Pun Salad

Hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving. At the Phony Campaign, it's the same turkeys this week as last:

• The "supercommittee" charged with reducing the deficit officially fell apart this week. Newt Gingrich would like to remind us what he said back in August:

  What they ought to do is scrap the committee right now, recognize it's a dumb idea, go back to regular legislative business, assign every subcommittee the task of finding savings, do it out in the open through regular legislative order and get rid of this secret phony business.

  Score one for Newt.

• Mitt Romney put up an ad that included excerpts from a speech then-candidate Obama made in a trip to New Hampshire in October, 2008. Among the things Obama said: "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose."

  Gosh, the poop hit the fan. Because Obama attributed these words at the time to "Sen. McCain's campaign". (It was actually an alleged McCain "adviser" anonymously quoted in the New York Daily News.) That provenance was omitted from the Romney ad. The reliable Obama-spinners at Politifact awarded Romney a "Pants on Fire" rating as a result. They echoed White House Spokesdroid Jay Carney:

  "I mean, what -- seriously? I mean, an ad in which they deliberately distort what the president said? I mean, it's a rather remarkable way to start, and an unfortunate way to start," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters during the trip up to New Hampshire.

  So bad on Mitt, right?

  But wait a minute. So the evil ad was "misleading" people into thinking the quote "If we keep talking about the economy, we're going to lose" was something Obama was saying about his own campaign? That doesn't even make sense. Because Obama did keep talking about the economy in 2008. And he didn't lose.

  Anyway, the Democrats and their press buddies can get upset about Mitt's ads all they want. That's probably their best bet. Because you know what? If they (instead) keep talking about the economy, they're gonna lose.

• President Obama visited Kramerbooks, a DC bookstore, for "Small Business Saturday". Like his wife's phony trip to a Target store in September, a photographer was on hand to snap some pix, and a reporter somehow found out that the purchases included "The Invention of Hugo Cabret," "Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Cabin Fever" and "Descent into Chaos: The U.S. and the Disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia."

  The Amazon page for the latter book includes the publisher's description:

  After September 11th , Ahmed Rashid's crucial book Taliban introduced American readers to that now notorious regime. In this new work, he returns to Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia to review the catastrophic aftermath of America's failed war on terror. Called "Pakistan's best and bravest reporter" by Christopher Hitchens, Rashid has shown himself to be a voice of reason amid the chaos of present-day Central Asia. Descent Into Chaos is his blistering critique of American policy-a dire warning and an impassioned call to correct these disasterous [sic] strategies before these failing states threaten global stability and bring devastation to our world.

  The book was originally published in 2008 (with a paperback version revised in April 2009), not exactly hot off the presses. In fact, it's almost certainly old enough to not include any criticisms of Obama Administration policy. The author's "blistering critique" is guaranteed 100% pure Bush-bashing, so it's perfect for Obama.

  Also, he'd probably like us to think the Wimpy Kid book is for Malia or Sasha.