Pending Draft Legislation Targeted for Spring 2005
David
G*rd*n
> This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
> ...
Translated:
From AxisofLogic.com
U.S. Military
Pending Draft Legislation Targeted for Spring 2005
By Action Alert
May 27, 2004, 14:50
The Draft will Start in June 2005
There is pending legislation in the House and Senate (twin
bills: S 89 and HR 163) which will time the program's
initiation so the draft can begin at early as Spring 2005
-- just after the 2004 presidential election. The administration
is quietly trying to get these bills passed now, while the
public's attention is on the elections, so our action on
this is needed immediately.
$28 million has been added to the 2004 Selective Service
System (SSS) budget to prepare for a military draft that
could start as early as June 15, 2005. Selective Service
must report to Bush on March 31, 2005 that the system,
which has lain dormant for decades, is ready for activation.
Please see website: www.sss.gov/perfplan_fy2004.html to
view the sss annual performance plan - fiscal year 2004.
The Pentagon has quietly begun a public campaign to fill
all 10,350 draft board positions and 11,070 appeals board
slots nationwide.. Though this is an unpopular election
year topic, military experts and influential members of
congress are suggesting that if Rumsfeld's prediction of
a "long, hard slog" in Iraq and Afghanistan [and a permanent
state of war on "terrorism"] proves accurate, the U.S. may
have no choice but to draft.
Congress brought twin bills, S. 89 and HR 163 forward this
year, http://www.hslda.org/legislation/na...s89/default.asp
entitled the Universal National Service Act of 2003, "to
provide for the common defense by requiring that all young
persons [age 18--26] in the United States, including women,
perform a period of military service or a period of civilian
service in furtherance of the national defense and homeland
security, and for other purposes." These active bills
currently sit in the committee on armed services.
Dodging the draft will be more difficult than those from
the Vietnam era. College and Canada will not be options.
In December 2001, Canada and the U.S. signed a "smart border
declaration," which could be used to keep would-be draft
dodgers in. Signed by Canada's minister of foreign affairs,
John Manley, and U.S. Homeland Security director, Tom Ridge,
the declaration involves a 30-point plan which implements,
among other things, a "pre-clearance agreement" of people
entering and departing each country. Reforms aimed at making
the draft more equitable along gender and class lines also
eliminates higher education as a shelter. Underclassmen
would only be able to postpone service until the end of
their current semester. Seniors would have until the end
of the academic year.
Even those voters who currently support US actions abroad
may still object to this move, knowing their own children
or grandchildren will not have a say about whether to fight.
Not that it should make a difference, but this plan, among
other things, eliminates higher education as a shelter and
includes women in the draft.
The public has a right to air their opinions about such an
important decision.
http://www.congress.org/congressorg/issues/alert/?alertid=5834001&content_dir=ua_congressorg
See also:
http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:S.89:
http://www.congress.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d108:HR00163:
--
(<><>) /*/
}"{ G*rd*n }"{ g...@panix.com }"{
{ http://www.etaoin.com | latest new material 5/10/04 <-adv't
smw
G*rd*n wrote:
> Selective Service
> must report to Bush on March 31, 2005
defeatists.
herothatdied
"smw" <sm...@ameritech.net> wrote in message
news:fKGuc.4233$n65....@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com...
and voters were staring at their electability navels. I just can't believe
that, if we'd known how vulnerable Bush was going to look by convention time
we'd be nominating the same candidate. dKos has an interesting post up
about trend lines in, of all red states, Alabama.
Capital Survey Research Center. 5/24-27. MoE 4.1%. (December 2003 results)
Bush 54 (64)
Kerry 35 (23)
The state isn't in play and isn't likely to be, but the trend is severe
enough that the Mobile Register reports:
"In this year's presidential race, Democrat John Kerry may even pull ahead
in polling by July, said Connors [chair of the Alabama GOP], who predicted
that Bush would recover and defeat the U.S. senator from Massachusetts in
November."
links to verify this very suspicious information sausage:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/5/29/14444/0986
http://www.al.com/news/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/news/1085303759134260.xml
Peter Stickney
Old news, and an embarrassing revalation of a lack of political
knowledge on the part of thedavid (No surprise there - Stupid is as
Stupid Does) and whatever Flavor of teh Month the "Axis of Logic"
bunch is. (Again, naifs wandering in the woods, with all the
sophistication of Little Red Riding Hood - either they are
life-threatenaningy stupid, and are taking this at face value, with no
ability to provide any level of critical thinking, or they are a part
of the scam, and thus their comtempt for the intellectual processes of
those to whom that they are blathering at is both telling and
enormously insulting.
HR.163 is Charly Rangel's (D, NY) showpiece Revolutionary Theater
tantrum that was filed last year. (So, like, duude, is Rangel part of
the Conspiracy, Man? Do you even know who/what he is?) As is
necessary (like, its in the Rules) for all bills, it gets forwarded
to the appropriate Comittee for study (Heh!) and recommendation. This
bill has been sitting in Comittee for more than a year, with abzero
action. It's not going anywhere, but is a handy foil to use on the
ignorant, incompetent, anf generally dull-witted.
S.89 was the companion piece in the Senate, filed by Fritz Holling (D,
SC) as a bit of logrolling to get something else through. (No
co-sponsors, a dead giveaway) It is also wasting away In Comittee.
Kids these days - I'm coming around to the idea that I should be
petitioning my Congressional Delagation to submit a Bill making
"Schoolhouse Rock" viewings mandatory for all Post-Secondary School
students.
--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster
smw
Peter Stickney wrote:
> In article <fKGuc.4233$n65....@newssvr33.news.prodigy.com>,
> smw <sm...@ameritech.net> writes:
>
>>
>>G*rd*n wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> Selective Service
>>> must report to Bush on March 31, 2005
>>
>>defeatists.
>
>
> Old news, and an embarrassing revalation of a lack of political
> knowledge
I was referring to the implicit assumption of having any Bush to report
to in 05.
jonah thomas
> G*rd*n wrote:
> defeatists.
I wish I could see something to indicate Kerry would be better.
He seems to be smarter, but that isn't necessarily an improvement.
"Mean or stupid, which is worse?"
I like his accent better. And he thinks we ought to have a health
care system, as opposed to none.
I wish we had more criteria to choose.
Michael S. Morris
Monday, the 31st of May, 2004
Gordon translated David O':
Selective Service
must report to Bush on March 31, 2005
Silke:
defeatists.
jonah:
I wish I could see something to indicate Kerry would be better.
This is the problem. Seems to me either of the two Senators from
Indiana, Richard Lugar, Republican or Evan Bayh, Democrat would
be infinitely better as President than either of the two choices we are
going to be presented with. Or John McCain. Why can't we get
rid of this democratization of the primary process and bring back
the smoke-filled-room method?
jonah:
He seems to be smarter, but that isn't necessarily an
improvement. "Mean or stupid, which is worse?"
I don't see any evidence that he is one whit smarter.
Every time he opens his mouth on Iraq, and goes on
about getting the rest of the world, or the UN, or NATO
on board (as if this hasn't been tried, and as if any
of these countries has any incentive to relieve the US
of its predicament), he comes across dumber and dumber.
Moreover, it's completely unclear what he's going to do once
he's elected and the rest of the world fails to volunteer
their boys die in lieu of Americans---we could well end up
with a draft, or more and more troops thrown at the problem.
jonah:
I like his accent better.
I'm probably with you there. Though, I think that's
probably a prejudice on my part. More, I'd applaud the
fact he's simply more articulate.
jonah:
And he thinks we ought to have a health care
system, as opposed to none.
We do have a health care system. A hugely expensive one,
and yet simply the best care available in the world, with
the best research and development of new therapies. Measured
in terms of gains in longevity and gains against kinds
of disease, it's really amazing what is being achieved---
the 60 plusers are having bypass surgeries as routine
as tonsilectomies. I.e. we are getting better medicine for
our increasing health costs. The problem is that there seems
to be no market brakes on the thing---it already is socialized,
just badly so. Also, the problem is, we all balked at
Hillary's proposal---chiropractors' lobby manouevring
fer chrissakes to see that their quackery gets "covered"---
which is the basic problem of handing it over to some
central commission. Anyway, we are very likely to end up with
some sort of national health system soon in any event.
Big corporations will drive it.
jonah:
I wish we had more criteria to choose.
I still think Bush made a sincere command decision
to pursue the Iraq war based on the intelligence he
had available at the time. But he sold the thing on womd's,
and he was wrong about that. It doesn't matter to me
whether I think the outcome of the thing is ultimately
going to be good or disastrous, I think there is a
political price that needs to be paid for being wrong
about what he wrong about. I just wish the hell I had
some hopeful choice to vote for. I figure it that the fact we
are going to end up with Kerry is Bush's biggest failure
as President (just as Bush is basically Clinton's fault).
I figure with Kerry, we are likely to see
fiscal disaster (raised taxes, much higher spending levels
and consequently deficits, higher fuel prices, the Dow
plummeting), a permanent extension of all that's worst
about the Patriot Act, and a disaster in Iraq. But, hey,
Bush deserves to go.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
David O'Bedlam
What's up with that anyway? A web encyclopedia from the perspective of
the U.S. Democratic Party. Of course its article on Third Parties says
they're doomed. What two-partisan tweedledum tripe.
As I said before, the U.S. Democratic Party does not derserve to call
itself "leftist" or "progressive" or even "liberal": being slightly
less neo-conservative than the Bush/Cheney crowd is so easy Goebbels
did it standing on his metaphorical head.
The U.S. greens, by criticising their German cousin's selling out to
get to play in the Big Boy's sandbox, barely maintains the right to
use those words, and the Workers World Party/All Peoples Congress/
A.N.S.W.E.R. lost it way back in 1956 when its Dear Leader Sam Marcy
came out *in favor* of the USSR crushing the Hungarian "revolt". The
fact is that, however the U.S. "Democratic" Party might spin it, we
have no viable Left in this country because we don't deserve one.
Nobody to the right of Nader can possibly be called leftist; Kucinich
turned my stomach less than the others in this round of the Great Farce,
but, besides working within the Democratic Party and accepting the shit
that entails, he too is unelectable -- because the voters believe their
Corperate Whore Pundits who tell them he is. (I can't think of a better
argument *against* universal sufferage than *that*.)
So much for electoral politics.
D.
--
Vote for REAL pathetic loser! Write in 'TheDavid^TM' for U.S. President!
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) 2004 by 'TheDavid^TM' | David, P.O. Box 21403, Louisville, KY 40221
David O'Bedlam
[...]
> >> Selective Service
> >> must report to Bush on March 31, 2005
> Old news, and an embarrassing revalation of a lack of political
> knowledge on the part of thedavid (No surprise there - Stupid is
> as Stupid Does)
Oh kiss my ass. It's an Information Flow issue: that shit does NOT
get much mention (if any) in the Mainstream Media, and it's hard
to even know where to look. I myself, you fuckhead, only stumbled
across it on Metafilter. (Mike Morris, where'd YOU hear about it?)
As for "Stupid is as Stupid Does", quick, explain to us in detail,
OFF THE TOP OF YOUR STICKNEY HEAD, what distinguishes the Shi'ism
of the Agakhanids from that of the Daudi Bohras. That information
is in fact readily available to those who know where to look for it,
SO using YOUR "logic", if YOU don't ALREADY know this then you are
even stupider than TheDavid. (C'mon man, this has been old news for
several hundred years!) Surely a *Brilliant Genius* like you think
you are SHOULD BE expected to be far more informed on simple basic
Muslim theology than a blathering idiot like me, eh?
For extra credit, Stickney, tell us whether Bin Laden or Burhanuddin
would have been more like to back Sam Marcy on Hungary in 1956, and
explain how you came to that brilliant conclusion. And, since you got
your Poli Sci PhD from "Schoolhouse Rock", you can of course explain
the clear and obvious Constitutional ramifications this issue has for
practical application of the U.S. Patriot Act, eh? Surely you know
what I'm talking about -- better than I do -- already, don't you?
--
"Why don't you pass the time by plaing a little solitaire?"
David O'Bedlam
But Teufelprofessor Stin^H^Hckney was talking about ME, TheDavid.
--
Vote for REAL pathetic loser! Write in 'TheDavid^TM' for U.S. President!
David O'Bedlam
[Bush v. Kerry]
[...]
> I wish I could see something to indicate Kerry would be better.
>
> He seems to be smarter, but that isn't necessarily an improvement.
> "Mean or stupid, which is worse?"
>
> I like his accent better. And he thinks we ought to have a health
> care system, as opposed to none.
> I wish we had more criteria to choose.
But you do: you could write in a vote for ME. I'm electable: I'm a
native-born American citizen 35 years old or more. I even know that
what makes someone electable is a majority of voters voting for the
candidate. And hey, I've got more hair than either Bush or Kerry,
and I'd could more fun at a barbeque than those guys *in my sleep*.
D.
--
"Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?"
David O'Bedlam
[...]
> Seems to me either of the two Senators from Indiana, Richard Lugar,
> Republican or Evan Bayh, Democrat would be infinitely better as
> President than either of the two choices we are going to be presented
> with. Or John McCain. Why can't we get rid of this democratization of
> the primary process and bring back the smoke-filled-room method?
But, you see, Americans are just too stupid to be trusted with a real,
meaningful vote.
[...]
> I still think Bush made a sincere command decision to pursue the Iraq
> war based on the intelligence he had available at the time.
You give the fool too much credit.
By the way, Bush's "victory" in 2000 proves that the American voters
deserve what they get: THERE WERE NO MASS PROTESTS, even though there
were no troops in Humvees patrolling the streets. None. The votership
just swallowed the ruling of their "betters". Unlike in India, France
or Ghana, democracy is wasted on USans.
Once I'm elected U.S. President I'll stop forcing the American people
to pay attention to that pretense: I know what's best for America and
the World, and I promise there'll be no more elections for 1000 years!
Electably,
TheDavid
jonah thomas
> Gordon translated David O':
> Selective Service
> must report to Bush on March 31, 2005
> Silke:
> defeatists.
> jonah:
> I wish I could see something to indicate Kerry would be better.
> This is the problem. Seems to me either of the two Senators from
> Indiana, Richard Lugar, Republican or Evan Bayh, Democrat would
> be infinitely better as President than either of the two choices we are
> going to be presented with. Or John McCain. Why can't we get
> rid of this democratization of the primary process and bring back
> the smoke-filled-room method?
I'm not clear democracy is the problem. The problem is the particular
rules that are being followed.
Any set of voting rules can have pathological cases when there are
more than 2 choices, but I believe some other approach would surely
work better.
I'd suggest possibley a primary where everybody gets a 1st, 2nd, and
3rd choice, and then a No Way and a Strongly Against choice. When
people can't agree on their best choices, maybe they'll agree on 2nd
best. Maybe give the different kinds of votes a 5 4 3 -4 -5 weight,
and if there's nobody you like enough to vote 4/5 as good as your best
guy then leave out the 2nd choice.
