bad enough if the story concerned only one person living is storage units for a short time.  But the evidence says they had families living in the units for months.

Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds expresses very well what I have been thinking about our much-ballyhooed but nearly invisible 'recovery' for a long time:  it is all smoke and mirrors.  Sooner or later reality intrudes.  The powers that be are simply hoping that the reckoning won't come soon or hurt them much.

Good morning, again, to you all.  The thermometer on the patio read 32F when we got up this morning.  But all of the plants outside are fine so far.  I will take a closer look later after it warms up a bit.  Even the tomatoes and pepper in the greenhouse are still standing up.  (Update: I think the Brandywine won't recover and perhaps the Fresh Salsa.  The cherry tomatoes may. I will wait and see.  I guess I have found the limits of the greenhouse.  The larger pepper and tomatoes are fine.) (2nd update:  Just checked the greenhouse again.  The little tomatoes are standing up!!  They just might make it!!)  The weather people say we will have 70s next week.  If so I will transplant some of my seedlings.  The yardlong and dragon's tongue beans really need to get out in the gardens.  They are rapidly outgrowing their current space.  I did get another five-gallon bucket filled and one dug out yesterday before the wind really kicked up.  I guess I should be grateful after the pictures the morning news showed from the Grand Junction area of Colorado--hurricane level winds with lots of blown dust.

I don't know how many reports I have seen over the last few months claiming that TARP would not only be fully repaid but actually make a profit for the treasury.  I have always taken the reports with a big grain of salt.  Like any other statistic the result always depends on the accuracy of whatever data goes into it.  As the famous computer saying goes: garbage in, garbage out.  This BBC story indicates that we have been fed a whole lot of garbage.  I wonder if our nearly useless mainstream median will pick this up.  No, I am not taking any bets.

Got something in the mail I hadn't seen in a very long time: a credit card offer that had an actual credit card in it.  Some years ago the companies stopped sending those out because too many were stolen in the mail before reaching their target consumer.  I saw a small item on some news broadcast that credit card companies are so desperate for new customers that they have begun mass mailings again.  I know I have received more offers over the last couple of months than during the previous several years.  Given the debt that we are drowning in as a global society, one would think the banks and finance companies would be far more cautious.  Evidently, one would be wrong.  Well, the old saying holds that a committee is the only form of human life with four or more legs and now brains.  I would say that that goes for companies also.

Good morning, Everyone.  Sunny but cool this morning.  But a stiff breeze has started up.  I think I will let the temperature get a bit higher before I go out and see what I can get done.  We stopped by one of my favorite garden centers (the year-round farmer's market) yesterday.  They are rapidly getting in new plants.  I found my stevia and lemon verbena.  I don't have any more plants on my shopping list so any future purchases will be something that intrigues me not something I need.  I saw some really cute plants over the last week.  The candy corn plant produces tricolor blossoms that resemble candy corn (surprise!!) and the shrimp plant was formed into a topiary with shrimp shaped flowers in shades of red and yellow.  But with as small a space as I have I would rather have utilitarian plants.  Many are very pretty but the primary concern is that they produce something useful or perform a useful service (like bug control).

I found this entry in the 'oh, my.  What weird weather!' file on the BBC this morning.  How often have you heard of tornados in England?

I absolutely hate the new climate of more intensely money driven politics.  And I hate the anonymous donors even more.  If they are going to give those megabucks they should acknowledge their gifts and be up front about what they hope to gain from them.

Grist posted this interesting article this morning.  I have been reading about the increasing resistance insect pests are developing but the article puts a real twist on the issue.  Apply insecticide and after a while you get resistant insect--we have known this for a while.  But, it appears, you also get bacteria that thrive on the insecticide and when those bacteria set up in the insect guts they confer immunity on their host as well--in a lot quicker time than if the insect pest alone became resistant.

Good morning to you all.  We expect possible thunderstorms later today  I hope to get some spinach and lemon balm for our chef salads for supper.  Those are doing very well outside.  I saw a couple of the new planting of peppers breaking the surface.  I may actually get some of the Lipstick and Bullnose peppers this year.  Next spring I will definitely shift to vermiculite for seed starting.

I saw a brief article on this about a month ago.  State and local governments are rushing headlong to 'privatize' various services and facilities only to find that the companies they are dealing with are not as trustworthy as they thought.  Maybe the latest company running the Mississippi juvenile detention center inherited bad actors when they acquired the old corrections company--maybe not.  But I think two years would have been plenty of time to clean house.

ETF Daily posted this commentary today that reflects my own thoughts on our debt 'problem.'  Some years ago I started asking what would happen in a consumer driven society if the consumer couldn't consume any more.  Well, as a society, we answered that, temporarily, but extending a huge amount of credit.  But with private debt at nearly five times the GDP and national debt equal between 80 and !00+% of GDP (depending who is counting), the debt pyramid has to collapse sooner or later.  For another take, and not an optimistic one, on the debt and the too-big-to-fail banks look at this ETF Daily article.

Good Tuesday to you all.  Last Tuesday of April.  So far it is sunny and calm.  And the temperature is supposed to rise to about 70.  See what I get done in the gardens today.  Have to keep reminding myself that we are still three weeks away from our average last frost date.

Last night NHK news (Japan--English language) had a segment on the Miharu-Takazukura in Miharu, Fukushima Prefecture, a waterfall cherry tree thought to be over 1,000 years old.  I found this Asahi Shimbun article with a picture of this amazing tree--designated a living treasure.  The city has received numerous inquiries about the health of the tree that survived the earthquake.

