Growing Vegetables, Herbs and Flowers in an Urban Environment

For those living in an urban environment, it is difficult to have a vegetable garden. But you can still have vegetables and herbs if you have a patio or a balcony at your apartment or condo.

A potted herb garden is convenient and a way to add your favorite spices fresh from the plant or grind and dry them for use during the winter. Some herbs can share the same pot, but make sure they are compatible by reading the care tags that comes with plants and seeds. Basil and curly parsley make good pot partners because they both require lots of water. Rosemary, sage, and oregano prefer a drier environment. And then there is lemon and silver thyme. Grow the thyme in the front of the pot. Herbs are low maintenance, just need water and sun.

Snippets – Energy and Science – June 10th 2008

Financial Times, G8 Ministers Call for Global Action on Oil, David Pilling, June 8^th 2008 …

Energy ministers of advanced nations expressed “serious concerns” about soaring oil prices and urged producers to lift production through greater investment and provide more transparency on oil supply data. A joint communiqué by the Group of Eight ministers, also signed by China, India and South Korea, stopped short of the tough language demanded by Kevin Rudd, Australia’s prime minister. He urged G8 leaders to “apply the blowtorch to Opec”, which he blamed for the rise in crude oil prices to a record $138.54, after a $10.75 jump on the New York Mercantile Exchange on Friday. …

Newt Gingrich Reports From Norway

Newt Gingrich – Report From Norway: Why They Don’t Have an Energy Crisis and We Do …

I am writing to you this week from Norway, where Callista and I have witnessed extraordinary natural beauty – and some things America could learn about creating a more sensible balance between protecting the environment and finding more domestic sources of energy.
You see, Norway, unlike the United States, has successfully avoided the “everywhere versus nowhere” trap when it comes to drilling offshore for oil and gas. The “everywhere versus nowhere” trap results when aggressive energy developers demand the unconstrained right to drill everywhere while environmental extremists assert that drilling can occur nowhere. This is the stalemate we currently have in the United States, with disastrous consequences. Emotion trumps science. Regulation blocks innovation. And sound methods of achieving energy independence are overlooked and underdeveloped. And gas prices go up, up, up.

Jerry Bowyer – Finger-Pointing and the Employment Situation

Jerry Bowyer writes:

“It wasn’t Bush, it wasn’t greedy corporations, or free trade, or history’s most over-predicted recession. It was not the oil companies, income inequality, or the excesses of cowboy capitalism. None of these things caused the unemployment rate to jump a half a percentage point in one month. Ask yourself a few questions: Why did unemployment surge at a time when unemployment compensation claims are historically low? More to the point, how could unemployment spike this much without a coinciding spike in corporate lay-offs? The answer to all of these questions is same: because very few people lost jobs last month. This huge jump in the size of the unemployed comes from new entrants to the economy—hundreds of thousands of them. In short, well over 600,000 people who were not job seekers in April became job seekers in May. And who starts looking for work at the end of Spring?
That’s right—students. Hundreds of thousands of students are looking for work right now, and they’re not finding it. Congress is to blame. Last year Congressional Democrats (along with some Stockholm-Syndromed Republicans) passed the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which started a phased hike of the minimum wage from $5.15 an hour to $7.25. Free market economists warned them that this would increase unemployment—that rapid increases in unemployment compensation hit teens and minorities the hardest. But the class-warriors are running the people’s house now, and they would hear none of that, so they took to the floor, let loose the dogs of demagoguery, and saddled America’s pizza parlors, municipal swimming pools, house painting businesses and lawn mowing services with a huge cost increase. Now, we see the perfectly logical outcome of wage controls—rising unemployment among the most economically vulnerable.”

Snippets – June 10th 2008

• Some folks just don’t change, as Capitol Hill Blue reports the “sore loser” antics of former President Bill Clinton demonstrated in the article Bill Clinton May Walk Away Mad and Not Campaign for Obama, June 9^th 2008 …

An angry, defiant Bill Clinton is threatening to walk away mad and not campaign for presumptive Presidential nominee Barack Obama, telling close friends and supporters that his wife has been “mistreated, maligned and smeared” by the party’s power structure.[1] Calls to Clinton’s office for comment were not returned over the weekend but sources close to the Clintons tell Capitol Hill Blue the former President is “pissed as hell” over his wife’s defeat for the nomination and blames the Democratic Party power structure for “turning their backs on her” when he felt they could have made the difference in the nominating process.
“President Clinton is very, very unhappy…that’s a fact,” says one party insider.  One source said the former President said it would “be a cold day in hell” before he would ever campaign for Obama. … But no one contacted over the weekend would go on the record, one way or another, about the former President and his feelings towards the freshman Senator from Illinois who derailed his wife’s quest to become the first woman President. “Both Bill and Hillary felt the Presidency was owed to them and something the Democrats should have bestowed automatically,” says one Democratic strategist, who refused to allow use of his name. “The nomination was, in their opinion, some kind of divine right. Neither believed it would be denied to them.”

Possible New TV Reality Show via Fox Broadcasting

Beginning in the Clinton administration there was a witch hunt. No, it did not occur in Salem, Massachusetts – but all across America. It was an advocacy concerning “Dead Beat Dads”. Divorced males have been seriously stereotyped since then. It was one of Hillary Clinton’s main advocacies while she was First Lady. Soon legislation appeared and was passed, and soon fathers who couldn’t or wouldn’t pay child support were found either/and in jail and their drivers license suspended. The latter being ridiculous because how could the “Dead Beat Dad” make money either in jail or with no means to get there?

This is not a treatise or advocacy on a generic subject concerning only males or only females, because in the case of a divorce (and other life situations) – each case stands on its own and is unique to the situation. When government gets involved, and because of its collective mind set, all Dads in a divorce situation are labeled in that situation and put in one neat basket that we call stereotyping.