Pun Salad

The candidate list is stable this week, with nobody dropping below or rising above our arbitrary inclusion criterion of a 4% score at Intrade. And the candidates maintained their relative positions, although Michele Bachmann is threatening to take the phony lead away from the President:

In this week's episode of "The Good, The Bad, and the Phony":

• President Obama (once again) showed why he's going to be tough to beat, phony-wise. He joked about the fact that the "shovel-ready" projects funded by his stimulus program were "not as … uh … shovel-ready as we expected." The comment by Baseball Crank seems apt:

  Obama's inexperience has proven to be awfully expensive. Next time, let's not elect a guy whose first order of business is to spend nearly a trillion dollars on something with no idea how it works. That would be a good start.

• And you may have heard that President Obama blamed ATMs and airport ticket kiosks for that whole unemployment problem we've been having. Andrew Coulson points out that instead of all that hopey-changey fact-based competence we were promised, Obama's actual ideas are stuck back in the 1800's; specifically, he seems to be channelling Ned Ludd:

  These words could only be uttered by someone who knows very little about economics or the history of human progress. In fact, they could only be uttered by someone who has never reflected on this question before in his life. Because if you reflect for one moment, you come up with this glaringly obvious counterfactual: we use a lot more labor-saving technology today than in previous generations, and yet we also employ far more people. Therefore, increased automation does not lead to decreased national employment.

• The First Lady provided a glimpse into the President's mental state:

  "I see the sadness and worry that's creasing his face," she said to a crowd of about 500 at the Pasadena luncheon organized by the Southern California Women For Obama. She described his worth ethic as "tireless," according to pool reports.

  "He reads every word, every memo, so he is better prepared than the people briefing him," she said. "This man doesn't take a day off."

  Gosh, it must have really impressed his economic advisors when a "better prepared" Obama informed them about the ATM job-killers.

• You'll want to check out the new site that promises to bring you "Exciting Things About Tim Pawlenty".

• We discovered a phony kindred spirit in commenter "gary3332" to this Marketwatch story:

  Barry the drone O'Bomber is doing exactly as he is being told to do as president of USA incorporated the shareholders run the corporation.[you was at the meetin] .in this case that be the private shareholders of the private non-federal reserve corporation who control Barry the drone O'bombers puppet strings its all a grand charade..a scam and spectacle of immense proportion that he American sheep buy into hook, line, and sinker every 4 years or 8 yrs. there is but one candidate that will actually change ANYTHING on either phony side of the aisle, and that is Dr. Ron Paul all the rest of it is a phony puppet show Barron Da Rothschild already picked the next president at the Bilderberg meeting in 09, and his pick was Texas phony baloney governor Rick "Merck Gardasil killer" Perry

  gary3332's MarketWatch comments demonstrate an impressive grasp of foreign policy and pharmaceutical side effects:

  can't remember what the death toll is now from the Gardasil vaccine that Rick Perry approved to sterilize and kill/murder young female tweens for a handsome payday from the makers of the vaccine..Merck Perry is Bilderberg globalist Zionist filth..another 2 faced phony Texan with a phony cowboy hat and phony Texas accent just Like Georgie boy Bush.. a vote for Perry is a vote for more of the same ol same ol globalist agenda for never ending war and in fact most likely even more war and Perry would be just another in a long line of bankster sock puppet presidents.. Ron Paul is THE only choice for President if Americans really want real change

  He also weighed in with a subtle analysis of Warren Buffett's psychology:

  i'd ask him about his and Bill Gates involvement with the makers of the fertility/sterility drug that actually burns out the uterus of women and then eventually kills them.. Warren Buffet is one sick mother.. he is obviously not the sweet sage savvy.investor from Nebraska that's the phony made up personality created by the corporate media Buffet is a psychopathic sociopath sicko eugenicist freakazoid that never has enough money

  I believe gary3332 has the inner track to be FDA Commissioner in the Ron Paul Administration.