Dear $POLITICIAN: Please go away now

You know what? I’m tired outside of all reason of the political scene. We've got the ‘top brass’ flinging poop at each other, and the entire Republican and Democrat parties are so shockingly polarized that if a Republican said, “Hey, don’t pull that trigger! You’ll shoot yourself in the foot!”, the Democrat would pull it just to be contrary.

And then blame the Republican for his lost toes. At which the Republican would turn around and blame Clinton because, well, uh…because-because!

Seriously. Is it just me? I mean, there’s always been the mud-slinging and so forth…but lately it just seems like it is escalating. And getting sillier and sillier, the outright lies and lies-by-omission easier and easier to spot.

I think they think we really are supremely stupid. And maybe we are.

Check me on this: Politic. Adj. Using or marked by prudence, expedience, and shrewdness; artful. In other words, you don’t shoot off at the mouth, preferably ever but most certainly not in a very public forum!

Did this change? Did I miss a memo? Because get what former Republican Assemblyman Dean Andal spewed forth at a fundraiser, regarding Democrat Cathleen Galgiani (who is running against Republican Gerry Machado for Assembly):

Galgiani, he said, “…is not married, doesn't have any children and, in my view, she's never had a real job.”

Nice. So, the twenty years as a political aide wasn’t a real job, huh? OK. Whatever you say, there, Scooter…

And then - and then - and then? Oh yes, it does get better!!!!

His remark prompted Machado's campaign manager, Chris Orrock, to tell the Tracy Press that Galgiani's "only family is the 20 cats she lives with. The Central Valley is full of values — the family values and the core traditional values."

The note I received from Assemblywoman Matthews says, and I quote, Republican Gerry Machado’s campaign is attacking Cathleen as a single, childless woman who knows little of family values.

And they helpfully included excerpts from an article, outlining all the egregious comments made.

But they conveniently left out other parts of the article. Like, say, this same Orrock following up his mouth-fart by reaffirming that Machado’s campaign planned to focus on immigration, taxation and transportation instead of personal issues. [emphasis added]

You know what that feels like to me? Have you ever said something, and as the words came out of your mouth you thought, Oh, carp. Can I please have those words back so I can eat them and in due course flush them?

They left out the part where Machado himself said he wasn’t going to go there. "I'm going to talk about issues. This race has nothing to do with personal background," Machado told The Bee.

They made sure to throw in that Machado was ‘ferried’ to the fundraiser by a private plane owned by a developer, but left out the part where some 60% of Galgiani’s $600,000+ fundraising comes from special interests and corporations. But they threw in the part about how she used to foster cats for the SPCA.

Yes, just a glowing little angel of misused perfection.

Whoops. Excuse me. I just realized my cynicism is showing again.

I’m sure in due course I’ll receive the same kind of thing from Machado’s campaign, removing all the egregious comments and highlighting all the ‘special interests’ and ‘crazy cat lady’ bits.

I am so damned tired of this. Throw out some keywords, tug at the heart strings, threaten higher taxes unless we vote yes/no on this/that, wave the flag a little bit, tell me you’ll make somebody else pay ‘their fair share’ and make sure you attack somebody on the basis of gender or because somebody they've been seen in public with turned out to be gay/insensitive/stupid/otherwise PI and gee – I’ll just rush right down like a good little dummy and check whatever box you told me to.

It’s like listening to my kids when they’re being cranky, tattling on each other and trying to con me out of treats.

Only these are grownups.

And they wanna run our lives.

You know what?

The Libertarian Party is starting to sound downright delicious…