How we pick candidates deserves at least as much attention as which
candidate to vote for this time, and I don't see that it gets it at
all. Smoke-filled rooms might get us candidates who look vaguely more
electable, but what else would we be getting? I see no particular
reason to think the kingmakers would be working for the public good.
> jonah:
> He seems to be smarter, but that isn't necessarily an
> improvement. "Mean or stupid, which is worse?"
> I don't see any evidence that he is one whit smarter.
> Every time he opens his mouth on Iraq, and goes on
> about getting the rest of the world, or the UN, or NATO
> on board (as if this hasn't been tried, and as if any
> of these countries has any incentive to relieve the US
> of its predicament), he comes across dumber and dumber.
He has no good option there. What could he possibly say that wouldn't
lose him votes and cause him problems if he wins? If he can just stay
bland and quiet enough he can let Bush defeat himself and he can take
the Presidency by default. Maybe that won't work but it's been his
best strategy so far. It isn't stupid that he's taken it, more
opportunistic.
> Moreover, it's completely unclear what he's going to do once
> he's elected and the rest of the world fails to volunteer
> their boys die in lieu of Americans---we could well end up
> with a draft, or more and more troops thrown at the problem.
Yes, but he has from now until the election to change his mind due to
new information. Or if he wins he can even change his mind later. "I
know this isn't what I said when I was running for office, but this is
what we need to do now." True we don't know what he intends -- maybe
he doesn't know himself yet -- but anything he told us would lose him
votes. The people against would be more against than the people for
would be for it.
> jonah:
> And he thinks we ought to have a health care system, as opposed to none.
> We do have a health care system. A hugely expensive one,
> and yet simply the best care available in the world, with
> the best research and development of new therapies. Measured
> in terms of gains in longevity and gains against kinds
> of disease, it's really amazing what is being achieved---
Traditionally gains in longevity have come from gains in wealth and
public health. Medical treatment hasn't prolonged health nearly as
much as less need for medical treatment.
> the 60 plusers are having bypass surgeries as routine
> as tonsilectomies.
This to you looks like an *improvement*? Wouldn't it be a whole lot
better if fewer 60+ers needed bypass surgery?
> I.e. we are getting better medicine for
> our increasing health costs. The problem is that there seems
> to be no market brakes on the thing---it already is socialized,
> just badly so.
Yes, instead of a government bureaucracy deciding that your surgery
will go on a waiting list until the government can afford it, we have
many redundant sets of insurance adjusters, and one of them decides
that you don't really need it or you aren't really entitled to it by
your particular insurance. If you have insurance.
Since there's a fundamental disconnect between the guys who increase
the premiums and the guys who decide which benefits you're not
entitled to, yes, there are no market brakes on it.
> jonah:
> I wish we had more criteria to choose.
> I still think Bush made a sincere command decision
> to pursue the Iraq war based on the intelligence he
> had available at the time. But he sold the thing on womd's,
> and he was wrong about that. It doesn't matter to me
> whether I think the outcome of the thing is ultimately
> going to be good or disastrous, I think there is a
> political price that needs to be paid for being wrong
> about what he wrong about. I just wish the hell I had
> some hopeful choice to vote for. I figure it that the fact we
> are going to end up with Kerry is Bush's biggest failure
> as President (just as Bush is basically Clinton's fault).
So you might blame Kerry indirectly on Clinton?
But then, I'd certainly blame Clinton on Bush Sr. How far does it go?
Can we work our way back and blame the whole mess on Lincoln or
somebody?
> I figure with Kerry, we are likely to see
<snip random disasters>
I don't know what to predict about him. For all I know he's a front
for the exact same guys Bush is a front for.
Paul Ilechko
> On Mon, 31 May 2004, Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
>
>>I still think Bush made a sincere command decision to pursue the Iraq
>>war based on the intelligence he had available at the time.
>
>
> You give the fool too much credit.
No, he gives an evil bastard just enough credit. Bush knew exactly what
he was doing, and he sure as hell wasn't looking for "weapons of mass
destruction".
G*rd*n
> ...
> How we pick candidates deserves at least as much attention as which
> candidate to vote for this time, and I don't see that it gets it at
> all. Smoke-filled rooms might get us candidates who look vaguely more
> electable, but what else would we be getting? I see no particular
> reason to think the kingmakers would be working for the public good.
But the public doesn't work for the Public Good, either.
Especially not when it gets in the voting booth.
To elect people who were going to work for the Public Good,
you'd have to trick the electorate. A lot of voting schemes
seem to come down to that. The American system, wherein the
least despised, least distrusted corporate bully wins, probably
reflects the spirit and desires of the American electorate
pretty well.
I understand that it is strange to think of people trusting
a proven liar and incompetent like George W. Bush, but he puts
on a good act of being a regular fellow, he seems like one of
the people, and that's all they've got. Maybe that's all they
want to have.
herothatdied
"David O'Bedlam" <thed...@shell.rawbw.com> wrote in message
news:2004053112...@shell.rawbw.com...
>
> What's up with that anyway? A web encyclopedia from the perspective of
> the U.S. Democratic Party. Of course its article on Third Parties says
> they're doomed. What two-partisan tweedledum tripe.
I'd say that it became obvious to anybody who was watching that the US gov
system was going to have a two-party equilibrium state sometime between
February 11 and February 17, 1801 and the nail went in the coffin in 1804.
Since then, if you're one who thinks that a third party can be successful
without subsuming one of the existing main two parties into it, thus
returning the system to its two-party equilibrium... you're in good company
with the Know-Nothings.
>
> As I said before, the U.S. Democratic Party does not derserve to call
> itself "leftist" or "progressive" or even "liberal": being slightly
> less neo-conservative than the Bush/Cheney crowd is so easy Goebbels
> did it standing on his metaphorical head.
There's a pretty wide range between Not Especially Progressive and Neo-Con,
thank you very much. Still, I think it's funny that the fundamentalist right
is starting to say the same things about the Republicans that you're saying
about Democrats. e.g. www.christianexodus.org:
"Christians have actively tried to return our entire land to its moral
foundation for more than 20 years. We can categorically say that absolutely
nothing has been achieved. If you disagree, consider this:
a.. Abortion continues against the wishes of many States
b.. Children may not pray in our schools
c.. The Bible is not welcome in schools except under strict FEDERAL
guidelines
d.. The 10 Commandments remain banned from public display
e.. Sodomy is now legal AND celebrated as "diversity" rather than
perversion
f.. Preaching Christianity will soon be outlawed as "hate speech"
g.. Gay marriage will be foisted upon us in the very near future
"All these atrocities continue in spite of the fact that we now have the
"right" people in places of power. Indeed, the occupant of the White House
is a professing Christian. The U.S. Attorney General is believed to be a
devout Christian. "Conservatives" control both Houses of Congress, and
Republican presidents appointed seven of the nine Supreme Court justices.
Christian activists placed the right party in power, but are we now
witnessing the return to moral and constitutional government that we have
demanded for so long?"
Are you absolutely sure there's no difference between Democrats and these
guys?
>
> The U.S. greens, by criticising their German cousin's selling out to
> get to play in the Big Boy's sandbox, barely maintains the right to
> use those words, and the Workers World Party/All Peoples Congress/
> A.N.S.W.E.R. lost it way back in 1956 when its Dear Leader Sam Marcy
> came out *in favor* of the USSR crushing the Hungarian "revolt". The
> fact is that, however the U.S. "Democratic" Party might spin it, we
> have no viable Left in this country because we don't deserve one.
>
In a democratic system, it would seem to me that wanting a political
philosophy and deserving it are one and the same.
> Nobody to the right of Nader can possibly be called leftist; Kucinich
> turned my stomach less than the others in this round of the Great Farce,
> but, besides working within the Democratic Party and accepting the shit
> that entails, he too is unelectable -- because the voters believe their
> Corperate Whore Pundits who tell them he is. (I can't think of a better
> argument *against* universal sufferage than *that*.)
>
I loved it when Kucinich said "I'm electable if you vote for me." Quite
right. It's hard to tell where the line was drawn, how many voted with
their guts and used "electability" as a rationale and how many really let
themselves be guided entirely by the Lieberman framed and media endorsed
electability question, but those second guessing meta-voters drive me up the
wall. - htd
smw
herothatdied wrote:
...
>
> I'd say that it became obvious to anybody who was watching that the US gov
> system was going to have a two-party equilibrium state sometime between
> February 11 and February 17, 1801 and the nail went in the coffin in 1804.
> Since then, if you're one who thinks that a third party can be successful
> without subsuming one of the existing main two parties into it, thus
> returning the system to its two-party equilibrium... you're in good company
> with the Know-Nothings.
Well, there's always the possibility of changing the winner-take-all to
proportional representation, making the US resemble a democracy of
sorts... well, okay, nevermind...
herothatdied
would be to put every state in play, and on anything other than
state-by-state change in the electoral college selection process it would
require a fundamental constitutional change. That's risky. Because it's
risky, if we may judge by historical precedent, it's probably not going to
get changed until there is incontrovertable evidence that the system itself
has failed.
smw
herothatdied wrote:
> "smw" <sm...@ameritech.net> wrote in message
> news:62Puc.551$25...@newssvr15.news.prodigy.com...
>
>>
>>herothatdied wrote:
>>
>>...
>>
>>>I'd say that it became obvious to anybody who was watching that the US
>
> gov
>
>>>system was going to have a two-party equilibrium state sometime between
>>>February 11 and February 17, 1801 and the nail went in the coffin in
>
> 1804.
>
>>>Since then, if you're one who thinks that a third party can be
>
> successful
>
>>>without subsuming one of the existing main two parties into it, thus
>>>returning the system to its two-party equilibrium... you're in good
>
> company
>
>>>with the Know-Nothings.
>>
>>Well, there's always the possibility of changing the winner-take-all to
>>proportional representation, making the US resemble a democracy of
>>sorts... well, okay, nevermind...
>>
>
> Sure, but the only thing that would do as regards the electoral college
Well, the electoral college has to go first, obviously. Nonsensical
thing that it is.
> would be to put every state in play, and on anything other than
> state-by-state change in the electoral college selection process it would
> require a fundamental constitutional change. That's risky.
Well, anything that can put Bush into power gotta be more risky than
constitutional change.
> Because it's
> risky, if we may judge by historical precedent, it's probably not going to
> get changed until there is incontrovertable evidence that the system itself
> has failed.
If current affairs don't count as evidence of failure, I don't know what
would.
But as I said, nevermind. Too much cathexis all around.
Michael S. Morris
Monday, the 31st of May, 2004
David O' wrote:
(Mike Morris, where'd YOU hear about it?)
I heard about it from the piece of propaganda you posted, David.
But, the point is, there are always goofy bills pending
in any legislative session. And I think a national service is
one that has been proposed and referred to committee every congress
(every two years). This one just looked so screwy that
it had to be "spin" coming from somewhere, and, as I said
looking up the details on thomas took me about 5 minutes,
once it occurred to me: Hey, I could do that! Thomas
is a web resource and tool, by the way, provided by the
Library of Congress that everyone ought to be familiar
with, 'cause you can type in any bill (HR 987654321 or S 123456789)
and it'll pop up with the text of the bill, the date of
its introduction, its dispensation, and it'll
give you a list of the sponsors. Unfortunately it did not
give me immediately the party of the sponsors, so I had to
go back and browse the directory of the Senate and House
of Representatives. And that took most of the time, because,
in the first place, it lists representatives alphabetically
under each beginning letter of last names, so I had to, for instance,
go to the list of A's to find Abercrombie and then back up and
look at C's to find Conyers. Like that. Extra complication
with John Lewis of Georgia, because there were I think maybe
three Lewises, only one a Democrat, so I had to back out of
that, go back to the House Bill and read the list again,
where it gives him as "Lewis of Georgia", which turned out
to be the Democrat of course. Also, umm, in the alphabetical
list in the directory it weirdly doesn't list the state, but actually
only names the city which is that representative's
congressional district. So, Stark on that list was given
as from "Fremont", and, though history tells me that is a
name strongly associated with California, I was unfamiliar
with where Fremont was, but if you actually click on the guy's
name, it is a link to a page with his DC contact info as well
as his home district.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
David
[...]
> > As I said before, the U.S. Democratic Party does not deserve to call
> > itself "leftist" or "progressive" or even "liberal": being slightly
> > less neo-conservative than the Bush/Cheney crowd is so easy Goebbels
> > did it standing on his metaphorical head.
> There's a pretty wide range between Not Especially Progressive and
> Neo-Con, thank you very much.
Yes, like there was a pretty wide range between the Mussolini's Fascists,
the Falange Espan~ola (which Franco considered "too leftist" and only kept
around because it was too much trouble to squish it completely) and the
Hitlerites. So the fuck what?
(By the way, U.S. neo-cons resemble Mussolini's bunch more than Franco's
or Hitler's: unlike Franco's they don't seem themselves to actually favor
the so-called Christian religion, especially not the Papist version, and
unlike the latter they don't seem to hold racism to be the highest good.)
The fact is that the Two Major Parties are more alike than not: they both
buy into the "capitalism equals democracy" crap, they both manipulate the
Masses with TV ads and silly Conventions while refusing to be more truly
responsive and responsible to those they supposedly represent; they both
side-line "dissidents" like McCain and Kucinich; they both accept as much
money from the same big corporations as they can possible get, and quash
those initiatives which would be harmful to their sponsors' interests....
Both parties are gutless hollow trojan-horse shills for the Fortune 500.
> Still, I think it's funny that the fundamentalist right is starting to
> say the same things about the Republicans that you're saying about
> Democrats. e.g. www.christianexodus.org:
[whoosh]
You mean they're saying the U.S. Republican Party ain't "liberal" and/or
"progressive" and/or "leftist" either? What a surprise!
Oh, I see. Your point is they too accuse "their" party of selling out and
betraying "their" people. Hey, they're probably right: I certainly don't
expect the Republican party to be any more honest and honorable than the
Democrats. Corporate whores will do that; it's what being a whore means.
As to their desire to form a State of their own, or at least to withdraw
from this one, I say go right ahead. I've long wished I could do the same,
provided I could find enough non-brainwashed Americans to fill a hot tub
let alone a Town Hall; hell, as I'm probably one of the few leftists on
Usenet who will maintain that the Confederate secessions were legal and
Constitutional, regardless of their motives for doing so, at least until
1866, i.e. until the Lincolnites went "Spurned Lover" all over the South,
I'd be perfectly happy to help them secede if they'll help us. I think
Rhode Island would do fine for a People's Democracy: no need to hack the
existing borders, as with the SF Bay Area idea.
[...]
> Are you absolutely sure there's no difference between Democrats and
> these [christianexodus.org] guys?
