Monday, July 29, 2013

Suggested by JAL: Who serves in the military?

Outstanding commenter JAL suggested posting something on this Powerline post, that points to this Heritage Foundation study, that answers the question thusly (summarized by Powerline):

...generally speaking, folks from Red States are much more inclined to serve in the military than folks from Blue States.
The most over-represented region consists of Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. The most under-represented region is the Northeast from Pennsylvania upwards.
And, no doubt, many of those recruits from conservative states are probably themselves pretty conservative.   That's one reason that many of us opposed to gays openly serving saw the issue as a cudgel with which the left could beat their opponents and their most despised institutions, and not really an issue about rights that anyone really wanted to take advantage of.

Of course, allowing gays to serve might help the military's collective IQ, as they currently have to pick from the bottom of the barrel -- unemployable losers too thick to go to college and too lazy to get a job.  Right?
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.
Yeah, not so much.   

Related photo after the jump:



That's my son -- the one that quotes Dale Carnegie all the time -- after he took the oath and signed up for the Marines.   He ships out to Parris Island next June, after his senior year of high school.  (Yeah, I know, he needs a hair cut -- he says he'll only be able to keep it long for another year.)

Needless to say, I'm very proud; but I had mixed emotions about this.  He'll have to watch for creepy ass-crackers in the showers.  His commander-in-chief is a corrupt Marxist dictator with delusions of godhood.  And if anything should happen to this god who bleeds, his CIC will be a high-functioning diagnosable moron.

41 comments:

Sharc said...

Outstanding, Pasta. Congrats to both of you. Exhibits great character by him and great parenting by you.

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

Thank you to your son for his service. The Marine Corps is a great organization and the best branch of the service (they all are good, just the Marines are best). He is defending the nation and constitution, not the CIC.

I pray he does well and stays safe.

edutcher said...

Saw that piece and it pretty much figures that the Conservatives are the ones putting it on the line.

If I may, a big Semper Fi to your son, Pasta, although I have to correct you:

It's not "corrupt Marxist dictator with delusions of godhood", it's tin-plated corrupt Marxist dictator with delusions of godhood (I remember that episode sooo well...).

Evi L. Bloggerlady said...

The Marine Corps is a great organization and the best branch of the service (they all are good, just the Marines are best).

I'm sure some of those "other" organizations would beg to differ.

FWIW and OT:

This should heat up the NSA thing again, Greenwald says low-level personnel can review surveillance records.

Michael Haz said...

Side note to Lem: Would you please darken the print? Many thanks.

Trooper York said...

God bless your son. We should all pray for his safety and the safety of all of those who serve and protect us.

You should be very proud of him.

Anonymous said...

LOL, was this Inga bait? Of course I must bring up my daughter and Wisconsin as a blue state, well it was in 2002 when she joined the Navy.

JAL said...

Told ya, Pasta.

Paddy O said...

It's also worth noting how much education is part of moving through the ranks. It's pretty constant, though not always directly connected with a general degree program.

And higher ranking officers, it seems, almost all have advanced formal degrees and many with PhDs.

I think there's a good argument that we have the best educated military in history, at all levels.

Cody Jarrett said...

Inga said...

LOL, was this Inga bait? Of course I must bring up my daughter and Wisconsin as a blue state, well it was in 2002 when she joined the Navy.


Inga, you're a beautiful person and we're all very proud of your daughter and her service.
We love you both.

Not that way. The other way.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Would you please darken the print? Many thanks.

I'm trying right now.

virgil xenophon said...

Appropos of the topic I remember a quote from an Army DI several years ago when he said in a magazine interview on training: "There are only three kinds of people in the United States Army: Southern Whites, Southern Blacks, and everyone else." LOL!

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Congratulations Pasta. I have a brother in law that after finishing his service signed on as a contractor. He is home in Georgia right now but he is going back to Afghanistan soon.

Anonymous said...

That's lovely, thank you again sweetie CEO, I know it's heartfelt, truly.

Cody Jarrett said...

You're welcome and thank you for saying so, it's much appreciated.

Aridog said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Freeman Hunt said...

Brave son, Pasta. Bravo.

Aridog said...

Congratulations to your son for his good choice in serving, and in an outfit where everyone is an infantryman first. Congratulations to you for providing the environment for him to grow up to be the man he is today. Here's a slightly modified blessing ...

May the road rise up to meet him.
May the wind always be at his back.
May the sun shine warm upon his face, and rains fall soft upon his fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold him in the palm of His hand.

Amen.

JAL said...

My military career person (officer) has a masters.

Other family member (enlisted) will have his associates by next year when he finishes training (his career path training gets credit).

Both are above average (and not just in the Lake Woebegone way).

A large number of quality volunteers form the best military in the world.

(I think Marines are awesome, too, Pasta, though we have a mixture of Army, Airmen, and Navy, actually.)

Valentine Smith said...

Good luck and God bless to your son.

ndspinelli said...

Pasta, Thanks to you and your son.

Synova said...

Congratulations Pasta Junior!

All I gotta say is... start running and working out now. Like you mean it. Like those last five wind sprints mean you make it out alive. The dirty secret of boot camp is that it's designed to get everyone out the other end even when you show up in sad physical shape, no matter how pathetic you are. The thing is... Just how miserable do you want to be for those 11 weeks?

Anyhow... good on you, Pasta Jr!

Anonymous said...

Pasta: Best to you and your son!

I read Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" when I was a kid and for two weeks wanted to go to a military academy, but that passed, the sixties happened, and Heinlein wrote "Stranger in a Strange Land."

I've matured some since then and even though I spent much of my life being anti-military, I now wish I had been open to that when I was young.

