Going Down Swinging

Well, I have my answer to who would bother airing anti-Kasich political ads.

Marco Rubio, of course.

I saw two instances of the same Rubio ad last night. It was a kind of confusing mish-mash starting with (I'm paraphrasing here), "Marco Rubio is awesome," segueing into "Donald Trump is the debbil," then "a vote for Cruz or Kasich = a vote for Trump," so "vote Marco. Yay!" All in less than a minute.

Two things:

Those were the only political spots I saw all night although that may be my fault since most of my limited TV time was spent either on the BBC, Al Jazeera (while it lasts), or the pre-March Madness tournaments. Colbert was the exception and that's where I saw them. I realize Florida is a large state with very numerous and distinct TV markets but, although two is a definite increase over the one, or none, per day I've been subjected to so far, this does not at all feel like a saturation campaign just days before a must-win election. Perhaps they're suffering more in Miami, Orlando and Jacksonville.

Also, the ads were put together and run by Rubio's superPac since, according to reports/rumours, Rubio's campaign is out of money and can't afford to do any commercials on their own in his own home state! I'm sure that's a confidence builder for his backers.

Our Cookie-Based Civitas

We're halfway through our early voting period before the primary election next Tuesday. The library's meeting room has been taken over by voting machines and the people who serve them, although the Christians who camp out by the door with their proselytizing propaganda have not moved as they have done in the past. They may have worked out some accommodation or, perhaps the authorities realize they're basically harmless.

I'm waiting for election day to cast my vote, mostly because the folks who run the actual precinct voting stations always have cookies and pastries and soft drinks available and never enough voters show up so there is always plenty to go around. The early-voting places are just boringly utilitarian.

I also get cookies and juice when I donate platelets.

There's no point in pretending my attention to civic duties is anything more than a Pavlovian response to a baked-goods stimulus.

Speaking of stimuli, there are no, zero, nada candidate signs on the approach road to the library. Normally there are dozens, frequently multiple signs per candidate. And I haven't seen any yard signs on lawns, either.

The TV spots are picking up, a little. I saw two more anti-Trump pieces, one of which was repeated, and another pro-Rubio. The most surprising one, however, was a hit on former Ohio governor, John Kasich.

John Kasich! Seriously?

Whose campaign manager, or superPac media "expert" has enough money to throw away attacking Kasich? Who in this race believes Kasich is any kind of threat? Is there some kind of deadline by which you have to spend a certain amount of money and you couldn't think of anything better to do with it?

Here's an idea: Buy cookies for everyone.

And, Here. We. Go.

Our presidential primary is now under two weeks away and I have finally seen campaign attack ads. Two, precisely.

Just to set the record straight, I have seen a couple of Bernie Sander's ads, I think, but they were on MSNBC, a national cable channel, not local, and I could be wrong about that because they sometimes run bits of various ads as explanatory material to their editorial segments. The two I'm talking about were local and real.

The first was from an obvious Marco Rubio supporter, although I think not from the campaign itself since it didn't have the "I'm [CANDIDATE] and I support this . . ." disclaimer. It started by claiming Rubio has foreign policy expertise (dubious, but O.K.) and then went on to disparage Donald Trump. The best line was (paraphrasing), "He claims he can negotiate with China because a Chinese bank is a tenant in one of his buildings."

The second one was also anti-Trump and didn't mention any other candidate, so must have been put out by a super-pac. It went on about all his various business failures, an impressive list.

And that's it.

No Hillary or Bernie ads even though the Democratic primary is the same day.

No other Republican ads either for or against any of the candidates, all (and I mean all) of whom are still on the ballot here. No generic attack ads for or against anyone. Just those two spots, and each one just once. I don't watch a lot of TV and what I do watch is seldom local, but still.

I cannot imagine it will stay this quiet until March 15.

The Place Where I Live

A couple in this county but a few towns over recently had a safe stolen from their home. It contained $100,000 in gold and silver bars that they had just removed from a bank safe deposit box in order to buy a house. I'm thinking either first generation immigrants untrusting of banks due to experiences in the old country (although, why then use a bank's safe deposit box?), or drug dealers trying to keep income off the books (although, I can't imagine customers buying with gold and silver so somewhere along the line cash must have been paid for these bars so there's a record somewhere), or--and this seems most likely to me--idiots.

