More MSNBC.COM Love

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The other day msnbc.com's Jane Arraf posted this (credit: msnbc.com)story about a Hunting Club in Baghdad where people go on Saturdays, and no one discusses religion, politics, or anything. They play bingo, the kids run around and have fun, and they even have a bar. Some girls wear dresses and bright lipstick, others might be dressed more conservatively.

After she posted it, a bunch of people sent in comments such as "this bit of marshmallow is just fluff, we need more of the blunt truth" and other comments that just make you say....huh? As if the blunt truth means only show me death and destruction, and not the truth as a whole. Poor Jane is damned if she does anything. When she posts the bad they scream for the good, and when she posts the good they scream for the bad. One of the comments there in particular made my blood curdle. This came from a guy in Connecticut named Sean, who I have a polar opposite view with. Here is his comment in full:

"But my government told me there would be no sectarian violence...my government told me that the experts who spoke out in the media had an agenda.

The situation in Iraq was predicted almost perfectly by the real experts on the region. Let the mentally-slow and easily-led clean up this mess. They screamed for it, they
got it, they can pay for it.

I'll be doing my best as an educated liberal professional to earn money and pay taxes to *laugh* help pay back the nearly ONE TRILLION DOLLAR WAR DEBT.

You war-supporters who can't earn very much money (i.e. at or below the national average) can do your part by enlisting.

It really galls me that the loudest supporters of this failure in Iraq won't enlist and don't make enough money to really impact the cost of the war...they all seem to be from the poorer southern states which are dependent on Federal Welfare to stay afloat."

I sent my reply into msnbc, but yet again they didn't decide that it was worth posting, so I'll put it here:

"You war supporters who can't earn very much money (i.e. at or below the national average)"

It's good to know you think that the majority of the US is worthless because they may make less money than you. We get a national average because it is the average. You know, the mean of multiple numbers? Such as, this is what MOST people make. To belittle them because that doesn't seem like much money to you is very elitist.

"It really galls me that the loudest supporters of this failure in Iraq won't enlist and don't make enough money to really impact the cost of the war"

Sean, if the war debt is "one trillion dollars!!" not even the likes of you can single-handedly effect the war debt, it's the efforts of a whole country. Even if you made $1 Million a year, your federal taxes (let's even say they are 30%) would be 300,000. And only a fraction of that would go to the war debt. Even if all of it went, $300,000 is a pebble in the river. 1,000,000,000,000. That means your 300,000 contribution would take it down to... 999,999,700,000. Thanks for paying for the war!

And your prejudice against the Southern states is very factionalized, are you sure you don't belong in Iraq yourself? Perhaps as a member of Jaish al-mehdi?

That post was very rude and condescending. I don't live on welfare, I'm based out of Florida, I make more than the average national income, yet you don't see me attacking people's income. Did you write Kerry's recent "Idiots are stuck in Iraq" joke?"

I don't know...for such an educated guy you would think he would be able to make an intelligent argument on his point without resorting to belittling other people. Perhaps because his point is only one of emotion, and not one of any rational thought that is all he can use to defend it. Oh well.