Post Debate Wrap Up: Droooooonnnnes

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.