On September 22 at 7 p.m. the candidates for Indiana’s 5th Congressional District (INCD5) from the Democratic Party, Christina Hale, and the Republican Party, Victoria Spartz, will participate in a virtual town hall meeting.

Spartz uses buzz words & phrases to stoke her campaign: “socialism” (bad); “trump” (good in her view, unless one of the 200,000 dead (unnecessarily) from Covid is a loved one); “gun rights” (good - unless you or a loved one have been harmed by gun violence).

I have one question for Ms. Spartz: Will you repudiate Vladimir Putin as a dictator? And please don’t dodge the question by saying “there are other forms of evil.” Putin has put a bounty out on U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan.

I don’t believe we should have troops deployed all over BFE - look it up - but neither do I think it’s acceptable to tolerate a superpower paying taliban members so many dollars - or rubles - to kill our people in uniform.
In fairness, we (kinda) did that to Soviet forces after they invaded Afghanistan. “Charlie Wilson’s War” told the story of our arms to Afghanistan rebels who then shot down Soviet choppers and fixed wing aircraft. Putin bears a grudge over that.

Putin hates the USA - he’s compared the USA to the Third Reich - and our democratic form of government. He’s a dictator. I’d say trump “adores” Putin, but Putin owns trump. A hooker has greater latitude than trump vis-a-vis Putin. A hooker can spit things out & it’s a temp gig.

There are reasons trump does not release his tax returns: we’d see all those ties to Russian banks & Russia is controlled by Putin. So trump will continue to assume the position however way Putin wants him, or else suffer a radioactive enema.

Spartz harps how she was raised “in socialist-controlled Ukraine ... [and] experienced firsthand the dark side of socialism.” She stimulates salivary glands of some INCD5 GOP voters, but she never defines “socialism,” and simply uses it as bait. (Putin was part of that socialism system, btw.)

There are countries with sizable portions of their economies functioning in socialism that work quite well. (Hint: most of the developed countries in the World.) And we subsidize oil, aircraft and high-tech corporations - to name three sectors - with billions in public monies.

That is NOT free market. Also, since the CEOs of those corporations do as they please, they’re not socialists. Of course, they have money to toss around, and Spartz sure spent one hell of a lot of it in the primary. After Citizens United, those sources are anonymous.

Putin put bounties out on U.S. military personnel, supported Syrian forces as they killed our people and has murdered people who have challenged him. I want to know if Spartz will denounce Vladimir Putin. Putin is one of a handful of leaders of advanced countries who exudes evil.

If Spartz renounces Putin as the dictator he is, I shall say “bravo”! If refuses to denounce Putin, I begin to wonder if Spartz favors a dictatorship.

Wow! Putin has gotten so much these past three years-plus. The Oval Office was a coup. If he can knock off seats in our U.S. House and Senate, he’ll really feel like a bare-chested kinda guy! I wonder if Putin will wire “congrats!” to Spartz.

On the other hand, highly-placed assets usually don’t like to draw attention to themselves. Then again, you have to look at trump. In the meantime, if Spartz will not renounce Putin, she must not have a problem with 200K deaths caused by trump.