Going through my email this morning turned up the latest from farm policy. White House has laid out a graphic there that speaks loads about the disconnect between reality and what should be our Subsidy in this country... I was really inspired by the diversity and nutritiousness of the crops…
Anyone with a garden in Houston knows just how stingy the skies have been this spring. According to the Houston/Galveston National Weather Service office, the period from mid-February to April 17 has been the driest in Houston climate records dating back to 1850. The .91 inch total beat out 1925's…
"The idea that all this can be reduced to money — that doctors are just people selling services to consumers of health care — is, well, sickening. And the prevalence of this kind of language is a sign that something has gone very wrong not just with this discussion, but…
... columnist and former GOP presidential aide Pete Wehner notes, "now that he finds himself intellectually outmatched by Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, and in a precarious situation when it comes to his re-election, Obama is dropping his past civility sermons down the memory hole. - Mean streak:…
As a major drought settles in on the state of Texas, the main problem with all of last years tea party campaign rhetoric about secession comes home to roost. When you wake up and find that you have already had 7,800 fires burn more than 2,400 square miles of your state and…
For a few years I have refrained in many instances from commenting on the political debate in this country. But the budget discussion this year is beginning to get my need to comment going again. Here is the straw that broke this uncommon, for me, silence... Here are two numbers to keep in…
Refund Status Results There is a delay in processing your tax return. For more information, please continue. If you have questions or need additional information, please have the following on hand when you call: A copy of this page. A copy of your tax return. The Social Security Number, Filing…
Reading Mark Bittman's blog this morning I saw this lead-in to a link I had to follow: Here’s the thing. A lot of stuff isn’t directly about food, but TB – that’s tuberculosis – is becoming, has become, antibiotic-resistant. And a lot of antibiotic resistance may be because there are…
General Electric, the nation’s largest corporation, had a very good year in 2010. The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States. Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2…
RALEIGH, N.C. – For the past three years, American consumers have been on a shopping diet. They cut nonessentials from their shopping lists. They’ve made do. They’ve thought twice before buying. And yet, they’ve continued to open their wallets for natural and organic products. via Recession-racked shoppers still spend on…
Unlike most of the 111 that preceded it, the 112th Congress must begin the process of restoring the national regime and civic culture the Founders bequeathed. This will require reviving the rule of law, reasserting the relevance of the Constitution and affirming the reality of American exceptionalism. George F. Will -…
"People used to say that the future happens first in California, but these days what happens in Texas is probably a better omen. And what we’re seeing right now is a future that doesn’t work." Paul Krugman, The Texas Omen - NYTimes.com. I am a native Texan...Some of my ancestors arrived prior to Texas…
OK, so I'm only half right correct...Let's just call it the politics of the past. Having decided to spend their first moments in power proclaiming their devotion to the Constitution, Republican leaders might at least have read the whole thing. The part, for instance, where slaves “bound to service” are…
And it's one she really deserves... From Media Matters description of the awards... This year, Palin stood out for her sheer ability to dominate our national conversation and draw the attention of the entire news media to her factually challenged claims and vicious attacks. She has blurred the line completely…
AUSTIN — A heavy influx of new residents, many of whom are Hispanics, has Texas poised to gain more congressional seats than any other state, and Tuesday’s announcement of the exact number begins what figures to be a politically divisive process on how to divvy them up. via Texas to…
When widely followed public figures feel free to say anything, without any fact-checking, we have a problem. It becomes impossible for a democracy to think intelligently about big issues — deficit reduction, health care, taxes, energy/climate — let alone act on them. Facts, opinions and fabrications just blend together. But…
If you haven't already...Please, go to the polls and vote. Vote your conscious, vote your beliefs, but, above all vote for the truth...I remember what that is...Do you?
This hour, with Bill McKibben, we seek perspective, both factual and moral, on human responsibility in a changing natural world. McKibben wrote The End of Nature, the first book on climate change for a general readership, in 1989. "Only in the disappearance of nature as we have known it," he…
Crooks and Liars has a list working of what we can expect in the first year while we wait for the full bill to kick in... Here are ten benefits which come online within six months of the President's signature on the health care bill: 1. Adult children may remain…
And I'm on the road to being proud again...Ain't that America?
