• Menu
  • Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Before Header

  • About Us
  • Lexicon
  • Contact Us
  • Our Store
  • ↑
  • ↓
  • ←
  • →

Balloon Juice

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Today in our ongoing national embarrassment…

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Rupert, come get your orange boy, you petrified old dinosaur turd.

They spent the last eight months firing professionals and replacing them with ideologues.

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

Republicans want to make it harder to vote and easier for them to cheat.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

They punch you in the face and then start crying because their fist hurts.

I would try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

Of course you can have champagne before noon. That’s why orange juice was invented.

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Finding joy where we can, and muddling through where we can’t.

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

The only way through is to slog through the muck one step at at time.

Consistently wrong since 2002

Mobile Menu

  • 4 Directions VA 2025 Raffle
  • 2025 Activism
  • Donate with Venmo, Zelle & PayPal
  • Site Feedback
  • War in Ukraine
  • Submit Photos to On the Road
  • Politics
  • On The Road
  • Open Threads
  • Topics
  • Authors
  • About Us
  • Contact Us
  • Lexicon
  • Our Store
  • Politics
  • Open Threads
  • 2025 Activism
  • Garden Chats
  • On The Road
  • Targeted Fundraising!
You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Military / The Counter-Recruiters

The Counter-Recruiters

by John Cole|  June 16, 200510:15 am| 7 Comments

This post is in: Military

FacebookTweetEmail

Lt. Smash.

FacebookTweetEmail
Previous Post: « Getting The Last Laugh
Next Post: What Can 30 Hornets Do? »

Reader Interactions

7Comments

  1. 1.

    Marcus Wellby

    June 16, 2005 at 10:38 am

    The whole debate regarding whether or not recruiters should be allowed in schools is ridiculous. It is yet another example of the culture in this country where some parents want to pass their parental responsibility on to others. If your child is so naive that they could be talked into military service (not a small commitment) when it is something they don’t want to do, then that child of yours is going to have a very difficult time with adulthood. It also means that you have failed miserably as a parent in teaching your child how to look after themselves and make their own decisions. It is not the fault of some “evil government” dragging your kids out of Social Studies and tossing them in the back of a black van.

    Oddly, its the same culture that wants to limit what is on TV because unsupervised children are watching shows they have no business watching. In that case certain parents would rather limit what I watch rather than establish some rules at home.

    It takes a village my ass.

  2. 2.

    MI

    June 16, 2005 at 11:07 am

    THE UNSPOKEN AGENDA of this “counter-recruiting” movement must be addressed. They seek nothing less than the destruction of the U.S. military, which they see as the primary instrument of “American Imperialism.”

    Wow, I really, really hate this kind of shit. Listen…I don’t want kids going over to Iraq for a myriad of reasons, and sorry to disappoint, none of them are my desire to see the destruction of the US military.

    I initially supported the war (philosophically I still do), and if I had any kind of platform at the time, I wouldn’t have discouraged people from joining up. But the shit hit the fan, nothing turned out as planned, there’s no end in sight.

    It would be different if the leaders and their failed war plans had gotten voted out of office. Then you could make the case that new and better ideas were on the way (actually with Kerry that wouldn’t have been this case really, but you know what I mean) but that’s not what happened. President Bush got reelected. So seeing how he/they handled the first couple years of the war, how in the hell can you in confidence and good conscience try to sign people up for a war that you know is being run by folks who don’t know what they’re doing??

  3. 3.

    MI

    June 16, 2005 at 11:37 am

    Sorry if that was a bit harsh..like most people with this war, whether for or against, discussion tends to drive up the blood pressure.

    If the president came out tomorrow and said, “We’re adding 200,000 more troops to Iraq, we’re going to close down the boarder, we’re going to shut the country down for a week or two, and we’re going to absolutely-fucking-obliterate the insurgency.” I would be much more inclined to support recruiting efforts and my support for the war itself would rise dramatically. But obviously that’s not the case, it’s the opposite. Until there’s a clear, reasonable, decent plan for what the hell we’re going to do with this mess, I don’t see my views on this issue changing much.

  4. 4.

    Geoduck

    June 16, 2005 at 6:00 pm

    Of course, we don’t have an extra 200,000 troops, we don’t have the power to shut down the border, and we can’t wipe out the insurgency. But it sure sounds snappy!

  5. 5.

    RW

    June 17, 2005 at 8:20 am

    MI, it would indeed be a good thing if the president actually said. I’m no military expert, though, so it’s just my gut feeling that something like that is needed.

