Pun Salad

A shakeup at PredictWise results in big changes in our phony poll. In this week: Bernie and The Donald (which would be a pretty good name for a rock band). Out: O'Malley, Biden, and Perry (which would be a pretty good name for a very boring law firm).

And Jeb sees a huge increase in phony hits. Probably one of those illusory Google glitches. Given that our methodology here (as we've said before) proves absolutely nothing, we're not too worried about that.

And I would be OK with a Paul/Sanders ticket. However unlikely that would be in the real world. I would definitely buy a bunch of bumperstickers just to splice out the "ers".

• As always occurs after a bloodbath perpetrated by someone with a nest of spiders living in his brain, politicians could not wait a decent interval to pontificate that the horror perfectly demonstrated what they've been saying all along; and demand that actions be taken that would have had no preventative effect on the crime.

  Sometimes they weave in fundraising requests while waving the bloody shirt; demanding money, in addition to new "gun control" legislation. And fervently hoping that nobody will notice that their 12-point official "Vision" page contains zero references to gun control.

  Yes, this issue became serious when it could be used as campaign fodder. Before that, not so much.

  As I've noted before, here at Pun Salad, we try to adhere to the Elvis Costello rule: "I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused." But events sometimes drag me back to disgust.

• One of our new entries, Donald Trump, is the subject of, not one, but two Kevin D. Williamson articles at NR. Sample:

  Donald Trump, being Donald Trump, announced his candidacy at Trump Plaza, making a weird grand entrance via escalator — going down, of course, the symbolism of which is lost on that witless ape. But who could witness that scene — the self-made man who started with nothing but a modest portfolio of 27,000 New York City properties acquired by his millionaire slumlord father, barely out of his latest bankruptcy and possibly headed for another one as the casino/jiggle-joint bearing his name sinks into the filthy mire of the one U.S. city that makes Las Vegas look respectable, a reality-television grotesque with his plastic-surgery-disaster wife, grunting like a baboon about our country’s “brand” and his own vast wealth — and not see the peerless sign of our times?

  Kevin's not a fan. Both articles worth your while.

• We were pretty tough on Mitt Romney in the past. He never shook off Jonah Goldberg's 2008 observation that if you pushed the mute button when he was speaking on TV, he seemed to be saying: What do I have to do to put you in this BMW today?.

  So (naturally) my attention was pricked by a CBS News story: "Mitt Romney: Hillary Clinton is a phony." It refers to Mitt's MSNBC appearance, reacting to Hillary's campaign kickoff, where he observed:

  "I thought the text touched the various places she needs to touch to try and keep her base intact," Romney said. "Somehow, though, when you see her on a stage or she comes into a room full of people, she's smiling with her mouth, but her eyes are saying, you know, 'Where's my latte?' It just doesn't' suggest that she believes everything she's saying."

  Some enterprising people should wave homemade signs at Hillary's rallies: "Hillary, I have your latte!"

• The Daily Sheeple (motto: "Wake the Flock Up!") asks: Want to Know If a Presidential Candidate Is a Phony?" Well, sure we do. Their recommended method:

  Do you wish there was a fast and easy way to tell if one of the front running presidential candidates is a big fat phony? Well fret not, because such a method exists. All you have to do is run the name of their twitter account through twitteraudit.com, and find out how many of their followers are bots and shills. Obviously, if someone is willing to buy a bunch of fake followers, then they’re probably a pretty disingenuous person.

  The various candidates are ranked, and the phoniest will surprise you!

  Well, that's not actually true. The phoniest candidate won't surprise you.

• Your tweet of the week:

  The juxtaposition of these two tweets though. pic.twitter.com/wqQhTqj05a

  — Andrew Quinn (@AndrewCQuinn) June 19, 2015

  Apparently only 90 minutes apart! Impressive!

I thought I was going to wait for the DVD. But Pun Son wanted to see it and we've been going to Jurassic movies since he was seven. I can't decline the pull of tradition.

And I forgot how much sheer fun these movies are. (I suppose they could make one that wasn't. But they haven't yet.)

The movie is set on the same island as the original Jurassic Park; it's a couple decades later, and John Hammond's vision has been restored: it's the site of an actual theme park where people flock to see live dinosaurs. And it's all pretty amazing, nothing goes wrong, and everyone has a good time.

Just kidding! The park is doing OK, but the supervisor, Claire (Bryce Dallas Howard), realizes that its continued health depends on coming up with new, even more thrilling creatures. Or, as everyone puts it, "more teeth." So the top-secret on-island lab creates an Indominus Rex.

This coincides with a visit to the park by Claire's nephews, Zach and Gray. (Kids in peril is a recurring theme in these movies.) There's also Owen (Chris Pratt), a genius researcher working to (sort of) tame three velociraptors by becoming their "alpha".

Corporate greed and hubris, as always, are the root causes of the ensuing havoc. And (also as always) there's plenty of stuff to chuckle at, even as people are getting eaten.