sfarber

Once again, it’s looking like the United States Army’s unfortunate choice of advertising slogans is a reflection of it’s intended force levels, as it looks like May’s Army recruiting goals were off by either 25% if you believe the “revised” numbers, or over 37% if you believe the actual numbers (the Grey Lady’s piece notes that there will be skepticism caused by the self-serving revision… to coin a phrase… ya’ think?) This is all part of a growing trend: our military’s largest (and coolest) branches, the Navy and Air Force, which, by and large, do not have heavy contingents on...

Your talking dog has been on what we’ll call an involuntary blogging hiatus, a hiatus during which we’ve posted a couple of things such as the interviews with Staff Sergeant Shanona Gregozek and Attorney Joshua Dratel, but generally, otherwise, pretty much… a hiatus. Fortunately, my spiffy new computer has finally arrived from our friends at Dell, and hopefully, I’ll soon figure out its manifest thousand and one uses (including “blogging”)… but I’ll say this (no, I’m not writing this at home, nor am I writing it at work… ). When one’s obsession is neglected for long enough, it becomes less…...

Your talking dog has been quieter than usual thanks to his ongoing computer problems (which translate to: “I haven’t gotten round to replacing the dearly departed ex-computer”) and am on a… borrowed terminal! In other hobby news, your talking dog ran down and back to complete the Delaware Marathon , which cooperated with unseasonably warm and humid weather for the fourth such marathon in a row (note to self: consider carefully before running such event in region of large glaciers without packing scuba gear…) So, how ’bout Newsweek and its story of Guantanamo Bay Gulag Guards flushing the Koran down...

Your talking dog has been having some computer problems of late explaining the lighter than usual free ice cream. Brother Rabid Dog assures me that its most likely a hopeless hard-drive situation, so… we’ll have to do something. We’re pleased to borrow brother rab’s set-up for this brief mention that nothing succeeds in British politics like success. Despite leading Labour to an unprecedented third straight term, many if not most British Labour MP’s want to see Mr. Blair go sooner rather than later in favour of heir apparent Exchequer Chancellor Gordon Brown. This seems consistent with some of my opinions:...

In this case, that would be our friend, West Virginia’s own reservist and designated fall-gal Pfc. Lynndie England, who just caught possibly the break of her life, or at least the next eleven years of it, as Army Col. Pohl, the judge advocate in charge of the kangaroo court set up to bring scapegoats of our empire to some perverse notion of justice whereby those responsible escape punishment in favor of the peons they order around, Col. Pohl declared a mistrial and Pfc. England withdrew her guilty plea. The reason was something I have been hinting at for quite a...

Henry Schuster gives us this CNN column entitled “Where’s Osama?” The simple answer for OBL’s reticence the last few months could have several explanations. One suggestion is that Al Qaeda hasn’t had any thing it can point to as a ‘success” in the last few months. Another is he simply has nothing to say. Schuster opines in general that the no news might be good news. As this compendium from a case brought to trial in 2001 in new York entitled United States v. Osama bin Laden, nothing could be further from the truth. Al Qaeda is.. get this… patient....

Our visit to the People’s Daily commences with this blast from the past: a ceremony in Beijing to honor 3,000 or so “model workers” of the People’s Republic. Among the “workers” is Yao Ming of the Houston Rockets, and 800 government functionaries, along with over 1,000 industrial workers and several hundred agricultural wrokers. Capitalism with Chinese characteristics indeed. Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chain store contracts. And (I guess) in honor of May Day, we get a most unusual visit: the Taiwanese opposition party Kuo Min-Tang (“KMT”) leader Lien Chan meets with CPC...

Our visit to Pravda gives us this explanation of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision not to sell Syria a class of Russian made missiles (during a visit to Israel), though Russia is planning on selling a shorter range, fixed air defense system to Syria (though the Russians have evidently fully disclosed the specifications to Israel, including noting that the system proposed cannot be used as shoulder fired missiles). Although I understand this is the first visit by a Russian leader to Israel, Russia’s relations with Israel (when compared, say, to the Soviet era) are “pretty good”. For one, Israel has...