{"id":1434,"date":"2009-07-02T07:01:52","date_gmt":"2009-07-02T11:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morningseditionists.com\/msblog\/?p=1434"},"modified":"2009-07-02T07:03:31","modified_gmt":"2009-07-02T11:03:31","slug":"1434","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/2009\/07\/02\/1434\/","title":{"rendered":"No Pain, No Gain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Looks like we got us a new war to watch on the teevee.  Well, not really a new one, but President Obama&#8217;s got his <a href=\"http:\/\/news.bbc.co.uk\/2\/hi\/south_asia\/8129789.stm\">first &#8220;major military operation&#8221; in the works in Afghanistan<\/a>.  This, of course, is a big moment for a president.  Kind of the equivalent of a  bar mitzvah or something.  Makes you feel proud, in a Red, White and Blue Fourth of July kinda way, doesn&#8217;t it?  And word just in is that one of our soldiers was captured.  That aint good.  But I&#8217;m sure Obama can expect oodles of support from our GOP friends, what with anything less than complete support and subservience to the Commander in Chief being tantamount to treason.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of pride-inducing developments,<a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2009\/07\/01\/AR2009070103477.html\"> the ACLU says the Obama administration is using confessions elicited through torture<\/a> to justify the continued detainment of Mohammed Jawad, who was something like 12 years old when he was first captured and thrown into US gulags in Bagram and Guantanamo. <\/p>\n<p>More pride, but of the gay (or, rather, anti-gay) variety locally.  You may have seen Lt. Dan Choi on Rachel Maddow.  In case you missed the news Tuesday, a military board right here in my fair city <a href=\"http:\/\/www.syracuse.com\/news\/index.ssf\/2009\/06\/military_board_recommends_disc.html\">recommended that Choi be the first person kicked out of the NY National Guard<\/a> for tellin&#8217; when nobody was askin&#8217;.  As I understand the board&#8217;s decision, it appears that, because Choi weighs the same as a duck, he&#8217;s made of wood and therefore&#8230;.  &#8220;<strong>Burn him!  He&#8217;s a witch!<\/strong>&#8221;  <\/p>\n<p>I could have that wrong though, since I don&#8217;t understand all the nuances of the Uniform Code of Military Justice.<\/p>\n<p>The NYS Senate continues to meet and do no work.  It&#8217;s somewhat difficult to tell this apart from business as usual, except for these sessions are a lot shorter.  Unfortunately, the failure to pass any of the basic housekeeping, end of session type of legislation is a real hassle for local governments, who can&#8217;t sell bonds, collect sales tax, and don&#8217;t know what sort of state funding they can include in proposing next year&#8217;s budgets.  But it&#8217;s all OK, &#8216;cuz Pedro &#8220;Erik&#8221; Espada is feeling mighty important these days, and that&#8217;s all that counts.<\/p>\n<p>We have things pretty much straightened out at work, which is a good thing (we&#8217;ll see what further problems develop today, of course).  No sleep for me, though. Between what has become rather excruciating neck (and now back) pain, and the fact that something&#8217;s wrong with one of the dogs, causing the other dog to freak out, I don&#8217;t think I got any sleep at all last night, though I may have accidentally drifted off once or twice.<\/p>\n<p>All&#8217;s well, though.  Matt Lauer is live at Neverland Ranch.  <\/p>\n<p><object width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><param name=\"movie\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/bG65axXE-HY&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1&#038;\"><\/param><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\"><\/param><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\"><\/param><embed src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/bG65axXE-HY&#038;hl=en&#038;fs=1&#038;\" type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" width=\"425\" height=\"344\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Looks like we got us a new war to watch on the teevee. Well, not really a new one, but President Obama&#8217;s got his first &#8220;major military operation&#8221; in the works in Afghanistan. This, of course, is a big moment for a president. Kind of the equivalent of a bar mitzvah or something. Makes you [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1434"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1434\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.morningseditionists.com\/msblog2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}