Casting Call

    Man, what a great time for comedy. Unfortunately, I'm not talking about The Hangover sequel and the more than likely chance that I will be underwhelmed by it simply because the first one was so amazingly well done. I'm pretty sure anyone from my generation would die of alcohol poisoning before they got drunk enough to steal a friggin' tiger from Mike F'ing Tyson. But since they are filming a sequel that has no chance whatsoever of being as good as the first one they should save some money by casting some of the idiots running for office in Texas this year. Seriously, they are play-acting in some great comedic melodrama already, I'm sure they would jump at a chance for some free exposure. Here's a couple of examples:


Kathy Glass - solid conservative libertarian candidate for governor. She got really miffed when she wasn't allowed in a couple of debates with republicans and democrats. She has every right to be upset about it. I wasn't happy that she got excluded either, since I think her views are more in line with mine than either of the other candidates. However, she had to go and make herself look like an idiot. She goes to confront Rick Perry at a speaking engagement where he isn't going to take questions from the audience. She announces her intent to make sure she gets good media coverage, then plants someone to get some "homemade" footage. Seriously, if you want to get in a debate with the big boys, act like it, not like an amateur. She had the video slow down (the angle was perfect because it didn't show where Perry actually shook her hand) so that you can't hear her sounding like a little kid trying to get attention by confronting the teacher. She's in some bright pink thing that she probably bought back in 1992. Really? She looks crazy now. And she is running for Governor? Now, her Facebook fans thought this little stunt was great and that it shows her "sticking it to the man" and all of that, but to the average conservative guy like me she just looks like an extremist out for attention. Thanks Kathy, now I have to vote for Perry or more than likely not vote for governor at all. I would rather vote for someone that I liked and that I think would vote in my best interest. Bill White fits neither category, he's got that weaselly, milquetoast feel to him on top of wanting to spend money on crap we don't need to. At least I can trust Perry to keep out of my way for the most part, even if he does irk the hell out of me.

Now, my favorite idiot running for office this year is Jeff Barton. He's running for County Judge, but he has been functioning as County Commissioner. Honestly, I don't really know what his political platform is. I've read his website stuff and read a couple of speeches, but it's all just crap. Now, what I mean by "crap" is that it's just political talk that could be conservative, could be liberal but always sounds perfect. Check this out:

"Barton said he called the debate to highlight how far political discourse has degenerated. Now, he said, “it’s time to focus on creating jobs, protecting our water and fixing our traffic.”

Read more at the Hays Free Press http://haysfreepress.com/archives/11899#ixzz13iDmykK1 


