We spent all day at the rental in Melbourne. The hardest part was picking out blinds--that took an eternity at Lowe's. It wasn't so much a problem of indecision, but the way Lowe's seems to use complicated methods to work out figuring the total bill. We must have spent over 3 hours there. It's not the first time we've gone on a Lowe's marathon. The same thing happened with windows we purchased a few months ago. I thought we were going to have to set up cots in the store and take a snooze before they figured it out.

Only had enough energy when we got back to take a quick nap, walk the dog, did (a little) yoga, showered and watched Bill Moyers. He had a piece about the mortgage melt-down in Ohio and it was grim. It's hard to believe the market is rallying for some of these banking stocks when they're "only" reporting losses of $2.5 billion this quarter (Citigroup). William Greider from "The Nation" was on discussing the problems with our country's financial system and how it has collapsed under greed and deregulation from the 80's. He said the three major religions of Christianity, Judaism and Islam all consider usury a sin, yet there hasn't been much pressure on Congress by the religious community to rein in these banking practices. There's much ado about gay marriage and abortion, but nothing about the greedy parasites who are really ruining the country. And Congress, having been bought and paid for by the banks, gladly leaps like an outraged puppet to the smoke screens offered by the church and that enables them to continue to do nothing about our real problems. I'm not a particularly religious person (I consider myself spiritual), but what he said makes sense.

As the broken system implodes, taxpayers are being called upon to bail out these "can't fail" institutions. Yet, as Mr. Greider points out, they are being bailed out at no cost to them. There are no stipulations that they must change their behavior to get at our money. As usual, the American taxpayer is bearing the full cost of our wonderful system of "free market" capitalism, while the bankers sail off into the sunset on their lavish yachts to count their money in their offshore accounts. The question may be moot by now, but when are we going to demand more from our government?