Pun Salad

PredictWise punters continue to give Bernie Sanders just enough love to keep him in our rankings. Still MIA: the Libertarian Party's nominee, Gary Johnson.

There's always phoniness in the news. A sampling from the past week.

• At Salon, Amanda Marcotte urges us to: "Forget Clinton’s fake scandals — Donald Trump’s history of real estate grifts is the real deal".

  It's difficult not to hear the plaintive pleading in that headline: "Please don't think about Hillary's decades of sleaze and dishonesty; instead concentrate on Trump."

  Marcotte's lack of enthusiasm for this argument is made clear in the subheadline:

  Trump is caught up in not one, but two shady scandals involving tricking people into shady real estate investments

  She can't even muster the effort to look up synonyms for "shady"?

  But to her credit, Marcotte does manage to accomplish the relatively easy task of rattling off Trump's current and previous efforts to make wads of cash off his famous name instead of honest work. All true!

  Why, I heard he made hundreds of thousands of dollars just for three secret speeches to … oh, wait, that was someone else. And Amanda Marcotte would desperately like you to forget who that was.

• Ann Althouse notes Donald Trump's response to Hillary's "foreign policy speech".
  'After what she said about me today in her phony speech – that was a phony speech, that was a Donald Trump hit job – I will say this: Hillary Clinton has to go to jail, okay?'

  'She has to go to jail. Has to go to jail,' he said again as cheers erupted in sternum-shaking chaos.

  'That was a phony hit job. She's guilty as hell.'

  Prof Althouse notes a key paragraph from the NYT coverage of Hillary's speech, a slightly less negative take than Trump's:

  But although her campaign had described the speech as a major foreign policy address, Mrs. Clinton spent more time ridiculing and dismantling Mr. Trump’s statements than she did elucidating her positions. Here are a few key issues she did not discuss....

  Ah, this would be hilarious if only the future of our country wasn't at stake.

• Danielle Pletka, a foreign policy expert from the American Enterprise Institute, writing at the WaPo: Clinton’s foreign policy speech: Slam dunk on Trump, but short on fresh ideas.

  Don’t get me wrong. I am a foreign policy voter. I care what is said about the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Islamic State, NATO defense budgets and Crimea and Muslims. I’m listening to Trump and have already made my decision: #NeverTrump. But the same is true of Clinton: #NeverHillary. She had her turn and failed to distinguish herself in any way; her indifference about the fate of Libya was appalling. And the Clinton Foundation is grifting on a major, disqualifying scale.

  I'm with Danielle.

• Did Bernie Sanders take the opportunity of softball questions from Rolling Stone interviewer/sycophant Tim Dickinson to brand Donald Trump a …

  Many working-class people in this country no longer have faith in establishment politics. And, of course, that's what Trump has seized upon. He's a phony and an opportunist. But he has seized upon that and said, "I am not part of the establishment." He's only a multibillionaire who has worked with Wall Street and everybody else. But he claims not to be part of the establishment, right? That has created a certain amount of support for him.

  Well, yes he did.

• And your tweet of the week:

  Hillary? #SheLies @varvel #CrookedHillary #HillaryLiesMatter #DontGetFooledAgain #VoteGOP https://t.co/RUXpTTSfTg pic.twitter.com/YWfaUWzyRf

  — Political Cartoons (@PolToons) June 2, 2016