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The Longest Day of the Year…
Summer Solstice… today. Sunshine from early morning to early evening… the longest stretch of the year. We began the morning with rain, but the sun is out now (although there is a 60% chance that the rain will return later in the day or overnight. Great for the gardens, though.
I spent most of the morning at the dentist having a replacement tooth installed after a root canal. On the way home I stopped in the new local pharmacy to get my dentist’s prescription filled and ran into Delegate Doyle, our representative at the State legislature and a frequent visitor to the radio show. We exchanged some pleasantries and, later, the pharmacist said Doyle was checking out the new store… so he’s showing interest in his District.
I’m back at home now watching the Senate on C-Span2 as they debate Leon Panetta‘s nomination for Defense Secretary and whether or not to pull out of Pakistan, or Afghanistan, or Libya. Doesn’t look like we’re going to really get out anytime soon, although Obama is supposed to be presenting a partial Afghanistan withdrawal tomorrow (I don’t expect the percentage to be a big one or the time it takes to do it to be very fast.)
Meanwhile we move forward into the muck of the future..
Related articles
- The longest day – Summer Solstice 21st June 2011 (mbcalyn.wordpress.com)
- Summer Solstice (stephaniezide.wordpress.com)
- Tuesday, June 21, 2011: Happy Summer Solstice! (eaststreetweatherblog.wordpress.com)
- Summer Solstice: Time for Reflection and New Beginnings (bloomnaturalhealth.wordpress.com)
- Let the summer begin! (tammyheff.wordpress.com)
- Weather could not dampen Solstice (mirror.co.uk)
- Welcome Summer (fremontlibraries.wordpress.com)
What does Pakistan use Lobbyists for?
According to Reuters, they use them to deny that anyone in the Pakistani government knew that bin Laden was hiding near the Capital for close to six years in the biggest house in the neighborhood:
WASHINGTON (Reuters/Tim Reid) – Pakistan‘s Washington lobbyists have launched an intense campaign on Capitol Hill to counter accusations that Islamabad was complicit in giving refuge to Osama bin Laden.
Alarmed by lawmakers’ demands to cut off billions of dollars of U.S. aid after bin Laden was found living in a Pakistani safe house for six years, President Asif Ali Zardari has ordered a full-court press to quell mounting accusations that it helped the al Qaeda leader avoid capture.
Mark Siegel, a partner in the Washington lobbying firm of Locke Lord Strategies — which is paid $75,000 a month by the Pakistani government — told Reuters on Thursday he had spoken twice to Zardari since U.S. special forces killed bin Laden on Sunday, and “countless” times to the Pakistani ambassador in Washington.
“They are certainly concerned,” Siegel said, adding that suggestions the Pakistani government knew about bin Laden’s whereabouts was nothing more than speculation.
Wow. $75,000 a month to put out press releases.
Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy isn’t buying it, however. He told Vermont Public Radio:
“It’s impossible for them not to have some idea he was there.“
Mark Siegel, referring to claims by the Afghan government that Pakistan must have known bin Laden’s whereabouts, said:
“Must have known doesn’t mean knew.”
A few non-bin Laden related updates…
“Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you are a mile away from them and you have their shoes.”
– Jack Handey, Saturday Night Live
The news this morning and into the afternoon has been fairly single focused and I haven’t had a chance to get back to some things I’ve been discussing in the last week or so. I’m sitting over at Mellow Moods having a cup of coffee and a vegan sandwich (black bean burger with fruit and salsa roll-up) and their wifi is working… so here goes:
4 Days into my SuperFocus glasses…
I know I bored everyone over the last few weeks with my enthusiasm and expectations for the SuperFocus glasses I ordered and have bee. waiting for. Well, they arrived late on the 28th and I’ve been wearing them for a hair over four days now.
And they are spectacular!
It took a little over a day to get used to changing the focus manually depending on what distances I was looking at. And I found out that, unlike my old bifocals, there were at least five regular viewing ranges I use regularly: reading, short distance, average distance, driving and very long distance. I’m amazed at how minimal a concern as my daily crossword puzzle now doesn’t require squinting and tilting my head to make sure I was at the close bifocal distance. And I can actually read road signs quite a way down the highway now.
