Deb, BeezleBub and I will celebrate Thanksgiving on this coming Saturday along with two of BeezleBub's farm friends, one from Brazil and the other from Poland.
While not our traditional Thanksgiving celebration, it will do!
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I am off from work all this week, burning off some of my unused vacation time. Even with this week off and the week between Christmas and New Year's I'll still be leaving some vacation time on the books. Blame it on my usual summer vacation schedule being thrown off because The Boat wasn't in the water this year.I'll be spending most of my time off taking care of still unfinished chores around The Manse, getting everything ready for winter.
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Could the reason so many urban areas vote heavily Democrat is because they are insulated from the economic realities that make their lifestyles possible?In their urban cocoons, city-dwellers take for granted the abundance and availability of the economic goods that they consume. For instance, many well-to-do, educated urbanites see no downside to supporting stricter regulations and higher taxes on energy producers, because to them, energy is something that is always there at the flip of a switch (except during the occasional hurricane, as some New Yorkers recently discovered). Life in the city for affluent Americans creates the illusion that all they have to do is demand something and – presto! – it will be there when they want it.When that's the case it's easy for them to promote and vote in favor of issues and politicians that will make it even more difficult (and expensive) to provide the very things they expect to be there while at the same time adding heavier burdens on the people who actually provide the things they take for granted. Call it the out-of-sight-out-of-mind syndrome.
Should the feces to hit the rotary oscillator and supplies to the urban areas were to be cut off, how well would those cocooned urbanites fare? Not well at all. The rest of us would likely survive with far fewer hardships than the urban folk.
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Jay Solo has noticed the downsizing of various foodstuffs containers for some time as some items now come in much smaller packages. Others appear to be the same size but closer inspection shows changes in the shape of the packaging that makes it appear it is the same size as always but in truth holds anywhere from 10 to 25% less product than the older packages. There's less product but the prices are the same, if not higher.************
This does not surprise me in the least.Glenn Reynolds links to a Guardian article reporting that 56% of Britons polled would vote to quit the EU.
Talking to friends and business acquaintances in the UK about this issue over the past few months, most of them would like nothing better than to shed themselves from the increasingly invasive and unaccountable dictats from Brussels.
One saving grace for the UK is that they decided to maintain the pound as their currency rather than buying into the euro. Should they decide to back out of the EU that's one less thing they have to worry about.
As one of Glenn's readers opined, it might be better if the Brits joined NAFTA instead, something I and many others (including Glenn) have been advocating for some time. It certainly has far more advantages than their present relationship as members of the EU.
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Here's a follow up to the entire Hostess debacle, with an interesting graphic showing people's reaction to the closing of an American icon business.There are also over 1500 comments (and climbing) to this WSJ article about Hostess' demise.
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As if the Hostess debacle weren't bad enough, another union is about to learn the hard way that they can demand too much and drive a business into bankruptcy.This time the target is a regional grocery chain in north central California where even after allowing the union – the United Food and Commercial Workers - to take a look at the books to show the dire financial straits of the chain, the union has demanded even more from the company, including a “re-signing bonus” for the workers who were on strike for 9 weeks before they come back to work and amnesty for striking workers who intimidated customers and destroyed company property during the strike.
Were I the head of the company I would be so tempted to throw in the towel, close the stores, and let the UFCW thugs go find work elsewhere. It's time for the unions to learn a hard lesson in economics.
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The People's Cube has a great screen shot of Obama's computer desktop.(H/T Pirate's Cove)
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The New England Patriots played the Indianapolis Colts in Foxboro today.The Patriots buried the Colts, 59-24. Frankly I expected a much closer game, but the Patriots defense forced a number of turnovers, some of which were immediate scores for New England.
The Patriots play again on Thanksgiving day against the New Your Jets in New York.