Reaction to the Hillary Clinton campaign hostage situation

In case you haven’t heard, Hillary Clinton’s campaign office in Rochester, NH was invaded by a man claiming to have a bomb, and he took several volunteers hostage for about five hours.

The situation finally ended when Leeland Eisenberg released the hostages and surrendered to police.

Thankfully, no one was hurt. The Rochester Police Department and Captain Paul Callaghan handled things wonderfully, kept order, and resolved the situation without letting it get any worse.

Hillary Clinton is apparently getting on a plane any minute now to come to NH and thank her campaign staff and the police for their handling of the situation.

I have to say that this is exactly what she should do.

But the real reason that I’m posting this is a call that I heard on Sean Hannity’s show this afternoon.

My last words on the YouTube Debate

Though there are many of them …

First of all, I hope that we have real debates in the future — when people talk, go back and forth, and are allowed time. You know, like debates?

Newt Gingrich has called for a return to Lincoln-Douglas style debates, and I think he’s right. These mass-forums don’t serve the public well because:

The YouTube debate: Content

I don’t want to go too far into specifics, because I think that this so-called debate was a debacle. It was pathetic.

I do think that Gov. Romney looked terrible. Almost as bad as Mayor Giuliani. Sen. Thompson never passed on an opportunity to lob verbal bombs at the other candidates, which is not the way to run a real campaign.

I think that John McCain actually did very well. In the opening bickering over immigration, it was — strangely enough — McCain who came out doing the best. Even if I think that he was substantively wrong, he sounded good, he sounded like he took the issue seriously. That’s far more than I can say for Romney or Giuliani.

Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo were, as usual, generally ignored. Rep. Tancredo did very well with the time that he had, but that wasn’t much.

I was working on posting about this piece by piece, segment by segment, and then I realized that it wasn’t worthwhile. I learned NOTHING by watching this debate. There wasn’t as single word said that hadn’t already been said, except those which were totally unimportant (such as that Sen. Thompson owns gun but won’t tell us which ones).

I have to give Gov. Romney credit for his reaction to the Confederate flag question — he seemed incredulous that he was actually being asked that. He went on to answer the question, but at first I thought he was saying that he wasn’t going to waste his time on such a question.

He would have been right to do so. It was a waste of time for him to answer, and for those of us who were looking for information from candidates to have to sit through that foolishness. Since no one is talking about hanging a CSA battle flag at the White House, that time should have been spent on a responsible question — “Do you believe that the FBI should be allowed to use executive warrants and national security letters without judicial approval?” comes to mind. “Do you believe that it should be a national priority to find Usama bin Laden?” might be good.

A couple mailings

Considering the criticism I threw at the previous Ron Paul “more than pro-life” ad, I feel obliged to mention the Ron Paul mailing we received today … I find it perfectly acceptable. It lists what he’s actually done and plans, and has removed the exaggerated claims and proclamations. I appreciate this one. It was really all about specifics, which is a wonderful change from other mailings.

We have also received a John McCain mailing covered in quotes from various figures commending Sen. McCain’s character. i have to admit, I half-expected to find “let me make this clear, if there’s anybody on this stage that understands the word honor, I’ve got to say Sen. McCain understands that word because he has given his country a sacrifice the rest of us don’t even comprehend,” attributed to Gov. Mike Huckabee at the debate in Durham, NH. It wasn’t there.  I felt rather relieved, actually.

These were both very good, as far as they went. It’s been a lot more pleasant in the mail this week.

Frankly, I haven’t bothered critiquing the Mitt Romney or John Edwards mailings we’ve received this week.

Finally watched the debate

My first comment about the debate at large is …

What is this country coming to?

I realize that these were the rejected questions, but what kind of person submits questions by animated aliens, melting snowmen, their dogs, stuffed animals, or talking 100-dollar bills? This is a Presidential race in the real world, not Fantasy Land. The President represents real people — not Gumby, Bullwinkle, Sponge Bob, or Garfield.

This was pathetic.

Most of the questions were designed for the purposes of setting people off against each other — “What do you think, was New York a sanctuary city?” What does that have to do with Romney running for President?

This debate isn’t about discussing ideas of the future, it’s almost entirely about finding each candidate’s faults in the past and watching them eat each other.

I’ll get back to the substantive comments on the content of the debate, but my initial thoughts on the debate format and questions are not positive. This is a joke.