DID I SAY THAT? NO. I said that that there is a big difference between
the U.S. Democratic Party and an organization that practices Liberalism,
progressivism or leftism.
The difference between the Major Parties is that that Republicans spout
a lot of bullshit about "Patriotism", while the Democrats bullshit about
"Liberalism." When in power their actual policies ain't much different,
and Kerry -- the most right-wing Democrat who's sought the nomination
this year -- has publicly said the U.S. will not bug out of Iraq, i.e.
he too has endorsed the corporate-imperialist agenda and would send our
"troops" to kill and die to maintain it.
There is a vast difference between the christianexodus.org people and
the Two Major Parties -- i.e. instead of relentlessly cramming their
agenda down our throats, and instead of selling out their ideals to
the Corporate Dominion, they want to take their toys and play somewhere
else. Where I sit these make them rather preferable to either Tweedle.
It's a question of honor: a straightfoward fascist with principles is
preferable to a mealymouthed pseudoliberal who wants to get elected.
So the christianexodus.org set is as far from the Democrats as I am,
albeit in the other direction.
> > The U.S. greens, by criticising their German cousin's selling out to
> > get to play in the Big Boy's sandbox, barely maintains the right to
> > use those words, and the Workers World Party/All Peoples Congress/
> > A.N.S.W.E.R. lost it way back in 1956 when its Dear Leader Sam Marcy
> > came out *in favor* of the USSR crushing the Hungarian "revolt". The
> > fact is that, however the U.S. "Democratic" Party might spin it, we
> > have no viable Left in this country because we don't deserve one.
> In a democratic system, it would seem to me that wanting a political
> philosophy and deserving it are one and the same.
Too bad the U.S. does not and never did have a democratic system then,
huh. Haven't you heard? "This is a *republic*, not a democracy." Even
then, I'll refer you to what that eminent non-leftist Eisenhower said
about the "military-industrial complex."
So, like, if you want to debate with me about things I say, you'll do
well to try a bit harder to notice what I say.
Tautologically,
TheDavid
--
"A big disadvantage of living sewage treatment systems is that if
the house is empty, the sewage system starves to death." Wikipedia
...................................................................
(C) 2004 TheDavid^TM | David, P.O. Box 21403, Louisville, KY 40221
David
> Well, there's always the possibility of changing the winner-take-all
> to proportional representation, making the US resemble a democracy
> of sorts...
YES. If we're going to bleat about democracy, let's try to have one.
Perestroika in the USA!
D.
--
"A big disadvantage of living sewage treatment systems is that if
the house is empty, the sewage system starves to death." Wikipedia
...................................................................
(C) 2004 TheDavid^TM | David, P.O. Box 21403, Louisville, KY 40221
David
> David O' wrote:
>
> (Mike Morris, where'd YOU hear about it?)
>
>
> I heard about it from the piece of propaganda you posted, David.
There ya go: when I think of "Usenetters who try to stay informed
about [that kind of shit]" your name makes the off-the-top-of-my-
head short list. And this ploy to re-establish the draft was news
to you too.
Furthermore, in the rest of your post I deleted, you went into
detail about how hard a time you had checking the sources. Surely
if they want "*average* Americans" to understand the facts behind
the issues they won't make it so difficult for an "over-educated"
guy like you to get at them, eh?
D.
--
"A big disadvantage of living sewage treatment systems is that if
the house is empty, the sewage system starves to death." Wikipedia
...................................................................
(C) 2004 TheDavid^TM | David, P.O. Box 21403, Louisville, KY 40221
jonah thomas
> Michael S. Morris wrote:
>>David O' wrote:
>> (Mike Morris, where'd YOU hear about it?)
>>I heard about it from the piece of propaganda you posted, David.
> There ya go: when I think of "Usenetters who try to stay informed
> about [that kind of shit]" your name makes the off-the-top-of-my-
> head short list. And this ploy to re-establish the draft was news
> to you too.
But his claim is that it isn't news. There are truly lots of very
silly bills that legislators start up to please their voters, that
they have no intention of getting passed and that have no chance to
pass. The politician can go home and tell his supporters "See, I
started up a bill to do exactly what you want!" and the guys are
pleased even though it doesn't even get far enough to be ovewhelmingly
voted down.
He says there's a crank "restart the draft" bill every two years. I
wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't even be surprised if there's a UMS
bill almost every two years. "Our friends the israelis draft every
single teenager for two years, and it's good for them so wouldn't it
be good for us too?" We've been having that sort of idea come ever
since vietnam and it's never had any chance to pass.
Until now. Maybe Morris is wrong and this time it has a chance.
Unless there's something fundamentally wrong with the form of the
bills this time, all we need is another big terrorist event and maybe
that will be the excuse to pass these bills. Or if there's something
fundamentally wrong with these versions they'll have to start new ones
from scratch and get them through committee fast.
> Furthermore, in the rest of your post I deleted, you went into
> detail about how hard a time you had checking the sources. Surely
> if they want "*average* Americans" to understand the facts behind
> the issues they won't make it so difficult for an "over-educated"
> guy like you to get at them, eh?
He explained in general terms how you could do it too. His point was
that it wasn't hard at all. What *might* be hard is to read the
wording of the bill and tell how the US government would interpret it
if it passed. Sometimes those wordings don't mean what you'd
naturally think they would. First the administration gets to
interpret them the way it wants, and Congress can possibly clarify
what it meant if it wants to, and then the Supreme Court might decide
what the bill really meant. Like, they're going to judge on when it's
OK to hold people in jail indefinitely without charge, without trial,
without any communication with the outside world, etc. These are
questions that I'd have thought we had gotten settled a long time ago,
but they aren't settled any more.
smw
jonah thomas wrote:
...>
> Until now. Maybe Morris is wrong and this time it has a chance. Unless
> there's something fundamentally wrong with the form of the bills this
> time, all we need is another big terrorist event and maybe that will be
> the excuse to pass these bills.
That's an odd assumption. Everybody I know who supports a draft wants it
precisely to _stop_ the rhetoric of a "war against terror" that's waged
on the back of underpaid poor kids who enter the army to learn how to be
a cook or rack up college credits.
francis muir
want the women drafted and Nancy the LeftBehind wouldn't allow a vote on a
Bill that didn't.
jonah thomas
> ...>
I don't think the people you know who support a draft will have
anything to do with whether or not we get a draft.
We'll get a draft when we find out that we need a great big army that
we can't get by paying for it on the job market. What does it take to
persuade us that we need a great big army when we're the only
superpower? Whatever it takes to persuade Congress of that, is what
will happen before we have a draft.
G*rd*n
> ...>
> > Until now. Maybe Morris is wrong and this time it has a chance. Unless
> > there's something fundamentally wrong with the form of the bills this
> > time, all we need is another big terrorist event and maybe that will be
> > the excuse to pass these bills.
smw <sm...@ameritech.net>:
> That's an odd assumption. Everybody I know who supports a draft wants it
> precisely to _stop_ the rhetoric of a "war against terror" that's waged
> on the back of underpaid poor kids who enter the army to learn how to be
> a cook or rack up college credits.
They say you should be careful about what you ask for.
smw
jonah thomas wrote:
> smw wrote:
>
>> jonah thomas wrote:
>
>
>> ...>
>
>
>>> Until now. Maybe Morris is wrong and this time it has a chance.
>>> Unless there's something fundamentally wrong with the form of the
>>> bills this time, all we need is another big terrorist event and maybe
>>> that will be the excuse to pass these bills.
>
>
>> That's an odd assumption. Everybody I know who supports a draft wants
>> it precisely to _stop_ the rhetoric of a "war against terror" that's
>> waged on the back of underpaid poor kids who enter the army to learn
>> how to be a cook or rack up college credits.
>
>
> I don't think the people you know who support a draft will have anything
> to do with whether or not we get a draft.
Apart from the fact that the people I know are far more likely to vote
and call their congresspeople and generally speak up, I think you really
are missing the point of the current bring-back-the-draft discussion.
Possibly, you're still mired in the Vietnam era draft discussion. This
here is an entirely different animal.
> We'll get a draft when we find out that we need a great big army that we
> can't get by paying for it on the job market.
Can we see the numbers here? What precisely makes you think a national
draft is cheap?
> What does it take to
> persuade us that we need a great big army when we're the only
> superpower? Whatever it takes to persuade Congress of that, is what
> will happen before we have a draft.
Terrorist attacks don't necessitate "great big armies," traditional wars
do. Really, think this through a bit more.
smw
G*rd*n wrote:
> jonah thomas wrote:
>
>>...>
>>
>>>Until now. Maybe Morris is wrong and this time it has a chance. Unless
>>>there's something fundamentally wrong with the form of the bills this
>>>time, all we need is another big terrorist event and maybe that will be
>>>the excuse to pass these bills.
>
>
> smw <sm...@ameritech.net>:
>
>>That's an odd assumption. Everybody I know who supports a draft wants it
>>precisely to _stop_ the rhetoric of a "war against terror" that's waged
>>on the back of underpaid poor kids who enter the army to learn how to be
>>a cook or rack up college credits.
>
>
>
> They say you should be careful about what you ask for.
They do, don't they. I grew up in a country with a universal male draft,
with conscientious objection becoming pretty easy over time. Apart
from the obvious injustice of drafting only the guys, in retrospect, it
doesn't look so bad. It's hard to tell how much a factor it was in
keeping Germany out of the many wars it was invited to, of course. But I
agree with what I take to be your point -- it might become a nasty
animal in the US, giving current imperial ambitions.
Michael S. Morris
Tuesday, the 1st of June, 2004
David O':
(Mike Morris, where'd YOU hear about it?)
I said:
I heard about it from the piece of propaganda you posted, David.
David O':
There ya go: when I think of "Usenetters who try to stay informed
about [that kind of shit]" your name makes the off-the-top-of-my-
head short list.
David, I do not watch television, and when it comes to newspapers,
I'll scan the headlines, both in print and online. For real analysis
about the stuff that isn't ephemeral enough to waste my time
thinking about, I trust NPR and The New Republic.
David O':
And this ploy to re-establish the draft was news
to you too.
You still don't get it. It isn't "a ploy to re-establish
the draft". It's a perennial proposal for national service
that probably comes up every Congress and gets turfed to committee
every Congress. And what it is a ploy for is a ploy by some
mendacious Democrats to try and spin as "the Amdinistration is
secretly planning to institute a draft" pre-election. What it
is is not news, but a political lie being circulated in the
hopes of gulling somebody.
David O':
Furthermore, in the rest of your post I deleted, you went into
detail about how hard a time you had checking the sources. Surely
if they want "*average* Americans" to understand the facts behind
the issues they won't make it so difficult for an "over-educated"
guy like you to get at them, eh?
As I said, it took me 5 minutes to go and check the facts of the
thing to expose what you posted for the anti-Bush propaganda that
it was. I mean, I agree with you that somebody was hoping to gull
some voters about it, but that somebody was an anti-Bush liar,
not a pro-Bush conspirator trying to hide from voters what it is
they were doing on the sly.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
jonah thomas
When we get a draft it will be because we believe our national
survival depends on it, and never mind the side effects. We will
draft women because we won't put up with people who want to hold back
from doing everything it takes to win.
It might change our demographics. Some of our ethnic groups are
reproducing so slowly that they aren't replacing themselves. But
american military women have been getting pregnant at a rate of
somewhere between 10% and 17% a year, though the military mostly
doesn't release statistics on that. One report had it that at one
time 51% of single airforce women and 48% of single navy women in
Iceland were pregnant.
A draft might have a revitalizing effect on the population.
jonah thomas
> jonah thomas wrote:
>> smw wrote:
>>> jonah thomas wrote:
>>> ...>
>>>> Until now. Maybe Morris is wrong and this time it has a chance.
>>>> Unless there's something fundamentally wrong with the form of the
>>>> bills this time, all we need is another big terrorist event and
>>>> maybe that will be the excuse to pass these bills.
>>> That's an odd assumption. Everybody I know who supports a draft wants
>>> it precisely to _stop_ the rhetoric of a "war against terror" that's
>>> waged on the back of underpaid poor kids who enter the army to learn
>>> how to be a cook or rack up college credits.
>> I don't think the people you know who support a draft will have
>> anything to do with whether or not we get a draft.
> Apart from the fact that the people I know are far more likely to vote
> and call their congresspeople and generally speak up,
Which is likely to be irrelevant if the case actually comes up....
> I think you really
> are missing the point of the current bring-back-the-draft discussion.
> Possibly, you're still mired in the Vietnam era draft discussion. This
> here is an entirely different animal.
It doesn't matter what the people you're talking about think. Those
are the sort of people that politicians will make a bill for that will
inevitably die in committee. Morris has that part pegged.
>> We'll get a draft when we find out that we need a great big army that
>> we can't get by paying for it on the job market.
> Can we see the numbers here? What precisely makes you think a national
> draft is cheap?
A great big drafted army is cheaper than a great big volunteer army
because you can pay draftees peanuts and you can't pay volunteers
peanuts and get that many volunteers.
>> What does it take to persuade us that we need a great big army when
>> we're the only superpower? Whatever it takes to persuade Congress of
>> that, is what will happen before we have a draft.
> Terrorist attacks don't necessitate "great big armies," traditional wars
> do. Really, think this through a bit more.
And great big occupations do. And it doesn't matter whether a
hypothetical theoretical "war on terror", supposing we actually decide
to do such a thing for real, would need big armies. What matters is
whether congress (and to a lesser extent the public) gets convinced
that it would help.
htd
>
> jonah thomas wrote:
> > smw wrote:
> >
> >> jonah thomas wrote:
> >
> >>> Until now. Maybe Morris is wrong and this time it has a chance.
> >>> Unless there's something fundamentally wrong with the form of the
> >>> bills this time, all we need is another big terrorist event and maybe
> >>> that will be the excuse to pass these bills.
> >
> >> That's an odd assumption. Everybody I know who supports a draft wants
> >> it precisely to _stop_ the rhetoric of a "war against terror" that's
> >> waged on the back of underpaid poor kids who enter the army to learn
> >> how to be a cook or rack up college credits.
Except they're not considering the way that Rumsfeld is restructuring the
Army. After Vietnam a lot of the quirky specialty MOS's were farmed out
into guard units so that any new wars that required a major mobilization
would have to pull folks out of their civilian lives, over which a bigger
stink would presumably get made than over deployment of the regular army.
Rumsfeld declared from day 1 that he wanted to do away with that, and
they've been consolidating and privatizing like mad. They've still got the
guard deployed, but I think that when you see the draft reinstituted (it's
looking more and more like Bush & Co have plans already in place to launch
it and are scraping every available other resource rather than a draft for
the present) you're going to see a liberal college deferment program, lots
of economically essential deferments, etc. Rove won't let anything mess
with the base.
