Defending a Mass-Murderer's Identity! Why on Earth has the Pentagon concealed the identity of the soldier who went on a mass-murdering rampage in Afghanistan? How does he have any privacy rights, or indeed any rights at all? Not only should his identity have been revealed immediately — as is the identity of EVERYONE accused of a similar crime in the United States — but he should also be turned over to the Afghan people for trial and execution. No way in the world do we have any right nor reason to protect that monster from the righteous wrath of the Afghan people.
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The insane choice to suppress his identity tells Afghans that there will be no justice, but the U.S. Government will defend him and rationalize away his crimes. That CANNOT be what we want the people of Afghanistan to believe. We must show our solidarity with Afghans, and our absolute disapproval of what he did, by disowning him, and sending him to his fate in the criminal-justice system of that tragic country.
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Hoist with Their Own, Plutocratic Petard. Republicans have been loud and long-winded in praising the value to society of unrestricted expenditures by the rich in political matters. Now they are seeing their own people crushed by money. Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich are being outspent 10:1 and more by Mitt Romney, and Ron Paul is being outspent by much more than that. Now the financial underdogs are complaining that Romney is trying to buy the nomination thru an unfair advantage in funding. Oh? I thought you LOVED economic inequality. It is supposed to provide us with vast benefits in giving incentive to people to do better! So, take that message, Santorum and Gingrich. Work harder! You too can have more campaign funding than you know what to do with! But if you finally do see that financial inequality is socially destructive, SAY so.
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The under-financed candidates should point out that whoever wins the Presidency will not have the option simply to increase private funding to run the country — that the Federal budget is not variable, so what matters is not that one candidate has 10 times as much money as another, but what a candidate can do with the SAME amount of money, because if Romney were to win the Presidency (which is not going to happen, of course; but let us, for this argument, say it could happen) he will not have 10 times the Federal budget to work with than would a President Santorum or President Gingrich, but the same, identical budget, so any monetary advantage in the campaign says NOTHING about his ability to govern with limited finances.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:06 PM