Monday 2nd June

The weather is getting hotter.   101 on Wednesday, SIGH.   I try to stay indoors and keep cool.  The cats are happy to sunbathe though, Bubbles on the front porch, her mama on the back.

 

I had a phone call this evening from Linda, a neighbour behind me, her mother lives in the house next door to the pitbulls and she lives across the road from her.   She is, understandably, distressed at the conditions under which the dogs are tied up.  One of the smaller dogs is on a particularly heavy chain and looking very pathetic, and she thinks one of the dogs has pink eye - can a dog owner tell me what ' pink eye' is.  And what exactly is a 'choke' chain?    Also one of them is very pregnant I'm told.   Linda obviously has a better view of them than I do, but in my garden bushes are growing up obscuring them.

 

In the news.......  The major news story you have probably heard about is the exchange of five 'hardest of the hard core' Taliban leaders for a US sergeant  who deserted in Afghanistan.   It is only just being confirmed though that he deserted - for the past five years they were saying he was 'captured' by the Taliban.   As the day has worn on however, his offence has progressed from deserting to collaborating with the Taliban.  Before his disappearance he sent his father some very anti American e-mails, which have just been broadcast today.

 

In his home town however they are planning a hero's welcome, with banners and balloons which  I think is going to fall a bit flat by the time he gets back and is extensively de-briefed, charged and court marshalled.    At the moment he is in hospital in Germany,

 

The whole scenario is bizarre.   His parents are appearing with Obama in the Rose Garden, heaven knows why.    And I hardly believed it when I heard his weird looking father quoting in Arabic from the Koran as he stepped up to the podium .   There is a lot more in this than is meeting the eye.

 

And while we are on the subject of there being more in the news than meets the eye......I have been shot down in flames for the absurd notion that Obama was  in Benghazi, meeting with the Ambassador - whose presence there is shrouded in secrecy.   

 

In the unlikely scenario that he was there, don't forget you heard it first from me.

 

And finally.........

 

And they call US a nanny state!!!