June 24, 2004
Alright, NOW let's talk about media bias.
In case you haven't noticed (and you would be forgiven, considering that as usual the Guardian is the only one covering this hot potato), the draft is coming back. This is not hype, this is not overreaction. The bills are currently in committee. They're recruiting draft board officers right now. There will be no higher education deferments.
I have a 19 year old brother.
Just because a bill is in committee doesn't mean it's going to ever even see a vote, much less get passed. That said, signs that they're going to at least try to reinstate the draft have been showing up for months and months now, so I wouldn't be terribly surprised. Even if they're serious about it, we're unlikely to see a vote before the elections. It'd be political suicide to propose one and tantamount in the public mind to admitting failure in Iraq.
Btw, that article links to an excellent resource in congress.org. They have XML feeds for all the bills under consideration.
There is also a bill in committee to return the Senate back from popular elections to state legislature elections via a Constitutional Amendment. No chance of that either.
PS maybe the military would do your brother some good?
Good call sleep.
The media is refusing to give attention to two bills, sponsored entirely by Democrats, with no popular support, that have absolutely no chance of getting out of committee.
One day we are going to wake up, there will be a draft and we will say "Why oh why didn't we read the guardian instead of allowing ourselves to be manipulated by the domestic conservative media?"
Maybe I was a little strident, but I think given the magnitude of what's in the offing, it would seem at least vaguely justified. If there was draft legislation in committee to drop a nuclear bomb on London, it might be considered newsworthy, even if there was "no chance" of it happening - which I'm not convinced is the case here. Either way, I find your pro-ignorance stance pretty humorous, piraeus.
Downto, allow me to outline just two of the ways that what you said reveals you as a rather monumental asshole: 1) You imply that my brother, who you don’t know, could stand to have some discipline knocked into him. I’m assuming you base this bit of prescient judgementalism on the fact that he’s my brother, and has somehow been corrupted by me. For the record, he’s one of the best souls I know, and based on the statements you’ve made on this message board, I can conjecture with some confidence that he’s a better person than you. 2) You also manage to blithely ignore the fact that the young men and women getting some precious ‘discipline’ in the military are also putting their lives on the line in a war motivated by the greed and corruption of the men in control of our government - men who you support.
To suggest that I’m somehow not seeing the whole picture by being scared of my brother dying in a war that I’ve opposed with every fiber of my being since its inception is staggeringly offensive. Maybe you could use some time in the military, so you could see firsthand the horrific consequences of the policies you support. Then again, maybe it’s easier to be a cheerleader and ignore the blood on your hands.
SNW, please try to tone it down a bit. Calling into question the quality of someone's faith is every bit as offensive as his suggestion that the military would do your brother good. While it's certainly acceptable to point out the offensiveness of someone's statement, striking back in kind is not—lest our normally civil comments section devolve into a series of flame wars. Thanks.
My bad - as a nonreligious person it's easy for me to forget how seriously people take their holy ghosts and whatnot. I've edited the comment. I stand by the remainder, however - it was an utterly asinine thing for him to say, and I don't think I'm in the wrong in pointing that out at length.
Well, like I wrote, pointing out offensive statements is fine. I singled out the religious part as a particularly egregious example of what's wrong with your comment, but you're still calling him names. I understand that you were upset by his comment, but I think your response was still too much. Anyways, I'm taking off my Politeness Police badge now...
Well, I don't consider calling someone an asshole when they're making assholish statements, and moreover have a history of them, to be a tremendous leap - it's a rather justifiable nomocide :). And for me, calling my brother superior to a homophobe (ANY homophobe) is pretty much self-eveident.
As for the blood on his hands comment - perhaps overblown, but nonetheless essentially true.
oxy clean got the blood off of my hands....