A Belated Report on Senator Obama at UNH

Your faithful blogger was unable to attend Barack Obama's town hall meeting in the University of New Hampshire's basketball gym on Monday. But Pun Daughter was more adept at scoring a ticket than I was. I asked her for a report, and here 'tis, only lightly edited:

BARACK WAS TA DIE FOR. I was impressed. I thought he gave great answers to the questions he was asked. There were quite a few students there and I'm assuming most of them were not Political Science majors so it's nice to know people are getting informed. He said some great stuff about education and getting the fighting stopped (which, I totally approve of because I think war is so lame). Obama BARACKED my world...I have bumper stickers to prove it.

So there you go. You'll note, I hope, that there's no political indoctrination going on here at Pun Salad World Headquarters.


Last Modified 2012-10-19 3:07 PM EDT

Unimpressed

  • Chris Edwards is unimpressed with Mitt Romney's announcement of his presidential candidacy:

    Like Bill Clinton or George W. Bush on the campaign trail, Romney combines throw-away lines about how government is too big with appeals to fix health care, education, and many other things. "We" need to fix society. "Our" schools and "our" children need help.

    Right. With all the politicians blathering about "our" children, I didn't notice a single one of them showing up at my house offering diaper-changing help.

  • David Freddoso is unimpressed with Rudy Giuliani:

    If Giuliani's stances on babies, guns, and gay marriage do not sink him in the Republican primaries, he will probably suffer in a general election campaign from the fact that there is so much evidence in the public record that he is a total jerk.

    For that matter, it's doubtful that a devout Yankees fan will carry a single New England state.

    (Many readers will contend that "devout Yankees fan" and "total jerk" are redundant. I, myself, would not go that far!)

  • Harold Meyerson is unimpressed with Hillary Clinton's skatearound of the Iraq issue, and digs back into NH-primary-meltdown history for parallels:

    A specter was haunting Hillary Clinton as she campaigned in New Hampshire this weekend: the specter of Ed Muskie.

    As the ancient or merely studious among us will recall, the Democratic senator from Maine, who'd been Hubert Humphrey's running mate in 1968, entered his party's presidential contest in 1972 as the front-runner. His prospects were dashed in the New Hampshire snows, however. … The Democratic base was in no mood for temporizing on Vietnam.

    Party voters wanted out, and they wanted a nominee who'd been right on the war (almost) from the start: McGovern. Sic transit gloria Muskie.

    Meyerson may be "ancient or merely studious", but he can't beat Pun Salad on pedantry: his column fails to point out that Muskie actually won the NH primary that year. True enough, however, it was "perceived" as a defeat, since he "only" beat McGovern by nine percent.

    Meyerson does mention Muskie's alleged crying in the Manchester snow, which seemed to me to be the real nail in his candicacy's coffin at the time. What are the chances Hillary will be caught out that way? Slim to none, I think; she may have had her tear ducts removed.

  • Nathan Gonzalez is unimpressed with Barack Obama's habit of voting "present" during his tenure in the Illinois Senate:

    For example, in 1997, Obama voted "present" on two bills (HB 382 and SB 230) that would have prohibited a procedure often referred to as partial birth abortion. He also voted "present" on SB 71, which lowered the first offense of carrying a concealed weapon from a felony to a misdemeanor and raised the penalty of subsequent offenses.

    In 1999, Obama voted "present" on SB 759, a bill that required mandatory adult prosecution for firing a gun on or near school grounds. The bill passed the state Senate 52-1. Also in 1999, Obama voted "present" on HB 854 that protected the privacy of sex-abuse victims by allowing petitions to have the trial records sealed. He was the only member to not support the bill.

    … and more examples follow. Gonzalez observes, accurately enough, that the President almost never has the option of voting "present."

Bottom line to all these data points? Probably one we've made before: people looking for inspiring leadership from the current crop of candidates are likely to remain "unimpressed."

Last Modified 2012-10-19 3:06 PM EDT