> >
> > I don't think the people you know who support a draft will have anything
> > to do with whether or not we get a draft.
>
> Apart from the fact that the people I know are far more likely to vote
> and call their congresspeople and generally speak up, I think you really
> are missing the point of the current bring-back-the-draft discussion.
> Possibly, you're still mired in the Vietnam era draft discussion. This
> here is an entirely different animal.
Last year I was among the scoffers at the idea that we were heading into a
conscription era, but reports started popping up about nine months ago about
exceptional attention being given to filling vacancies on draft boards.
What's kind of funny about the "National Service Act" or whatever it is root
of this discussion is that it's not clear to me that any act of Congress is
necessary to reinstitute the draft. If there wasn't already an apparatus in
place then it would certainly be within the Congressional prerogative, but
I'm willing to bet that Gonzales has a brief ready to go on how, "in a post
9/11 paradigm" or some other such nonsense, only the president's authority
is needed to proceed.
>
> > We'll get a draft when we find out that we need a great big army that we
> > can't get by paying for it on the job market.
>
> Can we see the numbers here? What precisely makes you think a national
> draft is cheap?
>
What makes anybody think that in the Bush / "Reagan proved that deficits
don't matter" Cheney administration costs are relevant at all? We're
already indirectly funding the largest private army in the world, and it is
unconscionable that while our national army is generally underpaid those
Soldier of Fortune Halliburton security forces are collecting six figures a
year. They're privatizing everything over there, all the mess halls,
transportation, everything they can and shifting everybody they can to
combat operations, and the kickbacks are gi-normous
(http://smh.com.au/articles/2004/05/20/1085028468241.html?from=storylhs).
Meanwhile, the regular army is being, for lack of a better word, raped.
Rumsfeld included IRR in his list of deployables when he testified to
Congress and a lot of those IRR guys have been contacted (I haven't heard of
any actually called up yet, though some did receive "report" notices, then
got corrections), we are pulling units out of Afghanistan and sending them
to Iraq, Opp Forces are being sent to Iraq (those are the guys who train
other guys to fight, which I find just a tad worrisome) and tours of duty in
Iraq are now at 18 months. That's 18 months for tours beginning now, not
just for the poor sods who've been over 18 months already.
Frankly, this "War on Terror" is scaring me to death. - htd
David
[...]
> But his claim is that it isn't news. There are truly lots of very
> silly bills that legislators start up to please their voters, that
> they have no intention of getting passed and that have no chance to
> pass. The politician can go home and tell his supporters "See, I
> started up a bill to do exactly what you want!" and the guys are
> pleased even though it doesn't even get far enough to be ovewhelmingly
> voted down.
> He says there's a crank "restart the draft" bill every two years. I
> wouldn't be surprised.
That's news to me anyway. As I think it would be to most people who
don't go to all the trouble involved in tracking down ever single bill.
[...]
> > Furthermore, in the rest of your post I deleted, you went into
> > detail about how hard a time you had checking the sources. Surely
> > if they want "*average* Americans" to understand the facts behind
> > the issues they won't make it so difficult for an "over-educated"
> > guy like you to get at them, eh?
>
> He explained in general terms how you could do it too. His point was
> that it wasn't hard at all.
What he said:
> > > ...as I said looking up the details on thomas took me about
> > > 5 minutes, once it occurred to me: Hey, I could do that!
What occurs to me: "What's 'Thomas'?"
(So Jonah, how doers a Tayyibi Ismaili differ from a Satpanthi?
> > > Thomas is a web resource and tool, by the way, provided by the
> > > Library of Congress that everyone ought to be familiar with,
AH.
> > > 'cause you can type in any bill (HR 987654321 or S 123456789)
> > > and it'll pop up with the text of the bill, the date of
> > > its introduction, its dispensation, and it'll give you a list
> > > of the sponsors.
Assuming you ALREADY know the alphanumeric designation of the bill.
Now Jonah: do YOU think a lot of Americans know how to keep track of
every single bill presented each year? I suppose it's easy once you
know where to look, but still. Is there a list online of the alpha-
numeric designations of the bills that have been presented, and if
so how often is it updated?
Oh wow, hold on, I'm slapping myself for forgetting to see if there
even is a Congressional Record website. So to answer my own question,
yes, there IS a way to track that shit:
http://www.gpoaccess.gov/bills/index.html
> > > Unfortunately it did not give me immediately the party of the
> > > sponsors, so I had to go back and browse the directory of the
> > > Senate and House of Representatives. And that took most of the
> > > time, because, in the first place, it lists representatives
> > > alphabetically under each beginning letter of last names, so I
> > > had to, for instance, go to the list of A's to find Abercrombie
> > > and then back up and look at C's to find Conyers. Like that.
And blah blah blah.
My point, you see, is not that it's not easy if you know how -- I've
heard programming in Perl is like that -- but simply that this ain't
common knowledge. Nor is it like "How long do I boil a 3-minute egg?"
Mike further said:
> > > What *might* be hard is to read the wording of the bill and
> > > tell how the US government would interpret it if it passed.
> > > Sometimes those wordings don't mean what you'd naturally think
> > > they would. First the administration gets to interpret them the
> > > way it wants, and Congress can possibly clarify what it meant if
> > > it wants to, and then the Supreme Court might decide what the bill
> > > really meant. Like, they're going to judge on when it's OK to hold
> > > people in jail indefinitely without charge, without trial, without
> > > any communication with the outside world, etc. These are questions
> > > that I'd have thought we had gotten settled a long time ago, but
> > > they aren't settled any more.
(So Jonah, why is Daudi Bohra Islam closer to Sunnism than to Khojaism?)
David
> Everybody I know who supports a draft wants it precisely to _stop_ the
> rhetoric of a "war against terror" that's waged on the back of underpaid
> poor kids who enter the army to learn how to be a cook or rack up
> college credits.
I'm so glad I don't know anybody who supports a draft, I'd have to slap
him/her. Don't they realize that a draft would be even worse, plucking
up poor kids who have no interest at all in joining the army and making
them learn how to kill colored kids overseas?
A quick, tangentially-related question: are Arabs "White" to Americans?
That is, do you think that most Americans (and keep in mind that most of
us USans are in fact counted as "White" in the census) have been taught
(by the White-controlled U.S. media) to regard Arabs as just as White as
George W. Bush? And, keeping in mind that the USA also has a "Christian
majority" -- and that, like most ("White") Americans are conditioned to
picture "your typical American" as "White", we're also taught to picture
most Christians as "White" (as in "What color is a savage?") -- do you
think most "White" American Christians would expect to be able to tell
an Arab Christian from an Arab Muslim by their skin complexions alone?
("What?" I can hear 'em say, "Did he say there are Arab CHRISTIANS?")
One big factor that made selling the "War on Terror" easier was that
the "terrorists" are pictured as *NON-WHITE* as well as non-Christian:
witness that one most common photo of Osama Bin Laden I keep seeing,
that shows him with black hair, black eyes, "swarthy" medium-brown skin
(darker than our "Black" Secretary of State Colin Powell), a big *wide*
nose and thick "Negroid" lips. Would Osama Bin Laden, and everything
and eveyone that can be said to be "linked with al Qaeda", be as easy
to demonize if he were a blue-eyed blond?
Another quick question: what "color" are the Serbs? Were they shown as
"White" in Clinton's NATO aggression? And why was it so hard to fire up
most Americans to go to war against Nazi Germany (a White country), but
so easy to get 'em into WW2 against the "slant-eyed Japs" (and, almost
coincidentally, their European Axis partners, a task which Hitler for
some odd reason made easier by declaring war against the U.S. first)?
So: as in the last draft, what'd happen is a bunch of poor kids -- of
all "races", but still disproportionately "non-White" -- will be made
to go overseas to kill, conquer and rob "colored" people. This is yet
another reason why American "liberals", "progressives" and "leftists"
(like your draft-favoring friends) have shit for brains and don't in
fact deserve to claim those labels any more than the German Greens.
Words have meanings, and this draft for conquest won't be "leftist"
any more than Napolean's was. (I anticipate Mr. Morris claiming that
Napolean was a "leftist" like Hitler; do YOU see Nappy as "leftist"?)
As the twerps on alt.peeves are fond of putting shit, someone so warped
and vapid that they claim re-instituting the draft is a "*progressive*"
measure should be castrated so they don't pollute our gene pool further.
Or in your case, Teufelprofessor Weineck, sent back where you came from.
David
Oh come on, can you seriously picture a non-negligible number of American
young women being gung-ho for getting drafted? That will founder on issues
of practicality: getting drafted might mean having to go to war, and that
would make it hard to keep their six-inch fake fingernails glued on.
Your average American chick would rather be Jessica Simpson on TV than
Signourney Weaver in "Aliens". Those that wouldn't, like that torturing
bitch who gave hillbilly women a metaphorical black eye, are welcome to
join up voluntarily already.
David
> jonah thomas wrote:
> >> Everybody I know who supports a draft wants it precisely to _stop_
> >> the rhetoric of a "war against terror" that's waged on the back of
> >> underpaid poor kids who enter the army to learn how to be a cook or
> >> rack up college credits.
> > I don't think the people you know who support a draft will have anything
> > to do with whether or not we get a draft.
>
> Apart from the fact that the people I know are far more likely to vote
> and call their congresspeople and generally speak up, I think you really
> are missing the point of the current bring-back-the-draft discussion.
> Possibly, you're still mired in the Vietnam era draft discussion. This
> here is an entirely different animal.
That's what YOU think.
> > We'll get a draft when we find out that we need a great big army that we
> > can't get by paying for it on the job market.
>
> Can we see the numbers here? What precisely makes you think a national
> draft is cheap?
Who says it has to be cheap? The issue is that the U.S. could not for any
price get enough people to volunteer to go overseas and risk being burned
alive in RPG attacks on their Humvees, so they must be *forced* to.
> > What does it take to persuade us that we need a great big army when
> > we're the only superpower? Whatever it takes to persuade Congress of
> > that, is what will happen before we have a draft.
> Terrorist attacks don't necessitate "great big armies," traditional
> wars do.
HA. That's really dizzy of you Silke. Please tell me all about Saddam's
al-Qaida buddies pointing out Iraqi stocks of WMDs, okay? Or have you
forgotten that the conquest of Iraq was sold as *anti-terrorist* -- as
revenge for "9/11" and prevention of further such "cowardly" attacks?
> Really, think this through a bit more.
Rich coming from you. You couldn't think your way *into* a paper bag.
David
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Michael S. Morris wrote:
> David O':
>
> There ya go: when I think of "Usenetters who try to stay informed
> about [that kind of shit]" your name makes the off-the-top-of-my-
> head short list.
>
> David, I do not watch television, and when it comes to newspapers,
> I'll scan the headlines, both in print and online.
So I was wrong: you're not well-informed about current events....
> For real analysis about the stuff that isn't ephemeral enough to
> waste my time thinking about, I trust NPR and The New Republic.
...So when you go about something that's (coincidentally?) been in
the news all you're doing is regurgitating what second-hand tripe.
So I was wrong to think of you as a smart guy who kept up on things
and thought about stuff all by yourself. No wonder then why you so
often sound like you don't know what you're talking about: you don't!
G*rd*n
> >>...>
> >>
> >>>Until now. Maybe Morris is wrong and this time it has a chance. Unless
> >>>there's something fundamentally wrong with the form of the bills this
> >>>time, all we need is another big terrorist event and maybe that will be
> >>>the excuse to pass these bills.
smw <sm...@ameritech.net>:
> >>That's an odd assumption. Everybody I know who supports a draft wants it
> >>precisely to _stop_ the rhetoric of a "war against terror" that's waged
> >>on the back of underpaid poor kids who enter the army to learn how to be
> >>a cook or rack up college credits.
G*rd*n wrote:
> > They say you should be careful about what you ask for.
smw <sm...@ameritech.net>:
> They do, don't they. I grew up in a country with a universal male draft,
> with conscientious objection becoming pretty easy over time. Apart
> from the obvious injustice of drafting only the guys, in retrospect, it
> doesn't look so bad. It's hard to tell how much a factor it was in
> keeping Germany out of the many wars it was invited to, of course. But I
> agree with what I take to be your point -- it might become a nasty
> animal in the US, giving current imperial ambitions.
I guess I had two points. One was that if G. W. Bush had a
larger military to command, "we" would be at war in more
countries. The fact that things did not go well enough in
Iraq to allow troops to be sent elsewhere is, I think, the
main reason "we" are not now also at war in Syria and Iran.
I will pass over the evidence for this guess, with which the
Net and the mass media are all too replete.
The other point was more mystical. I remember the ancient
fairy tales. A draft is a method of kidnapping people and
sending them off to be coerced, terrorized and possibly killed;
it is, therefore, evil (in my sight, anyway), regardless of
what tricks one may think one can play with it. Those who
ask for evil in the old stories generally come to a bad end.
(Sometimes the end is so grotesquely bad as to be quite
entertaining, at least to bystanders at a safe distance; I
would prefer to go to the movies for my entertainment,
however.)
smw
G*rd*n wrote:
...
>
> The other point was more mystical. I remember the ancient
> fairy tales. A draft is a method of kidnapping people and
> sending them off to be coerced, terrorized and possibly killed;
> it is, therefore, evil (in my sight, anyway), regardless of
> what tricks one may think one can play with it.
I used to agree with that, and I still might -- I'm very ambivalent at
this point. The question is, I suppose, whether we could hold, as a
basic assumption, that a country of the US's nature needs an army to
begin with. If the answer is yes, then a universal draft may well be
less evil than the current system which in practice, if not in theory,
cynically exploits both the poor and the mentally ill. Certainly, it
does not coerce its victims with overt force, and you could argue, for
every single case, that nobody was coerced at all. But as a system, it's
highly coercive, and disgusting, as well.
The idea behind a universal draft, to get beyond the mystical back or
beyond to the practical, is that it would make wars harder to fight,
since people, in general, object to being "coerced, terrorized and
possibly killed." With a universal draft, the objecting voices have a
chance to be heard.
> Those who
> ask for evil in the old stories generally come to a bad end.
> (Sometimes the end is so grotesquely bad as to be quite
> entertaining, at least to bystanders at a safe distance; I
> would prefer to go to the movies for my entertainment,
> however.)
Alas, in the old stories, those who draft soliders generally come to a
good end. If the princess (andherfather) so chooses, that is.
Richard Harter
wrote:
>A great big drafted army is cheaper than a great big volunteer army
>because you can pay draftees peanuts and you can't pay volunteers
>peanuts and get that many volunteers.
