Anybody who has read my blog back when I was actively blogging before has probably wondered how I have managed to have two posts without a going nuts on the political scene, especially during Election Season.  Fear not, today is about politics.

 

Last night was the second Presidential Debate.  In the first debate, my favorite candidate, President Obama, seemed a bit out of sorts.  He was not his usual confident self, he seemed a bit haggard, and was just not as on top of things as he could have been.  Debate number two, however, was a different story.  He kicked ass.  According to several sources, Obama was the winner.  The margin was not as much as I would like, but winning is winning, regardless of the margin.

 

There were a couple of things said which stand out for me, both of them by Governor Romney.  The first was where he said something about how he would make sure he took care of the whole country.  This is in contrast to his now-infamous “forty-seven percent” comment.  In case you missed it, he told a conference that forty-seven percent of the country did not pay taxes and how his “job is not to worry about those people.”  As president, it is, in fact, your job to worry about every citizen.  Obama, who had the final closing comment in last night’s debate, brought this up, pointing out that part of that forty-seven percent are military or former military personnel who risk their lives for the U.S.  I can only speak for myself, but I want somebody who is going to support everybody in the country, regardless of their circumstance.

 

The other thing Romney said which bugged me is something he and his V.P. candidate have harped on a few times, and that’s that Iran is “four years closer to a nuclear weapon.”  Okay, I’ll buy that on the surface.  On the other hand, I am four years closer to being a millionaire, assuming I ever do.  I think me being a millionaire is pretty unlikely, and Iran having a nuclear weapon is not likely either.  Sure, they have some uranium, but even if they refined it enough to make a bomb, they still wouldn’t have a bomb.  You have to build the bomb itself; the fuel is just one piece.  Iran is under heavy scrutiny and has been for a long time.  The odds on their building a nuclear bomb without anyone noticing (and taking action) is pretty slim.  Even if they did make a bomb, what exactly would they do with it?  Send it to strike the U.S.?  We have security measures in place to stop something like that from reaching us.  If it did reach us and blow up, we have hundreds if not thousands of nukes to retaliate with, and plenty of lesser armaments that would be very effective without the radioactive aftermath.  The most optimistic estimates say Iran might–might–have as much as five bombs worth of material.  If you’re in a gang of five bandits and you each have a gun, are you going to take on a military base with hundreds or thousands of armed soldiers?  No, that’s a suicide mission, and while Iran may have a few suicide bombers in its population (any population of significant size will), as a country it does not want to take an action that will get the entire nation destroyed.

 

There was plenty more to the debate, but from my admittedly biased point of view I mostly heard crap from Romney and solid plans from Obama.  My vote was never in question, but if it was, last night’s debate would have swayed me towards the president.