​As hard as it is to believe, money is already being wasted on political advertising for national elections in November. Is there any more worthless way that dollars can be used? I’m hard pressed to find one.
 
Let’s step back for a minute and think about where money can be wisely/appropriately/effectively invested in productive endeavors, things that help our society progress and improves the lot of families and individuals. Rather than contributing to a political figure or campaign months and months before voting, those who fund these attack ads seven months and more before voting takes place, we could find causes that grow our economy, protect the environment, educate children, house the homeless.
 
I don’t have a handle on who puts the big money into campaigns so far in advance of elections. Suffice to say, it likely is individuals with big bucks, along with organizations/businesses that have huge sums of cash to pedal influence. They throw money into ways to influence you into thinking the way they do or how they want you to think.
 
This typically involves demonizing the opponent rather than educating the potential voter. Time and again, it’s been proven that negative and attack ads get viewers thinking bad thoughts about the individual being attacked.
 
How much is spent? I don’t know. Let me ask Ms. Google right now. The quick response is that the advertising dollars spent on U.S. elections and advocacy issues will grow to roughly $16 billion in 2024, up 31.2% compared to the last presidential election in 2020..
 
I can think of much better ways to spend/invest that money. How about we create jobs for people where they pick up all the trash blowing on our highways and city streets – plastic bottles and bags, cardboard boxes, tires, wrapping, fast food refuse. Before we end up getting buried in all the crap that ends up on the side of the road, lets have the big kahunas throw a couple of billion into that program.
 
We can have them throw another couple of billion into feeding the one in six kids in the United States who have to skip a daily meal. How about we build tiny affordable home dwellings with another two billion dollar investment to get some of the homeless off the streets? 
Those three ideas combined would only come to a mere six billion dollars out of the pockets of the uber wealthy who are already dipping into their pockets to manipulate your thinking and getting you to see a candidate or campaign in the same light as them. There would still be $10 billion available in their 2024 till to handle all the other issues based on those earlier Google stats.
 
Maybe there could be some political advertising requirement put into place that for every dollar you contribute to a candidate, you must invest a dollar into something constructive for society. Probably too much to ask of the big guns. And they certainly aren’t going to do something like that out of the goodness of their heart.
 
Paid political advertising is a waste product. It needs to be reformed. I don’t have the answers. We can all ask questions. 

​The past two weeks, the local rock radio station has played an ad. In it, Home Depot runs an audio that plays to the mechanical (presumably inherent) talents of fathers.
 
They run on about giving dad power tools for Father’s Day. Setting him free to fix the toilet. Letting him explore electrical outlets with abandon.
 
My wife has been in the car several times when the ad comes on. We turn and smile at each other. “That’s you,” I go. She laughs and nods. She’s the technical master of our household.

It’s amusing that a hardware store chooses to play to this stereotype, assuming 1) men are mostly/all mechanically inclined and 2) men will desire power tools and “want” to fix things around the house.
 
While this has some truth to it, it doesn’t tell the full story and instead pigeonholes people. As a young boy, our dad frequently had us help him with his home projects. I have two brothers, and one picked up that gene, and the other has it to a certain extent – he chooses to dig into more complex chores, I think, to save money and perhaps figure out how something works.
 
I don’t have the fix-it gene, and my mind doesn’t function in a mechanical way. And the desire is not there to handle those deficiencies.

Thankfully, I have a wife who is very mechanically inclined, and LOVES to dig in and problem-solve. She’s talented and I’m thankful, and we often shake our heads in amusement when faced with stereotypical messages about who is the “man of the house” when it comes to repairs and fixing things.
 
Recently, my car radio stopped functioning. As usual, Mr. Non-Mechanical could not figure out what was wrong. Determined to find the simple solution (there had to be one, didn’t there?), I chose not to seek my wife’s help for a couple of days.

Intelligently, I thought, I turned the car off and on several times with no result. This works with the computer, doesn’t it? So why not the car?
 
I played with the tap screen. This is dangerous for me. My stubby fingers, which often operate on another planet, can accidentally hit just about anything in the wrong way, causing technological damage. In fact, in this case, I was confident they were the cause of the problem, though I couldn’t figure out when it happened.
 
When the on-off solution provided nothing, I began playing with the touch screen, examining buttons, lightly tapping indicators that could in any way, shape or form appear to mean “mute” or “unmute.” No dice after spending many minutes on this, more than I’d care to relate.
 
I considered using the Operators Manual, but really, why bow to the printed word and the sure-fire answer. Aren’t we supposed to be Handy Men and figure it out on our own?
 
So, my car went silent for a day, then two. Then my wife joined me for our morning drive to walk the dog. “How come your radio isn’t on?”
 
“I, uh, um…… Well, I must have tapped something to turn it off and haven’t been able to figure out how to get it back on.”
 
She leaned over, touched the screen once, MAYBE twice, and bam, Led Zeppelin came back on with “Stairway to Heaven.” I was in heaven because I have such a talented wife. She’s the Handy Woman they should target next year, perhaps on Mother’s Day. 

