Pun Salad

Mr. Michael Ramirez supplies our biological update this week, a pictorial representation of Invertebrates of the world.

Pun Salad Truth-O-Meter: True.

Our post-New Hampshire Primary phony results are in, and they are spectacular:

Warning: Google result counts are bogus.

Not much movement in the phony hit counts (which, don't forget, are bogus anyway). Perhaps the most surprising result is that Mayor Pete is now circling the drain, after coming in second in both Iowa and New Hampshire; the betting market judges there's only a 2.4% probability that Mayor Pete will become President Pete.

And it appears the real fight, at least in the near term, is going to be between Mike and Bernie. So for our first item…

• Emily Zanotti of the Daily Wire covers one side of the fight. Bernie Sanders Unloads On Mike Bloomberg: Dem Billionaire Can’t Beat Trump.

  “We will not create the energy and excitement we need to defeat Donald Trump if that candidate pursued, advocated for, and enacted racist policies like stop-and-frisk, which caused communities of color in his city to live in fear,” Sanders snapped, referring to Bloomberg.

  “We will not defeat Donald Trump with a candidate who in 2015 stated, and I quote, ‘I, for example, am not in favor, have never been in favor, of raising the minimum wage,'” Sanders continued.

  Don't worry, Bernie: Mayor Mike has since come to believe in a $15/hr minimum wage. (That is, making it illegal for anyone to work for less than that.) Also: "requiring employers to provide 12 weeks of paid family leave and seven days of paid sick leave and proposes strengthening unions by prohibiting “right to work” laws that ban requiring union membership as a condition of employment."

  That will fix those pesky low unemployment numbers.

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• Inquiring minds want to know: Who's the most dangerous Democratic candidate? P. J. O'Rourke, fortunately, has the answer. (Spoiler: it's Bernie, but the competition is tough.)

  Bernie Sanders is the, so to speak, most promising of the candidates. He’ll promise you anything. I went to a Bernie rally at Keene State University. It was the most crowded primary event I attended and very enthusiastic… especially by New Hampshire standards where, every four years, we feel like a cheap motel with a bedbug infestation of presidential hopefuls putting the bite on us.

  It was a school, so half of those “Feeling the Bern” were kids at the “easy believey” stage of gullible youth. They applauded loudest for Bernie’s promise to make school tuition free. The other half of the Bernie supporters looked like they were still on the outskirts of Max Yasgur’s farm, waiting for free admission to Woodstock.

  P. J. did better than I: I managed to see zero candidates in person this year. Far easier to stay home and watch Jeopardy!

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• The intrepid Veronique de Rugy analyzes the phoniness in the President's proposed budged for FY 2021: How To Disguise a Budget Increase as a Cut.

  […] I can promise you that this budget isn’t a document produced by an administration that “does everything [it] can to deal with the trillion dollar deficits.” With the help of Congress, Mr. Trump has become a big-spending president. Period. No if, ands, buts, or “on the other hands.”

  Let’s look for instance at the fact that during his first term spending increased by 21 percent, or $850 billion. Adjusted for inflation, that’s 17.5 percent or 4.3 percent annually. This first-term annual spending rate increased more than any other president other than Lyndon B. Johnson and George W. Bush. Adding insult to injury, the president does not have an excuse he can spin such “the economy is in recession” or “we just got involved in a new war.”

  Those economic numbers look rosy, but how much do they depend on government spending like a drunken sailor? And how long before the bubble bursts?

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• And Elizabeth Warren has been long gone from our standings (current probability of President Warren: 0.5%, below Hillary's 1.1%). But she's desperate to come up with new come-ons, for example (Washington Examiner): Warren proposes 'Blue New Deal' to 'save our oceans'.

  Sen. Elizabeth Warren told a fired-up crowd that she "believes in science" before proposing a "tenfold" increase in science funding if she is elected president.

  The Massachusetts Democrat, who struggled in the first two primary contests of the 2020 election season, said the proposed "Green New Deal" does not go far enough to deal with climate change.

  "I'm all for a 'Green New Deal,' but it's not enough," Warren said. "We gotta have a 'Blue New Deal' to save our oceans as well."

  If I were looking for a pony among all the horseshit, I suppose it's nice that a 70-year-old lady can still maintain a childlike faith that shoving a whole bunch of taxpayer money into "science" will produce untold miracles.

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• Another also-ran (actually never-ran) weighs in. Mr. Tom Steyer Frustrated by Poll Showing High Economic Satisfaction.

  Democratic 2020 candidate Tom Steyer on Sunday accused ABC News anchor Martha Raddatz of "standing up for" President Donald Trump's "version of the economy" after she cited a poll showing high satisfaction with the economy.

  Raddatz, noting Steyer has campaigned on challenging Trump on the economy, pointed to a new Quinnipiac poll showing 70 percent of respondents felt the economy was excellent or good. That mark was only slightly lower than the 73 percent who answered that way in December, an all-time high.

  Steyer didn't actually say: "Well, who ya gonna believe me or your own eyes?" Came close, though.

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• And the New York Post reports that Mike Bloomberg's 2020 presidential campaign turns to bizarre Instagram memes.

  Michael Bloomberg is channeling some of his $61.8 billion net worth into a new campaign strategy: memes.

  The Democratic 2020 hopeful unleashed a flood of posts onto Instagram Wednesday night, partnering with some of the most-followed accounts for a series of bizarre memes.

  The posts follow a similar theme, all pretending to be depicting direct messages from Bloomberg himself to the individual accounts. Most of the posts find him taking the persona of an out-of-touch old guy, trying to reach out to a younger audience in a tongue-in-cheek fashion and go viral.

  Bloomberg did not actually say: "How Do You Do, Fellow Kids?". Came close, though.