I have a modest proposal for reducing for the cost of a large army;
revive the tradition of offering people a choice between going to
prison and joining the army. Currently, or so I have heard, one in 75
US males is in prison. Put them in the army and, voila, we have two
million extra troops. What is more, in a proper sort of army, it
costs less to support troops than it does to incarcerate them.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty
loses interest in students. - John Ciardi
smw
Richard Harter wrote:
> On Tue, 01 Jun 2004 11:17:45 -0400, jonah thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net>
> wrote:
>
>
>
>>A great big drafted army is cheaper than a great big volunteer army
>>because you can pay draftees peanuts and you can't pay volunteers
>>peanuts and get that many volunteers.
>
>
> I have a modest proposal for reducing for the cost of a large army;
> revive the tradition of offering people a choice between going to
> prison and joining the army. Currently, or so I have heard, one in 75
> US males is in prison. Put them in the army and, voila, we have two
> million extra troops. What is more, in a proper sort of army, it
> costs less to support troops than it does to incarcerate them.
Seeing recent reports of US army conduct, this proposal has a beautiful
symmetry to it.
Michael S. Morris
Tuesday, the 1st of June, 2004
David O':
There ya go: when I think of "Usenetters who try to stay informed
about [that kind of shit]" your name makes the off-the-top-of-my-
head short list.
I said:
David, I do not watch television, and when it comes to newspapers,
I'll scan the headlines, both in print and online.
David O':
So I was wrong: you're not well-informed about current events....
Actually, I think NPR is wonderful on current events, and
The New Republic is great for analysis and details. What
I refuse to do, however, is devote brain cells to stupid
ephemera, such as the alarmist thing you posted.
I said:
For real analysis about the stuff that isn't ephemeral enough to
waste my time thinking about, I trust NPR and The New Republic.
David O':
...So when you go about something that's (coincidentally?) been in
the news all you're doing is regurgitating what second-hand tripe.
David, you have zero call to be trying that crap on me at present,
when *you* were the one gullible enough apparently to believe the
Bush Administration is in the process if instituting a draft, when
in fact it's Democrats who introduced the bill two years ago and
and Republicans who shunted it off to committee. I mean, after such
a complete demonstration of your political naivete compared to my
political horse-sense, you simply are not the one to be calling me
uninformed here.
David O':
So I was wrong to think of you as a smart guy who kept up on things
and thought about stuff all by yourself. No wonder then why you so
often sound like you don't know what you're talking about: you don't!
No doubt this is often the case. However, in the present instance,
you seem to be the one who regurgitated propaganda without
thinking about it, and I seem to be the one (I mean there were
more obviously than just me) who had the sense enough to know
what you were dishing out was nonsense, and who had the gumption
and know-how for calling you on it.
As for your claim not to know what "thomas" is, I'm dumbfounded
after I told you what it is and how to use it.1 "thomas" is a
legislative search engine provided by the Library of Congress
which is named after Thomas Jefferson and which allows you to
pop in "HR 123456789" and read that bill and find out who its
sponsors are and what happened to it.
Umm, the Library of Congress website is
<http://lcweb.loc.gov/homepage/lchp.html>.
And you can link to thomas from there or go directly to
<http://thomas.loc.gov/>.
It's simply one of the really great information sources
on the web. And there are great links to the other branches
of government, as well as the U.S. Code, which, yes, you
don't have to be a legal eagle to go and read for yourself.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
smw
Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> And you can link to thomas from there or go directly to
> <http://thomas.loc.gov/>.
>
> It's simply one of the really great information sources
> on the web. And there are great links to the other branches
> of government, as well as the U.S. Code, which, yes, you
> don't have to be a legal eagle to go and read for yourself.
Thanks, Mike! I'm sure you know about constitution.org, but if not,
another great resource (go straight to their library of online classics
in political philosophy). Searchable via google site: only, but fabulous.
Paul Ilechko
For every current soldier sent to jail, release ten drug offenders to
replace him or her ?
Paul Ilechko
>
> I guess I had two points. One was that if G. W. Bush had a
> larger military to command, "we" would be at war in more
> countries.
Surely the whole idea of the draft is to strengthen anti-war resistance,
not create a bigger army for Bush. Plus Bush only has a few months left
in office anyway.
Paul Ilechko
> On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, smw wrote:
>
>
>>Everybody I know who supports a draft wants it precisely to _stop_ the
>>rhetoric of a "war against terror" that's waged on the back of underpaid
>>poor kids who enter the army to learn how to be a cook or rack up
>>college credits.
>
>
> I'm so glad I don't know anybody who supports a draft, I'd have to slap
> him/her. Don't they realize that a draft would be even worse, plucking
> up poor kids who have no interest at all in joining the army and making
> them learn how to kill colored kids overseas?
David, you have it bass-ackwards. It's only the poor kids who fight now
- as soon as the draft starts pulling in rich kids, you're getting to
hear the anti-war volume increase by 1000 decibels.
smw
Paul Ilechko wrote:
David is entirely out of his depth in this discussion, but hey...
Anyway, only a truly universal draft would guarantee the desired effect,
I think.
jonah thomas
> jonah thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net> wrote:
>>A great big drafted army is cheaper than a great big volunteer army
>>because you can pay draftees peanuts and you can't pay volunteers
>>peanuts and get that many volunteers.
> I have a modest proposal for reducing for the cost of a large army;
> revive the tradition of offering people a choice between going to
> prison and joining the army. Currently, or so I have heard, one in 75
> US males is in prison. Put them in the army and, voila, we have two
> million extra troops. What is more, in a proper sort of army, it
> costs less to support troops than it does to incarcerate them.
This looks like another example of forgetting the lessons from
vietnam. You're in a lot of company in that, lots of people say that
vietnam was a long time ago and it has nothing to teach us about the
modern world.
I knew several people who went to vietnam to avoid jail sentences for
drug offenses. Somehow the druggee soldiers in vietnam introduced
drugs to most of the other soldiers. We might have been better off
without them. And of course a lot of the other criminals were
discipline problems of one sort or another. I suspect but can't prove
that a disproportionate fraction of the fragging incidents came from
excons. And of course there was the theft. Theft is normal in the
army, whoever needs stuff naturally takes it from other units if they
can get away with it -- better that the other unit need it and not
have it than your unit. But there was too much private theft, and
theft from civilians etc. Then there were the gangs, some of the
black youth gangs survived intact and went around trying to terrorize
soldiers (and of course civilians).
All in all, we'd need a more effective method of brainwashing than our
current basic training before we could incorporate large numbers of
convicted criminals into the military. It might work to recruit
directly out of reform schools, but I think adult criminals might tend
to be too set in their ways.
jonah thomas
> G*rd*n wrote:
>> The other point was more mystical. I remember the ancient
>> fairy tales. A draft is a method of kidnapping people and
>> sending them off to be coerced, terrorized and possibly killed;
>> it is, therefore, evil (in my sight, anyway), regardless of
>> what tricks one may think one can play with it.
> I used to agree with that, and I still might -- I'm very ambivalent at
> this point. The question is, I suppose, whether we could hold, as a
> basic assumption, that a country of the US's nature needs an army to
> begin with.
We used to strongly believe that the USA did not need a standing army.
I say that to protect the US borders, we mostly don't need a
standing army now. (If we depended mainly on reserves, we would need
to send some of them to alaska each winter, to learn how to fight there.)
We decided we needed a standing army so we could stop the communist
russians from invading western europe, and then to fight international
communism around the world, and when the communists and the russians
didn't look like such a threat, by that time we had so much invested
in it that we looked hard for another enemy. The chinese are our
obvious next enemy but they're too tough. The EU won't do, we do too
much trade with them and they aren't willing to stand up to us and be
the enemy. International terrorism doesn't seem plausible, but
somehow they're treating it as a plausible enemy anyway. I dunno.
If the answer is yes, then a universal draft may well be
> less evil than the current system which in practice, if not in theory,
> cynically exploits both the poor and the mentally ill. Certainly, it
> does not coerce its victims with overt force, and you could argue, for
> every single case, that nobody was coerced at all. But as a system, it's
> highly coercive, and disgusting, as well.
What good is an army that doesn't do coercion? Even if you somehow
had an army that was organised by ad hoc committees or something,
still the whole point of an army is to coerce the army's enemies.
> The idea behind a universal draft, to get beyond the mystical back
> or beyond to the practical, is that it would make wars harder to fight,
> since people, in general, object to being "coerced, terrorized and
> possibly killed." With a universal draft, the objecting voices have a
> chance to be heard.
?? How would that make it *harder* to fight? You'd already have the
big army mobilised. I guess if they didn't like the war they were
sent to, sometime within the next 4 years they could vote against the
president who sent them there.
jonah thomas
> jonah thomas wrote to me of Mike Morris in context:
>>He says there's a crank "restart the draft" bill every two years. I
>>wouldn't be surprised.
> That's news to me anyway. As I think it would be to most people who
> don't go to all the trouble involved in tracking down ever single bill.
Yes. So the question is whether this is just another crank bill, or
whether it's a conspiracy. I can't tell from context, it could go
either way.
And there's htd's point that they don't actually need Congress to pass
another bill. All they need is the money to pay for maintaining the
organizational structures that are already in place.
Htd makes a series of good points. Morris could be right in detail --
these particular bills could be business as usual that some alarmists
have blown out of proportion -- and still there could be firm,
completely-decided-in-all-details, but unannounced plans to start up
the draft or a UMS sometime after January.
> My point, you see, is not that it's not easy if you know how -- I've
> heard programming in Perl is like that -- but simply that this ain't
> common knowledge. Nor is it like "How long do I boil a 3-minute egg?"
Yes. I learned it in 5 minutes once when I needed to, and forgot all
about it until Mike mentioned it. If regular voters can't figure that
much out about legislation they care about, how much input should they
have in their government?
jonah thomas
> David wrote:
>> I'm so glad I don't know anybody who supports a draft, I'd have to slap
>> him/her. Don't they realize that a draft would be even worse, plucking
>> up poor kids who have no interest at all in joining the army and making
>> them learn how to kill colored kids overseas?
> David, you have it bass-ackwards. It's only the poor kids who fight now
> - as soon as the draft starts pulling in rich kids, you're getting to
> hear the anti-war volume increase by 1000 decibels.
In theory, if any significant number of people went to prison for
white-collar crime we'd get the prison-reform volume increased by 1000
decibels. But in practice we have "country-club" prisons for the rich
criminals.
The same people who can pull strings to get their kids into
prestigious schools could pull strings to keep their kids out of a
draft. And if we had a universal draft, they could pull strings to
get their kids "country-club" duties.
jonah thomas
> Paul Ilechko wrote:
>> David, you have it bass-ackwards. It's only the poor kids who fight
>> now - as soon as the draft starts pulling in rich kids, you're getting
>> to hear the anti-war volume increase by 1000 decibels.
> David is entirely out of his depth in this discussion, but hey...
> Anyway, only a truly universal draft would guarantee the desired effect,
> I think.
Not even that. What might work would be to give all the
universal-draftees randomly-assigned names and give them no contact
with their families etc until they get out. A million warm bodies go
into the system, get assigned tasks anonymously based on military
need, and their families find out what happened to them when they die
or get released.
But if nobody is allowed to track the rich kids then nobody is allowed
to check whether the rich kids are actually being illegally tracked,
so ... that fails too.
G*rd*n
> > I guess I had two points. One was that if G. W. Bush had a
> > larger military to command, "we" would be at war in more
> > countries.
Paul Ilechko <pilechk...@patmedia.net>:
> Surely the whole idea of the draft is to strengthen anti-war resistance,
> not create a bigger army for Bush. Plus Bush only has a few months left
> in office anyway.
The point of the fairy tales was, one tries to do good,
or at least do well, by doing evil. But it comes out badly.
At the Devil's supper, one's spoon is never long enough.
I don't know how we can tell how much longer Bush will be in
office. Although he has many weaknesses and deficits, his
official opponent seems to be doing his best to throw the
election, and might succeed. In any case, the opponent has
already firmly signed on to the war and imperialism, telling
those who don't like these things to "get over it", so I think
we must expect more of the same, though carried on with a
different style, depending on whatever resources, taxed or
grafted or drafted, the commander-in-chief can seize for the
purpose.
smw
jonah thomas wrote:
> smw wrote:
...
>> The idea behind a universal draft, to get beyond the mystical back
>> or beyond to the practical, is that it would make wars harder to
>> fight, since people, in general, object to being "coerced, terrorized
>> and possibly killed." With a universal draft, the objecting voices
>> have a chance to be heard.
>
>
> ?? How would that make it *harder* to fight? You'd already have the
> big army mobilised. I guess if they didn't like the war they were sent
> to, sometime within the next 4 years they could vote against the
> president who sent them there.
What's up, Jonah? This is really simple. Draft the upper middle class
kids to fight in Iraq, and voila, no more Iraq war.
smw
jonah thomas wrote:
> Paul Ilechko wrote:
>
>> David wrote:
>
>
>>> I'm so glad I don't know anybody who supports a draft, I'd have to slap
>>> him/her. Don't they realize that a draft would be even worse, plucking
>>> up poor kids who have no interest at all in joining the army and making
>>> them learn how to kill colored kids overseas?
>
>
>> David, you have it bass-ackwards. It's only the poor kids who fight
>> now - as soon as the draft starts pulling in rich kids, you're getting
>> to hear the anti-war volume increase by 1000 decibels.
>
>
> In theory, if any significant number of people went to prison for
> white-collar crime we'd get the prison-reform volume increased by 1000
> decibels. But in practice we have "country-club" prisons for the rich
> criminals.
Are you seriously suggesting that a "significant number" of rich people
are in any jail whatsoever?
> The same people who can pull strings to get their kids into prestigious
> schools could pull strings to keep their kids out of a draft. And if we
> had a universal draft, they could pull strings to get their kids
> "country-club" duties.
Not necessarily. In Germany, the kids who didn't want to do army duty
went to the hospital, the homeless shelters, etc. Simply a question of
political will. Which, of course, isn't there in the first place which
is why these bills are non-starters.
David
> The question is, I suppose, whether we could hold, as a basic
> assumption, that a country of the US's nature needs an army
> to begin with. If the answer is yes, then a universal draft
> may well be less evil
The last draft we had, the one Bush and Cheney both evaded,
was anything but "universal" or "fair". Ask around.
By the way, it's not that I think evading the Vietnam war
draft, for reasons of conscience or simply an aversion to
the thought of coming home missing important parts of one's
body, was a bad thing to do; what gets me is those chicken-
hawk assholes then grew up to do *this* shit. I would like
to think they ought to know better.
> than the current system which in practice, if not in theory,
> cynically exploits both the poor and the mentally ill. Certainly,
> it does not coerce its victims with overt force, and you could
> argue, for every single case, that nobody was coerced at all.
> But as a system, it's highly coercive, and disgusting, as well.
But Silke, you've just described American society in general,
not just the U.S. military system. Now, please, if you really
hate America and Americans so much you'd wish a draft on us,
JUST GO HOME to Germany. Since, as you say, you have a next-
to-perfect Teuton Paradise waiting for you already. This is
my home, and, as fucked up as it is, I think Americans don't
need your help to fuck it up even worse.