Considering all of the advertising on TV and in the paper pushing gold and silver hedges against a falling dollar, junk mail touting collectible coins and medallions and right-wing ranters extolling the virtues of hoarding hard metal for the end-times, I'm not surprised someone thought this was a good idea.
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On a totally unrelated note, the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commissioners remind people that it's not just a bad idea to hunt alligators with a handgun, it's also illegal. Handguns are, apparently, perfectly legal when hunting Burmese pythons, as long as the coup de grace is administered correctly.

But do not share with bears. Or the feral hogs.

Familiar Faces Standing in the Light at the End of the Tunnel

The county Supervisor of Elections sends out sample ballots to every registered voter a couple of weeks prior to the election so we can all familiarize ourselves with what's up for decision this time around. I received mine yesterday.

The good news is: this means we're very close to the end of our two-year-long civic iron man triathalon. I look forward to the return of the overbearing used-car salesmen, ambulance chasing lawyers, screaming furniture warehouse pitchmen and concernedly sensitive hospice hucksters to our local airwaves. The bad news is: that final hurdle at the finish line.

We've been warned for a while now that this year's ballot would be exceptionally long, thanks to our pusillanimous legislature that decided, rather than actually doing its job and passing laws, to kick the responsibility over to us by creating an even dozen constitutional ballot initiatives and then exempting its initiatives from the legal requirements for brevity and clarity that ones proposed by, say, real concerned citizens are subject to*. Our ballot will be seven pages long**.

The first two pages are for candidates for office, the second page being entirely for the election of various judges which is a stupid concept in the first place and a legacy of Jim Crow but constitutional and just the way they do things down here. Technically, the judges are appointed and these are just retention elections but still.

What fascinated me, though, was the first column on the first page which is devoted entirely to the presidential/vice presidential race. In this state, at least, there are ten different tickets running for those offices. At the top of the list, of course, are Romney/Ryan and Obama/Biden (in that order, our governor being Republican thus giving that party top billing). After that, I'm not sure what order these candidates are in. Perhaps by vote total in the previous election? It's certainly not alphabetical by either candidate or party. Speaking of which, the three-letter abbreviations used for the parties are not much help.

The third party listed is "OBJ". Objectivist? After that, I recognize Gary Johnson and the "LBT", or Libertarian. There's Virgil Goode and what I assume from "CPF" is Conservative Party of Florida although it could just as easily be Communist. (O.K. a quick Google search indicates the "C" stands for Constitution. Apologies to all those on the far left and/or right.) "GRE" equals Green and I recognize Jill Stein. I assume "SOC" is Socialist. (And good luck to you, too, in this state.)

I have no idea what the REF, PSL, PFP, AIP, or JPF parties are even though Roseanne Barr (yes, that Roseanne Barr!) and Cindy Sheehan (of camping out in W's front yard fame) are the PFP candidates.

And then, here, at the very bottom of the ballot is a candidate I know personally, who I have met on a number of occasions and spoken to. Ross C. "Rocky" Anderson, former mayor of Salt Lake City, lefty burr under the saddle of the Utah legislature, is the presidential candidate for the JPF and is on the ballot here in Florida.

It is indeed a small, and very strange, world.

*I intend to vote no on all of them. The ones I have been able to read are awful and I have no intention of voting "Yes" on anything I haven't read.
**Some slightly paranoid commentators have opined that the length of the ballot is intentional and designed to discourage voters who may get frustrated at the amount of time needed and the backed up lines and just give up without voting but, as a voter suppression tactic, I don't see how that favors one side over the other. Never ascribe to Evil that which can be explained by Stupidity. For me, it's a moot point since we have early voting starting tomorrow and I intend to get it all over with then.

Sexy Republicans

And now the fun starts.

Local politics is almost always more entertaining than the national sort, what with all the handlers, spinners, rough-edge-sanders and consulting befoggers employed by the big guys. We now have a delightful little scandal being puffed up here.

One of the local Republican candidates for US Congress, a former talking head on a local Fox radio station and Tea Party favorite, before announcing his candidacy, went out and bought website domain names for a number of his primary opponents forcing them to use less desirable alternatives (i.e., "So-'n'-so4Congress.com" as opposed to "So-'n'-soforCongress.com") and setting up pages attached to those names which trashed the candidates they were supposedly supporting. Now, as dirty tricks go, this was fairly innocuous. And, besides, this is the 21st Century. Do you want to vote for a candidate who doesn't understand the Internet or social media?

