Pun Salad

We look at PredictWise every week to determine which candidates to gather hit counts for. It has become an increasingly depressing exercise, as the chances for candidates we even slightly like range from slim to none.

Oh well. We're doomed.

In our standings, Bernie and Hillary swap second and third place:

In phony news this past week:

• There was an acrimonious GOP debate! For phony fans, the high point was when Rubio accused Trump of starting a "fake university". This is in reference to "Trump University"; the NYT describes the "University", if you're interested.

  One particularly poignant sucker was Kathleen Meese; she attended the first free "class", which was essentially a sales pitch to shell out $1495 for a three-day real estate seminar. Then she was encouraged to pony up for the "Gold Elite" program ($25000). And then…

  Seminar participants, [Ms. Meese] said, were told they would have their photos taken with Mr. Trump.

  “It ended up being a cardboard cutout of Mr. Trump,” she wrote.

  Was there ever so apt a symbol? As P.T. Barnum (probably never) said: there's one born every minute. And Trump's success at the polls is depressing verification of that.

• Our girl Hillary showed her firm grasp of America's foundational documents:

  Hillary Clinton cited a “constitutional right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” in an interview that aired Wednesday with Steve Harvey, apparently forgetting those words are in the Declaration of Independence.

  Forgot? Or never knew? Whatever. At this point, what difference does it make? It's not as if she has taken either the Declaration or the Constitution seriously, or plans to do so in the future.

  I would guess that when Hillary watched Animal House, she did not get the joke when Bluto asked "Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?"

• The Conservative Tribune opines:

  It might just be time for Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders to quit his phony anti-establishment act and admit to being a fraud, because on Thursday, election regulators announced that his campaign had violated federal campaign finance laws by accepting 3,457 “excessive, prohibited and impermissible donations.”

  To echo a comment I left at Granite Grok: I must be feeling unusually cynical today, as I'm wondering if the (well-publicized) FEC announcement is a hit job fueled by pro-Hillary partisans. I'm not saying they are operating under direct orders from the Hillary campaign. I just wouldn't be surprised if it turned out that way.

• Famous lunatic Alex Jones claims Roger Stone has the inside info on a Koch Brothers Secret Plan! And that is cleverly named "Plan B".

  The Koch Bros. met with GOP millionaires and billionaires Thursday night to pool together over $75 million to stop Trump and are going to use Mitt Romney as ‘Plan B’ if Rubio fails to gain traction on Super Tuesday, according to moles who were inside the meeting.

  Sounds crazy. Like most information emanating from Jones. But, hey, what do I know?

  "Plan B" is to go into action if Marco doesn't win the Florida primary. And current polling has Trump leading Rubio by 20 points there. So perhaps we'll find out on March 16 or so.