Pun Salad

It appears the Republican National Convention provided Mitt Romney with a solid phony bump: President Obama's phony advantage is now a mere 4.08-to-1, while last week it was 5.04-to-1:

Will the Democrats' convention enable Obama's lead to widen again? Stay tuned!

• Mark Steyn was among many who noted some phoniness behind an Obama campaign ad titled "Republican Women for Obama".
  Prominently featured among these lifelong Republican women is a striking brunette who is aghast to find out that Romney wants to reverse Roe v Wade. This totally Republicanly Republican GOP-type conservative-to-the-hilt woman has since been identified as Maria Ciano of Colorado. She's a registered Democrat, but don't let that fool you. Her accumulated Facebook "likes" over the years testify to her rock-ribbed Republicanism. They include Amy Goodman, MoveOn.org, Bernie Sanders, and a Facebook page called "I Love It When I Wake Up In the Morning and Obama Is President".

  Ms. Ciano still self-identifies as a woman, and is "for Obama", so probably considers herself only one-third phony.

• Keith Hennessey responded to President Obama's weekly address, which managed to be unusually phony with respect to Medicare. You should Read The Whole Thing™, but here's his response to the President's wish that "the millions of Americans who are working hard right now deserve to know that the care they need will be available when they need it."
  Medicare, Social Security, and Medicaid are growing at unsustainable rates. The "millions of Americans who are working hard right now" are paying taxes into a system that will be unable to afford to pay the benefits it is promising them today. President Obama says these workers "deserve to know that the care they need will be available when they need it," but he has not proposed policy changes to produce that outcome.

  Fearless prediction: no such proposals will be forthcoming in the next couple months.

• Your intrepid blogger did not watch any convention coverage. I hate watching speeches. When I disagree with the speaker, I get mad at their cheap focus-grouped, fallacy-laden demagogic appeals.

  A more subtle danger is when I agree with the speaker, and fail to notice that I'm falling for their cheap focus-grouped, fallacy-laden demagogic appeals. Which makes me mad at myself.

  Either way, a waste of time.

  But Clint Eastwood is not a pol, and I've been a fan ever since his spaghetti-western days. So I checked out his controversial GOP convention speech at YouTube. My reaction: not bad for 82! But for a more nuanced reaction, see Jesse Walker at Reason.

  In short: A widely beloved figure came onstage, offered a politically popular critique of the other party's candidate, put it in transpartisan terms that are more likely to appeal to undecided voters, and did it in a way that guaranteed we will remember it. He was human, eccentric, funny, weird, relatable. Maybe I would have preferred a performance of Eastwood's anti-government monologue from The Outlaw Josey Wales, but I'm not the target audience. I say the speech helps Romney.

  By coincidence (honest), The Outlaw Josey Wales is in my media-consumption list over there on the right. (No, your right.) Click to buy at Amazon; you might need something to watch, because I hear there's another convention coming up…