This just in, Wisconsin Senators Pass Bill Pushing Abstinence Over Contraception

And those people are called "friends."

Oh, so yesterday the line was that OWS protestors and their college-age sympathizers were rich hypocrites, born with a silver spoon in their mouths but with the temerity to ignore their noblesse oblige to, I dunno, vote for self-serving tax cuts.Today the line is that they're all self-described "victims" out to seek self-serving "social justice", which, I guess, means redistributive tax hikes on the rich and greater social program spending. So yesterday it was hypocrisy for young liberals to be anything but self-serving, and today it's a moral outrage that they're so self-serving. This is reminiscent of conservative complaints that President Obama is somehow simultaneously a Chicago insider and a Kenyan outsider.I wish you morons could get your attacks straight. Don't you get whiplash from pivoting on a dime so often?

Oh, are you guys vets?Thanks - not for "defending my freedom", which unless you're 80 years old you have not ever done, but for paying the price of our mistaken policies. We owed you better than that.

You're completely wrong. What is ungracious is to send young men and women to die in countries with no capacity to attack us or "threaten my freedoms" and then act like they're engaged in some great noble defense of freedom so politicians can profit from a state of war.That's bullshit. The last war that represented even the hint of risk to the freedoms of American citizens by foreign malefactors was WWII. Every subsequent war has been in the service of treaty obligations or the economic interests of moneyed elites, and if you ask just about any vet they'll agree. I've talked to many. Plenty of men and women sacrificed much in Korea, the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan, and other godforsaken, benighted places that posed no conceivable threat to Americans at home, and I honor and recognize that sacrifice.But not because I benefited in any way from it. Rather, because I did not do enough as an American citizen to prevent my leaders from putting them in the position of having to sacrifice much for literally absolutely nothing. My best friend died in Iraq about seven years ago, and I'll never stop being ashamed that it was for absolutely fucking nothing. God help me, I was even in favor of invading Iraq. What an utter absolute idiot I was. We all were, and are. And that's what we owe our vets today - our gravest apologies for what we've done to them.

And I'm sorry. A better people would not have put you in that position.Truly, truly sorry.

I guess what I was confused by is that "veteran" means "somebody who fought in a war". Certainly our servicemen and women have contributed and continue to contribute much to America, and I hope I didn't give you the impression that I didn't believe that. My wife serves in AMEDD as an entomologist (she's working on malaria right now) so I'm certainly mindful of the vast contributions and accomplishments of service personnel. I disagree, since the context here is Veteran's Day, not Armed Forces Day. I'm sorry if I somehow gave you the wrong impression about what I was talking about, but surely a glance at a calendar might have addressed your confusion. You've misunderstood. My position is that no American war has done anything to defend the freedom of Americans since WWII, and that's abundantly true.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

We're maybe talking past each other. Let me just say that it was not ever my intention to slight servicemen and women, but rather to slight the leadership that so frequently plays a shell game with their lives and livelihoods.