    The bad thing is that he’d have to seek congressional approval for the money and you’d have even more dickwads like Dick Durbin comparing the soldiers to nazis, this time during debates on further military action. I don’t think the Democrats are anti-military, so please, no one think that I’m even hinting at something like that, but there’s no f#cking way 200K troops sent for the purpose of more asskicking in the current climate. Cripes, you’re hearing more people propose about cutting and running than crushing the terroristic insurgency.

    And, that goes for both sides (the Buchananesque wing of the libertarian right and the anti-war left), so that comment was non-partisan, for the most part (let’s be honest, there are more anti-war lefties than anti-war isolationists).

  6. 6.

    Kimmitt

    June 17, 2005 at 12:05 pm

    Cripes, you’re hearing more people propose about cutting and running than crushing the terroristic insurgency.

    1) Well, we were repeatedly promised a short, cheap war and occupation by every single relevant official other than President Bush.

    2) I’m all for crushing the terroristic insurgency. I don’t think our current leadership is up to the task. Better to pick a nice date, declare victory, and leave soon than to watch a lot of our people get killed in service of a strategy which is going to fail. You disagree with this. Fine. But if Bush were to call for 200,000 more soldiers, I think you’d be surprised at how many people would take the call seriously. Any sign that this Administration is capable of admitting error would be greeted with joy.

  7. 7.

    Barry

    June 18, 2005 at 8:28 am

    MI, you aren’t harsh. Bush & Co, and their supporters deserve this.

    If 100,000 young College Republicans per year said ‘Time to fight; college can wait’, and enlisted, the Army wouldn’t know what to do with all of them. Probably 50,000 extra guys would saturate the system. [comment – age doesn’t really matter; there were lots of civilian contractor jobs which needed/need to be done – driving gasoline tankers, engineering work on re-building projects, etc.]

    Instead, we’re seeing what happened in Vietnam, which is that a lot of the guys who support the war don’t want to actually go and, you know – support the war. Back during Vietnam, long-haired hippie/commie freaks were a much less problematic encounter than short-haired, heavily-armed disciplined commie soldiers.

    And the second old thing that is new again is that many right-wingers don’t want to face that. It must be the Evul Libruls!

    The third old thing, which I prophesy is yet to come, is that these people will be happily accepted into politics by right-wingers, while people who opposed the war will be disrespected, libeled and slandered. Even if they fought in it.

    Or rather, *especially* if they fought in it.

Comments are closed.

Primary Sidebar

On The Road - Albatrossity - Landscapes, Global 1
Photo by Albatrossity (1/31/26)

Mary Peltola Alaska Senate

Donate

Order Your Pet Calendars!

Order Calendar A

Order Calendar B

 

Recent Comments

  • YY_Sima Qian on War for Ukraine Day 1,426: Kyiv Blacked Out (Jan 21, 2026 @ 1:51am)
  • YY_Sima Qian on Tuesday Night Open Thread (Jan 21, 2026 @ 1:42am)
  • Kayla Rudbek on Tuesday Night Open Thread (Jan 21, 2026 @ 1:34am)
  • Kayla Rudbek on Tuesday Night Open Thread (Jan 21, 2026 @ 1:27am)
  • YY_Sima Qian on Tuesday Night Open Thread (Jan 21, 2026 @ 1:25am)

Balloon Juice Posts

View by Topic
View by Author
View by Month & Year
View by Past Author

Featuring

Medium Cool
Artists in Our Midst
Authors in Our Midst
On Artificial Intelligence (7-part series)

🎈Keep Balloon Juice Ad Free

Become a Balloon Juice Patreon
Donate with Venmo, Zelle or PayPal

Calling All Jackals

Site Feedback
Nominate a Rotating Tag
Submit Photos to On the Road
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Links)
Balloon Juice Anniversary (All Posts)
Fix Nyms with Apostrophes

Balloon Juice Mailing List Signup

Social Media

Balloon Juice
WaterGirl
TaMara
John Cole
DougJ (aka NYT Pitchbot)
Betty Cracker
Tom Levenson
David Anderson
Major Major Major Major
DougJ NYT Pitchbot
mistermix
Rose Judson (podcast)

Mary Peltola Alaska Senate

Donate

Site Footer

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

  • Facebook
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube
  • Comment Policy
  • Our Authors
  • Blogroll
  • Our Artists
  • Privacy Policy

Privacy Manager

Copyright © 2026 Dev Balloon Juice · All Rights Reserved · Powered by BizBudding Inc

Share this ArticleLike this article? Email it to a friend!

Email sent!