GO GOME. GO HOME. Deutschland awaits!
Sheesh. The nerve of some Guest Workers.
The
David
On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Michael S. Morris wrote back:
[...]
>> ...So when you go about something that's (coincidentally?) been in
>> the news all you're doing is regurgitating what second-hand tripe.
> David, you have zero call to be trying that crap on me at present,
> when *you* were the one gullible enough apparently to believe the
> Bush Administration is in the process if instituting a draft, when
> in fact it's Democrats who introduced the bill two years ago and
> and Republicans who shunted it off to committee.
Pay attention, asshole: I forwarded somebody else's document to a bunch
of newsgroups, without adding any comment. Go back and look. That does
not mean I even fucking read the thing, much less swallowed it whole; I
just thought the thread it might provoke it might prove interesting.
We've been having crappy around here, if you ain't noticed, and until
today it was the ass-end of the month and I get paid by the month. So,
like, thank you for helping to keep me entertained.
As for who wants a draft or why, there's a damn good chance the draft
will be reinstated in the second Bush administration (yes, I do think
Kerry's gonna lose by a clear majority; P.T. Barnum was right), as soon
as the Bushites decide to finally chastise Syria and/or Iran for being
the Christine Kraft countries of the so-called Middle East (probably
after they arrange another "terrorist attack"); as Jonah's said, one
advantage of a drafted military is that you get to pay them peanuts
and piss in their oatmeal while they're overseas maiming and getting
maimed by (other?) colored people and they can't do a damn thing about
it. So regardless of whether the Republican Party or the Democratic
(Republican) Party (Liebermanist-Kerryist) pushes the damn bill, if
there even needs to be a bill, there *will* be a draft by this time
next year, and U.S. forces will be in yet another front in the "War
on Terror".
Maybe nobody remembers, but I predicted in 2000 that Bush would win
and that within a year of his inauguration the Bill of Rights would
be in worse tatters and the U.S. would be at war: I turned out to
be off on the timing, which perhaps accounts for the "necessity" of
a "cowardly attack" to help the Cause a little. In fact, hey, I even
said that war and tyranny would be the result of either party winning.
This is not so much because I'm an Expert Analyst of political records
and predictable agendae, but because I know that, in the U.S.A., it
ain't necessarily the fish's head that stinks first.
As for your crack about my political naivete, who are you kidding?
I might be an idiot but I'm hardly naive.
Oh and by the way, as I've already posted, I found the Congressional
Record site on my own already.
In general, like wow, I don't see much substantial difference between
you the Locke citer and smw the Nietzsche scholar, though I suspect
you smell better and have shapelier legs.
Luv,
Davey
David
> G*rd*n wrote:
> > I guess I had two points. One was that if G. W. Bush had a
> > larger military to command, "we" would be at war in more
> > countries.
>
> Surely the whole idea of the draft is to strengthen anti-war
> resistance, not create a bigger army for Bush.
Maybe you need to read something besides Harry Potter books.
Assuming you're serious; I'd like to hope you're not.
> Plus Bush only has a few months left in office anyway.
Either you're an optimist, an idiot, or you're kidding.
C'mon Paul, we got enough bozos on this bus already.
D.
David
> David, you have it bass-ackwards. It's only the poor kids who fight now
> - as soon as the draft starts pulling in rich kids, you're getting to
> hear the anti-war volume increase by 1000 decibels.
Maybe, but regardless of the noise level the fact is the poor kids will
still do the fighting and the rich kids will again get deferred or flee
to Canada (which costs money).
C'mon Ilechko, it was Vietnam student deferments that were responsible
for all the "Postmodernism" and "multiculturalism" in U.S. academia.
Deferments created the reverse of the post-WW2 G.I. Bill: hordes of
middling-bourgeois nitwits spending forver in "gut" courses in "soft"
fields like Literary Theory and Sociology (if those *are* different
fields or ever were) to keep from losing their student status. Then
once you've gotten your PhD for "Contrasting Theories and Practices
of Booger-Picking Across Racial Barriers in _Huckleberry Finn_," what
else *can* you fucking do but stay in Academia to teach? And what've
you got to teach but more contrasting booger-picking?
Running and hiding in Canada costs money and takes guts, man. It's
far easier to sit here and "work the System" like Bush, Cheney, and
the male members of those pundits Mike loves on "high-brow" radio.
Jonah Thomas, please explain.
David
> David is entirely out of his depth in this discussion, but hey...
Kiss my ass. After you clean your lips, and only through Saran Wrap.
David
[...]
> And there's htd's point that they don't actually need Congress to pass
> another bill. All they need is the money to pay for maintaining the
> organizational structures that are already in place.
>
> Htd makes a series of good points. Morris could be right in detail --
> these particular bills could be business as usual that some alarmists
> have blown out of proportion -- and still there could be firm,
> completely-decided-in-all-details, but unannounced plans to start up
> the draft or a UMS sometime after January.
I guess that means I'm thirding htd then, or seconding your seconding.
As to "paranoia", hey, I'd've thought before that somebody who really
believed a bunch of Saudi college boys would fly crowded airliners into
an office complex at 9 AM was reading too much Sci-Fi.
By the way, was _The Manchurian Candidate_ *supposed* to be funny? And
I doubted that the conference spoken of in _Report from Iron Mountain_
actually happened, but the ideas in it still seem perfectly sound. And
the Germans did have this Wannsee Conference, which would have seemed
pretty unreal to most Americans (or most Germans for that matter) then.
These days I'll do almost anything to keep this "hole" to hide in. Say
what you want about me, but there are too many dangerous crazies with
too much power and too little inhibition out there -- being in charge.
David
> The same people who can pull strings to get their kids into
> prestigious schools could pull strings to keep their kids out of a
> draft. And if we had a universal draft, they could pull strings to
> get their kids "country-club" duties.
Such as Georgie Bush's old job in the Air National Guard, e.g.
D.
David
[...]
> This is really simple. Draft the upper middle class kids to fight in
> Iraq, and voila, no more Iraq war.
You've been a Gastarbeiter in the Ewe Ess of Aye for all these years
and you seriously suggest that Sci-Fi scenario could actually happen?
What ARE you smoking?
Electing Mister Death Valley Days president *once* sounded incredible
beforehand, but at least it was theoretically possible; drafting upper
middle class to actually fight an actual war is a flying pig scenario.
Hell, Warp Speed passenger flights are a more realistic expectation.
David
On Tue, 01 Jun 2004, Paul Ilechko wrote:
> Surely the whole idea of the draft is to strengthen anti-war resistance,
> not create a bigger army for Bush. Plus Bush only has a few months left
> in office anyway.
And then on Wed, 2 Jun 2004, Madame SMW Fujimori wrote:
> This is really simple. Draft the upper middle class kids to fight
> in Iraq, and voila, no more Iraq war.
Oh I get it! So if we want to inspire more people to fight for social
justice, we ought to bring back slavery! Or why stop there -- we can
re-enserf the peasants (defining "peasant" as anyone who does not own
X amount of corporate stock and/or so much real estate). Yeah, that's
the ticket: it has to get worse before it gets better -- so the worse
we can make it, as fast as we can, the better it'll feel when we get
around to stopping!
So I have an idea: for the sake of furthering social justice, anyone
who is worth less than $250,000 USD a year may not wear or even have
a pair of leather shoes, and whosoever gets caught breaking this law
will be flogged to death while watching his or her family members be
raped into porno stardom. What could possibly be more conducive to
equality than THAT? And while we're at it, lets burn us some Jews --
to dramatize the need for religious tolerance! We'll start with SMW's
(half-)Jewish kids, since she was so kind to advocate reinstating a
military draft -- to end U.S. war-mongering.
It's like David Bowie said in 1975: what this country needs is some
really nasty fascism, so then we'll appreciate how good we *used*
to have it. Is that right? Do I understand you now?
It's okay if a(n ex-Ukrainian?) Brit slings envious shit at the U.S.A.,
and I feel I have a right to to point out my country's faults in order
to rectify them, but Silke-Maria Wieneck is being just plain *nasty*:
if you hate MY country, that gave you an education, an ex-husband,
two kids and tenure at a public university, so damn much, you don't
have to try to wreck it further -- you are free to go. Please DO.
Your beloved Deutschland awaits! Go home, go home, go home!
Grrringly,
TheDavid
jonah thomas
> ...
Far too simple. We're already sending some of their reservist parents
to fight in iraq, and the war rolls right along.
Richard Harter
wrote:
>Richard Harter wrote:
>> jonah thomas <j2th...@cavtel.net> wrote:
>
>>>A great big drafted army is cheaper than a great big volunteer army
>>>because you can pay draftees peanuts and you can't pay volunteers
>>>peanuts and get that many volunteers.
>
>> I have a modest proposal for reducing for the cost of a large army;
>> revive the tradition of offering people a choice between going to
>> prison and joining the army. Currently, or so I have heard, one in 75
>> US males is in prison. Put them in the army and, voila, we have two
>> million extra troops. What is more, in a proper sort of army, it
>> costs less to support troops than it does to incarcerate them.
>
>This looks like another example of forgetting the lessons from
>vietnam. You're in a lot of company in that, lots of people say that
>vietnam was a long time ago and it has nothing to teach us about the
>modern world.
You are very young, aren't you? Or were you just subtly hinting that
I'm not very Swift?
Young people these days, thinking that the Vietnam nonsense was a long
time ago. Mutter, mutter, mutter.
Richard Harter, c...@tiac.net
http://home.tiac.net/~cri, http://www.varinoma.com
A university is what a college becomes when the faculty
loses interest in students. - John Ciardi
htd
"David" <thed...@shell.rawbw.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.58.04...@troll.weezl.org...
> On Tue, 1 Jun 2004, Paul Ilechko wrote:
> > G*rd*n wrote:
>
> > > I guess I had two points. One was that if G. W. Bush had a
> > > larger military to command, "we" would be at war in more
> > > countries.
> >
> > Surely the whole idea of the draft is to strengthen anti-war
> > resistance, not create a bigger army for Bush.
>
> Maybe you need to read something besides Harry Potter books.
> Assuming you're serious; I'd like to hope you're not.
>
There's every reason to think that you're both right. We're stretched so
thin right now that it's hard to tell what country's florists Our-Busto,
Inc. wants next to help by driving up the demand for flowers suitable for
showering our Army with, but there was enough noise about Syria at one point
to think that they have other targets in mind, and there's no reason to
think that they're getting from Iraq any lesson less self-serving than "next
time we'll do it better."
However, there is indubitably a reason that the administration is not yet
conscripting civilians, and that reason is not that more people aren't
needed. The particular piece of legislation in question is more
philosophically driven, but quite a bit of the general call for a draft is
driven from the idea that if more of the country got a concrete lesson in
the costs of war, support for elective war would fade; as long as pundits
can spin nonsense like "war is good for the army" and the people being sent
into battle all volunteered to do so if need be, not too much of a snit is
going to be thrown over the injustice of elective war. That's why support
for the draft is found more regularly among those opposed to the war in Iraq
than among those who support it: there is nothing that brings the real
sacrifices that get made in a war home the way that draft notices do*. I
think I'm correct in stating that out of the entire US Congress, only one
member has a family member in Iraq - that in itself is shameful and
dangerous. The people who voted for the War Powers Act thought themselves
in no danger of personal loss from that vote.
But a draft of sorts is already here; this is no longer an all-volunteer
army. Anybody else read the NYT?:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/international/middleeast/02CND-SOLD.html?hp
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/02/opinion/02EXUM.html
> > Plus Bush only has a few months left in office anyway.
>
> Either you're an optimist, an idiot, or you're kidding.
>
As long as Nader doesn't suddenly grow a charismatic personality, this
election is likely go very badly for Bush. Polling trends are looking
terrible for him. His base is even getting rumblesome about the lack of
progress on their social regression agenda. I expect one hell of a
Hobbesian summer, but barring some serious electoral hanky-panky, Shrub is
anything but a shoo-in. - htd
*the exception to this of course being if aeroplanes and zeppelins come out
and pitch like King Billy Bomb Balls in until the town lies beaten flat.
That's worse than the draft. Obviously. - htd
jonah thomas
> jonah thomas wrote:
>> In theory, if any significant number of people went to prison for
>> white-collar crime we'd get the prison-reform volume increased by 1000
>> decibels. But in practice we have "country-club" prisons for the rich
>> criminals.
> Are you seriously suggesting that a "significant number" of rich people
> are in any jail whatsoever?
No, I'm pointing out that we *already* have very special treatment for
the small number of white-collar criminals we have. If we were to get
more of them, we'd get more special treatment more than we'd get a
stronger prison-reform movement.
>> The same people who can pull strings to get their kids into
>> prestigious schools could pull strings to keep their kids out of a
>> draft. And if we had a universal draft, they could pull strings to
>> get their kids "country-club" duties.
> Not necessarily. In Germany, the kids who didn't want to do army duty
> went to the hospital, the homeless shelters, etc. Simply a question of
> political will. Which, of course, isn't there in the first place which
> is why these bills are non-starters.
If germany has a system where the upper classes don't pull strings to
get special treatment under the draft, then I respect them that much
more. It has nothing to do with the american system, though.
smw
jonah thomas wrote:
> smw wrote:
...
>> Not necessarily. In Germany, the kids who didn't want to do army duty
>> went to the hospital, the homeless shelters, etc. Simply a question of
>> political will. Which, of course, isn't there in the first place which
>> is why these bills are non-starters.
>
>
> If germany has a system where the upper classes don't pull strings to
> get special treatment under the draft, then I respect them that much
> more. It has nothing to do with the american system, though.
Germany abolished the draft. I don't think there was much
string-pulling. Of course, the German army didn't fight any wars,
either, so why would they pull any strings? the biggest problem my
friends complained of was boredom.
jonah thomas
> ...
I see. Looking back, I see that you didn't claim your experience with
universal male military service (with easy ways out of the military
into emptying bedpans etc) had any relevance to the US, and said it
might be very bad for us. Fair enough.
smw
jonah thomas wrote:
that's a stupid thing to say -- the bedpan jobs were incomparably more
difficult than army duty.
> had any relevance to the US, and said it might be
> very bad for us. Fair enough.
As I said several times, it can only work to end militarism if it's
universally enforced, or at least universally enough to piss off enough
voters to make fighting wars very very difficult politically.
htd
> [...]
>
> > And there's htd's point that they don't actually need Congress to pass
> > another bill. All they need is the money to pay for maintaining the
> > organizational structures that are already in place.
> >
> > Htd makes a series of good points. Morris could be right in detail --
> > these particular bills could be business as usual that some alarmists
> > have blown out of proportion -- and still there could be firm,
> > completely-decided-in-all-details, but unannounced plans to start up
> > the draft or a UMS sometime after January.
