FU - FairAndUNbalanced.com

Living in a battleground state, I've had the benefit of a wide assortment of political television ads. So far, the most intense have been Republicans accusing each other of secret midnight rendezvous with Obama deficit mongers, and counter-ads that call accusations of secret midnight rendezvous with Obama deficit mongers dirty politics.

Peter Kinder is the most entertaining politician. He was a tea party favorite in the race for US Senator Claire McCaskill's seat. His past kind of exploded on the Missouri electorate like a prolonged, loud fart in church. Seems he has a history of stripper clubs, along with harassment charges brought by an exotic dancer. A photograph of Kinder enjoying female company at a club featuring a "pantsless party" kind of took him out of the Senate race.

Now that is sad.

Still, he is running for re-election as Lieutenant Governor. He is interviewed every once in a while and denounces the charges as lies, distractions from the real issues. His denials sound strong until you pick at them a little. Are the details wrong? "Like most people I am not proud of every place I have been but this woman's bizarre story is not true." Instead of every Monday, the bar visits were every Tuesday? Sometimes Kinder responses sound like denials but aren't denials at all. "The Democrats have tried to use these tactics against me in the past and they have failed."

The guy isn't cheating on his wife. He has never been married. He would look a lot less silly if he would try the long-shot responses of former Louisiana governor Edwin Edwards. Edwards went from a so-what defense to boasting about his affairs. Governor Edwards was once asked what it would take for him to lose re-election: "…if I’m caught in bed with a dead girl or a live boy." Of course, Edwards is still in a halfway house after serving most of a prison sentence behind actual steel bars. Not the Kinder pantsless kind. Kinder taking the Edwards approach is happening in an alternate universe. In this one, he asks voters not to believe their lying eyes. Photo? What photo?

Someone is running against him and a soft spoken woman's voice tells the story of strippers and affairs. She sounds so very sad and sincere. It is very well done. Unfortunately, you don't see it much. The hotly contested nominations are for the Senate and Governor positions. But I admire the anti-Kinder ads. Very effective. They make me wish I was a Republican -- well, almost -- just so I could vote for Kinder. They make me like him.

The national ads are more serious. Obama campaign ads feature the famous singing Mitt, voicing an out-of-tune patriotic song which echoes through empty factories and Cayman Island locales. There is no narration, just written screen explanations of outsourcing and tax havens. What is striking is how they vary the echo effect in every scene. Factories that Bain has closed have a different echo from the empty parking lots outside, which have yet a different effect from the outdoor Cayman Island echo. The ad ends with Mitt Romney not being the solution. Mitt Romney is the problem. There are other ads, but that is the most memorable.

The Romney effort strikes me as weak, but then I am a partisan Democrat, so you kind of have to expect that. Romney offers an issue oriented ad that seems to have been composed by a beauty pageant contestant. I don't think he is for anything in his ads that anyone is against. Just based on his ads, I think Michele Obama and her mom would vote for Romney if they lived in Missouri and the ads were all they had to go on. He's for ice cream without any calories.

Romney has a five point program for getting America's economy moving again. Here it is:

• Using America's resources to establish energy independence. Well, hey. I'm for wind power.

• Educating America's children. No mention of the larger classrooms the Governor says will help, but you ARE for educating children, right?

• Trade policies that will help America's businesses and create jobs.

• Cutting the deficit

• Helping small businesses. It's time we had a President who will "champion small business."

Yup. No calories at all.

I dunno. Maybe there are low-information voters in Missouri who can be convinced President Obama is against energy, against education, for exploding the deficit, generally for finding new and creative ways to destroy small business owners, a President who devotes his time and effort to designing trade policies to hurt US businesses in general in favor of Kenyon third world anti-colonial enterprises. I'm inclined to think those who are open to such possibilities are already wearing GOP tinfoil in their headgear.

As far as I know, Mitt Romney has made no effort to get the Obama's little girls to endorse his economic plan. If kids could vote, the Governor would come out for cookies.

He still might include cookies in his economic plan before this is over.