Reality Based Politics...

Look, can we as Democrats just come correct and acknowledge, not only the propriety, but the factual basis for Senator John Kerry's "botched joke."

"You know, education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

Let's face it people, it was a throw away line from a bygone era, but it meant exactly what it sounds like, and is none the more insulting for being absolutely fscking true!

Don't believe me? Go back and watch the recruiting scene from Fahrenheit 9/11... go back and ask yourself who those Marine Corps recruiters are targeting. They are going after the kids without much in the way of educational opportunity.

They are looking for kids who live in a country where the socio-economic infrastructure is systematically being dismantled around them and for whom the choice between a bullet headed existence as the night clerk at the gas and sip and between taking your chances in Iraq and having college paid for (mostly) by Uncle Sam starts to be a no-brainer.

I'm sorry Kerry chose to apologize. I don't think it was an insult to our men and women in uniform, it was acknowledgement of a lack of options and opportunities for a lot of these kids.

We are rapidly approaching a point where you are either "the best and brightest" staying in school and getting those last seats on departing train that is the American Dream or you are cannon fodder.

"Remember... service means citizenship..."

And spare me the anecdotal "well, there's this guy, with double Ph.d's in physics and engineering and he joined the Army within months of getting his degrees..." Yeah, I'm sure that guy exists, really... but he/she is soooo out-numbered by the rank and file kids who were just looking for some help bettering their lives, and got stuck in Iraq because some lying cranks in power were too busy creating their own End Times® prophetic war against all evildoers and too stoopid to understand how badly they botched it.

Look at the pictures of that gang from Abu Ghraib, do any of them look like Comparative Lit, or Pre-Med National Merit Scholars to you?

oh, and "all hail great leader!"

mojo sends