Beanie Babies

 Vengeance is mine; 
I will repay, saith the Lord 
--Romans 12:19 (KJV)
 _______________

In the political circus we call nomination season, Vice Presidential nominee "I'm very fit and Catholic" Paul Ryan ended his first debate with VP Joe Biden with a comment on his 7-week-old Beanie Baby, implying that even the life of a bean is sacred.

Ranger wonders why an avowed Catholic would have a 7-week-old fetal ultrasound unless it was to discern any early possible problems with the fetus, and wouldn't that open the possibility of medical abortion of grievously damaged or non-viable beans?  Or is viewing the ultrasound just feel-good entertainment for self-involved pro-lifers? 

The same week a YouGov.com survey showed 69% of Americans favor assassinating know terrorists; 41% approve of using torture on suspected terrorists (Torture Creep).  Interesting that assassination is acceptable to a larger portion of respondents than is torture -- could this have something to do with the queasiness of facing the consequences (the tortured), versus the comfortable finality provided by death?

Glenn Greenwald notes, 

"It is often noted that the Catholic Church stridently opposes reproductive rights. But it is almost never noted that the Church just as stridently opposes US militarism and its economic policies that continuously promote corporate cronyism over the poor (Martha Raddatz and the Faux Objectivity of Journalists)."  

Our candidates all claim to be religious and presumably moral men (two Catholic, one Mormon, one, a pastiche) for whom assassination is acceptable while abortion gives them the willies.  Perhaps for them and the rest of the 69%, death by Hellfire missile is more moral than an abortionist's curette; it certainly sounds more apocalyptic.

So, Americans like Ryan oppose abortion, but are o.k. with blasting terrorists (=fully formed fetuses) into the great beyond.  What is missing from the debates and the party platforms are discussions of torture and assassination, and a coherence with the feel-good bean comments. 

The U.S. Army Military Police school used to teach that all life is sacred to an officer of the law, including that of the perpetrator. It is a clear and unambiguous statement, and forms the basis of federal law enforcement policy and doctrine.  It is not muddied by terms like "suspected perpetrator". 

Simply, the life of a terrorist is to be respected in the United States legal system.  But grasping this idea would require an honesty and intellectual rigor which has succumbed to visceral reactions.  Instead, the U.S. body politic operates as a blob of amoebic protoplasm, reacting to the light by lurching away.

How can a journo like Raddatz or politicians like Biden or Ryan or the lot of them look themselves in the mirror and imagine themselves to have done well by the people they supposedly serve?