Isn't that aewsome! Of course, there's no need to mention "how" he's going to do all of this, that would just complicate things. Obviously he's not alone in this kind of talk, I think they teach that in Campaign PR BS 101 at Plum Creek Elementary, but this guy thinks that he has the next Karl Rove running his campaign or something. He just staged a "high-noon" confrontation with some unknown idiot e-mailer. Yes, he really did. And he's the one that called it "High-Noon". Thanks for making my hometown look like a caracatuer of friggin' Mayberry there, Jeff. 'Preciate ya. He calls this unknown emailer (who sent out some obviously stupid crap about Barton getting in a fight with his sister when Barton doesn't have a sister and something about giving big contracts to his friends which would be almost impossible nowadays) a "hoodlum" and sets up this melodramitic charade in downtown Kyle like he's Mr. Tough Guy wanting to face his accuser in "the light of day". Come on now, Jeff. Local media HAS to cover crap like this, they don't get a choice. It even got a blurb in the Austin paper. The Hays Free Press is like 4 pages of local stuff wrapped in a bunch of coupons ( I got one from Toys-R-Us this week, and there's not a single one of those in Hays County) and I always read it because, well, it gets thrown on my driveway for free and, well...ya know, I live here and stuff. [ Honestly, it's always worth the time to read even if most of the stuff has absolutely no bearing on my life in general. I love Kyle and the whole area and I like to keep up with it. The people writing do a good job, they just don't always have a lot to work with.] Around 50 people showed up for "High-Noon" and a dozen or so of them were supporting some Dr. Cobb guy that I know nothing about who is running against Barton. That's like the turnout for a school play. Basically you have the 30 or 40 people that are personally interested in this Barton guy because they know him, like him, or just like to go to things like this. Then you have the idiots on the other side that show up to do the Kathy Glass impersonation. One of these guys is prepared to call Barton out on a bunch of stuff. The good part is that he went and got a bunch of records from the county to back him up. I promise you Jerry Springer is pissed he didn't get to be there. Jeff is getting called out for lying on all kinds of stuff. He claims not to have accepted a raise, but he actually did. Now, he did turn it down (with all the right verbage too), but then he recanted after it passed an impartial comittee vote. The thing is he turned it down for 2009 and not 2008 or vice versa, I'm a little confused here. No, I'm a lot confused here. Apparently he initiated the vote, then didn't accept the raise, then did accept it, then claimed that he couldn't accept it....or something... both sides are claiming different things and both bringing documents from Treasury...seriously, where is Politifact when ya need them? Next he posted on his website that he was from born in Colorado, then allegedly said he was born in Texas and now his website doesn't say anything about it anymore. So some activist guy shows up to confront Ol' Jeff with this crap and Barton says that he can't debate him or respond unless he signs an affidavit that he sent the email stuff. Obviously, dude can't sign any of it since most of it isn't true and then ya get legal issues and whatnot, and there is the chance that he didn't write it anyway. I can't fault Barton for this after railing Glass for pretty much doing the same thing, but he's the one who staged all this stuff and forced the media coverage, then cracked a fallopian tube once he got on stage. There was absolutely zero chance that whoever wrote the emails would be there, it was all political fluff. Did he not realize that he was gonna get challenged? Surely he isn't that dumb. There are like 200 people that actually care about all of this stuff and every one of them cares waaaaay too much. He had to know that. Granted, according to the Hays Free Press this guy is "an activist whose causes include exposing a conspiracy for world domination between the Nature Conservancy and the United Nations," which makes him sound like he was some evil character from an Austin Powers movie or something, so who knows what would have happened if he got an official spot at the podium. 


  I think this stuff is awesome. How does some goofball like Barton get elected to County Commissioner in the first place? Who is so concerned about it that they make up some fake emails, from a fake democratic club of some kind with all fake names?  Is it some Cobb supporter? Did someone from the Barton camp do it? Who thought up this glorious "High-Noon" stuff? What kind of world do these political junkies live in where they think that this stuff is cool? That it makes them look good? That the average guy like me associates them with Jerry Springer and cares more about why Barton is wearing that mustache in his website picture than what the guy can actually do as a judge may say as much about me as it does about him, but this kind of stuff is hilarious. I mean, this could have been a plot for some Lindsay Lohan flick before we knew she was crazy. If you set it during a Jr. High student council election it would be more believable anyway.

  I realize that almost everyone I know has no clue who is running for what and local politics is just kind of there, it doesn't matter to them. Honestly, it doesn't matter much to me either. When I see stuff like this I realize how bad it is for the country that most of us don't vote in local elections and don't pay attention to them until we retire or lose the normal thinking functions in our brain and become some crazed activist. Check this out. Please note that the TOTAL number of votes cast in the primary for Barton was 56, yes fifty-six, with an even 100 votes cast before his opponent conceded. That means that she knew that getting 12 more votes was impossible. There are more than 100 people just in my neighborhood that could have voted, but obviously we didn't.  Don't ask me why it says 58% when it's 56/100.  I guess no one involved had a calculator, or a 3rd grader around to do the math for them. Think about that for a minute. If the number of voters is ten times greater for the real election then it would equal 0.6% of the population of Hays County. It's funny as hell to me to read stuff like this, but when I really look at what it means, it just makes me sad.


Edit: Wow, after I wrote this, I went back and was reading about it some more. It turns out that Hays Free Press is owned by Barton Publications Inc. Now I feel like deleting the crap I said about the paper, but I'll leave it in since it's true. Man, this feels more like RoadHouse with Patrick Swayze than it does Andy Griffith now. But I'm going to link to this site now, since I read it as well, but didn't quote it or cite it because it seemed to be a little more "unofficial" than the Hays Free Press and could have been more of an opinion piece than I would normally like to cite. But after realizing that Barton's family owns the one I did quote, it feels right to cite what Mr. Ochoa has reported as well.