Just a reminder: I didn’t start this thread to debate Prop 1. I started it to pit Bill O’Reilly for suggesting that anyone who voted for (or even against) it should be murdered by terrorists. The merits of the initiative and the practice of recruiting in high schools are really immaterial. It doesn’t matter to me who’s right or wrong about the initiative. The point is that O’Reilly thinks people should be killed for disagreeing with him.
Is your opposition to recruitment at high schools tied specifically to the Iraq war, or is it more general? Would you be willing to allow recruiters on campus if it was a war that you though was necessary? Or how about if there was no war?
Also, do you think that a military career is, or can be, an honorable one for a person to pursue?
So noted, but it was an interesting hijack 
We now return this rant to talking about how Bill O’Reilly is a turd licker.
Me no understand.
Yep. It’s not really central to the argument anyway.
I can’t argue for people who feel differently than I do.
I gotta say that I’m not really on the feds side on this issue. I think it is a sleazy tactic to offer money and then tie it to military recruiting. But like I said earlier, if you make a bargain with the devil, it’s hard for me to have sympathy for you when the bill comes due. I don’t like coercion no matter who it’s coming from-- the feds making the schools suck this stuff up, or the school administrators trying to force their political opinions on students.
I think this is the best argument against in-school recruiting, and I’ve read enough in other sources that I don’t need to be convinced that the problem exists. But the way to fix it is to have the schools put some guidelines in place, or to offer alternative counceling and/or to make sure the students have good decision making skills in the first place. I think saying “no military recruiting allowed” is a knee-jerk reaction. The military CAN be a great place and offer people good opportunities. I know plenty of people who’ve had very positive experiences in the military as well as people for whom going into the military would be a terrible idea. One size does not fit all.
Sorry for the hijack, but it’s really a lot more interesting than the O’Reilly pitting du jour.
O’Reilly is an idiot, and this was a really stupid thing to say. Unfortunately, his ratings will probably go up as a result…
I just found that interesting, s’all. Didn’t mean to imply anything by it.
But, isn’t Bill O’Reilly like a secular Pat Robinson? Patty wants God to punish people who vote down creationism in the schools. Billy wants Bush to punish people who vote down military recruiting in the schools.
As a parent you should definately be allowed to keep them away from your kid …unless of course, your kid is pregnant and that nasty recruiter is offerring her an abortion if she’ll just sign on the dotted line! 
I honestly don’t know much about Pat Robertson (other than that his name isn’t Robinson). Like I said in my first post to this thread, O’Reilly is spiteful man. He does act quite a bit like a cult leader, though, so to the extent that Robertson does that, you’re probably correct.
Could we do that split by county … at least for Michigan?
Yikes. It joined. (I just noticed the “member” status)
Nice little thread you got going in GD, btw. :rolleyes:
D’oh!
Now you won the internet.
Please leave some of the porn.
No need to apologize. It was a natural place for the dicussion to go and I got drawn into it myself. The issue of recruiting in schools probably deserves a GD thread of its own.
As a side note, I might have gotten a tad carried away with my characterization of recruiters. I still have a chip on my shoulder (22 years later) about how I was (I feel) hustled into the military at an age when I was young and naive and lacking critical skills. And that was when there wasn’t even a war. I did my time in Florida. I can’t imagine how I would have felt if I’d have ended up in a mess like Iraq. I sure as hell wouldn’t want my kids to get targeted by these people when I wasn’t around.
As a sidebar, it appears Bill O’Reilly is also starting his crusade against merchants who use “Happy Holidays” in their Christmas adverts. :rolleyes:
Why do people waste their time listening to him?
Is it a crusade, a jihad, or did he issue a fatwa? 
He did this last year, too, didn’t he?
Yeah, I don’t get this one at all. For some reason he thinks he’s being victimized if someone says “Happy Holidays” to him instead of “Merry Christmas.” I’m not even sure what he wants. Does he think the government should force department stores to say the word Christmas? WTF? He’s got a Christian persecution complex the size of Texas.
Thanks for the welcome … keep an eye on that post count and get your reaction ready for the 2000th. Or maybe in a few weeks you could take a half hour and read off the titles slowly.
He’s got a thing for what he calls the “secular elite”. Or something like that. It’s not just the government… THEY’RE EVERYWHERE!!!
Yeah, that wasn’t very nice of me. Sorry about that…
Heh, that’s great.
I suspect that being persecuted for his Christian beliefs is the last thing on Bill O’Reilly’s mind. He makes his living stirring up trouble for the sake of ratings. He talks big, but this is the same man who couldn’t sit all the way through an interview with NPR’s Terry Gross.
Ghanima, the letter from your fellow Californian has a few flaws. I won’t go into all of them.
I guess it slipped his mind that New York State still hasn’t been a free state as long as it was a slave state. (Psssst. The North had slaves too.)
I live in Nashville which is the same color as San Francisco. Most of Tennessee is about the same color as eastern California.
Our electoral system paints things in a very simplistic manner and encourages stereotyping. If you are a Liberal, you should know better.
BTW, Vanderbilt over Dartmouth any day.