Pun Salad

Another week of tightening! Just like the real campaign, the phony race could remain close right down to the wire.

And it's been another week of phoniness:

Sunday

Many people, including the MinuteMan, take note of Obama's claim that he signed up for the draft when he graduated from high school in 1979, and seriously considered enlisting for real. Obama (in fact) didn't register until he was a sophomore at Occidental College; he'd not previously mentioned his inclination to military service in either of his two autobiographies.

Monday

An AP news story reported the latest crumbling campaign pledge:

Democrat Barack Obama says he would delay rescinding President Bush's tax cuts on wealthy Americans if he becomes the next president and the economy is in a recession, suggesting such an increase would further hurt the economy.

Note that this is only a delay in hurting the economy. Once it gets up off the ground, Obama still plans to kick it in the teeth.

Tuesday

A "highly knowledgeable source" at Power Line questions Obama's claim to have cooperated with GOP Senator Lugar to "help lock down loose nuclear weapons." The source points out that Obama's contributions didn't have anything to do with nukes, instead with small anti-aircraft weapons. And even at that, the legislation didn't do much to keep such weaponry out of the hands of our enemies, but did manage to largely disarm our allies, such as Georgia.

Scott Johnson adds the comment that the press is just way too busy to do this kind of skeptical research of campaign claims, since they've devoted most of their research staff this week to Sarah Palin's per diem reimbursements as Governor. I'm sure they'll get right on this, real soon now.

Wednesday

And of course, there was the whole "lipstick on a pig" thing this week. I'm sure Obama thought that was a clever jape, but as David St. Hubbins famously remarked, "It's such a fine line between stupid, and clever." And, like Prufrock, Obama was forced to say, “That is not what I meant at all. That is not it, at all.”

Sen. Barack Obama angrily challenged Republican claims that he insulted Gov. Sarah Palin by using the expression "lipstick on a pig" to describe Sen. John McCain's attempts to paint himself as an agent of change, and called the GOP indignation "phony outrage and Swift boat politics."

This is pretty funny, coming as it does from the side that specializes in phony outrage. "How dare they do that. That's our thing."

Thursday

The blogosphere took notice of the prose stylings of Wendy Doniger, Professor of the History of Religions, University of Chicago’s Divinity School, who was able to convince the Washington Post to publish her thoughts on Governor Palin. Among the usual mad-lib litany of atrocities, this stood out:

Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman.

There's now a test you have to pass, I guess. The rest of Professor Doniger's rant is equally well-grounded in reality, but is well worth reading as a display of unhinged hatred.

Jonah Goldberg devoted a fine column to the phenomenon of woman-on-woman warfare, using Doniger as one of his examples.

It’s funny. The left has been whining about having their patriotism questioned for so long it feels like they started griping in the Mesozoic era. Feminists have argued for decades that womanhood is an existential and metaphysical state of enlightenment. But they have no problem questioning whether women they hate are really women at all.

Since we know from basic science that Palin is a woman — she’s had five kids, for starters — it’s clear that these ideological thugs aren’t talking about actual, you know, facts. They’re doing what people of totalitarian mind-sets always do: bully heretics, demonize enemies, whip the troops into line.

Friday

McCain showed that he's still in the phony game, coming up with a Spanish-only ad that underlines his support for "comprehensive immigration reform." Mickey Kaus states the obvious: McCain would not dare run that ad in English.

Saturday

Roger L. Simon comments on Whoopi Goldberg's recent queries to John McCain about the possibility that his Supreme Court nominees could bring back slavery. Many speculated that Whoopi was merely demonstrating the common stupidity of her Hollywood peers. Not so, says Roger. Whoopi's actually quite bright.

No, Whoopi is just a fake - quite willing to say and do anything she wants to make a point or, even more, for her own self-aggrandizement. Her attendant disrespect for John McCain - who on other occasions might even lay down his life for her - is contemptible. But it’s typical of her class in Hollywood where extreme narcissism outweighs any sense of reality or decency.

Too bad. I like Whoopi very much as an actress.

In our semi-continuing feature: we've narrowed the gap, but "Obamafuscation" continues to out-googlehit our word "Barackrobatics" by 641 to 7.