[b said:
Quote[/b] (wolf9striker @ Nov. 01 2006,2:53)]Clint & Joe - Just because each of you went to school with a couple of kids that joined the armed forces and they werent 'honor roll students' does not mean that the less intelligent people are the only ones to join. You cannot take a few examples that you are aware of and make a large generalization. Take a look at a few studies, they show time and time again that specific age brackets in the armed forces have equal to or higher intellingence then the same age bracket of people in the US.
I didn't intend to make a generalization, Wolf, I'm stating that a few people I know are in this situation. And when I talk to friends of mine from other places around the country, they too usually have been acquainted with a few people who enlisted. I also have a number of friends and family whom are themselves enlisted, in a number of branches. And the overwhelming impression I get among the enlisted is that there is a sizable portion (if not a majority) of recent enlistees whom are not in a position to make an acceptable living in other occupations; these are kids that can't get jobs better than entry-level, and are in the military seeking employment skills. The way they see it, there simply is no other niche for them in our national economy. I don't claim to know the numbers, but I can say first hand, six of my seven enlisted acquaintences fit this bill, with the exception being a friend of mine who has a high school diploma and is in the Army until he can get a job with the local police force.
You're the one who decided I was talking about everyone, and you again demonstrate one of the logical fallacies that I pointed out earlier. You've decided I'm putting down everyone, while I'm only referring to a limited group of the individuals in question. Also, I'm not talking about intelligence, I'm talking about employment skills. Diplomas, college degrees, and work experience. What tears me up is that a lot of my friends in Iraq right now are smart kids that got shafted by our school and wound up with grades and test scores too low for decent colleges, who enlisted in the short term to make a decent living while improving their situation. I feel like our country, particularly our government, has let them down and taken advantage of them in many ways, and I know a lot of people who agree with me.
[b said:
Quote[/b] ]I would rather start hearing more important news. I think it was a bad joke personally, I dont think he would say what it seemed he said even if he thought it true. There is an important election in about a week, this is just distracting from it.
Good to know there's things we can agree on from both sides of the fence. I don't understand why he would set himself up for this kind of thing, but then he isn't really running for anything so it could be that he had let his guard down. I would like to offer a little something I saw on tonight's Colbert Report with regards to Kerry's retraction of his comment. Kerry said that he missed an 'us' in his scripted joke;
"You know education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don’t, you get stuck in Iraq.” -> "...If you don’t, you get us stuck in Iraq."
A number of people seem to think that his comment must have been directed at the military at large, even if he did misspeak, but I think this is fairly strong evidence otherwise. Whatever you think of what he actually said, this minor alteration yeilds a comment that couldn't possibly be directed at anyone but the President, or possibly a few other figures in the highest levels of command. In addition to the fact that Kerry is not running and simply offering political commentary as an excercise of free speech, this is a major reason why I think this has been seriously overblown as a psuedo-campaign media event. Why can't the democrats just parade up conservative figures like the Westboro Baptist Church to demonize the republican agenda? (Er, is Westboro too right for the republicans?) It all seems rather low.
~Joe