>
> I guess that means I'm thirding htd then, or seconding your seconding.
>
> As to "paranoia", hey, I'd've thought before that somebody who really
> believed a bunch of Saudi college boys would fly crowded airliners into
> an office complex at 9 AM was reading too much Sci-Fi.
>
Or just enough Tom Clancy, take your pick.
> By the way, was _The Manchurian Candidate_ *supposed* to be funny? And
> I doubted that the conference spoken of in _Report from Iron Mountain_
> actually happened, but the ideas in it still seem perfectly sound. And
> the Germans did have this Wannsee Conference, which would have seemed
> pretty unreal to most Americans (or most Germans for that matter) then.
Um, I don't know exactly what you're talking about with the Iron Mountain
reference, but just because things are pretty clearly fucked up doesn't
relieve a person from the responsibility of asking the question "just how
fucked up are things really?" That's usually the question that separates
_The Manchurian Candidate_ et al from dismissable hysteria.
And of course we all tend to give more credence to reports that fit in with
previously confirmed information or which just support our worldview and
mistakes can happen. I am surprised at the amount of vitriol that's been
expended over this mistake. So he believed a document without doing a
thorough critical check on its merits and then acted on that erroneous
belief. Come on folks, is that really something to launch a war over?
>
> These days I'll do almost anything to keep this "hole" to hide in. Say
> what you want about me, but there are too many dangerous crazies with
> too much power and too little inhibition out there -- being in charge.
>
Hey - Just Because You're Paranoid Doesn't Mean They're Not Out To Get You.
and with that, I give you Republicans for Voldemort:
http://www.goats.com/archive/030808.html. Have a nice day. - htd
jonah thomas
> jonah thomas wrote:
>> smw wrote:
>>> Germany abolished the draft. I don't think there was much
>>> string-pulling. Of course, the German army didn't fight any wars,
>>> either, so why would they pull any strings? the biggest problem my
>>> friends complained of was boredom.
>> I see. Looking back, I see that you didn't claim your experience with
>> universal male military service (with easy ways out of the military
>> into emptying bedpans etc)
> that's a stupid thing to say -- the bedpan jobs were incomparably more
> difficult than army duty.
It depends. In the USA conscientious objectors sometimes found
themselves assigned to be medics with the troops, and they claimed the
NVA tended to aim at medics right after they took out the guy with the
radio.
And then, there's the hierarchical stuff that is so much more blatant
in the military. There are other considerations in addition to the
difficulty of the tasks.
You seem to judge people's words as stupid very often without giving
them much thought.
David
> the bedpan jobs were incomparably more difficult than army duty.
Let me guess, your rich (now ex-) husband got you "staff" to deal
with your infants. For the rest of us, butt-wiping and diaper-
changing are incomparably easier than, say, teaching the kids not
to throw kittens at each other.
[...]
> As I said several times, [the draft] can only work to end
> militarism if it's universally enforced,
Which you should know by now is *impossible* in the U.S.A.
But then I suppose it's all part of your Hohenzollern plot to
re-enserf the peasants, eh?
D.
--
"Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?"
Paul Ilechko
>
> David is entirely out of his depth in this discussion, but hey...
Only this one ?
francis muir
<pilechk...@patmedia.net> wrote:
Ypu're both probably right, but isn't out-of-depthness preferable
to those embarrassingly blindingly boring posts from persone who
are, in fact, always right?
htd
"jonah thomas" <j2th...@cavtel.net> wrote in message
news:SJrvc.45$741....@news.uswest.net...
>
> It depends. In the USA conscientious objectors sometimes found
> themselves assigned to be medics with the troops, and they claimed the
> NVA tended to aim at medics right after they took out the guy with the
> radio.
>
primarily supports the people who are a bit past carrying guns. Brilliant.
Not saying you're wrong or that they were, mind you, but there is some funky
logic at play there.
David
Kiss my bum, Iechko. Macallan is bilge ballast.
David
Oh come on. Don't you know that *killing* your enemy is doing him a favor
compared to leaving him, say, a paraplegic colostomate with one testicle,
half a face, and burn scars over 3/4 of his body -- but no brain damage
to blunt the knowledge of how fucked up he is? And, like, ain't you heard
that M-16 bullets were designed to wound severely, rather than to kill,
because for every severely wounded soldier you need a medic or two and a
couple buddies to drag him out of harm's way? Not only that, but seeing
a few soldiers get fucked up for life is bound to have a deletrious effect
a whole unit's morale, thus eroding the effectiveness of the soldiery.
The object of war is not to *kill* one's enemy, or we'd be using nukes
left and right, but to *render it impotent as a fighting force*. To win
the war, not to wipe out half the planet. It's baboon-dominance thing:
if you kill the other baboon you can't hear him squeal while you shove
a broomstick up his rectum.
smw
jonah thomas wrote:
> smw wrote:
>
>> jonah thomas wrote:
>>
>>> smw wrote:
>
>
>>>> Germany abolished the draft. I don't think there was much
>>>> string-pulling. Of course, the German army didn't fight any wars,
>>>> either, so why would they pull any strings? the biggest problem my
>>>> friends complained of was boredom.
>
>
>>> I see. Looking back, I see that you didn't claim your experience
>>> with universal male military service (with easy ways out of the
>>> military into emptying bedpans etc)
>
>
>> that's a stupid thing to say -- the bedpan jobs were incomparably more
>> difficult than army duty.
>
>
> It depends. In the USA
I wasn't talking about the US
>
> And then, there's the hierarchical stuff that is so much more blatant in
> the military. There are other considerations in addition to the
> difficulty of the tasks.
>
> You seem to judge people's words as stupid very often without giving
> them much thought.
At least I judge you stupid on the basis of your stupid words, whereas
you seem happy to judge people on the basis of nothing whatsoever.
>
Stevet Thompson
> On Mon, 31 May 2004, Michael S. Morris wrote:
> [...]
>
> > Seems to me either of the two Senators from Indiana, Richard Lugar,
> > Republican or Evan Bayh, Democrat would be infinitely better as
> > President than either of the two choices we are going to be presented
> > with. Or John McCain. Why can't we get rid of this democratization of
> > the primary process and bring back the smoke-filled-room method?
>
> But, you see, Americans are just too stupid to be trusted with a real,
> meaningful vote.
ITYM that some Americans are not to be trusted with a `real,
meaningful vote'. I'm certain that you would still like to vote, and
you may even think that you deserve to vote; but that does not mean
that you will always be allowed to vote. I should not have to point
this out, but as I see it, the moment that you lose your usefulness to
the `ruling' class, as it were, you will probably find yourself in a
situation that resembles mine to a degree contingent on your
re-educatability.
This is of course the threat that silently hangs over all Party
members, and I do wonder at the meek aquiescence to this status quo as
it relates to the practical excercise of voting that disinclines you
to sincerely rail against it. Perhaps the example of
disenfranchisement presented by all those who are, for all intents and
purposes, stranded within the lower strata of society is not enough of
a disincentive to provoke you to more strenuous collective objection.
But then, rule by the omnipresent and continual threat of subtle legal
or social sanction creates enough fear to make day-to-day personal
security the primary focus of Party members like you.
> [...]
>
> > I still think Bush made a sincere command decision to pursue the Iraq
> > war based on the intelligence he had available at the time.
>
> You give the fool too much credit.
>
> By the way, Bush's "victory" in 2000 proves that the American voters
> deserve what they get: THERE WERE NO MASS PROTESTS, even though there
> were no troops in Humvees patrolling the streets. None. The votership
> just swallowed the ruling of their "betters". Unlike in India, France
> or Ghana, democracy is wasted on USans.
Hmm. I thought that the lack of mass protest simply indicated that
`our' fearless leaders are simply doing a proper job according to the
expectations of the people. I don't pretend to understand how the
masses, as you put it, come to think that their better's plans and
actions serve their interests, even in the short term, but evidently
this is true enough to preclude 'mass' protests.
> Once I'm elected U.S. President I'll stop forcing the American people
> to pay attention to that pretense: I know what's best for America and
> the World, and I promise there'll be no more elections for 1000 years!
You should really mind your own business, but then perhaps that is not
allowed for those who are party members. Perhaps there is a law
stating that Party members must invade my privacy to acquire data
concerning my unpulished musings, and then must construct trolls on
usenet to provoke my responses?
I mean, if someone's holding a gun to your head, and forcing you to
engage in psychological or information-warfare, then it's all very
understandable. It's not like the police (at whatever level) have the
mandate or authority to halt those kinds of of coercive, human rights
abuss, particularly if they further an Official Party Objective.
Regards,
Steve
htd
"David" <thed...@shell.rawbw.com> wrote in message
news:Pine.LNX.4.58.04...@troll.weezl.org...
> On Wed, 2 Jun 2004, htd wrote:
> >
> Oh come on. Don't you know that *killing* your enemy is doing him a favor
> compared to leaving him, say, a paraplegic colostomate with one testicle,
> half a face, and burn scars over 3/4 of his body -- but no brain damage
> to blunt the knowledge of how fucked up he is? And, like, ain't you heard
> that M-16 bullets were designed to wound severely, rather than to kill,
> because for every severely wounded soldier you need a medic or two and a
> couple buddies to drag him out of harm's way? Not only that, but seeing
> a few soldiers get fucked up for life is bound to have a deletrious effect
> a whole unit's morale, thus eroding the effectiveness of the soldiery.
Speaking on behalf of women the world over: there is more to life than
having testicles.
M-16 bullets were built to tumble on impact; they're inherently imbalanced.
Steel nosecone over lead core, penetrates 1/4" of plate steel at 100 yards,
and the front of bullet is lighter than back of bullet plus it's a
high-velocity projectile, so it has a lot of punching power and when it hits
it somersaults end over end, breaks into pieces, and sends little itty bitty
fragments in all different directions inside the body. Creates a large
hydrostatic shock cavity, simultaneous with a large permanent crush cavity.
Killing bullet. Make Black Talons look like BBs. Nasty-ass shit.
But those are straw men. There is plenty to be said for the demoralization
of the opposition, but it's a silly thing to shoot for in a battle. Smart
thing to shoot for: torsos.
>
> The object of war is not to *kill* one's enemy, or we'd be using nukes
> left and right, but to *render it impotent as a fighting force*. To win
> the war, not to wipe out half the planet. It's baboon-dominance thing:
> if you kill the other baboon you can't hear him squeal while you shove
> a broomstick up his rectum.
>
We don't use nukes left and right because nukes are a total war weapon and
since WWII, no nuclear power has engaged in total warfare. We fight limited
engagements, which is what you want to fight if you possibly can, because
total war is fighting for your own survival. There is no going back from
the red button, and as long as the primary method of deterrence is Mutually
Assured Destruction the rapid emptying of silos by any means is a pretty bad
idea. In short: we don't nuke because not nuking is the only way not to get
nuked yourself.
But honestly, I don't think the object of war is to kill one's enemy or to
render it impotent. I think the object of war is to be the one who gets to
say when fighting stops and under what conditions. To wit (I am such a
sucker for the classics): to achieve one's diplomatic goals. I can't deny
that there's machismo at play in a lot of time to fight decisions, but
usually, mostly, wars happen in very Clauswitzian terms, and when goals are
achieved, the victors stop fighting. Most of the time. - htd
htd
"Stevet Thompson" <stev...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:b7461e85.04060...@posting.google.com...
> David O'Bedlam <thed...@shell.rawbw.com> wrote in message
news:<2004053113...@shell.rawbw.com>...
> > On Mon, 31 May 2004, Michael S. Morris wrote:
>
> You should really mind your own business, but then perhaps that is not
> allowed for those who are party members. Perhaps there is a law
> stating that Party members must invade my privacy to acquire data
> concerning my unpulished musings, and then must construct trolls on
> usenet to provoke my responses?
>
David O'Bedlam
[...]
> > But, you see, Americans are just too stupid to be trusted with
> > a real, meaningful vote.
> ITYM that some Americans are not to be trusted with a `real,
> meaningful vote'. I'm certain that you would still like to vote,
> and you may even think that you deserve to vote; but that does not
> mean that you will always be allowed to vote.
Your voices have again misinformed you about me: I'm against voting
from anarchist principle. I did vote once, against Bush pere, i.e.
for that Dukakis non-character, in 1988, and was physically ill that
night when I found out he'd conceded so damn easily, thus wasting my
sell-out. Never again. If my fellow Americans must insist on choosing
between two evils they can bloody well do it without my assistance.
[snip paranoid blah blah]
> Party members like you.
Wrong again! I'm sui generis, not a member of any party, not even my
very own party of one.
[...]
> Perhaps there is a law stating that Party members must invade my
> privacy to acquire data concerning my unpulished musings, and then
> must construct trolls on usenet to provoke my responses?
You're so vain. I bet you think this plot is against you. Don't you.
Luv,
Davey
--
"Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) 2004 by 'TheDavid^TM' | David, P.O. Box 21403, Louisville, KY 40221
David O'Bedlam
[...]
> > You should really mind your own business, but then perhaps that is
> > not allowed for those who are party members. Perhaps there is a law
> > stating that Party members must invade my privacy to acquire data
> > concerning my unpulished musings, and then must construct trolls on
> > usenet to provoke my responses?
> can I just be the first to say, WTF?
No, I'm sorry, there are a few people in front of you on this one. I
know of two in this apartment alone.
What Stevet doesn't get understand that if I had that much focus and
energy I'd find better things closer to hand to do with 'em.
Living without SSRIs is getting easier, by the way; now we'll see if
I remember which jacket I left it in (so to speak).
D.
David
> Speaking on behalf of women the world over: there is more to life than
> having testicles.
Ah, but to be born with them and have them blasted away against your will
is not the most neato experience I can imagine. Same for Hemingway.
> We don't use nukes left and right because nukes are a total war weapon and
> since WWII, no nuclear power has engaged in total warfare. We fight limited
> engagements, which is what you want to fight if you possibly can,
So use TACTICAL low-yield short-range nukes. Don't you remember the '80s?
Overdog
Aiming at the guy with the radio makes a lot of sense. Without radio
contact, a division could end up in trouble pretty quickly.
Aiming at medics isn't a bad idea either, if you're fighing against
Americans.
Without medics, wounded troops are much more likely to die. Since the
our army wanted to fight the war with a minimum of casualties, losing
medics really put us in trouble. Obviously, in a total war, a
different strategy might be better.
Overdog
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 3rd of June, 2004
David O':
...So when you go about something that's (coincidentally?) been in
the news all you're doing is regurgitating what second-hand tripe.
I responded:
David, you have zero call to be trying that crap on me at present,
when *you* were the one gullible enough apparently to believe the
Bush Administration is in the process if instituting a draft, when
in fact it's Democrats who introduced the bill two years ago and
and Republicans who shunted it off to committee.
