12/12/2024
My Dear Friend & POTUS, JRB,
What do you think should happen to Assad’s soldiers? What do you think the newly appointed caretaker prime minister, meant when he said he would “bring to justice those whose hands are stained with blood from military institutions or the shabiha?” Should the soldiers be put into some kind of camp to protect them? Should they be pardoned?
I know you are pondering this question of pardoning folks & hope that you have just gotten started giving prisoners the benefit of the doubt. I am grateful that you set a record yesterday by commuting the sentences of 1500 citizens. As I have mentioned before letting Leonard Peltier go would also be most welcome. Even better would be to commute the sentences for the 40 federal prisoners on death row. As Bryan Stevenson, author of Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption points out, “we don't need to execute people to show our concern, our outrage about violent crimes.”
Did you see WP’s coverage of the SNAFU with the EV truck purchase at the USPS? Apparently, defense contractor, Oshkosh, isn’t delivering the 3000 trucks that were supposed to be ready by now. They got $6 billion to build up to 160,000 vehicles but things aren’t going as planned. Given that airbags & air conditioning are part of the production problem, perhaps car makers would be more successful building the trucks than Oshkosh. Apparently, Ford & GM were in the running to get the contract but didn’t. I wonder if Postmaster, Louis DeJoy fell down on the job, by not keeping tabs on things, or if defense contractors just tend to be sloppy because they can be. Maybe big jobs like this will always run into snags & we should just be patient.
According to Irrawaddy, “we are seeing a storm of discussion on social media—endless opinions and comments about the fall of the Assad regime and whether it could happen in Myanmar.” What do you think? Is there something the US could do to put the situation past the tipping point? Is that something we’d want to do?
WINTA!
BYBS,
