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Site contact: greyhawk at mudvillegazette dot com
BloodSpite and Calimus have generously donated a server, and their services, to the MilBlog Conference. They are going to provide the Chat Room, free of charge, to us. This is great news and will allow our "virtual" attendees to talk amongst themselves during the conference. Thanks guys.
For those who want to participate in a dry run, and I would appreciate as many people as possible, they're going to go through it tonight at 10:00 EST. Let's log on and try it out.
Gotta be ready for primetime.
Divorce in the nation’s military was no higher after four years of war than it was in peacetime a decade earlier, despite the stress of long and repeated tours of duty.Separation strengthens some marriages.A yearlong study by Rand Corp. says divorces rose from 2.5 percent of military marriages in 2001 to 3 percent in 2005. But that is still short of a previous Pentagon theory that marriage breakups had been soaring due to the strain of fighting the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, lead researcher Benjamin Karney said Thursday.
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Rand’s National Defense Research Institute — a federally funded research and development center sponsored by the Pentagon — found in the new study that after declining from 1996 to 2000, divorces rose gradually in the following years. Divorce, separation and annulments across all branches of service rose to 3 percent of military marriages in 2005 — the same as in 1996 when soldiers did not routinely face the battlefield deployments that are common today, Rand said in a statement.There’s no comparable system for tracking the national or civilian divorce rate, though the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in 2005 that 43 percent of all first marriages end in divorce within 10 years.
“Everyone is saying that they are very, very stressed, but the genuine stress isn’t necessarily leading to elevations in divorce,” Karney said.
Those who will bear lifelong wounds of body, mind, or spirit from Iraq gain little consolation from the fact they represent a small percentage of the total. But they are heroes among us, and we do them disservice in assuming their numbers are so large as to make them simply average.
Evil Spock, denouncing Prime Minister Prodi, Talib - dead and/or weird, letters to the editor and the HIG deploring violence (WTF?!) all in this non-superstitious installment of the news.
Just plain huge news for those concerned with the future of the fleet.
The Navy has terminated its contract for the third Littoral Combat Ship because it could not come to terms with builder Lockheed Martin on a modified contract, officials announced Thursday afternoon.This is close to being on par with the A-12 fiasco - and larger than the CANX of the Army's Crusader program earlier this decade. At least we still have the Paladin. We are about out FFG.
For those who do not know, LMT was set to build one of two options for the LCS. General Dynamics has the even numbered LCS hulls. LCS-1 is in the water - LCS-2 not yet. GD's LCS is showing similar cost trends, and shares the not-ready-for-prime-time CONOPS.
Good news though. When you go from $270 to $410 million and have yet to even validate the mission systems for what is just a fast Corvette - someone need a pop up-side-da-head. SECNAV Winter is on target. Better to take the hit now and fix shipbuilding than to have a TIffany Fleet that isn't worth (literally) half of what you payed for it. Ouch, but a good ouch.
...Look what the Air Force done to me...
Sorry, don't know why that old cadence call popped into my head.
But speaking of Drill Instructors, let's check in on former USAF Staff Sergeant Michelle Manhart:
“Some people say, ‘She had her 15 minutes of fame. Now shut up,’” Manhart says. “Some say, ‘Girl, take it for all its worth.’”Manhart says she does not plan to shut up. She is hustling to spin her high-profile punishment into a lasting celebrity career.
In days, she’ll go to her next high-profile modeling gig, with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Manhart will pose wearing only an American flag for the group’s “I’d Rather Go Naked than Wear Fur” national campaign. In coming weeks, her Los Angeles agent will negotiate with reality TV producers and try to secure a World Wrestling Entertainment diva role.
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Nowhere does her infamy burn brighter than at Lackland. Yet Manhart walks the base with Playboy written all over her.Literally.
Her white cotton Playboy long-sleeve T-shirt fits snug. Her lipstick-pink Playboy bunny pendant jingles when she walks. Her flip-flops glitter. Ask for her ID, out comes the metallic Playboy business card holder Manhart uses as a wallet.
- here.
And take a look at this, too.
The Army's secret for success: They've reduced Basic Training from 14 weeks to nine!!!
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Original content copyright © 2006 by the respective authors