David O':
Pay attention, asshole: I forwarded somebody else's document to a bunch
of newsgroups, without adding any comment.
I'm well aware that you spammed this newsgroup with a piece
of idiotically partisan anti-Bush propaganda. And this makes
*me* the asshole how?
David O':
Go back and look.
Why? It was a piece of idiotically partisan anti-Bush propaganda.
I merely exposed the lie in it. There's no sense sullying myself
anymore than I did .
David O':
That does not mean I even fucking read the thing, much less
swallowed it whole;
So you spammed this group with idiotically partisan
anti-Bush propaganda that you did not even read
and this makes *me* the asshole how?
Jeez, your behaviour reminds me of some fundie Christian
homeschoolers on an inclusive Indianapolis-area
homeschooling list, who just *have* to "share
with the group" every piece of Christian spam
(national anti-abortion prayer action alerts
and the like) that comes their way.
David O':
I just thought the thread it might provoke it
might prove interesting.
You posted a bald-faced lie, which said the administration was
doing something that, in fact, was a Democrat move.
Now, you either knew it was a lie when you posted
it or you didn't. I'm not sure which is worse.
David O':
We've been having crappy around here, if you ain't noticed, and until
today it was the ass-end of the month and I get paid by the month. So,
like, thank you for helping to keep me entertained.
You are welcome. And, no, I ain't noticed and remain approximately
clueless as to your travails or why it is you get paid at all.
David O':
As for who wants a draft or why, there's a damn good chance the draft
will be reinstated in the second Bush administration
I doubt it. But a national service strikes me---has always
struck me---as a good, albeit impractical, thing.
David O':
(yes, I do think Kerry's gonna lose by a clear majority;
P.T. Barnum was right),
Kerry is so incredibly lackluster and stupid in his own right
that I guess it is possible. Still, I think Bush would
have to a) capture Osama, b) transform Iraq into a peaceful
liberal democracy with all US troops out, c) drop the
pump price of gasoline below a dollar, and d) locate a
hidden Iraqi nuclear-weapons laboratory in order for that to
happen at this point.
David O':
as soon as the Bushites decide to finally chastise
Syria and/or Iran for being the Christine Kraft countries
of the so-called Middle East
I'm afraid the allusion to "Christine Kraft" flies
right past me.
David O':
(probably
after they arrange another "terrorist attack"); as Jonah's said, one
advantage of a drafted military is that you get to pay them peanuts
and piss in their oatmeal while they're overseas maiming and getting
maimed by (other?) colored people and they can't do a damn thing about
it.
You didn't go read the legislation in question, did you? You might
be able to pay them peanuts, but the problem is there are going to
so many of them (something like 6 million) that peanuts times 6 million
equals a whole lot more than peanuts.
David O':
So regardless of whether the Republican Party or the Democratic
(Republican) Party (Liebermanist-Kerryist) pushes the damn bill, if
there even needs to be a bill, there *will* be a draft by this time
next year, and U.S. forces will be in yet another front in the "War
on Terror".
Well, I agree roughly that we *might* end up with a draft *if*
Kerry gets elected. However, you seem to have zero understanding
even yet of the politics of the draft legislation. You see, it
was introduced by the *opposition party* a year and half ago
just prior to our going to war in Iraq. I.e. it was legislation
which the people who introduced it *knew* hadn't a chance in hell
of passing. I.e., it was a cynical move on their part, perhaps to
try and embarass the administration, or raise anti-war alarm in
the country. Not to actually institute a draft.
David O':
Maybe nobody remembers, but I predicted in 2000 that Bush would win
And he did. I figured he'd lose.
David O':
and that within a year of his inauguration the Bill of Rights would
be in worse tatters
Lawrence v. Texas, for example.
David O':
and the U.S. would be at war: I turned out to
be off on the timing, which perhaps accounts for the "necessity" of
a "cowardly attack" to help the Cause a little.
So, David, you are now implying Bush had something to do with
*perpetrating* the 9/11 attack. That puts you in the nether
orbits of crazies as far as I am concerned.
And what the fuck do you imagine the Cause is? I mean,
they passed a milquetoast piece of legislation, the
Patriot Act, which has allowed them to detain without charging
one hood, and which the Supreme Court is poised to strike down.
We invaded a country that looks like a perfect hornets' nest
in terms of any hope for a democracy to come out of it,
and we brought on ourselves national shame and disgrace for
our behaviour there and the failure of our intelligence
in claiming a raison de guerre in the first place. Looks to
me like the only Cause has been How to Lose the Next Election
to Even the Worst, Most Lackluster, and Most Stupid Candidate
the Other Party Can Nominate.
David O':
In fact, hey, I even
said that war and tyranny would be the result of either party winning.
Well, you were half right, I guess. Two tyrannies were removed from
the face of the earth by this administration's warmaking. And, no,
tyranny was not increased at home.
David O':
This is not so much because I'm an Expert Analyst of political records
and predictable agendae, but because I know that, in the U.S.A., it
ain't necessarily the fish's head that stinks first.
You're a goof.
David O':
As for your crack about my political naivete, who are you kidding?
I might be an idiot but I'm hardly naive.
You are politically naive in the extreme. Again, the piece you
posted lied about who was pushing for a draft. You either understood
that it was a lie, and posted it anyway, in which case you
were mendacious yourself. Or, you didn't understand it
(which is obviously the case), in which case you most certainly
were naive. And almost identically naive with the most treacly Polyanna.
David O':
Oh and by the way, as I've already posted, I found the Congressional
Record site on my own already.
Good, then you can read the legislation for yourself and figure
out when it was introduced and who introduced it and make some
assessment about *why* it was introduced.
David O':
In general, like wow, I don't see much substantial difference between
you the Locke citer and smw the Nietzsche scholar, though I suspect
you smell better and have shapelier legs.
I suspect your suspicions are seriously in error, David.
But, again, this sort of thing is supposed to demonstrate
*I'm* the asshole how?
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
Michael S. Morris
Thursday, the 3rd of June, 2004
jonah thomas:
It depends. In the USA conscientious objectors sometimes found
themselves assigned to be medics with the troops, and they claimed the
NVA tended to aim at medics right after they took out the guy with the
radio.
htd:
Boy, that sounds dumb. Aim at the guy who 1) doesn't carry a gun, and 2)
primarily supports the people who are a bit past carrying guns. Brilliant.
Not saying you're wrong or that they were, mind you, but there is some funky
logic at play there.
jonah sounds right on to me. It seems to me often underappreciated
how much the NVA and Viet Cong tactics were in fact terrorist
tactics, and not merely guerrilla. Both went into villages in the
South and simply assassinated anyone who was potentially in the
political middle. Note well, they were not targeting the pro-regime
people, but anyone (doctors, lawyers, teachers) with some measure
of education and authority who might lead a compromise down the
road. Same thing the FLN did in Algeria. Don't engage the enemy
directly, but take out the middle.
Mike Morris
(msmo...@netdirect.net)
jonah thomas
> "jonah thomas" <j2th...@cavtel.net> wrote
>>It depends. In the USA conscientious objectors sometimes found
>>themselves assigned to be medics with the troops, and they claimed the
>>NVA tended to aim at medics right after they took out the guy with the
>>radio.
> Boy, that sounds dumb. Aim at the guy who 1) doesn't carry a gun, and 2)
> primarily supports the people who are a bit past carrying guns. Brilliant.
> Not saying you're wrong or that they were, mind you, but there is some funky
> logic at play there.
I'm not sure it was right, it might have been one of those perception
things. One possible motivation was that our care of wounded was so
much better than theirs, they might have felt like they could hurt our
morale by evening the odds a little, or maybe help their own morale.
Still, I read that some statistics claimed that medics got hit third
most often, behind second lieutenants and the guys who carried the
machineguns.
The second lieutenants of course didn't wear insignia. It might have
been they tended to get hit because they tended to be in front, or
maybe they tended to get shot in the back, the stories went both ways.
htd
"Overdog" <Overd...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:4bdbe04b.04060...@posting.google.com...
> "htd" <heroth...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:<Wvsvc.14272$Lq1....@nwrddc03.gnilink.net>...
> > "jonah thomas" <j2th...@cavtel.net> wrote in message
> > news:SJrvc.45$741....@news.uswest.net...
> > >
> > > It depends. In the USA conscientious objectors sometimes found
> > > themselves assigned to be medics with the troops, and they claimed the
> > > NVA tended to aim at medics right after they took out the guy with the
> > > radio.
> > >
> > Boy, that sounds dumb. Aim at the guy who 1) doesn't carry a gun, and
2)
> > primarily supports the people who are a bit past carrying guns.
Brilliant.
> > Not saying you're wrong or that they were, mind you, but there is some
funky
> > logic at play there.
>
> Aiming at the guy with the radio makes a lot of sense. Without radio
> contact, a division could end up in trouble pretty quickly.
I'm not arguing that with you. Taking out the guy who calls in the air
strikes is not a bad plan (hitting the radio itself is better though).
Signal Corps took horrible casualties in Vietnam.
>
> Aiming at medics isn't a bad idea either, if you're fighing against
> Americans.
> Without medics, wounded troops are much more likely to die. Since the
> our army wanted to fight the war with a minimum of casualties, losing
> medics really put us in trouble. Obviously, in a total war, a
> different strategy might be better.
>
You're missing a few points. When you're a minor power fighting against a
major one, you are engaged in Total War. You have to be, if you want a shot
at winning, because anything less than a supreme effort on the part of the
weaker party doesn't stand a chance.
Next, firefights are not the way to destroy morale. The thing is, when
somebody's shooting at you, there's something you can do about it: there is
an ass to kick. Attention is focused outward, at the enemy. It's why a lot
of people got obsessive about bodycounts in Vietnam, it was proof that we
were making progress, doing something, having an effect (as long as you
don't stop to ask what progress, what we were doing, what effect we were
having this can be really encouraging). Real demoralization is better
achieved through booby traps, land mines, etc. Introduce elements of
unpredictability, chaos, random dangers, and remove the ability to
retaliate. You can't hit a Bouncing Betty back.
It really seems to me that it would take an extrordinary level of
discipline, when engaged in a firefight, to take careful aim at the one
person in the unit who isn't either firing a gun at you or calling in the
heavy artillery to fire at you. - htd
jonah thomas
>> You seem to judge people's words as stupid very often without giving
>> them much thought.
> At least I judge you stupid on the basis of your stupid words, whereas
> you seem happy to judge people on the basis of nothing whatsoever.
From your own mouth.
I bet you didn't even notice the implications of your words.
David O'Bedlam
[...]
>> as soon as the Bushites decide to finally chastise
>> Syria and/or Iran for being the Christine Kraft countries
>> of the so-called Middle East
>
> I'm afraid the allusion to "Christine Kraft" flies
> right past me.
The TV news anchor who was fired a few years ago for being "too
old, too ugly, and not deferential enough to men." It was a big
thing for the hyperfeminist crowd, but I thought it was silly:
it makes sense to fire a baseball pitcher when his throwing arm
get all mutilated in a car crash (just give him a good severance
package), so when your Spokesmodel's appearance no longer does
it for your target TV audience she's got to find something else
to do. Does anyone actually actually believe on-camera TV news
personalities are valued for their journalistic skills, native
talents, or their professional integrity? "It's a CIRCUS, fool."
Anyway, my allusion mainly was to the "not deferential enough"
part -- and yes, by the way, supposedly that was the working of
the reason for Kraft's discontinuance.
Have you been in that cave long, Morris? This is OLD news here.
[...]
>> one advantage of a drafted military is that you get to pay them
>> peanuts and piss in their oatmeal while they're overseas maiming
>> and getting maimed by (other?) colored people and they can't do
>> a damn thing about it.
> You didn't go read the legislation in question, did you? You might
> be able to pay them peanuts, but the problem is there are going to
> so many of them (something like 6 million) that peanuts times 6
> million equals a whole lot more than peanuts.
The existence of a 16.5 zillion dollar "defense" budget is supposed
to cheer a sand-flea-bitten *drafted* grunt who's being paid $1.65
a day and whose wife and handicapped kid live in sub-sub-standard
housing and need Food Baskets to supplement their Food Stamps? Gee,
it shows that you're a Boss and an Owner. At least realize that by
*being drafted* he did *not* freely choose his line of work, and
so if he doesn't like it they *cannot* simply take a better-paying
position elsewhere: desertion in wartime might get him shot. He's
not even really supposed to moonlight by shipping Kurdish heroin
home to Akron for resale.
(Watch, he won't get this point either.)
[...]
> Two tyrannies were removed from the face of the earth by this
> administration's warmaking.
I don't mourn the Taliban and Saddam. But why are U.S. troops still
occupying Afghanistan and Iraq countries? Two tyrannies were removed,
and U.S. imperial tyranny was installed instead.
> And, no, tyranny was not increased at home.
So what the fuck is your gripe about the Patriot Act etc.? If you
think it's a Good Thing, or nor a Bad Thing anyway, why complain?
Sheesh.
D.
--
"Why don't you pass the time by playing a little solitaire?"
------------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) 2004 by 'TheDavid^TM' | David, P.O. Box 21403, Louisville, KY 40221
htd
semi-rabidly, didn't you? From the May 03, 2004 Toronto Star
(http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Arti
cle_Type1&c=Article&cid=1083535813785&call_pageid=968332188854&col=968350060
724) found through Tom Tomorrow's blog
http://www.thismodernworld.com/weblog/mtarchives/week_2004_05_02.html#001512:
U.S. eyes proposal to draft women
WASHINGTON-The chief of the U.S. Selective Service System has proposed
registering women for the military draft and requiring that young Americans
regularly inform the government about whether they have training in niche
specialties needed in the armed services.
The proposal, which the agency's acting director Lewis Brodsky presented to
senior Pentagon officials just before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, also
seeks to extend the age of draft registration to 34, up from 25.
The issue of a renewed draft has gained attention because of concern that
U.S. military forces are stretched thin because of worldwide commitments.
Since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist strikes, U.S. forces have fought and won
two wars, have established a major military presence in Afghanistan and Iraq
and are now taking on peacekeeping duties in Haiti.
The plan, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, highlights the
extent to which agency officials have planned for an expanded military draft
in case the administration and Congress authorize one in the future.
"In line with today's needs, the Selective Service System's structure,
programs and activities should be re-engineered toward maintaining a
national inventory of American men and, for the first time, women, ages 18
through 34, with an added focus on identifying individuals with critical
skills," the agency said in a Feb. 11, 2003, proposal presented to Pentagon
officials.
.
The agency acknowledged that they would have "to market the concept" of a
female draft to Congress, which would have to authorize such a step.
Agency spokesperson Dan Amon said the Pentagon has taken no action on the
proposal.
"These ideas were only being floated for department of defence
consideration," Amon said.
He described the proposal as "food for thought" for contingency planning.