The Phony Campaign

2016-10-02 Update

As I type, PredictWise gives Hillary a 79% chance of winning (up a whopping 9 points from last week) and FiveThirtyEight calculates her probability at 67.3-74.4% (up … erm … also a lot from last week).

This week's Getty picture: the Trump campaign.

In phony news: Jill Stein maintains her firm lead, Trump continues to edge Hillary for the coveted second place spot, with hapless Gary Johnson far behind in fourth:

Query String Hit Count Change Since
2016-09-25
"Jill Stein" phony 3,920,000 +170,000
"Donald Trump" phony 1,320,000 +220,000
"Hillary Clinton" phony 1,060,000 +241,000
"Gary Johnson" phony 142,000 +32,000

  • Most honest people would admit that both Major Party candidates display serious character flaws. But, as a bonus, their positions on major issues are also odious, dishonest, and/or ignorant.

    It's important, therefore, for Major Party sycophants to warn people away from those Other Party candidates. We've seen examples before; this week's hit job is from Michael Tomasky, writing in the Daily Beast: "Why No One Should Vote for Gary Johnson or Jill Stein".

    But here’s the catch. The libertarian live-and-let-live credo doesn’t apply just to young people who’d like to blow a doob in a public park (that’s how we put it back in my day, sonny, and I’m not going to make any phony attempt to be hip). It applies to polluting corporations. It applies to corporations and individuals who want to make unlimited dark money contributions to political campaigns. It applies to the forces pushing free trade. It applies to employers who don’t want to be nickel-and-dimed over paying their workers a minimum wage. It applies to gun manufacturers, and to the National Rifle Association.

    Discounting Tomasky's overheated, dishonest rhetoric, his shocking truth is that the Libertarian Party candidate holds (some) libertarian positions. Film at 11.

    And those stoners in the park couldn't possibly buy into that crap about personal liberty, limited government, and free markets! That's not cool, man.

  • Mad belabors the screamingly obvious (click for full size):

    My Little Phony

  • And Rudy Giuliani apparently agrees with Mad:

    AOL has some excerpts from Rudy's rude remarks:

    While Giuliani applauded the Republican nominee for showing "admirable restraint regarding Hillary Clinton's phony attempt at feminism," he revealed Trump was ready to attack Clinton for taking money from "countries that stone women."

    "You take money from countries that imprison women. You take money from countries where women can't drive," Giuliani continued as he laid into the former secretary of state. "You take millions and hundreds of millions of dollars from countries that treat women as chattel."

  • Amusingly: "Donald Trump Whines About ‘Phony’ Attack Ads That Feature Him Speaking His Own Words".

    “She said very bad things about me,” he said on Fox News. “Worse than what she said, she’s taking these phony ads, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on phony ads, and I think it’s a disgrace that she’s allowed [to do that].”

    Yeah, that whole First Amendment thing, it's a disgrace.


Last Modified 2019-01-07 5:24 AM EDT