Update: Leave it to The Onion:
Obama Takes Out Romney in Mid-Debate Drone Attack
BOCA RATON, FL—Saying that the high-value target represented a major threat to their most vital objectives, Obama administration officials confirmed tonight that former governor Mitt Romney was killed by a predator drone while attending a presidential debate at Lynn University.
[…]
“Our information indicated that the target, who had been recently spotted in Ohio, Virginia, and Colorado, was traveling all around America and had access to a fortune consisting of hundreds of millions of dollars,” a military spokesperson said of the mission to “find and kill” the Detroit-born politician “no matter what the cost.” “When we received credible evidence that Romney was going to be in the vicinity of Lynn University the evening of Oct. 22, we realized our opportunity had arisen.”
Hey! We’ve got ships that go underwater!
And drones.
Turns out Romney likes drones too, the ultimate rings of Gyges.
Cheap, effective, easy to use. What’s not to love? Oh sure, no one intends to abuse them and use them against people who we simply do not like, including our fellow Americans, but that’s what’s going to happen. There’s nothing to stop us from using them any way we want. Abuse is inevitable without a moratorium and examination of their threat to our civil liberties. I’m starting to see a pattern of loss of our liberties at the same time technology is accelerating at a rapid pace. We are not taking the time to safeguard ourselves before we go gung-ho into the next hot tech thing.
IMHO, war has to be personally expensive so that people will be discrouraged from getting into one. (Note that while I don’t love war, I am not a Chomskyesque pacifist.) But drones are like land mines. The people who exercise the power to use them don’t have to stick around for the slaughter. They wash their hands and pick up their joysticks. Those hits cease to be real people after awhile. The operators *have* to disconnect eventually or they wouldn’t be able to do their jobs, just like the traders and brokers have to stop thinking about screwing hard working people out of their pension funds. If they didn’t think about that tomorrow, how would they make the big bucks for their companies and themselves today?
As for who won, neither did. Mitt and Obama don’t really differ all that much when it comes to foreign policy. It’s just that their goals are different.
Mitt had Obama in defense mode for a good portion of the middle of the debate when he saw an opening to attack Obama’s domestic policies. Obama had Mitt on the defensive at the end just because after four years in office, Even a guy as indifferent to the suffering of others as Obama eventually learned something about foreign policy. Maybe that will make a difference to some people but you’d have to be a hard core, chickenshit Democratic loyalist to find anything worthy or inspiring in Obama’s halting, maze-like, non-sequitor laced sentences that wander off to the desert. I thought someone would have to send out a search party for the point he was trying to make, assuming there was one. I didn’t get to watch him much this time but he sounded as dweebish as Dukakis again.
So, anyway, that’s my take on it, for what it’s worth. As the election gets nearer I am more and more comfortable voting third party.
Filed under: General | Tagged: dukakis, Mitt Romney, obama drones, third presidential debate 2012 |
The Confluence 
Couldn’t watch, but read tweets. This is one I liked
Is there REALLY a 3rd party debate tomorrow night? I’ve got to wash the taste of this one out of my brain.
Have some spiced cider?
And King agreed to moderate the Tuesday event in order to give all the independent candidates “a voice” they’ve been denied thus far in the 2012 campaign, he said. For the independent candidates who have confirmed they’ll attend the Chicago debate — Johnson, Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Constitution Party candidate Virgil Goode and Justice Party candidate Rocky Anderson — this is their sole chance to present their platforms to voters on a major stage.
Viewers can tune into the third party debate on Tuesday night at 8pm EST on C-SPAN, Al Jazeera English and Russia Today, and streamed online at Ora TV and on the Free & Equal debate site.
Read more
Sheeeit! We should have saved our debate mojo for Tuesday night. I don’t know if I can do this two days in a row.
Oh No! C-span is rerunning the debate. Where’s the remote!? Help! Help!
Mitt and Obama don’t differ on FP, but they differ in how engaged each man is.
Myth Rmoney got his battleship bayoneted tonight. Apparently, he’s never played Risk and took his geography tutoring from Gerald Ford.
Here are the NYC tabloids on it
http://edgeoforever.wordpress.com/2012/10/23/tabloids-do-debate/
Stirling Newberry has made a very profound prediction. The next Bin Laden will, indeed, be a graduate of Drone U. And we can already imagine the outrage – outrage!!! – that the US will exhibit when what goes around comes around…our heads. Like the idea of drones over the heads of people all over the middle east (and heaven only know where else in our future)? Well, don’t scream bloody murder when they are flying over our own heads.
“The next Osama bin Laden, will be a graduate of Drone U.”
Yes. I remember a woman commenting after the September 11 debacle, “Well, we do it to them,” and being met with incredulity. How many millions of lives ruined and countries reduced to rubble, elected governments overturned and dictators installed, savage repressions implemented/supported? The list is sickening.
I had lunch with a friend who, when I pointed out the children and non-militants who are being blown into a pink mist, she said “But their lives won’t be very good anyway.” I couldn’t come up with a response while I was choking.
And I hope you spewed it all over her face when you got control of it again!
Reminds me of a line from the J A Jance novel Day of the Dead. A husband and wife sadist tag team rape and she murders a 12 year old in Mexico. He muses that the girl wouldn’t have had a good life, anyway.
Whatever writers put to paper, reality far outdoes.
The navy is both way over staffed and way under staffed. That was so obvious with the Somali pirates when we were chasing row boats (with outboard motors) with a handful of big expensive ships spread out over hundreds and thousands of square miles of ocean.
Note to Obama: nobody else has the nuclear submarines and air craft carriers but the row boats are far more likely to be a threat. In World War II we had PT boats. In Vietnam we had swift boats. Now we have snark. And an expensive, slow moving navy designed to fight an opponent we will never face rather than the ones we are facing.
The biggest threat to the US “foreign policy” is the lackluster economy. Green energy will reduce our dependence on oil from unreliable countries and drastically reduce our exposure in the Middle East. Of course no one was talking about that Jobs and prosperity will enabe us to efend ourselves in the future. Remember reading about the US being the arsenal of Democracy. Remember those posters of Rosie the Riveter. Not so much these days..
Fun facts for the Foreign Policy debate:
Romney and my favorite line of the night, “But we can’t kill our way out of this mess.”
Use of the word, “Peace” :: Romney used it 12 times. Obama, Zero. None.
Not that it matters. They both LOVE the drones.