Phillipe and Jorge’s Cool Cool World: Ad Nauseum

It’s on, mofos!

We have begun the battle of political TV ads you will be so sick of within a month you will be begging to see even more ambulance-chasing spots by the likes of The Heavy Hitter and Agent 777 instead (if you don’t by now, as they are already brain-numbing and annoying enough).

First out of the gate with TV spots was Republican gubernatorial candidate Ashley Kalus, the carpetbagger from Illinois, running for the chance to step in front of Little Rhody’s Democratic bus. She’s been followed by Helena Foulkes, the former CVS honcho who nobody knows, but is rich enough to run in the Democratic gubernatorial primary on essentially her own dime. But remember, former guv Gigi Raimondo showed how far a dollar will go.

To be successful, as P&J are certain overpaid consultants are advising the pols, you need to tick the important boxes:

1. Family. If you’re in the race and don’t have a brood, go out and either adopt or rent a band of precious young cuties. 
2. Public Education. Show unquestionable dedication to our public schools and the needs and joys of a proper education. Even if your own kids are tucked away at exclusive private schools away from the riff-raff one may encounter in your school district.
3. Economy. Yes, it is the fault of everyone, except your high-end political donors, that we are being price-gouged at the gas pump, smoked by the baby formula drought and undermined by those unaffordable rents – which need correcting that you know you can’t and won’t do.
4. I’m One of Youse. Total bullshit as a credential, but it will kill Ashley Kalus. And like Ms. Foulkes, who now uses her Italian family name of Buonanno to possibly capture the Federal Hill vote, candidates will work that ethnic/gender/local/legacy angle. And as we have previously said, P&J’s ordained candidate, General Treasurer Seth Magaziner, in his Congressional race, had better move into the district toot sweet. And rightly so.
5. What a genius you are and always have been. Whether she/he is a Golden Gloves boxer or serious ailment sufferer who has engaged in facing down opponents or beating all odds, best try to not be seen blowing your own horn. As if that is possible for a politician.
6. I’ve never been arrested for shady deals. Well, besides being a possible lie waiting to happen in all camps, it’s touch-and-go whether this might matter. Although, the fact that Gov. Dan “Who’s He?” McKee – and his deal with his cronies in securing a multi-million-dollar state contract for them one week after he was sworn in – is being investigated by the state’s attorney general and FBI, does not bode well. We’ll see when the gloves come off down the stretch.

Spot the Difference

It’s time for this edition of Phillipe and Jorge’s “Spot the Difference” competition. This is inspired by reading People magazine at our local laundromat, where you better habla español with the wonderful people who run it.  But it is entertaining – in a bizarre way – to read about the “celebrities” People covers (marriages, births, deaths, drug problems, faux traumas, romances designed to fail, etc) among ostensibly famous folks we couldn’t pick out of a police lineup, if we aren’t being too out of touch with who’s what is where, when and how in the modern social media world.

Being your globally aware and superior correspondents, if not important “influencers” (pardon us while we wretch at that term), we have chosen an international theme, in which you can try to identify the differences between two major sources and influences of power. Here ya go, puzzle fans:

1. The ruling power in Afghanistan, the Taliban, with their trampling on rights of women and subjugating them to totally restrictive laws, which the US government has said they abhor.
2. The US Supreme Court, with their proposed trampling of the rights of women and subjugating them to totally restrictive laws (take a bow, Texas and Oklahoma governors and legislators) that the US people have said they abhor.

Answer:

The difference is that, while both are brutally repressive, wear long, flowing oversized outfits/robes, and are so full of themselves you need to coat the doorways with Vaseline to get their inflated heads into a room, the Taliban wear those turbans and beards with pride, while the Supreme Court justices choose to go bareheaded. Although both the unspeakable sexual predator, incompetent and totally compromised by his wife Clarence “Frogman” Thomas and Donald Trump’s hired housemaid, Amy Coney Barrett, could use a shave, notably (and preferably) of their brains’ frontal lobes.

(A tip of the beret and sombrero to England’s exquisite Private Eye magazine for the kick-start.)