McLaughlin is a warmer.

Crusty old John McLaughlin, of  the everybody-shouts-at-each-other Sunday pundit show,  believes in global warming.  He appeared on his show, with a copy of Michael  (Hockey Stick) Mann's new book.  Mann is a high priest of warming.  Michael Mann is the guy who emailed "Hide the decline" to a fellow warmer, which came to light in the Hadley climate research unit document leak of a few year's ago.  Mann has been accused of fudging his data to make or create the hockey stick warming trend that is propelling the administration's war on coal. 
   The modern newsie doesn't report facts, he advocates worthy causes. 

Campbell's Soup

Long time favorite.  Good for cooking with, good for something warm on a cold winter day.  Loosing market share, or at least shelf space in markets up here.  Campbell's is loosing on the low end to house brands and on the high end to groovier competitors.
   And on the taste front, Campbell's puts too much salt in their soups.  They taste too salty.  I'm looking at two cans of vegetable beef.  Campbells, which really tastes too salty, and Healthy Choice which tastes better to me.  Read the labels on the back of the can.  Sodium  (dietician speak for salt) 890 milligrams Campbells, 420 milligrams for Healthy Choice.  And Healthy Choice tastes better.
   I'm thinking an old American brand is hurting. 

Resignation II

Following Shenseki's resignation/firing we have the Obama mouthpiece, press secretary Jay Carney resigning.  Wow!.  Here is a guy that gets more air time than Obama himself.  He is in front of the camera's every day, dodging reporter's softball questions.  Despite recent setbacks to the administration the reporters, even the Fox News guys, are failing to ask hard questions, you know the "Who,Where,When,What,and Why" kind.  Instead they ask "What does so-and-so think about what somebody else said" kind of question.
  You would think being press secretary would be fun.  You get a lot of TV exposure, it's easy to look sharp going up against newsies, you don't have to get armies of civil servants to actually do something to justify their salaries, in fact you don't have to produce much of anything at all.  You look good on nationwide TV for just selling the Administration's line.  Indoor work, no heavy lifting. 
   And yet Carney is sufficiently burned out to toss the job when it was his for the rest of Obama's term in office.  I used to do a bit of selling in my time.  The one thing I learned, is to make the sale, you have to believe in the product yourself.  The customer's can read you, they can tell when you are bending the truth (lying), and when they do, that sale is dead.
   Could it be that Carney has lost his belief in the Obama product?  And hence his ability to sell it on TV?

Resignation

Obama was just on TV.  He started out eulogizing Eric Shinseki, and right then I knew that Shinseki was toast.  Obama finally got around to mentioning that Oh By the Way, Shinseki is gone, but I'd figured that out already. 

Survival of the fittest

Consider the dandelion.  It puts up a bright yellow flower to attract pollinating bees.  Without pollination, the species would die out in a season. It's an annual plant after all.
  On the other hand, that bright yellow blossom attracts implacable dandelion pluckers like myself.  I like a green lawn, no bare patches.  Each dandelion spreads out and kills a six inch circle of grass around its root.  I have kept a reasonably dandelion free lawn for many years by merely hand plucking every blossom that shows.  With luck I get the root to come up too, so I know that dandelion is really dead.  I don't use weed n feed, 2-4-D, Agent Orange, or other weed killers, fearing they will kill more than weeds.  So that bright yellow blossom can be a liability as well. 

The scenic route home

So, just for a change of scenery, I drove back on the old roads.  Picked up old US 1 off the Baltimore beltway.  In Maryland it's a two lane road, must date back to the 1920's.  It was Memorial Day, lovely weather, but the traffic was light, pavement in good shape, road signs legible.  Crossed the Susquehanna River/Head of Chesapeake Bay on the old Conowingo Dam.  It's old, but looks like it's still making juice, plenty of water behind the dam.   Crossed the Mason-Dixon line into PA.  In PA they had widened old US 1 into an up-to-date 4 lane divided highway built to interstate standards.  Probably did the widening in the 1960's.  Swung north on old US 202 thru West Chester.  The never ending construction mess at King-of-Prussia was finally ended.  The road crews had moved south toward West Chester and were tearing up a perfectly good 4 lane divided highway. 
   Stopped at the Mercer Museum in Doylestown PA.  Neato.  A guy named Mercer had some money, and got interested in early American artifacts.  He collected woodworking tools, kitchen utensils, horse drawn vehicles, whaling boats, guns, farming tools, gunsmithing tools, gristmills, spinning wheels, looms, everything.  He had the money to put up a seven story vaguely medieval looking museum to hold all his stuff.  It's still open to the public, and it's cool.  There is material in that building to write twenty books on period stuff.  Well worth stopping in. 

The VA

Amid the howls of outrage from all over the place, I have yet to hear a few important numbers.  Such as:
1.  How many employees does the VA have?
2.  How many of those employees are real medical personnel treating patients, doctors, nurses, physical therapists and the like?
3. How much money could be saved if all the non-medical personnel were laid off, their health care canceled and their retirements canceled?