There's been some talk of military recruiting in the news lately, tho it's been focused mainly on the sexual abuse scandal thing... guess that makes for more titillating coverage than the fact that the military is using all kinds of Bushian tricks & lies worthy of Rove/Bush/Cheney, himself, to lure mainly poor young men & women into the cannon fodder club.

Two years ago when my son was in high school (which happened to be a "ghetto school", for lack of a better description), the military recruiters were there every week, conducting "assemblies" in the gym that were nothing more than sales pitches to sign up. Two years later, he is still receiving recruiting brochures, but these days they sound more like a letter from Publisher's Clearing House. Check out the brochure that arrived today (below) - I only bothered to scan the money page, but the rest of the rhetoric is equally euphemistic and sales-ey... read on:

So, a 40 Grand Bonus? Damn... that sounds pretty good - especially to a kid that doesn't exactly have a long dance card of college/career options. Unfortunately, what the recruiting propaganda never bothers to mention is that your chances of serving in Iraq or Afghanistan or whatever other oil-related country we invade next are pretty darn high. And, once you go there, there's a pretty darn good chance you either won't come home in one piece (physically and/or mentally), or you won't come home breathing.

So... quite a gamble in reality, and we all know that in gambling, the House always comes out ahead.

But, 40 Grand... damn! That's gotta be tempting...

All I can say is I hope that Rapture thing happens soon so we can get rid of these insane faux-religious right-wing assholes that are conning a whole generation into being maimed or killed in the name of Haliburton/Kellogg Brown & Root/Carlyle Group/Bush family/Exxon-Mobil/Texaco/Unical/Shell and all the other evil corporate parasites that are sucking the soul - and blood - from our once great country.