I have been totally irritated by the news coverage this morning of the latest report from the Social Security/Medicare trustees which says that the 'trust' fund will run out of money three years earlier than previously projected.  This article was on MSNBC and it simply increased my irritation.  I notice that the reasons listed for the predicted shortfall include: increasing baby boomer retirements, longer life expectancy, longer unemployment periods which lowers the amount of funds coming in, increased Medicare costs which will necessitate transfer from the trust fund, and the fact that the Treasury bonds the Social Security holds will have to be redeemed from the general fund.  What really pisses me off is what not a one of the accounts mention: the fact that the so-called tax holiday for workers came from the Social Security tax and it has been extended once so far.  I asked when they put that in what the effect on Social Security would be.  Now we know--this is simply another way to kill the program the Repthuglicans have never liked.  Crooks & Liars has a similar take on the coverage.

Just saw another segment on CNBC this time that has me a bit irritated.  Evidently there is a controversy over recent attempts by some politicians to allow write downs of mortgage principle or allow forgiveness of student loan debts.  Rick Santelli railed against either on the grounds of 'moral hazard' or the notion that such forgiveness basically encourages future bad behavior.  I might agree with him except for a few very uncomfortable facts.  First, the notion of 'moral hazard' or fiscal responsibility or any other such ethical notion is applied so unevenly.  The banks were bailed out in spite of arguments against on those very grounds.  Why the banks and not others?  Second, student loans are among the few that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.  So the lender is protected first by government guarantees and then by the fact that the student cannot get out from under short of dying.  Santelli brought up the notion of 'tough love' and I would say "Fine.  But for both the lender and the borrower."  The first step is to reduce the mortgages to the current value of the house and forgive whatever is underwater.  Second step would be to enforce the criminal penalties on mortgage originators who falsify information on a mortgage loan and on applicants who knowingly supply bogus information.  Third step is to forgive student loans for those who have no reasonable possibility short of winning the damned Megamilions lottery of paying the loans back, allow bankruptcy discharge and remove government guarantees to lenders.

I had a couple of comments on the meaninglessness of the employment statistics last week.  Joshua Brown at Reformed Broker makes similar comments on the housing data.  Our government statisticians have been reading 1984 way too much.  Double think done with numbers!!!!

Good sunny Monday morning to all of you.  We should see temperatures in the high 50s today.  I hope so and I hope the winds die down.  They have made the last few days feel like early March.  Do want to get the last of my digging done this week.  Otherwise, nothing to report on the garden.  All of the outside plants are looking good.  I found a couple more strawberries and two of the tomato plants have blossoms--one has a couple of little tomatoes forming.  That always makes us smile.  I was surprised this morning when I saw a heavy frost on the roofs and Mom told me that the car was well frosted also.  I quickly checked out all of the plants on the patio and in the greenhouse.  They are all fine.

If we needed proof that our weather is really weird this year all we have to do is read this article and follow it with this one.

Watching the converge of Wal-Mart's Mexican bribery scandal.  Two threads are somewhat amusing.  First, has been the number of commentators who seem to think that Wal-Mart should be somewhat excused from allegedly breaking U.S. law because the actions took place in Mexico and everyone knows Mexico has a 'culture of corruption.'  Crap!!  Second, one of the reporters read her story from outside a Wal-Mart store in New York somewhere and noted that people were still shopping.  Evidently, the low prices trumped the scandal.  Double Crap!!

Hi, Everyone.  Here we are starting the last full week of April.  Where does the time go?  I don't have much gardening planned.  I am watering some of the seedlings inside.  But the temperature is only in the low 40s and we may get rain so I doubt I will get anything accomplished outside.  We definitely need the moisture because we are short on precipitation by about 2.5 inches for April.  We went to one of the large greenhouse/gardening markets just to look around.  If I had the space I saw several beautiful and unusual lowering plants.  I did find a pot of marjoram that I bought to provide in case my seeds don't produce.  I am getting a nice collection of herbs.

I am constantly amazed at what the news media considers news.  I just sat through about 3 minutes of a non-story about New Jersey Governor Christie photographed apparently sleeping during a Bruce Springsteen concert.  Who the hell cares?

We were just commenting on what is the most pathetic aspect of the Secret Service sex scandal.  Not only could these guys not keep their pants zipped but one of them, stupidly, agreed to an outrageous sum for a prostitute that he tried to renege on the next morning.  Somehow he expected that the working girl would settle for less than 10% of what he agreed to pay and keep quiet about being cheated.  Now that boy had a serious 'entitlement' problem.

This tomdispatch post should be filed under the 'what's old is new again.'

I just looked at the new AARP (from an e-mail alert) poll on Social Security and Medicare.  You can find it here and look at it yourself.  I didn't fill it out because I think it is a meaningless piece of crap.  Although you can register, to a certain extent, whether you think the systems should be tweaked or overhauled or left alone, it doesn't ask what options the respondent might think should be enacted.  It doesn't commit AARP to any specific program.  Does this really give us a say in what happens???  I don't think so.

And here is another case of what the right hand does the left know nothing of.  They keep bleating about the 'epidemic' of obesity and the subsidize the ingredients of junk food.

Media Matters posted this little piece on three stories that have received so little press they are invisible. How many of the oil spills have you heard of post--Deepwater Horizon?  I have seen only a couple of stories on other-than-mainstream venue on the Pacific garbage patch and the Gulf dead zone.  I saw on segment about the eyeless shrimp and ulcerated fish in the Gulf on a mainstream outlet and that report did his best to denigrate (as unconfirmed) and minimize the story that I wondered why he bothered--unless the purpose of the story was to preemptively neuter it.

Annie's Granny posted an example of a bit of commercial idiocy.  Sometimes all I can do is shake my head at the lack of common sense.