And We're Keeping Your Whiffle Balls.

Well, the elections are in just 5 days or so, meaning the number of political television ads will increase exponentially over the next week. Personally, I don't get the average political ad, specifically the overwhelming majority of ads that are solely "attack" ads.

First off, I don't really get the overall motivation behind them. Imagine a world in which McDonald's commercials never said anything about their own burgers, but instead showed filthy BK workers and substandard BK ingredients, and BK's commercials were the same about McDonald's. Probably wouldn't make you want to run out and grab a burger would it? It'd probably just turn you off to eating fast food at all.

And that's exactly what the prominence of attack ads has done in America. It's turned people off of voting. Now, I can understand that it's almost always in one party's interest to keep voter turn-out low, but invariably both parties use attack ads.

But I'll accept that maybe you have to use attack ads to counteract the party that wants to keep voter turnout low. Even given that, I just can't understand why they're designed as they currently are. A generic political campaign ad:

"I'm a scary and unpleasant voice. I'm going to read the exact words that appear on the screen, since there's nothing people like more than being read to. No moving images will occur in this commercial, instead we'll just show a poorly-lit picture of the candidate I want you to hate."

How is that a good commercial? Would you buy beer based on a commercial like that? It's the 21st century, and you can't do anything more than a fucking powerpoint presentation?

If I was a candidate, I'd go to Budweiser and hire one of their advertising writers. You can't tell me people wouldn't be more inclined to vote for a candidate whose commercials were actually funny.

Speaking of funny, you may have heard about Kerry fucking up a joke about Bush getting us stuck in Iraq, instead making it sound like he thinks our soldiers are stupid (I'm thinking about calling it Kerry-Fucked-Up-Again-Seriously-How-Many-Elections-Can-One-Man-Lose-Gate, catchy isn't it?).

The Democrats are really outdoing themselves this time. There was no earthly way, given current popular opinion, that the Democrats wouldn't do well this election cycle. They might not have taken back Congress, but they'd have picked up some seats at least. But, ever the trailblazers in the field of losing elections, the Democrats have actually tricked us into thinking we've traveled back in time, to a point where we wouldn't have wanted to vote democrat: the 2004 elections. It's pretty impressive when you think about it.

Meanwhile, the Republicans are working their own ingenious (at least comparitively) strategy: erecting a giant fence. Bush just signed into law a 700-mile fence on the Mexican border (although, in what seems to be the modus operandi of this administartion, the legislation doesn't actually fully fund the 700-mile fence, in fact the billion it authorizes is probably less than half what the fence will cost).

I find it strange that anyone believes a fence will keep illegal immigrants out. Cubans brave leaky rafts and shark-infested waters to come to America. Do we really think Mexicans will be stopped by a fence? I mean, Mexicans aren't THAT lazy.

In point of fact, we don't seem to think that. T.J. Bonner, head of the National Border Patrol Council, said "A fence will slow people down by a minute or two."

It's brilliant...we'll spend a couple of billion dollars in order to annoy some Mexicans. It's the most monumental undertaking in passive-aggressiveness ever imagined. Makes you proud to be an American.

Help me Barack Obama, you're my only hope.