When the other candidates noticed and struck back they also noticed something else. It seems Mr. Candidate had also in the past bought a number of questionable domain names, many in Spanish.

The upshot is there is now a TV commercial, paid for by someone's SuperPac, that is just beautiful (although I can not yet find it on the Web). It starts with a blank screen and and "Advisory Warning" for content and then proceeds to list the raunchy domains with the actual names covered by a black censorship bar while questioning the morals of any alleged conservative who would purchase such things.

The ad must have hit home because within two days the candidate's wife, also a TV talking head currently on leave while her husband runs, appeared in front of a plain simple white (for purity) background speaking with well-practiced sincerity about how nasty politics can be. Especially, the false, negative ads accusing her husband of things he has admitted to and are on the record. And please ignore her husband's business practices.

It's twelve days to the primary. And I'm enjoying the ride.

The Longest Season: TNG

The newest iteration of political attack ads is in full swing. These are the response spots, answering, or at least attempting to answer, the arguments put forward by the first round of advertisements. Thus we now have both candidates, and their surrogate PACs, complaining that the other side has misrepresented them (true), taken quotes and positions out of context (also true) and warning people not to believe anything the other guy says (pot, meet kettle).

We're now starting to see hints of the third generation arriving wherein the candidates deny the accusations and accuse the other of whining about otherwise fair attacks. Slowly being buried under layers of charge and counter charge are the original points of contention, whether valid or not. Eventually the ads will become incomprehensible to anyone who has not been following along from the beginning.

There is a smattering of spots for local politicians showing up, mostly US House and Senate races. These tend to be more "Hi, I'm So-'n'-so and I'm running for X. See my pretty family? I live and work around here and promise to not be like the last guy you elected." Mostly, this is because all the candidates are from the same party, vying in the upcoming Republican primary for the right to take on the sacrificial Democrat; even so a couple are slightly edgier. One states that the office being sought is "elected not inherited" a sly reference to the fact the opponent is the "IV" of that name whose recent ancestor (the II or III, I'm not sure which) also held that seat. Of course, the candidate making that insinuation happens to be the son of a former congressman and CIA director who just started adding daddy's name to his own in his campaign, but, hey, if you're not willing to vote for a hypocrite you'll never vote at all.

The good news is: political ads have not yet completely overtaken the airwaves.

The bad news is: because of the good news, the loud-mouth local car salesman and talking animal insurance mascots are still around.

The Longest Season

Not Summer, unfortunately.

The political season has started here with an official Obama ad ("I approve this message") disparaging Romney's record as governor of Massachusetts. I've seen it a number of times now on several different stations, but always seemingly on national programs of a political nature so I'm not sure if it's being aired nationally or just locally.

I haven't seen any other ads, yet, which is a little surprising since this is a critical swing state but I'm not complaining, either. I am quite sure before this season is finally over in November we will be saturated from both sides.

Glimpses Into the Future

Mom has become aware of Facebook.

With her Alzheimer's induced OCD tendencies, she reads advertisements in the newspaper down to the finest of fine print. She reads every word. She doesn't necessarily understand what she reads, but she reads it. Every. Word.

So, lately, she's noticed references to "Follow Us On Facebook" on everything from hype by the local mega-deal car sales lot to coupons for dish detergent, to the local pool cleaner. She doesn't get detail from TV ads (images go by too fast for her) so I'm not sure if she's noticed any references there, yet. And I doubt she'd recognize the  logo.

I've explained the general concept to her, and the fact that it's huge, and that I and my Other Brother and his two eldest kids and his ex- plus a whole bunch of other people she used to know (although not of her generation) are on it, and she sort-of gets it.

She gets it enough to wonder how it makes any money if they don't charge for using it. So that's something.

So far, at least, she hasn't noticed the Twitter logos. I'd hate trying to explain the concept behind that.

Why It Is A Good Thing I Do Not Have Children

Because I giggle myself silly every time I see this:

Especially the last two kids scenes. I would so send kids of mine there. I'm a bad person. I know.