… I just read the piece in today’s WP about the 14 Trump associates who had conversations about a possible Trump-Putin meeting. I felt like I was reading War and Peace with all of those wonderful Russian names. Oleg Deripaska, Dmitry Klokov, Konstanin Kilmnik… It doesn’t get any better than that!…
… Your administration just asked Canada to arrest Meng Wangzhou. As you know that would be like China having Jeff Bezos arrested while he was traveling through the Phillipines. Former deupty director of CIA, John McLaughlin, finds the timing of this arrest awfully strange when you are trying to iron out a trade deal with Xi Jingping. He thinks it’s eitherduplicitous or incompetent…
…I hope you have fun at the Army/Navy game today. You better bundle up. It's going to be chilly in Philly. There's a lot of hype about the team uniforms. The Army outfits honor the Black Lions of Cantigny who fought in WWI and Navy's have something to do with their mascot, the goat. I hope our tax dollars are not paying for those…
The orange foster dog will be going to his new forever home today. I hope they can provide him with all of the stimulation and affection that he requires. who knew that so much energy could reside in a 10-pound body? We’ll miss him but it will be a lot calmer around here when he’s gone…
Are you ready for the GWH Bush's funeral today? I understand that he'll be wearing some sox with planes flying in formation. Have you decided what sox you'll be wearing at your funeral? According to the NYT, presidents start planning their funerals shortly after they arrive in office. What lucky staff member gets that job?
It's great that Frank's retiring from his job as Congressional Representative for NJ's 2nd District after helping out his "coasties" with $7.9 billion in operating expenses and $2.6 billion in facilities improvements along with some "fast response cutters" and some drones. Best of all his bill eliminates some duplicate regulations on commercial fishing boats about their discharge. Vessels will no longer have to be inspected by the EPA and Coast Guard. I assume Mr. LoBiondo had to attend to numerous details and visit with a whole slew of people to get that bill written in such a way that 94 Senators could vote for it. That's worth celebrating.
Did you learn something new at the G20? How was your steak dinner with the Chinese contingent? It's great that you agreed to hold off on increasing tariffs for the time being, and I hope that China will buy more soybeans. I was surprised to learn that a lot of the fentanyl sold on the streets of the US comes from China and hope that their promise to treat it as a controlled substance has the desired effect.
How's it going at the G20? Did you see how Vlad and MbS greeted each other? They looked like high school football players coming into math class. Thrilled to see each other with a bit of mischief on their minds on assuming all eyes are on them (which, in this case was true). I found it most disturbing.
What is your gut telling you about your trip to Buenos Aires for the G20? I was just reading in the Buenos Aires Times (English Edition) that folks are worried about security. Apparently this weekend a riot erupted when the bus of Boca Junior, a major soccer team, was attacked by the fans of the River Plate, their rival. The bus driver fainted and players got injured from broken glass.
Don't you wish you had more time? I sure do! Today I am running low on time because my sleep schedule is off and I can't get up as early as I'd like. So, I missed out on a chance to do a couple of critical garden tasks. Hopefully I will be able to accomplish a lot at work today, but it always seems that there's something I didn't get to at the end of the day. I guess that's life.
It's back to work. At least it's a beautiful day as we launch into the intense time when we close out the fall quarter. Folks on campus will be more stressed than usual due to the backlog caused by the campus closing. The stress will be offset by the relief of having life get back to normal.
