"The most economically incompetent administration since the Great Depression"

[plumbervol]

He can follow the Bush two front war.We will be out of Iraq(useless) and be in Afghanistan and Iran... If we keep this up we will need a draft. Or perhaps give those that go citizenship.... Dead white boyz laying on their while the Brown Boyz go and do their dirty work..... Obama will  play president or whoever replaces him. We have no idea how to get thell out of there now that we are in.... I say send in the Mexicans!! Maybe when they come back they will knock your children out of a job as a returning Vet!! They wipe Granny's , they grow your food, do you city county and states dirty work and keep your sale and property taxes low, let them fight for us!  The Irish did it during the Civil War

[Sasquatch]

.... Dead white boyz laying on their while the Brown Boyz go and do their dirty work.....

Unbelievable. There is no low I guess when it comes to playing the race card. 

[plumbervol]

Lets face it Sas I don't want to send my kid, and no way either party will ever bring back the draft without a trigger bigger than 911. We are going to keep a presence in the Middle East it appears for the forseable future. We need soldiers, Mexicans want to live here. Don't send my kids, my kids role is to kick your kids in the new world order as the technocrats take over the high paying jobs...... Lets send the Mexicans!! This last deployment of Reserves cost us on average around 65 grand per soldier in salary. We can get a full time military soldier for 1/3 of that....Somebody that is actually tough mean and hard...Citezenship in exchange for GI Benefits!!! Good Deal if you ask me

[Jeremy Roenick]

I've got an even better solution PV.

How about we don't go starting fights halfway around the globe at a cost of trillions of dollars, and innocent American lives and defend the keep instead?  These preemptive wars in the name of the global war on terrorism are draining the treasury dry.  Rome did the same thing in the pursuit of the empire and you can open a history book and see how that turned out for them.

[Sasquatch]

Lets face it Sas I don't want to send my kid,

I must have missed where it is the parent's responsibility to "send their kid" to military service. Last I looked, EVERYBODY currently deployed has volunteered.

Why don't you get the most recent military enlistment numbers and tell me if they are up or down. Last I heard they are turning people away. I guess that's what happens when you cannot find a job anywhere else, huh?

...... Lets send the Mexicans!! This last deployment of Reserves cost us on average around 65 grand per soldier in salary. We can get a full time military soldier for 1/3 of that....Somebody that is actually tough mean and hard...Citezenship in exchange for GI Benefits!!! Good Deal if you ask me

I guess you don't realize how degrading you are to the military. So it will take getting Mexicans into the military before we have "somebody that is actually tough mean and hard"?

I suggest you take your own advice when it comes to talking about the military. Keep your out of something you obviously know NOTHING about.

[Dementia_Madness]

Many many Mexican citizens (only legal residents of the US) are actually fighting in our military right now....they get a fast track to citizenship, God bless them.

[plumbervol]

That is my point Darth... With a little theatrics tossed in....

I must have missed where it is the parent's responsibility to "send their kid" to military service.

I am a family type of guy, I send them to school. I help get them established in life etc. Not leaving some silly war seems to be part of the family thing IMO. Role model etc....

A family member got called up 5 years ago and has been over there since then waiting to cycle out. He was working as a TAT guard at the Y-12 plant. His outfit is a counter terrorist group and he gets home about 4 times a year. Seems to me that these reserve groups are used in support of the full time military for the most part. A friend of mine was forced to retire from the 278, he was an old ranger and did two tours of Vietnam and Desert Storm and the first Iraq deployment. They had him working a garage and the 50 something year old wanted to go outand kill people..... The company I work for forced him into retirement so you birds could have your tax break......... I appreciate them and all but they should have let him hit the roads and really serve...

[NCVol]

I spent a second looking up recruiting numbers and this caught my eye. 

The Department of Defense announced today its recruiting and retention statistics for the active and reserve components for January 2010.

· Active Component.

· Recruiting. All four active services met or exceeded their accession goals for January 2010.

· Army: 8,513 accessions with a goal of 8,393; 101 percent

· Navy: 3,012 accessions with a goal of 3,012; 100 percent

· Marine Corps: 3,035 accessions with a goal of 3,024; 100 percent

· Air Force: 2,593 accessions with a goal of 2,593; 100 percent

· Retention. The Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force retained near or above mission goals through the first four months of fiscal 2010.

· Reserve Component.

· Recruiting. All six reserve components met or exceeded their accession goals for January 2010.

