Presdiential debate

Fellow countrymen, our differences in domestic policy are the greatest and I think I have a good shot of convincing you all that my policies are better. Let's start with drug laws. There is very, very little compelling in favor of drug prohibition. These are a set of draconian, wrongheaded, and frankly racist laws that have done more damage to our society than perhaps anything else in recent years. Setting aside for a moment the sheer absurdity of treating our citizens as children incapable of making their own decisions, let's just look at the effects these laws have caused both in our country and outside of it. Outside of it our policies have forced the drug trade underground, leading to governments such as Mexico literally going to war against the cartels. As I speak over 100,000 people have died. Drug laws in the United States are selectively enforced against African Americans who are four times as likely to get arrested for a drug crime as whites are despite roughly equal rates of usage. Communities have been absolutely destroyed as fathers are kept in prison for nonviolent crimes that are not crimes. Our prison population has absolutely exploded, costing society billions, and rates of drug use still remain stubbornly high. No, there's not enough time in the world to say all the bad things about the drug war that need to be said, but as President this won't happen. I will get these laws repealed and if congress will not allow it with the American peoples mandate I will pardon every nonviolent drug offender. It's the right thing to do. Speaking of prisons, while I have no power at the state level I will reform federal prison. Offenders will be do menial labor inside the prison in the case of violent offenders and outside of it in the case of nonviolent ones, with all income they make going straight to their victims or their victims families. Solitary confinement will be abolished as the cruel and unusual punishment that it is.As for the death penalty, it's a great option to have and I support it wholeheartedly but let's face it: our system needs some serious reform. The fact that we have people on "death row" for decades is absolutely absurd, unacceptable, and a mockery of justice. Executions ought to be swift and painless. I will, congress willing, get rid of lethal injection and replace it with the firing squad because the firing squad always works. Moreover, in his excellent opinion circuit judge Alex Kozinski argued that if we are going to kill a man, we ought to kill him as a man instead of pretending as we do with lethal injection that it's some legitimate and clean medical procedure. It's not. It's a very serious penalty that should be taken seriously, and if we can't stomach that we shouldn't have a death penalty. On abortion my opponent is so far right that it defies belief. It is beyond cruel to force a young woman who was raped to keep the child. No, like most Americans, my position on abortion is pretty moderate: it should be allowed during the first trimester, and banned after that. A woman should have a choice if she wants to carry the fetus to term, although at some point you have to make a decision on what's reasonable. A hardline pro abortion stance, for example, would allow abortion untill the very moment the fetus exits the mother allowing for atrocities like partial birth abortion. This is the price of complete consistency. At some point to satisfy our sensibilities we have to be arbitrary and the first trimester is a good time.Gay marriage should certainly be legalized if we are going to have marriage be recognized by the government at all. Why would we not give these couples federal benefits? It seems like a no brainer to me, and my administration will recognize and support gay couples. There's no point in living in the past.It's reasonable to support limited gun control in the form of background checks, but there's no point in trying to delude the American people who are much too smart for that--the chances of getting any bill like this through Congress is remote. The NRA is an incredibly powerful lobbying group and it's extremely unlikely that any gun control legistlation will survive getting through Congress and if it does it will be weakened to the point of being worthless. If you don't like that, vote for campaign finance reform. No, the real issue to look at here is mental health. Look, I'm not going to stand here and say that the advances in technology allowing for more powerful firearms haven't made a difference, because they have, but the people of the past had access to some pretty powerful weapons as well. After World War Two, anyone could mail order semi automatic weapons used in the war like the Gewher or the M1 Garand. These wouldn't be as effective in a mass shooting as an AR-15, but they would do. And yet, these things didn't happen. Guns are but a minor issue--the real issue is what drives a person to such madness that they would murder their fellow people in such a pointless and terrible way. And that's what is far more important to figure out. My opponent and I mostly agree on the economic issues regarding welfare, which is good. Building a border fence is a waste of time and money, and once Latin America gets back on its feet after we end the drug war there won't be nearly as many migrants coming from our Southern neighbors anyway. Human desperation drives these bold people to leave behind everything they know in search for a new life here and we have to respect that on some level. Part of the reason we have so many migrants is because our drug policy is so destructive to life down south as drug cartels literally control vast swathes of the country.