Great work Josh.

See this URL: www-personal.umich.edu/.../housemaplarge.png

for an actual map where you can see red/blue congressional districts.  

I'd prefer to see the College Republicans put their bodies where there big, sissy mouths are and enlist in the army. How can the terrorists (That word means "insurgents", " right? ) be defeatesd if the kick-assers are over here? We don't want to hear, 15 years from now, that the Iraq (mis) adventure and Afghanistan (yDubya: " bin Laden and the Taliban are there, but I have a hard-on for Saddam. I need to show up my dad.") wars were lost because the army was enlisting cretins and criminals.

I can bear to hear a latter-day, war-mongoring, take-no-prisoners, John Bolton-type (I confess I had no desire to die in a Southeast Asian rice paddy.") complaining that the lack of quality recruits in the military contributed to America's defeat.   Though, of course, nothing was stopping the CRs from enlisting.

It would seem that the CRs are taking their queues from GOP leadership when it comes to lack of attention to actual facts.

The CRs are the real elitists.  Let the supporting classes provide the cannon fodder.  We - like our beloved Vice President - have other priorities.

Well put tec!  I totall agree.  As a college student, I have to deal with loudmouth republican peers touting the war, its importance, our responsibility, the honor of the militiary, blah blah blah.  And they sit in their cushy apartments all day studying history or some other bullshit.  Its incredible how hypocritical some of these people can be.  Its part of the reason our army is in such disarray - all the top potential recruits went to college instead, running for a war they claim to believe in, while the less privileged get shipped off to die.  What a joke.  

The important thing here: you have to drive through a lot of shitty, barren wasteland to accomplish what they want.  Have fun, kids!

You sic 'em Tec.

waynejm  said:

We - like our beloved Vice President - have other priorities.

Well done "waynejm" - apt and funny - bonus points therein!  LOL Our heroic 5-time-deferment vp is the bomb.  I mean he's learned to "love the bomb and stop worrying."  What could be better?

College Republicans are not the same vermin as the Young Republicans, are they?  A lamer caste??

This is a small quibble, but the comments regarding Arizona's 1st Congressional district were not quite right.  Ann Kirkpatrick is NOT the Democratic nominee.  Not yet and maybe not ever.  She is in a tough primary fight with, among others, a very talented opponent, Howard Shanker, who has been attorney for various Indian tribes in the huge district.  For those of you who have an interest in this sort of thing and consider yourselves early talent spotters, I would encourage you to check out Howard Shanker.  I live in Massachusetts but have contributed to the Shanker campaign.

Same thing, I believe, Bukharin.  When I was in school it was the Young Republicans and the College Democrats.  I doubt it's changed.

Same thing, I believe, Bukharin.  When I was in school it was the Young Republicans and the College Democrats.  I doubt it's changed.

Say, tec, I'm wondering whether I myself could avoid your contempt.  Back in the late 80s I was in college studying philosophy and voting Democratic, and I very nearly enlisted in the Army.  I still remember the look on the recruiter's face when I walked in off the street and told him I wanted to join up.  It was something like the expression you might expect from a man sitting alone at a hotel bar when a Scarlet Johansson look-alike comes up to him and says, "I've been watching you, and I like what I see.  Let's skip the preliminaries and go upstairs to my room and fuck."  My plan was to crush the ASVAB and then go to the Armed Forces School of Languages in Monterrey and learn something like Russian or Chinese or Arabic.

I went up to the Federal Building in my state's capital for the physical and everything, and ultimately that's what kept me out.  I had scoliosis.  Not so bad that they wouldn't let me enlist--the recruiter confirmed this--but I needed a doctor's letter saying my spine was so many degrees off the vertical.  At the time, my doctor was on vacation, so I went up for the physical and the ASVAB empty handed, hoping they wouldn't pick up on my bent spine.  They did.  I was lined up in my underwear with about ten other guys and they had us all bend over to touch our toes.  A guy took one look at my asymmetrical ribcage and told me to split.  They wouldn't let me go one step farther without that doctor's letter.  It gave me enough time to reconsider what I was doing.  

Now, in my defense, let me assure you that had there been an actual war on (Gulf War One came about a year and a half later, and anyway it was always fairly evident that that conflict would be finished before a new enlistee finished basic training) I'd have joined up for sure.  If I was in college today and was the same person I was at 19, I'd have already joined the Marine Corps and probably requested an infantry or recon MOS.  Hell, if I didn't have three kids and a wife who would surely divorce me if I suggested such a thing, I'd probably go Army today--they've upped the enlistment age to 42.  It's what my father did in the Korean War, that is drop out of college to enlist, and I always sort of emulated the old man.  Also, I was crazy enough back then just to want to SEE war, to gain some direct understanding of it.  In a funny way, the seeming low likelihood of war in 1989 was a big part of what turned me against the Army.  I started to get the feeling then that I was about to consign 4 years of my life to a giant bureaucratic system that no longer served any real purpose.  Little did I know...