Pun Salad

Obama continues in the phony lead, but it's looking kind of shaky, as McCain creeps up this week:

• It's almost unnecessary to say that the Phony Campaign really misses John Edwards. Ms. Kirsten Powers explains to us, in the pages of the New York Post, that "HE WAS ALWAYS A FAKE".
  JOHN Edwards "shocked" the political world yesterday by admitting he'd cheated on his wife of 30 years with a campaign aide, Rielle Hunter.

  If it looks like a phony, walks like a phony, quacks like a phony, it's a phony.

  Indeed. Or if it runs for President.

• Barackrobatics I is the somersault on NASA funding noted by the lovely and talented Mary Katherine Ham. From "Obama's Plan for Lifetime Success Through Education:
  The early education plan will be paid for by delaying the NASA Constellation Program for five years, …

  But as of last Sunday, that's no longer operative:

  In a dramatic reversal of policy, Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama on Saturday told supporters on the Space Coast he no longer favors slashing NASA's budget, declaring that the United States "cannot cede our leadership

  Sorry, kids, you'll have to stay stupid as long as Obama needs electoral votes from Florida!

• Barackrobatics II is noted by the MinuteMan. We got a foreign policy compare-and-contrast moment when the Soviets invaded Georgia; Obama's initial statement was characterized widely as "mush" while McCain's was firm.

  A new day, however, …

  In their latest emanation Team Obama has figured out which side we are on and rivals the bellicosity of McCain and Rice in backing Georgia and calling on Russia to withdraw its troops. Geez, this is almost like watching "Follow The Leader". Too bad it's not a game.

  No worries.  Once we elect Obama I'm sure he'll be able to get stuff like this right the first time.

  Sure.

• But let's be mean to McCain for once. The folks at Factcheck.Org seem to be picking over the campaign ads of both candidates fairly. Here's one from July 30:
  McCain's new ad claims that Obama "says he'll raise taxes on electricity." That's false. Obama says no such thing.

  Wha!? But McCain can't make this kind of thing up, can he? It turns out to be based on an interview from last February:

  Guerra: Have you considered other funding sources, say taxing emerging energy forms, for example, say a penny per kilowatt hour on wind energy?

  Obama: Well, that’s clean energy, and we want to drive down the cost of that, not raise it. We need to give them subsidies so they can start developing that. What we ought to tax is dirty energy, like coal and, to a lesser extent, natural gas.

  … and a tax on coal and natural gas is indirectly a tax on electricity produced from those sources.

  Obama's campaign (now) explains that Obama was referring to cap-and-trade, the proposal to decrease American carbon emissions. Which would make, roundabout, electicity (and all carbon-based energy) more expensive by government fiat. FactCheck quotes an economist who points out that cap-and-trade is, effectively, a tax.

  So McCain's ad is true, right?

  Well, sure. Only problem is that McCain is also a huge fan of cap-and-trade. Which makes his ad sort of … you guessed it, technically accurate, but 100% phony.

• In our semi-continuing feature: "Obamafuscation" continues to out-googlehit our word "Barackrobatics" by 1680 to 5. Sigh. And it's such a good word, too.

This week's test of the Sunday Basic Cable Movie Actor Theory:

• 1:55AM on TNT: In the Line of Fire (Clint Eastwood)
• 2:00AM on AMC: Striking Distance (Bruce Willis)
• 2:15PM on AMC: Coogan's Bluff (Clint Eastwood)
• 5:30PM on TNT: Die Hard With a Vengeance (Bruce Willis)
• 8:00PM on TNT: Die Hard (Bruce Willis)
• 10:30PM on TNT: Die Hard With a Vengeance (Bruce Willis)

Not to mention our old standby:

• 7:00AM on AMC: The Hunt For Red October

Lots of choices for non-fans of the Olympics. And the theory stands unrefuted for the past 25 weeks.