The Phony Campaign

2012-02-19 Update

[phony baloney]

Hey, Newt's back! He is showing up at Intrade with a 4.0% chance (as I type), and by our arbitrary rules, we shall include him once again in our phony poll:

Query String Hit Count Change Since
2012-02-12
"Barack Obama" phony 175,000,000 +11,000,000
"Rick Santorum" phony 13,000,000 +3,520,000
"Newt Gingrich" phony 6,480,000 ---
"Mitt Romney" phony 6,160,000 +190,000
"Gary Johnson" phony 1,160,000 -40,000

  • A side effect of entering the contest for an invitation to dine with President Obama: I'm on his campaign's mailing list. Their latest missive offered me a "free" bumper sticker. And the sales pitch is intelligence-insulting, e.g.: "Once you put it in a visible place like the back of your car, in your window, or near your desk, things might start happening."

    For example, people like me will lose a certain amount of respect for your judgment.

    Anyway, they are proud to trout out their new design:

    Obama BS

    But gosh, what's that remind me of? Oh, right: they totally ripped off the flag of Luxembourg:

    Flag of Luxembourg

    I can't imagine what the bumper sticker designers were thinking. A subliminal appeal to Luxembourger-Americans? Can Luxembourg sue? Isn't there some kind of international law that can stop this desecration?

  • Rick Santorum used the p-word yesterday, referring to President Obama:
    After bemoaning the White House's energy policy during a campaign stop here on Saturday, Mr. Santorum, "This is what the president's agenda," before cutting himself off. He continued, "It's not about you. It's not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your job. It's about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible, a different theology, but no less a theology. "
    Pun Salad doesn't like Santorum much, but this falls squarely into the "obviously true" bin. President Obama's devotion is to the theology of the state. (A theme your proprietor has been harping on since his Usenet days.)

    But Santorum's point is (apparently) being lost in the backlash of—guess what?—phony outrage! The WSJ (!) article attempts to link Santorum's comment to birther efforts to "paint [Obama] as something short of American." And an Obama campaign spokesdroid lost no time in saying "This is just the latest low in a Republican primary campaign that has been fueled by distortions, ugliness, and searing pessimism and negativity."

    I think the Obama campaign has that programmed into a hotkey.

  • The true phony news this week was the release of President Obama's budget for FY2013. Here's Chart 5-1 from the budget's Analytical Perspectives section:

    Debt Projection

    Have kids? Want to throw a scare into 'em? Show them that, and explain what it means.

    But wait, it gets worse. Tim "Turbo Tax" Geithner went before a Congressional committee and needed to defend the budget document before, among others, Paul Ryan. Many noticed the imbroglio, including Guy Benson, who noted the "political quote of the year".

    Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, speaking on behalf of the Obama White House, to Rep. Paul Ryan: "You are right to say we're not coming before you today to say 'we have a definitive solution to that long term problem.' What we do know is, we don't like yours."
    Guy comments, accurately:
    Those two sentences speak to a mentality so bereft of intellectual vigor, so stunningly and candidly shallow, so thoroughly irresponsible, so politically myopic, selfish, and cowardly, that it should disqualify this crew from a second term in office. What a disgrace. Remember this moment the next time Democrats accuse the GOP of being the "do nothing," intransigent, "party of no."
    Yeah, the Republicans would have to be massively, ineptly, brain-dead to fail to win against this bunch.

    Oh, wait…

  • Mike Riggs catches up with Gary Johnson, who's now running for the Libertarian Party nomination. One of Johnson's main planks is marijuana legalization. So you'd think pot-smokers would be a natural source of campaign funds, right. But as it turns out:
    In theory, it was a swell plan. In practice, Johnson has "done so many events with marijuana. So many marijuana events. Basically, nothing comes out of it other than for an enthusiasm for what I say. No money comes out of it."
    Dude, if you can't depend on potheads, who can you depend on?


Last Modified 2014-12-01 2:38 PM EDT