Wind power generation in Texas is growing so quickly that it is testing the limits of the state’s electrical grid. The state set a record on March 5 when wind turbines generated 6,272 megawatts of energy, or about 19 percent of the electricity on the state’s main power grid. That…
Now comes a fitting bookend to a winter seemingly without end. While we have missed any snow accumulations here this winter, we did have a full afternoon of flurries back in earl December...And now, this is what greets me in my feedreader this morning over coffee... Houston already had its…
I tossed and turned in bed last night in a perfect storm of tax related muses...nightmares...planning. I had a meeting with a CPA yesterday. I had arranged the meeting to try to get a handle on my tax plan for next year. This is the year I finally bury my…
Mr. Will, from his pontificating height, has this to say about Sarah Palin in his latest column... She is what she is, and what she is merits no disdain. She is feisty and public-spirited, and millions of people vibrate like tuning forks to her rhetoric. When she was suddenly forced…
The logical outcome to the Supreme Courts twisted reasoning... Murray Hill is planning to run in the Republican primary for Maryland’s 8th Congressional District, which would be pretty unremarkable national news but for the fact that Murray Hill is not, well, actually a man named Murray Hill. Murray Hill For…
Talk about getting your head in a spin...Today I went through my daily routine of reading email as I listen to yesterdays "news" via podcasts downloaded to iTunes. I do this every morning, without fail...Coffee, email, podcasts. All of a sudden, it hit me...The incongruousness of what I was doing.…
All of the folks that are claiming that the Earth is and has been in a cooling cycle are being disingenuous...Using weather trends to infer climate trends breaks down when you watch the averages over any period of time. I can already hear the cries from the climate skeptics...But, here…
I found out about these Blue Zones a month or so ago. Went on the expedition with them to a Greek Island (virtually), read the info on their website, was intrigued by...And impressed with the simplicity of the idea. So when this TED Talk popped up on my Facebook Feed…
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s investment bank, survivors of the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, are set to pay record bonuses this year. The firms -- the three biggest banks to exit the Troubled Asset Relief Program -- will hand out $29.7…
Another reason to change our methods... A ground beef recall for more than 545,699 pounds of meat has been expanded to states from North Carolina to Maine on fears of E. coli contamination. Fairbanks Farms of Ashville, N.Y., expanded the recall on Monday for ground beef produced between Sept. 14…
To a rancher like me, who raises cattle, goats and turkeys the traditional way (on grass), the studies show only that the prevailing methods of producing meat — that is, crowding animals together in factory farms, storing their waste in giant lagoons and cutting down forests to grow crops to feed them — cause substantial greenhouse gases. It could be, in fact, that a conscientious meat eater may have a more environmentally friendly diet than your average vegetarian.
It's understandable the drugmakers would want a roll-call accounting of who their friends and enemies are, considering the size of the investment they are making on Capitol Hill: in the first six months of this year alone, drug and biotech companies and their trade associations spent more than $110 million…
The world’s largest reserve for migrating Monarch butterflies, located in the Mexican highlands, is suffering from an infestation of bark beetles similar to outbreaks that have killed millions of acres of evergreens in the U.S. and Canada...So far, the infestation has affected only a small portion of the 33,000-acre core…
The globe recorded its second warmest September since record keeping began in 1880, according to NOAA's National Climatic Data Center. The combined global land and ocean temperature anomaly was 0.62°C (1.12°F), falling only 0.04°C (0.07°F) short of tying the record set in 2005. NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies also…
Record heat is forecast for today in the Houston area, but by late this afternoon or early evening a blast of cooler Canadian air is expected to drop temperatures through the weekend. Temperatures are predicted to creep back into the 80s early next week, but another cold front is predicted…
It's that time of year again...15 October 2009 is the third Blog Action Day. This year the subject of conversation for the day is "Climate Change". Close to 7,000 bloggers are participating this year. What Is Blog Action Day? Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites the world's…
Eating a hamburger should not be a death-defying experience. Too often it is. via Editorial - Toxic Hamburgers - NYTimes.com. This is where Food Policy and Health Policy come together. And the American people get taken for a ride by the corporate penny pinching policies and the lack of enforcement…
"We as a party have spent the last six months, the greatest minds in our party, dwelling on the question, the unbelievably consuming question of how to get Olympia Snowe to vote on health care reform. I want to remind us all that Olympia Snowe was not elected President last…
Churchill's argument was this"I have heard it said that the government had no mandate such a doctrine is wholly inadmissible. The responsibility for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate!" And there is the essence of what this is. What, on the eternal list of priorities, precedes health?…
Compare this... "We're winning the argument," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared inside the hotel ballroom. "We know that most Americans are common-sense conservatives and that most of the people running our government in Washington are not. . . . We've been calling their agenda what it is. The…
DALLAS — Recent storms in Texas brought some long-awaited relief to the nation's most drought-stricken state, but the brutal dry spell is far from over as it drags into its third year. About 16 percent of the state — all in the southern and central parts of Texas — is…
The insurance industry, of course, loves the Baucus plan. Need we say more? via Paul Krugman - Baucus and the Threshold - NYTimes.com.
