Here's what I thought you'd like to hear about today:

1. Why the UN is Irrelevant - When the Human Rights Council is Your Best Example of Success, You're in Trouble
2. We're At War. What Are You Doing? - Recruiting Success
3. Give me All Your Sevens - Reporters Play Go Fish
4. How many died? - Political Bias in Science
5. Geographically Speaking, Where is Work? - The Telemarketer's Call from Hell

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Why the UN is Irrelevant

Gillian Sorensen is one of the most passionate defenders of the UN. And you have to admit that in some areas, the UN does helpful work. I can't think of any at the moment, but I'm sure they're out there. Ms Sorensen spoke recently at the USC Center on Public Diplomacy in LA. In this section she talks about some of the good things the UN has done, after peacekeeping, disarmament, elections monitoring, and others.

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Later on she gets into the meat of her talk, which principally consists of criticizing America. After talking about our failure to sign the Kyoto accords, she goes off into our failure to sign on tto the International Criminal Court. That ridiculous bit of internationalism would have allowed judges across the world to hold our soldiers and civilian leaders to be tried for war crimes if our actions did not meet the standards of the "global test".

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These people only talk to other career diplomats, and their self referential isolation leads to anti-American attitudes. After all, if all your friends all think in one way, how can you expect to feel any differently? And that reference to how America has squandered all the good will we had accumulated on 9-11. Does she realize that the good will was only there as long as we were under attack? As soon as we made an attempt to go after and kill those responsible for the attacks, people stopped feeling sorry for us? Should we have done nothing just so we could have basked in the glow of world opinion? I'd rather be safe, personally.

We're At War. What Are You Doing?

The Pentagon held a press conference with Dr. David Chu, the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, this week to review the current status of recruiting. The forces met their targets, not easily, and not 100% across 100% of the branches, but on balance they had a terrific recruiting year. They had to increase their recruiting staffs, improve the recruit's experience, and take other sensible actions to meet their quotas.

The press is highlighting the "waivers" that permit the military to bring in those who for some reason did not meet the standards in all areas, moral, intellectual, legal, financial, that they demand. Did you know that if your credit card debt is over a few thousand dollars the Army considers you unfit for service? Or if your body mass index is above average, while still below that of a typical NFL lineman, you can't join? They are rather picky. Listen to this segment, when the head of Army recruitment, who met their goal, thank you very much, for 2006, hypothesize on why it is so hard for them to meet their goals year in year out to keep us safe. It is especially tough in the Northeast, for some reason. Something about those New England and upper Midwest blue states that result in low enlistment rates. This section starts by describing how they have reduced their attrition ration down. They have been able to get more of the recruits to last long enough through training to become contributing members of the military. Here David Chu describes a few ways they have done this. Thanks to the Pentagon Channel Podcast for the audio.

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His parents said someone else's kid should do it. That is disgraceful.

Give me All Your Sevens

Powerline Blog in a post headlined "Suffering Fools" offered an audio clip today from a Rumsfeld Pentagon Press conference. I'll play a longer excerpt. It's classic. Thanks again to the Pentagon Channel Podcast for the audio. He is asked about the study published Wednesday in The Lancet, a British publication that seems to make a habit of publishing controversial and highly politicized articles in October before an American Election. Transcript from Defenselink.

Play clip.

"Give me all your sevens." That line is from the card game, "Go Fish". When it's your turn, you ask the other player if they have any aces, or kings, or jacks, or sevens, until you get four of a kind. It's a perfect analogy for when a questioner knows absolutely nothing about what they are asking. They are just fishing for information, asking questions in the hopes they might get lucky. And Rumsfeld of course gives them nothing. Wonderful.

By the way, "Give me all your sevens" is one of Rumsfeld's favorite phrases. He's said it in the context of the hunt for WMD's, in answers to questions about the Valerie Plame affair, and other reporter's "fishing" expeditions.

Google it and you will see how often he uses it.

How many died?

President Bush was asked about the same report claiming 655,000 dead in Iraq at his news conference Wednesday, in his case by a well dressed reporter, Suzanne Malveaux. Thanks to C-SPAN for the video. Transcript at Whitehouse.gov.

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The report is just not credible. Who put it out?

None other than The Lancet, the same English publication that put out a similar piece claiming that 100,000 had died in the Iraqi liberation back in October 2004, just in time for the last election. You don't suppose the English would try to influence an American election, do you?

But these guys are scientists, right? They can't have any kind of agenda can they? Listen to the editor, Richard Horton speak at a conference last month in London.

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Ash in the caskets of global death. Sounds like a nice scientific statement of fact, as opposed to, say rhetorical excess. What, bias in science? Hardly.

Geographically Speaking, Where is Work?

The final segment came from Ace of Spades who pointed to this audio file from the Bob & Tom radio show. It's self explanatory, and not necessarily family safe.

Play clip.

That's it podcatchers!