I really like them. My wife got so interested that she just made an appointment with her optometrist and will be ordering her own soon (right now she wears trifocals and has great trouble with computer-use distances.)
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Getting Excused From Jury Duty
I got called up for a month of Jury Duty in June and I had to call my Doctor and get a note about my ischemic seizures which can happen at any time (the meds I take have them pretty much under control, but I’ve had at least one in the last few weeks.) It would be awfully embarrassing to go into a seizure while watching testimony… not to
mention the fact that there’s a lot of driving back and forth and my wife is convinced I’ll have an attack at 60 miles per hour.
Anyway, my Neurologist’s office is giving me the note to attach to the form I had to fill out. Apparently they do this kind of thing all the time.
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I’m working this afternoon on the basis of my podcast. I’m still very unsure of how everything is done, but I’m doing it live at 10 AM tomorrow. If you listen to it then, or get it later, please excuse my early user mistakes. I’ll get better.
A comment on the death of Richard Holbrooke…
America had a very great loss this week with the death of Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, 69, The Bulldozer, who served this country as a negotiator and State Department problem solver for nearly five decades. Known for the Dayton Accords which ended the Bosnia conflict, at the time of his death during 20 hours of surgery for a torn aorta he had been working on the AfPak portfolio… solving the Afghanistan/Pakistan conflict diplomatically.
The Washington Post reports that Holbrooke’s last words came just before the 21-hour operation:As Holbrooke was sedated for surgery, his final words were to his Pakistani surgeon, family members said: “You’ve got to stop this war in Afghanistan.”
Related Articles
- Richard C. Holbrooke Dead at 69 (seattlepi.com)
- Obama pays tribute to Richard Holbrooke (bbc.co.uk)
- Veteran US diplomat Richard Holbrooke dies at 69 (nowpublic.com)
- “Richard Holbrooke Dead from Heart Surgery Complications” and related posts (rajeev2004.blogspot.com)
- An Homage To Richard Holbrooke & To Diplomacy (themoderatevoice.com)
- Richard Holbrooke has died (dailykos.com)
- Richard Holbrooke Dead At 69 (alan.com)
- US diplomat Richard Holbrooke dies at 69 (thejc.com)
- What is the legacy of the late diplomat Richard Holbrooke? (politico.com)
Glen Greenwald has a well-informed article on Yemen and the US in this morning’s Salon…
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So here we are with another Muslim country to accidentally kill women and children in and make them love us. Thanks, Glenn.
Last “Full Combat” Brigade out of Iraq
I watched on Olbermann as the last “full combat” brigade (440 soldiers) pulled out of Iraq and rode their Strykers into Kuwait last night (I have no idea how long it takes them to actually get out of the country) leaving 50,000 “non-combat” troops who are to serve as trainers and are not to get into any combat incidents… not to break up fights between Sh’ias and Sunnis, or anything like that.
The American Ambassador to Iraq, Christopher Hill, was interviewed and said that this was the keeping of Obama’s promise to get combatants out. The Iraq war is, therefore, ending… but we still have a commitment there. We’ve gone from 140,000 troops to 50,000 and it appears to be a positive mood. The Ambassador’s biggest worry is that there is still not an effective coalition government in Iraq and they are going to have to do it pretty much by themselves.
It is now up to the Iraqis… at least that’s what we’re saying.
I’m also wondering if these troops are going to end up in Pakistan or Afghanistan.
This from CNN:
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A Quote for Today: Tom Friedman said it on TV this weekend…
Re: terrorism and our response to it…
“This double game goes back to 9/11. That terrorist attack was basically planned, executed and funded by radical Pakistanis and Saudis. And we responded by invading Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? The short answer is because Pakistan has nukes that we fear and Saudi Arabia has oil that we crave.”
– Thomas Friedman to Fareed Zakaria on CNN
The Big News of the Morning… the Wikileaks
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Feingold: Why Surge Where Al Qaeda Isn’t?
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