I grew up with a strong support for the power of technology...But the abuses perpetrated in the name of technological advancement of agriculture in the past few decades have left a foul taste in my mouth. It appears I share that distaste wit Verlyn Klinkenborg... There is no disputing the…
Something I keep pushing in the healthcare reform debate...Agriculture is key to real reform. Recently a team of designers from M.I.T. and Columbia was asked by the foundation of the insurer UnitedHealthcare to develop an innovative systems approach to tackling childhood obesity in America. Their conclusion surprised the designers as…
I keep reading how this reform is dead. We have Texas Republicans in Congress claiming if the Dems pass a plan they will be back in power and repeal it. Yet, the only alternative they seem to have to offer is Health Savings Plans...Call me stupid, but exactly where do…
Nicholas Kristof, writing in his column, had what I think is probably the best definition I have ever seen of the state of our agriculture... I think I figured out the central problem with modern industrial agriculture. It’s not just that it produces unhealthy food, mishandles waste and overuses antibiotics…
...the public — struggling with the worst economic downturn since the 1930s — is looking on with great anxiety and confusion. If the drug companies and the insurance industry are smiling, it can only mean that the public interest is being left behind. Bob Herbert said it today, I've been…
Cheney's disappointment with the former president surfaced recently in one of the informal conversations he is holding to discuss the book with authors, diplomats, policy experts and past colleagues. If there is anything that could improve the historical reputation of George W. Bush, this could be it...Dick Cheney is voicing…
I have been incredibly blessed to be able to combine this love of calloused hands with dramatic and verbal skills. And that is why I promote direct marketing. Too often parents whose children express an interest in farming squelch it because they envision dirt, dust, poverty, and hermit living. But…
LONDON — In America, the health care debate is about to come to a boil. President Barack Obama has put pressure on both houses of Congress to pass versions of his flagship domestic legislative program prior to their August recess. Good luck. Opponents are filling the airwaves with the usual…
If only there was a court to try the cases in... So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political terms, it was a remarkable achievement. But 212 representatives voted no... And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help thinking that I was watching a…
There are times my hometown newspaper makes me proud...This is one of them. In an editorial yesterday they laid out the argument for health care reform and touched many of the reasons that what is being argued in Congress is just BS. These three paragraphs tell the story... but you…
Paul Hawken: The New Great Transformation This talk is quite long...but quite good. Take a bit of your day and be inspired...
Can someone explain the connection between Credit Card Reform and the right to bear arms in national parks? Now don't get me wrong, I was raised to be a hunter, I bought my first guns at 18, my grandfather was a life long hunter who bought and passed down a…
Think of the 47 million Americans who lack insurance. They are less likely to receive flu vaccines (which might or might not help), less likely to receive prompt care when they get sick, and less able financially to stay home from work — and thus they are more likely both…
I saw Patry's post about the medicinal use of red wine in the treatment of influenza... Patry Francis Red wine may prevent swine flu, which is the absolute only reason I drink it. http://www.anotherwineblog.com/archives/4253 I checked my stock and decided I needed to make a "medicine" run...Off to Spec's we…
Leave to a youngish mind in a middleaged, out of shape body to discover the hard way (always the hard way) that he cannot still do everything he once did. Yesterday I decided, at long last, to finish the distruction of our dog pen that Ike had started. Bearing in…
...maybe they’d take away his parking space, too. What is it with Republican Governors these days. Especially, Republican Governors with national aspirations. It's almost as if they can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Even members of their own party have noticed. And it seems as if they…
Yesterday I had to swing by the Post Office to drop off a couple of Netflix returns and ran into the local "teabagger" protest...All 100 of the...maybe. All I could do was shake my head and wonder what exactly they were protesting. Do they even know? Was it taxes? Was…
Just recently, the small-business boogeyman came up in the debate over the estate tax -- specifically, whether it is unfair to impose a tax on estates in excess of $7 million per couple (the level this year) or whether the first $10 million of every estate should be exempt from…
The cornbread I put aside for the next day...did not make it that long.
