The Dog Blog

I confess to being exhausted after all these years. But imagine if you were a guest of our military and intelligence services at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Inconceivable that a human being could stand the overt torture, punctuated with the boredom, and overlaid with the uncertainty of whether you will leave the place in a coffin, as nine men have. And yet, 30 men are still there. And have been for decades. 22 years as if today. And 16 men have been cleared for transfer by our national security services. The reality is that most Americans accepted Barack Obama and his...

December 23rd only comes once a year, so let me be among the first to wish you a happy Festivus roughly 25 years after Seinfeld went off the air. Jerry is a weird role model, but of relevance, he quit while he was on top, something that neither 80 something Joe Biden nor 70 something [ptttooooyy] Donald Trump are willing to do. And so the gerontocracy/kakastocracy/kleptocracy/oligarchy that infests not only the so called United States, but also China, Russia and a lot of other apparently relevant countries, just continues, until, I suppose, it doesn’t. It’s been a while since my...

Now at 22 years on from “that day,” my first thought after traveling by subway to lower Manhattan today was “I hope that the organizers of the 9-11 memorial ceremony had the good sense to keep indicted criminal defendant Rudy Giuliani away this year.” My second was noting that the subway car appeared to be full of teenagers on their way to attend high school, probably at Stuyvesant, which was famously impacted by September 11, 2001, and of course, none of them were alive at the time. My third thought was that today is actually the 50th anniversary of the...

Yes, of course it’s been a while since I’ve posted anything. Part of it is the slog of caring for aged loved one, young loved one having flown out of the nest for about a year now, and a never ending litany of dental issues resulting in near total cash-ectomy, coinciding with not-inexpensive veterinary issues of concern on our now over 14 year old cats, all while trying to maintain employment, my sanity, etc., etc. Perhaps not coincidentally, because it’s always about me, just this year, aside from four marathons (including my fourth world marathon major star, in London) and...

In context, this means a couple of things. For various reasons (most of them simply our domestic living situation, as we have had a family member living with us who requires a great deal of attention, the Loquacious Pup has moved out of the house for a post-college job, my focus on my alternate persona, the never ending plague of COVID-45 and other factors), I have gone without posting for almost four months, last posting on the GTMO 21st anniversary. But the real overdue event is, of course, the release of Candace’s Algerian client, Saeed Bakhush, after almost 21 years...

Andy gives us a list of events commemmorating the 21st (Jesus) anniversary of the opening of the prison for Muslim men and boys at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. As I said, I will be present (and perhaps participating) at the NYC event to commemorate this dark moment in American history. If you are able, please partake in one of these events near you. We all know the usual shticks about GTMO– Dubya and Barack dishonestly suggesting “this isn’t who we are” (when of course it is exactly who we are), Biden, to his credit, mostly not talking about it (even as...

2022 ended up being a most unusual year, both for me, and I suppose, for everyone else. In my case, the year in which I turned 60 began last January with my testing positive for COVID-45, evidently contracted when I was ordered to a live court appearance in Manhattan shortly before Christmas, literally just as the Omicron variant was ramping up to a full crescendo. As a result, we abruptly canceled our usual Christmas visit to an aging relative, who we obviously did not want to expose. Because apparently the universe saved a bunch of Jokers in the deck for...

Your humble author was born, on this day. Those of you with a sense of history will recall that this means that I was born in the middle of a significant historical event. Somehow, the world survived that, and another six decades hence. As you know from recent postings, this blog showed up a week or so after another significant historical event. For both occasions, I found myself in New York City, as I do on this day (albeit in another borough slightly removed from Manhattan). When asked where I am “from,” I will, in what I believe to be...

Yes, just like 9-11, which turned 21 last week, this blog turns 21 today. Yee ha. Meaning an entire generation has grown up without knowledge of either a pre 9-11 or a pre-talking dog world. Obviously the two are in parallel. We learned that America finally turned its perpetual war to justify the military industrial complex against the American population itself. This all still seems troubling, even 21 years later. People might be surprised to learn that in the early days of blogging, the red and blue teams would actually socialize with each other. We were capable of talking about...

The turn of the calendar is relentless; it has now been 21 years since 9/11. I suppose it can drink now, and gamble in Vegas and whatever else you have to be 21 to do. In four years, it can rent a car. In a week’s time, this blog will also turn 21, and if you ask me, that’s a more momentous event (or at least, an infinitely less damaging one). Most of you are probably aware that I spent the original 9/11 (actually, the original 9/11 was in 1973 when a junta backed by the CIA and Henry Kissinger...

In this case, happy 94th to TD father in law, whose recovery from two major medical incidents has dominated his year, and ours here at Stately Dog Manor [and explains the paucity of posting in this here space]. But we are all still going strong, for which we are all grateful. Happy birthday!

Regular readers (and thanks for staying with us) are aware that we lost TD Dad back in late 2015. Mrs. TD’s Dad is still going strong at 93; happy Father’s Day to him, and to TD Brother, TD Brother-in-Law, and to all the rest of you fathers out there. Cryptocurrencies and assorted other Ponzi schemes (like, perhaps, the stock market?) seem to be collapsing, and inflation is exploding, and so, the Federal Reserve is jacking up interest rates. Donald Trump seems to still be the right-wing kingmaker, even as the January 6th hearings roll on. This is a bit overdue:...

I am pleased to report that Candace’s still-detained-at-GTMO client… has finally… FINALLY… been cleared for transfer. He’s been detained there for just about TWENTY YEARS. A yuuuge thanks to Andy for breaking this great news. It is not an understatement for me to say that I have been following the case of Said Bakush (one of many spellings for the Alegerian detainee known on base as ISN 685) as long as I have known Candace, to wit, since I interviewed her in 2007. I have followed her travails both with respect to Mr. Bakush (including traveling to Washington both for...

I would usually be the last person on Earth (particularly given my twitter handle) to suggest that Russian President Vladimir Putin was doing something incredibly stupid (as opposed to, you know, evil or otherwise Macchiavellian). But with the brazen seemingly all-out military assault on Ukraine in the last 48 hours, Mr. Putin has effectively flushed virtually any and all moral authority he had. He had some good “moral authority” arguments to respond to what the West would claim as his prior aggression, to wit, that the people of Crimea wanted to leave Ukraine and join Russia (and overwhelmingly voted so...