Of course, short of a time machine or reincarnation, what's done is done. However, I have come to a belated appreciation of the military and the fine people who serve in it.

Again, best.

Chip Ahoy said...

Lem, are you trying to change the color of the text on the main page posts to be darker?

If so.

Change the color of text

This takes courage.

Take three deep breaths. No! Two deep breaths, Three is too much oxygen all at once.

Open template.

It will show you what you have for template and what you can choose to change it to.

Ignore your choices beckoning to pick them, they're noisy and you've made your choice and now you want to tweek it to your desire. It is too pale.

Top left. The biggest picture, your blog as it shows now in miniature. The word "customize" is a darkened button. Ignore it. Select HTML instead to look at its guts. (It's not really its guts, those are elsewhere, these are your template's guts, the real guts are out of your reach, they are Blogger guts and they are a lot messier than this. These template guts are simple compared to real Blogger guts.

They tell you right there what they're on about. They are self-describing. Says right there

Copied from my own site which is alreay black text. Numbers on this site will be different. The strings are six digits but they keep changing standards to be shortcuts so now three. You see what is going on. The color code for black is #000000 Isn't that splendid? It's like they were actually thinking about it before slapping numbers around willy-nilly. They did their best to make it foolproof. Just boldly change whatever you have to the numbers for black, 000, and 000000 respectively. The following is a sample to show how clear it is.

Variable definitions
====================
<Variable name="bgcolor" description="Page Background Color"
type="color" default="#fff" value="#ffffff">

<Variable name="textcolor" description="Text Color"
type="color" default="#000" value="#000000">

<Variable name="pagetitlecolor" description="Blog Title Color"
type="color" default="#000" value="#000000">

<Variable name="titlecolor" description="Post Title Color"
type="color" default="#000" value="#000000">

<Variable name="footercolor" description="Date and Footer Color"
type="color" default="#555" value="#555555">

<Variable name="linkcolor" description="Link Color"
type="color" default="#58a" value="#5588aa">

<Variable name="visitedlinkcolor" description="Visited Link Color"
type="color" default="#999" value="#999999"> Used to be #969

<Variable name="bordercolor" description="Border Color"
type="color" default="#999" value="#999999">

<Variable name="bodyfont" description="Text Font"
type="font" default="normal normal 100% Georgia,Serif;" value="normal normal 100% Georgia,Serif;">

<Variable name="pagetitlefont" description="Blog Title Font"
type="font"
default="normal bold 200% Georgia,Serif" value="normal bold 200% Georgia,Serif">
<Variable name="startSide" description="Start side in blog language"
type="automatic" default="left" value="left">
<Variable name="endSide" description="End side in blog language"
type="automatic" default="right" value="right">

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Ok I'm going to try that.

Phil 314 said...

Yes, but liberals care.

Lem the artificially intelligent said...

Ok, the text color on the main page should be darker now.

Thanks Chip!

Anonymous said...

Liberals also join the military Phil, yes they do care.

Cody Jarrett said...

Of course they care, Inga. That's easily seen just by looking toward you and your progeny.

We're very proud of them. And you, for raising them well.

Anonymous said...

CEO, I'm touched.

Not that way. The other way.

deborah said...

Bless him. My dad was a marine.

Cody Jarrett said...

It's a new day, Inga. A new leaf.

And I realize I forgot to offer congrats to Pasta and his son too.

So congrats.

angieoh! said...

Congratulations Pasta. God's blessings to your son (and your family) on this journey.

Dante said...

Regarding "Creepy Ass-Crackers", isn't it time to integrate the showers? It's wrong the dudes are ogled by gays but don't get to ogle the ladies. Were is the fairness in that?

Next, there used to be a map showing Iraqi casualties and deaths. But, this list will have to do.

Of liberal states, CA is pretty high at 14 deaths per million. Compare to Connecticut, NY, DC, and NJ all around 10 (what happened in Vermont??).

Meanwhile, TX, OK, MN, etc. are all @ 20% or above, with TX donating the most deaths of any state.

As a friend of mine once mentioned, once the leftists kill religion, who is going to fight the wars? I guess we better start building robots.

Anonymous said...

Congrats to Pasta 's son, yes indeed. My daughter went through Army basic training and Navy boot camp, her choice, she didn't have to. Her advice to youngsters entering boot camp, don't get noticed.

Anonymous said...

Wisconsin, 18 per million, blue state.

Cody Jarrett said...

My daughter went through Army basic training and Navy boot camp, her choice, she didn't have to. Her advice to youngsters entering boot camp, don't get noticed.

How could a daughter of yours not get noticed? I mean...I hate to go there and bring up bad memories of the past, but we have seen the pictures after all.

You know?

Anonymous said...

Clarification, she did not need to do the full Navy boot camp, she chose to. She did say Navy boot camp was a piece of cake next to Army basic training. Marine boot camp still tops them all . My daughter was married in the chapel on Parris island, while stationed in Beaufort, SC.

Anonymous said...

CEO, wrong daughter dearie.

Cody Jarrett said...

Ahh. Sorry for the confusion.

But my original statement stands I think...how could a daughter of yours...

Dante said...

Inga,

Wisconsin, 18 per million, blue state.

Yes, there are some exceptions to the rule, if that's your point.

Meanwhile, the numbers speak for themselves. The blue states I listed have a total population of 70M, whereas WI is 6M.

The red states I listed have a population of 30M.

Fr Martin Fox said...

Congratulations to your son!

All this raises a question: why is the President and his people making Evangelicals and Catholics increasingly unwelcome in the military? Scratch that--I know why.

Better question: if this continues, what will the country do if those made unwelcome go elsewhere?

Wait--now we understand why Obama pursues a high unemployment economy.