Pun Salad

A solid phony increase for both major-party candidates this week, probably due to their second debate. But President Obama maintains, even slightly widens, his phony lead:

• Roger L. Simon summed up his debate observations in the headline: "Phony Town Halls and Candy Crowley's Ego"
  The U.S. population clock is currently showing 314,583,682 residents as of October 2012 and yet we are about to hold a "town hall" debate for our presidential candidates.

  How quaint. (The first town hall meeting was held in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in 1633.)

  How completely and utterly phony.

  Roger notes that gathering together a bunch of allegedly "uncommitted" citizens to ask questions is suboptimal. And Candy Crowley was obviously unwilling to restrict herself to the role of "moderator", instead wishing to insert herself into the fray.

  Roger wishes for Lincoln-Douglas style debates. Couldn't be worse.

• A whole lotta people cried "phony" over a visit by Paul Ryan to a Mahoning County's [Ohio] St. Vincent de Paul Society soup kitchen last Saturday. Ryan arrived after the crowds had left, but washed some dishes that had been (specifically) left behind for him to wash.
  [Juanita Sherba, St. Vincent's Saturday coordinator for the dining hall, says] The event "was a photo op," she said. "It was the phoniest piece of baloney I've ever been associated with. In hindsight, I would have never let him in the door."

  But (in actuality) Ms. Sherba did let him in the door.

• As noted by nearly everyone. Barack Obama, 2004:
  Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us, the spin masters and negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of anything goes.

  Well, I say to them tonight, there's not a liberal America and a conservative America; there's the United States of America.

  And in 2012...

  A new commercial from the Obama campaign targeting Ohio slams Mitt Romney for not having supported the auto bailout and declared the Republican Presidential nominee as "not one of us," as the president looks to shore up support in the crucial battleground state.

• For a chuckle, visit http://www.romneytaxplan.com/. Phony, but clever.

• But speaking of tax policy: in the second debate, guess who said, responding to a "20-year-old college student" …
  We've got to reduce our deficit, but we've got to do it in a balanced way. Asking the wealthy to pay a little bit more along with cuts so that we can invest in education like yours.

  Yup. In case there was any doubt, he still thinks you're stupid.