I woke this morning to a still, clear, cold sunrise. There was a layer of frost on the freshly cut grass out back. The scratchy throat, runny eyes and stuffy nose had managed to transform into a full blown cold. Herbal teas and sweatsuit time... And yes the wildflowers have…
When I read this yesterday I wasn't surprised. Gov. Rick Perry today told the federal government that Texas doesn’t want $555 million to expand benefits for the unemployed in exchange for widening the program to include part-time workers. The Legislature can decide to accept the money, but Perry said the…
In the meantime, says Gilding, take notes: “When we look back, 2008 will be a momentous year in human history. Our children and grandchildren will ask us, ‘What was it like? What were you doing when it started to fall apart? What did you think? What did you do?’ ”…
Let’s talk pills. To treat everything from allergies to heart problems, half of Americans take a prescription medicine every day, and nearly all of us reach for the pill bottle on occasion. It's perfectly safe, though, because the Food and Drug Administration regulates the ingredients that go into those medicinal…
While most successful food producers are far more diligent — big name-brand peanut butter is considered safe, for example — American consumers have faced far too many food-supply emergencies in the last few years. Congress and the Obama administration must finally make food safety a serious priority.The new agriculture secretary,…
In times of economic crisis, where do we draw the line on funding cuts? Food safety? Drug Safety? Highway Safety? If we can cut funding when the economy is good, what are we going to do when the economy is faltering? The news on our latest food "crisis" is not…
And the "good" news just keeps coming in. At what point do we stop putting so much trust in corporations to do the "right" thing...Not just the profitable thing? In one of the largest food recalls in history, the Food and Drug Administration asked retailers, manufacturers and consumers yesterday to…
I watched and listened to this as it was given on Tuesday. It wasn't until today that I actually read it...I find myself even more encouraged than I was with the first hearing. I foresee the American people will be inspired to greatness once again. Maybe, just maybe, our leaders…
Wandering down my Google Reader list today led me to Seth Godin's Blog and his muse on Newspapers...Go check it out... I worry about the quality of a democracy when the the state government or the local government can do what it wants without intelligent coverage. I worry about the…
Zell Miller was right sort of - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog.
Pre-Election Day Twenty O'Eight While everyone else is focusing on the election tomorrow, Bush and Company are getting a lot of the agenda they tried to pass and failed to do done anyway. The power of the executive office being used better to overthrow the will of the people. They…
This says it better than I could... First, we need a president who can speak English and deconstruct and navigate complex issues so Americans can make informed choices. Second, we need a president who can energize, inspire and hold the country together during what will be a very stressful recovery.…
The Center for Responsive Politics calculates that, by Election Day, $2.4 billion will have been spent on presidential campaigns in the two-year election cycle that began in January 2007, and an additional $2.9 billion will have been spent on 435 House and 35 Senate contests. This $5.3 billion is a…
Currently (on Tue 5:53AM CDT from Pearland Regional Airport) Clear Temp: 41° Dewpoint: 34° Wind: Calm MPH I woke up this morning at about 3:45 smelling something burning. Sherry sat up at about the same time and said something. We both jumped out of bed before I realized it was the…
Just call me Paul the Professor Colbert, via Crooks and Liars: I for one appreciate the McCain campaign treating us like children. McCain will bring us back to a simpler time. A time when you could identify your neighbors’ jobs by the hats they wore. Like Sam the Fireman, Bill…
For me the most moving moment came when the family in front of me, comprising probably 4 generations of voters (including an 18 year old girl voting for her first time and a 90-something hunched-over grandmother), got their turn to vote. When the old woman left the voting booth she…
This I can believe... Check out the comments from the Congresswoman from Minnesota at about 2:40...Are we back to McCarthyism already? When I heard her on Cris Matthews' podcast I was amazed by her comments...
This link is as much for me as it is for you few folks who read these daily musings. Farmer in Chief By MICHAEL POLLAN Dear Mr. President-Elect, It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is…
Palin, the Republican vice-presidential candidate, launched the attack Saturday and repeated it twice Sunday, signaling a new strategy by John McCain's presidential campaign to go after Obama's character. "The comments are about an association that has been known but hasn't been talked about," Palin said as she boarded her plane…
Every time Joe Biden made mention of the last eight years, Sarah Palin would chastise him for looking to the past not the future. Look who's digging deep now. SEDONA, Ariz., Oct. 4 -- GOP vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin opened a new assault on Barack Obama on Saturday, accusing…
Makes sense to me...
Unbelievable. Sarah Palin finished her closing remarks by quoting Ronald Reagan: It was Ronald Reagan who said that freedom is always just one generation away from extinction. We don’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream; we have to fight for it and protect it, and then hand it…
After wondering for days where the cool mornings the weather prognosticators kept telling me about were hiding, they arrived this morning. As a native to this climate in SE Texas, I am always amazed to hear these same prognosticators (most of whom arrived from climes much closer to the poles)…
But it’s equally clear that in recent years Mr. McCain has become impish cubed — impulsive, impetuous and impatient — and those are perilous qualities in a commander in chief.(1) What we learned last week is that the man who always puts his “country first” will take the country down…
It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying…
