I don't understand why the GOP Neo-Con Senators continue to want to send Islamic criminals to Guantanamo Bay. If they are in U.S.A. jails they will be subject to the ultimate criminal justice system in the world, U.S. criminal gangs who don't respect people who do harm to their turf, which is what the 9/11 attacks were. But on a more serious note, what makes us a great nation is our belief that our justice system transcends politics and the military (which is suspect to outsiders in foreign countries) and in the ultimate guilt by evidence and conviction by a jury of ordinary people.
I don't understand why these Senators refuse to trust the system and advocate torture as a form of retribution which is what Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio did yesterday.
But the Middle East is a rats nest and I appreciate Thomas Friedman's expansion of my post from last week. I know he didn't read it, but it is nice to see we agree.
Link to Thomas Friedman today
And we would be remiss if we did not call out Doc Hastings, the GOP House Committee on Natural Resources Chairman. He denounced President Obama's expansion of the George Bush II's Pacific Ocean National Monument, which has the goal of providing a safe haven for fish to live and reproduce preventing the extinction of the species. Congressman's Hasting's ostensible reason is it will give U.S. Tuna fisherman a smaller slice of the ocean to fish in and make it harder for them to make a living.
But if the fish don't have a safe place from the navy of fishing boats that is out there looking to hook them in order to feed 7 billion people, there won't be any fish for the 7 billion people. How many tuna do you need to even provide sushi for 200 million sushi eaters? The world needs more safe places for the fish than even the U.S. can provide in this one national monument. How many fish species are struggling to avoid extinction? Too many!
This is just another illustration of how the GOP supports business that has absolutely no ability to control its need for short term cash flow at the expense of a healthy environment that is sustainable in all its diversity. I think the GOP wants the world to live off of land based animal protein that is fueled by water that is unsafe for humans to drink (my dog shows me that animals have a greater tolerance for unsafe water) and animals don't live long enough to suffer from air pollution and the issues of global warming.
I am an individual of business training and I want business to be profitable and sustain prosperity. But I learned studying economics and in business school that when a company must spend money to prevent harm to a freely available part of nature they will not spend that money unless government regulation insures that all the competitors will face the same burden. If only one company takes advantage of avoiding the cost, they will scoop up more market share and put the "good" companies out of that business and the same pollution will still be there in the end. Only government regulation can prevent the short sighted nature of capitalist enterprise when it comes to natural resources.
The GOP of the 1960's and 1970's understood that. Today's GOP does not.
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