· Army National Guard: 4,402 accessions with a goal of 4,100; 107 percent

· Army Reserve – 2,272 accessions with a goal of 2,229; 102 percent

· Navy Reserve – 511 accessions with a goal of 511; 100 percent

· Marine Corps Reserve – 1,130 accessions with a goal of 819; 138 percent

· Air National Guard – 563 accessions with a goal of 470; 120 percent

· Air Force Reserve – 772 accessions with a goal of 772; 100 percent

· Attrition. Losses in all reserve components are within acceptable limits.

That's a lot of "100% of target" numbers!!   

Now seriously, if we saw those kinds of numbers coming out the old USSR, I think we'd all figure the goals and the actual might have been adjusted just a little bit to satisfy the pencil pushers and propaganda outfits so good news could be reported to the citizens on state run radio and TV!  See, NO PROBLEMS getting kids to fight and die in a hellhole across the world!! 

[Flummoxed Lummox]

I've got an even better solution PV.

How about we don't go starting fights halfway around the globe at a cost of trillions of dollars, and innocent American lives and defend the keep instead?  These preemptive wars in the name of the global war on terrorism are draining the treasury dry.  Rome did the same thing in the pursuit of the empire and you can open a history book and see how that turned out for them.

Excellent post! 

[One Man Gang]

He can follow the Bush two front war.We will be out of Iraq(useless) and be in Afghanistan and Iran... If we keep this up we will need a draft. Or perhaps give those that go citizenship.... Dead white boyz laying on their while the Brown Boyz go and do their dirty work..... Obama will  play president or whoever replaces him. We have no idea how to get thell out of there now that we are in.... I say send in the Mexicans!! Maybe when they come back they will knock your children out of a job as a returning Vet!! They wipe Granny's , they grow your food, do you city county and states dirty work and keep your sale and property taxes low, let them fight for us!  The Irish did it during the Civil War

... and yet another leftist collection of horsesh*t is blown away by the cold light of reality:

http://www.heritage.org/Research/Reports/2008/08/Who-Serves-in-the-US-Military-The-Demographics-of-Enlisted-Troops-and-Officers

Based on an understanding of the limitations of any objective definition of quality, this report compares military volunteers to the civilian population on four demographic characteristics: household income, education level, racial and ethnic background, and regional origin. This report finds that:

   1. U.S. military service disproportionately attracts enlisted personnel and officers who do not come from disadvantaged backgrounds. Previous Heritage Foundation research demonstrated that the quality of enlisted troops has increased since the start of the Iraq war. This report demonstrates that the same is true of the officer corps.

   2. Members of the all-volunteer military are significantly more likely to come from high-income neighborhoods than from low-income neighborhoods. Only 11 percent of enlisted recruits in 2007 came from the poorest one-fifth (quintile) of neighborhoods, while 25 percent came from the wealthiest quintile. These trends are even more pronounced in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) program, in which 40 percent of enrollees come from the wealthiest neighborhoods-a number that has increased substantially over the past four years.

   3. American soldiers are more educated than their peers. A little more than 1 percent of enlisted personnel lack a high school degree, compared to 21 percent of men 18-24 years old, and 95 percent of officer accessions have at least a bachelor's degree.

   4. Contrary to conventional wisdom, minorities are not overrepresented in military service. Enlisted troops are somewhat more likely to be white or black than their non-military peers. Whites are proportionately represented in the officer corps, and blacks are overrepresented, but their rate of overrepresentation has declined each year from 2004 to 2007. New recruits are also disproportionately likely to come from the South, which is in line with the history of Southern military tradition.

The facts do not support the belief that many American soldiers volunteer because society offers them few other opportunities. The average enlisted person or officer could have had lucrative career opportunities in the private sector. Those who argue that American soldiers risk their lives because they have no other opportunities belittle the personal sacrifices of those who serve out of love for their country.

All the statistics used in the report quoted above come from DoD.

Plumber, everything you have been told by the media, the Democrats, and academia are LIES. 

Accept it and move on.

[Flummoxed Lummox]

All the statistics used in the report quoted above come from DoD

Uh, no. Read your own report.

The statistics were calculated by the Heritage Foundation, not exactly an objective source, using DATA from the DOD. That's a big difference from saying the statistics came from the DOD.

Furthermore, the data is from 2006-2007. Fine. What about 2010?

You may be right in the long run. I don't know. But I certainly don't take claims from the Heritage Foundation, using data from four years ago, as the truth. The Heritage Foundation is nothing more than a biased mouthpiece for the far right.

[GRAY]

based on what FL? are the numbers correct or incorrect?