Pun Salad

Pun Salad was all over the recent Consumer Reports article reporting that new Federal regulations mandating "efficient" clothes washers are forcing consumers to choose between spending $900 or more, or buying something that doesn't actually get your clothes very clean.

Since this was Consumer Reports, when forced to make a call between being on the side of government or the consumer, their choice was pretty easy: they "wholeheartedly support" the regulations.

Fortunately, there's an actual pro-consumer group that noticed this, and has the wherewithal to produce a campaign, complete with YouTube goodness:

Unfortunately the young lady has a voice that can most politely described as "grating". Yet, her suggestion is charming: send a pair of your underwear to—heh!—the Undersecretary of Energy, Mr. Dennis R. Spurgeon. (If you choose to do that, please observe the USPS regulations on the mailing of hazardous substances. Especially if you have one of those new washers.)

Pun Salad doesn't play very hard at inside-baseball politics, leaving that sort of thing to the ever-growing Granite Grok Media Empire. But the New Hampshire Presidential Primary is a mere (tentatively scheduled) 251 days away as I type. Dagnabbit, it's time to start paying attention. So:

• I don't mind voting for candidates with less than zero chance of winning. So I was thinkin' about voting for Ron Paul, arguably the most libertarian candidate. Unfortunately, he's got a blame-America-first isolationist streak that flatly disqualifies him.

• And I'm darned if this isn't the cutest lil' political graphic I've seen lately:

  [Cute graphic since removed from the "RudyMcRomney" site]

  They're "RINOs"—get it? Heh!

• Everybody and his mother has linked to the cool Fred Thompson video, so why should I be an exception?

• Also cool is Bruce Willis, who went to geeky extreme measures to prove he was really he. To tie it into our theme today: I'm up for a Thompson/Willis ticket in 2008. (OK, the Willis part is only semi-serious. But still, they worked well together in Die Hard 2.)