​We watch Wheel of Fortune on a regular basis and have a standing joke: when a contestant gets greedy, they turn the magnet on. When the wheel spins, the magnet sucks the pointer towards the “Bankrupt” or “Lose a Turn” space, rather than to a space where the contestant would get money.
 
When my wife and I find a contestant continuing to want money after they could EASILY solve the puzzle, we figure greed has taken over. “Turn the magnet on,” we shout at the screen.
 
Magnetism is a strange thing. It’s like magic. Sometimes it’s on and you have no idea why. There’s an unseen draw.
 
In this vein, I’ve come up with this term called “spousal magnetism.” This occurs if you’ve had children and they are no longer in the house. Not to say this special magnetism can’t exist when kids are in the house, but they probably interfere with the force and intensity.
 
Case in point: every morning my wife and I go through a magnetic routine. She gets ready to eat her yogurt and blueberries while I feed the dogs (now dog rather than dogs). We rise at the same time, enter the kitchen.

You’d imagine both of us would know where the other will be in the kitchen and adjust ever so slightly so we don’t bump into each other. That’s not the case.

Instead, she prepares her breakfast, I reach for a fork in the silverware drawer, and there we are in each other’s way. No big deal. She shifts or I wait.
 
Here’s the thing – we still do this. Spousal magnetism takes over. It pulls us together in some unseen fashion, a force outside our control.

I’ve spoken with other friends about this unique magnetic force. They agree spousal magnetism is real.
 
Multiple examples have been sent to me. The kitchen seems to be a particularly nuisance colliding point. Magnetism appears extra powerfully there. One person looks for the bottle opener while the other searches for the mixing bowl and the magnetic pull exerts itself, ensuring the two bodies get in each other’s way.
 
Another example is the wandering around syndrome. One of the two spousal/partner units finds a nice comfortable niche, stretching out, getting comfortable. For no apparent reason, magnetism decides to exert its powers and the other unit finds just that moment to come into the room and vacuum, empty the trash or look for something in a closet.
 
The upstairs vs. downstairs situation is another example sent to me by multiple readers. You are upstairs. The other unit is downstairs. The magnetic pull switch flips and suddenly the upstairs person decides downstairs is the place to be, or vice versa. 
 
“Why’d you decide to come downstairs?”
 
“I don’t know. Probably the magnetic pull again.”
 
You would think with kids out of the house, and with more room for the two units to spread out and not bang into each other that magnetic pull would not exert itself so aggressively. But it does not appear that square footage factors into this equation.
 
Everyone likes to wander. When the magnet is turned on, watch out for the collisions.

​Sometimes I wish I had the desire to be a Con Man. Fake people out. Take their money. Point one direction, then stick my hand in their back pocket and pull their wallet or cell phone out and walk away.
 
It would be so easy.
 
We are overwhelmed these days with Con Men. And, perhaps we always have been but they just haven’t been as visible. Snake Oil Salesmen have been around forever. The traveling carnival makes it’s living off selling you the big yarn to gulp down as you hand over your dough. “Five shots for a dollar, folks, and you can win the stuffed animal you’d forgotten existed.”
 
The Con Man of 2024 is more ubiquitous, the lies more insidious. Playing off fears and the dumbing down of people, they share information that seems like it COULD be right. Even though facts can clarify statements, many gulp hard on the hook and the Con Man reels them in.
 
Think of how easy it is, for example, to get people to attend events of no consequence, like the NFL draft. The geniuses have figured out how to turn that into a money maker, drawing people from all over the United States to party and listen to their teams announce who they have selected to play on their team next year. Pretty exciting stuff, right?
 
Then again, maybe that’s just an excuse to party. That’s always good bait for the Con Man to hang out the window.

Gambling is the other one. Play off people’s emotions and how they support a team and don’t take the time to analyze or assess facts and study trends, and money pours out of their pockets and into the Con Man’s.
 
Interestingly, there are steps being taken to curb the Con Man. That is a sign of how far the Con Man has infiltrated our society.

For example, check out the U.S. Department of Energy’s website and you’ll find “Malarkey’s Corner.” I accessed this recently when looking for some information and found this section of the site dedicated to debunking myths. It lays the facts out. Relies on the intelligence of the reader to understand the science and what is really going on.  Hmmm, sounds revolutionary.
 
Another good example of battling the Con Man is the Ombudsman role – a position at newspapers to directly analyze statements and positions put forward to see the truth or deceit involved in the statements. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel on page 2 every day looks at an issue put forth by a public figure and goes in-depth researching the veracity of the statements. It then ranks the public official from False to Mostly False to Partially True to True. You get to see what level the Con Man has taken his position.
 
It's a sad statement about U.S. society that we need a Malarkey’s Corner and Ombudsmen at newspapers. But we do. Because the Con Man is out there lurking.
 
Though the Snake Oil Salesman has around since the dawning of con jobs, it sure seems like it’s a sign of our times that we need to combat lies, distortions and conspiracy theories. Keep your eyes open, read, and check to make sure your wallet is intact.