taking a stand

The For Maryland, For Our Future group - the one advocating for slots here in MD - had an ad up on the Baltimore Sun website, so I clicked on it (I'm pretty easy that way.). So, as part of the website you can download widgets to put on your own site if you're so inclined. Obviously, the chance to add content here without putting forth much effort myself was too easy to resist. I was sorry, though, that they didn't put together any widgets with fat broodmares contentedly grazing in a field, or something along those lines. I mean, I'm not asking them to put up pictures of us gamblers whipping ourselves with programs as the horses come down the stretch, but it's kind of funny how the slots issue is framed as saving everybody, from the kids and seniors to the whales, before any mention is made of the racing industry. I get it. We're dirty, dirty people, and I paid just enough attention in those poli-sci classes back in the day to know that you craft referendum language in such a way that a "no" vote is tantamount to hating children.

As a side note, that's why I always take so long in the voting booth - those referendum items take so long to read! Then I get to tearing up over the language, forget where I am and what I'm voting on and have to start all over again. My rule for those things is kind of like my approach to summer novels: if I can easily enough suspend disbelief, believe that the President's daughter has been kidnapped and that a little known public defender in Vermont is called on to save her (and himself, plus a new, hot girlfriend!), I'll vote yes (keep reading, but sometimes just for those special chapters), but when the language gets so over the top that it borders on ridiculous, down goes the hammer, baby. So, pretty much most of those referendums that pass with, like, 90% of the vote, I'm in that other 10% because the language goes too far, as if they were writing it and just kept throwing in things like end hunger, plant flowers at every stop light and bring back the troops, and it's all wrapped up in some little township-wide resolution. Thank you, Mayor, but no thanks. I love kids, though, don't get me wrong.

Anyway, I've put up the widget above, but just wish I could modify its scroll to add a "For Sean," bit to it. Maybe a picture of me holding some Benjamins, or maybe just a few tens and fives, would be hot. Personally, I think the voters of Maryland would respond.