Monday, January 16, 2012

Monday Morning Quarterbacking; Jan 16 Reflections on the GOP

Been reading about Perry's appeal to try to get on the Virginia ballot. Joined by Huntsman (who I guess will now drop his appeal) and Santorum.

Virginia's requirement of 10,000 signatures including 400 from each county is a heavy burden. One can understand how the state doesn't want any Tom Dick or Harry with a few hundred bucks to spend on pure vanity taking up space on a ballot. But 10,000 signatures to get in and on is like saying "Don't matter if you're ready for the big time, if you're not big time now with an organization already in place in our state, you don't get to play." The high roller buy-in philosophy. Totally anti-democratic imo.

I halfway listened to a short Perry interview on TV yesterday. Pleasant man, rugged good looks. But; you know how sometimes you talk to someone who seems a little off? How their responses to your words don't quite match up with what you said, as though they are distracted or self-obsessed or in some small way mentally impaired? That's kind of how Perry sounded to me. Pleasant but a mite tiched in the haid.

Somewhere iin this thread I mentioned "interesting candidates." Who do I call the interesting GOP candidates? Those with interesting ideas to put forward. The adventurers. A new or different point of view. Those who are in the vanguard or the forelorn hope as opposed to mainstream candidates who construct a platform out of planks provided by polls or significant blocks in the GOP electorate.

The interesting: Definitely Ron Paul. Bruce Johnson. Huntsman. I would once have included Herman Cain but his half-baked ideas didn't wash and in the perspective of time it looks like the whole Cain escapade was a testosterone and status fueled vanity run, amteur nite at the Bijou for everybody in his campaign.

Some say Ron Paul is good on domestic economics but naive about foreign policy. I say the opposite, that the strength of his ideas is in foreign policy.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

Marines Urinating on Taliban Fighter

I haven't seen the video;  I only know what it is said to portray.  I am not out to court martial anybody over that.

The guy is dead.   Could be piss, could be flowers and medals, doesn't make any difference to him.  Dead is dead.   And as for respect for the dead, that is an empty quantity, with significance only for survivors.

How much respect ought one to feel about the body of an enemy who was out to kill you?   

The natural human reaction is tear into the body with teeth and fingernails, to defile it, to burn it, shit on it, piss on it, throw it in the garbage dump.

For that matter, isn't one's own prestige enhanced by the hatred and lack of restraint shown by an enemy?   So what happened was in the screwy way of war an honor to the Taliban fighter.

As a practical matter, a diplomatic matter, it is not a good idea to be caught urinating on a fallen warrior.   Poor propaganda for us, good propaganda for the other side even if it was all meaningless.   And with more negotiations between invaders (us) and invadees (the Taliban) in store, this doesn't help.

Problem is, of course, that the Taliban is an idea and not a person.   You can kill a person or persons but it is much harder to kill an idea. 

In the war of ideas this counts as a lost battle.

Rep. Giffords and that Crazy Old Coot

You probably heard about that old buzzard in Arizona who says Gifford makes him want to vomit.   One ought to feel sorry for the guy, having been stewed in his own  untraconservative bile for decades.  There ought to be medications available to treat his illness.   Hell of it is, he's right.   About Giffords staying in office that is.  

It may be good therapy for Giffords to have the goal of coming back and reclaiming her house seat.   But it's not likely.   She has been severely damaged, and one has to question any vote she may ceremonially cast.   The higher order function, the verbal function is not there, and may never again be there again.   She should have resigned her seat long ago.