Pic of The Day

The one and only (that I know of) checkerboard flower.

*Click the pic to embiggen

The End of Oil: Time to Work Together

Through the continuing embargo of Cuba, the US government keeps trying to smother this small country. Cuba just keeps taking the lemons that we throw at it, and making the juciest sweetest lemonade.

We disrupt their economy by withholding energy and trade, they transform their society to welcome the new age, and in the process end up with a leaner, greener, healthier, more community oriented populace. Moreover, they do it in less than 5 years.

We've had twice that long to mull this over, and a large minority in our country is still chanting "drill baby drill", and we've done nothing in any real practical sense about it.

So - if you want a taste of what's to come here eventually, check out this vid. It's a little long, runs about an hour, but I found it very inspiring.

One From The Vault

Spring has finally sprung.

Sue Louden - Utah's Replacement for Harry Reid?

Lowden is a former state senator and chair of the Nevada Republican Party. She’s also, according to nearly every recent poll, the favorite to defeat Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) in November. Lowden is not, as one might imagine, a supporter of recent improvements to the broken health care system, and she was asked at a candidate forum the kind of policies she’d prefer to see. Among her proposals:

“…I would have suggested, and I think that bartering is really good. Those doctors who you pay cash, you can barter, and that would get prices down in a hurry. And I would say go out, go ahead out and pay cash for whatever your medical needs are, and go ahead and barter with your doctor.”

check out Liberal Values' blog

I would think that negotiating with Doctors, Pharma, and Hospitals is the main thing that we pay our outrageous premiums for in the first place. Sue Louden thinks we should all bring our doctor a chicken - or maybe a hundred dozen eggs? And this is supposed to make our medical prices go down somehow?

Lets hear this again:>

"...go ahead and pay cash for whatever your medical needs are, and go ahead and barter with your doctor"

That sure sounds like a plan.

What's on My Screensaver?

I have a screen saver that goes through my photos and changes the desktop image every day, and this is today's pic.

We aren't quite warm enough yet here for these tiny flowers to cover the grass. Soon though..

Quote of the Day

Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.

~ Bill Clinton

Pssst: Catholic Clergy - this is how it's done!