>The military.com link is to a military recruiting ad

military.com is a news and information website that covers topics such as benefits to military members, veterans, their families and those with military affinity. Even if there are links to recruiting, this does nothing to refute the facts.

>Heritage's business is generating talking points and 'research' for conservative/Republican policy

Reality has a conservative bias apparently. The facts are here for all to see.

>Here's a report saying that 79% of US Army recruits come from families with service members.

Which is a meaningless statistic. This number could be the same across all income classes, or again, higher income classes could be overrepresented.

>the military is overwhelmingly rural and does not recruit in major urban areas

That is hilariously wrong. Your own sources shows Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Tampa, Atlanta, etc. all in the top counties for recruitment. "Blue cities" != "[all] major urban areas". Your anti-Southern bias is showing.

>Also, the officer corps is overwhelmingly white people, afaik, in a country that is only about half white people in that age group.

This is to be expected due to requiring a four year degree, among other things. Whites are slightly overrepresented in the officer corps. The US is 73% White (including Hispanic), and the officer corps is 75.8% White (including Hispanic). Asians are also ever so slightly overrepresented in the officer corps.

You can see the report that covers this here: http://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/2008/pdf/cda08-05.pdf

I can easily attack your source(s) as fake news outlets (New York Times especially), but I'm not going to use fallacies like you have here. Your sources simply do not back up your claims.

The richest quantile is overrepresented. The aforementioned report was compiled by Dr. Shanea Watkins, a policy analyst specializing in empirical studies.

Unless you have sources that claim otherwise, my original claim stands.

QED.

I think it’s fair for the person you’re replying @ to point out the heritage foundation is a self professed conservative think tank if you point out that you believe the NYT is not trustworthy. There’s nothing inherently wrong with being a conservative think tank but it’s important to consider how data presentation might be impacted by the person(s) presenting the data. Which is in line with your suspicions of the NYT.

QED.

I wouldn't be so even-handed. Asserting something is biased doesn't make it so; assertions aren't taken as fact or truth. Assertions are worthless and two assertions are equally worthless. I talked about the factual basis of my claims and the parent claims, not assertions.

Honestly, I agree with you, but I was attempting to be diplomatic in case that would help drive the point.

>Whites are slightly overrepresented in the officer corps.

This is why whites were overrepresented as a percentage of troops killed in Vietnam, because so many young officers were killed leading platoons in the jungle.

It's sad to see the discussion turn to an attempt to shut down conversation. I have so many things to do in my day, why would I read that comment?

>It's sad to see the discussion turn to an attempt to shut down conversation.

I'm not shutting anything down, you're just throwing in the towel because...

>I have so many things to do in my day, why would I read that comment?

You won't, because you know you've been proven wrong.