Hardly Smartie Strickland

It's one of those rare moments in which the Google and the YouTube are useless. I'm trying to find the latest anti-Hannah Beth Jackson TV ad I've caught a few times, the one that once again tries to hammer home the silly Taxin' Jackson meme. First, if Tony Strickland really thinks that the California budget crisis, which after almost 3 months we simply pushed off into next year, can be solved without, uh, "revenue enhancement," then he's an idiot.

But separate from his inability to understand simple math, he also doesn't seem to understand the pulse of the local populace very well. In the latest ad he refers to quotes from newspapers three times to help buttress his point. The first quote, which is displayed, as the other two are too, with that usual "ripped from the headlines" graphic all such political ads must use, is clearly from the Santa Barbara News-Press. For, indeed, it was dear Travis Armstrong who first came up with Taxin' Jackson. This moment of the ad only says "a local paper calls her Taxin' Jackson." Then the ad quotes something about what "the Journal" says about the terrible HBJ, as if the Montecito Journal has ever said anything good about anyone with a D after his or her name. Then again, how many turn to Jim Buckley, the editor of the Journal, for cutting political analysis?

The kicker is this, the third paper quoted is, again, the News-Press. The voice-over tells us, "The News-Press agrees...." This is something, given sometimes the paper doesn't agree with itself, but in general it seems an odd way to argue: A (who I won't name) thinks you stink; A (who I will name now) thinks you stink; therefore two entities think you stink.

Well, something certainly stinks.