Pun Salad

With about as much dynamism as the US Unemployment Rate, President Obama continues to maintain a nearly 20-to-1 phony margin over his nearest competitor, Mitt Romney.

It seemed like only yesterday that everyone thought that Mitt would win the phony poll in a cakewalk. He must be wondering what he's doing wrong.

• A phony conspiracy theory about a phony assassination attempt is a twofer for us:
  A Republican member of the Tennessee state legislature emailed constituents Tuesday morning with a rumor circulating in conservative circles that President Barack Obama is planning to stage a fake assassination attempt in an effort to stop the 2012 election from happening.

  Brian Ross and George Stephanopoulos of ABC News have already identified the fake assassin as a Tea Partier.

  [There's nothing new under the sun. Here's a 2004 prediction that Dubya would call off that year's election using a terrorist attack as pretext. And you can still find references to nefarious schemes to avoid the 1972 election. (One version masterminded by Richard Nixon, the other involving his actual assassination, so go figure.)]

• Ex-cokehead Aaron Sorkin has an HBO show about a fake TV newsroom; it's a safe bet that nothing will be broadcast thereon that might disturb the sensibilities of 21st-century American progressives. Many of the show's fictional characters now have fake Twitter accounts. The people behind them are embellish the typical wise and tolerant liberal mindset.
  The man behind @DrunkWillMcAvoy, which has more than 500 followers, said he enjoys being able to use the mask of his account to disseminate controversial opinions without drawing ire to himself.

  "When I say that I want to round up the GOPers spreading misinformation about climate change or healthcare and drown them like cats in a bag people seem to forgive me of my lust for violence," he said in an email. "Whereas in real life I try to maintain a moderate viewpoint on most things."

  Got violent fantasies about murdering your political opponents? If you're a liberal, that's a "controversial opinion".

• Over at HuffPo, Jim Kuhnhenn notes that Obama is kinda sorta hoping that Gary Johnson, and another less-known candidate, Virgil Goode, might siphon enough votes away from Mitt Romney to swing some marginal states in a Blue direction.
  Still, in a national contest like this year's where Obama holds slight leads or is running virtually even with Romney in key battleground states, even a sliver of the vote in a crucial state could determine the outcome. Obama's team has scenarios whereby Obama can win states like Virginia and Colorado with less than 50 percent vote with an assist from Goode and Johnson, respectively.

  We've talked about Gary Johnson occasionally, but I have to admit that Virgil Goode is a new name to me. Here is his website.