Pun Salad

Phony hits for all candidates crashed further and faster than the stock market this week, but they didn't crash quite far enough for Barack Obama to avoid being the winner of our little contest.

Congratulations! If that's the right word:

We usually look at current phony events, but since this is our last in the series, let's take a longer range view:

• Our first tally of phony hits, gathered August 8 of last year, is here. Interestingly, today's counts for Obama and McCain aren't that different from those gathered back then, nearly fifteen months ago. Although I have no idea what that might signify, if anything.

• Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" result for Obama is a blog post by Chris Cilizza of the Washington Post written back in July of 2006. Cilizza made the hypothetical case for an Obama presidential candidacy in 2008. (Telling quote: "We tend to doubt he will make the race").

  The phony component is contributed by commenter "bill":

  Obama is phony as the day is long. Typically Clintonesque in that he espouses a "moderate" line; yet when he finally does speak he's somewhere to the left of Chuck Shumer. Phony. Phony. Phony. Of course with the Democratic Party looking something akin to picnic day at Haight Ashbury, I suppose anyone who even sounds "moderate" is attractive to the media. One caveat: look what the Dems did to Lieberman when he had the audacity to leave the far left plantation - they turned on him.

  To repeat: that was over two years ago. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. Or so I'm told.

• On the other hand, the "I'm Feeling Lucky" for McCain is a YouTube vlog from Jackie Mason from January of this year, a time when Mason was utterly disgusted with McCain's misrepresentation of Romney's statements on "timetables" in Iraq.

  Jackie is … unique. Nowadays he's more favorably inclined to Maverick.

• And we haven't shown Bob Barr a lot of love here, but his "Lucky" link is also a YouTube result, where he speaks of phony conservatism:

  That's the kind of thing you won't hear from Obama or McCain.

You often see comments to the effect that voting for a third-party candidate is "throwing away" one's vote. I don't really get that:

1. It's not as if my vote will decide the fate of New Hampshire's four electoral votes.

2. I don't get any particular psychic thrill from voting for the winner.

3. A vote for the third-place guy is no more wasted than a vote for the second-place guy.

Also I pledged over two years ago in this very blog to never, ever, vote for John McCain for anything.

So I think my choice is pretty clear. I'd say "make up your own mind," but I'm pretty sure you, good reader, do not need my advice or permission to do that.