12:08 p.m.
Saturday, November 3, 2018 12:05 pm

Just some random thoughts on how we go about lowering the temperature surrounding the political discourse as we head toward the midterms on Tuesday.

First, this ubiquitous conceit now being heard ad nauseam across the political spectrum doesn't play as well up heah in New England, where the reality of a long, frigid winter stares us full in the face.

Trying to lower the temperature is a bit of an anathema. I mean if the temperature is lower out there isn't that going to raise my heating oil bill?

I realize, of course, it won't, but you get the gist. I mean if we were in Tucson and it was 108 degrees, I'm all for it. When I hear the furnace go on, not so much.

Now, before we go any further, I want to make sure that my "rhetoric" doesn't offend you.

Actually, I never realized rhetoric was such an offensive, divisive term till these midterms.

Back in college I had to take Rhetoric 101 and Rhetoric 111. Naïve me thought it was just about effective writing, which Merriam-Webster confirms in its first meaning. But toward the bottom of the meanings barrel, there it is: "insincere, grandiloquent language."

Now that sounds more like my Rhetoric professor. He was an insincere, grandiloquent bastard if I ever knew one, staring down at me pompously as he handed me my C+ graded essay filled with his notes disparaging my discourse. I guess I didn't care for his rhetoric in those notes too much.

Speaking of random thoughts, why is it that every other digital daily in New Hampshire and Maine will have the same headline three times on its home page. For those who don't know, a digital dailies' home page is also known as the landing page, like therochestervoice.com.

Anyways, we at The Rochester Voice scroll down other digital dailies home pages every day, and we're always amazed at this phenomenon. You'll find the story listed under "Breaking New," "Local News" and "Soon-to-be Breaking News" as well. I just don't get it.

By the way in Maine where recreational pot is legal, they have a different spin to the "When they go low, we go high" saying; it's "when they go low, we get high."

Makes sense. I mean how many people you meet think the country's going to pot.

And another thing you never hear about. No one ever brings up the need for a wall on our northern border. Why is that?

Such vile random thoughts can only be born of one thing: the endless blathering of political ads. They're making me nutty.

There actually causing domestic friction here in my own home, where a political ad gave rise to an argument over double dipping. The ad showed a hand dipping a nacho over and over again into some guacamole as it tried to illustrate a candidate who was double dipping by being paid a taxpayer-funded retirement as well as a taxpayer-funded salary.

Rochester Voice President Martha Soto Galicia fumed that double dipping refers to when you dip a chip, take a bite of half of it, then dip it again, dispersing thousands of germs into the dip bowl to infect anyone else who uses it.

Obviously she is a huge "Seinfeld" fan.

She said the ad portrayed a false narrative of what double dipping is, giving rise to a protracted bit of rhetoric between the two of us.

I ended up getting another C+.

What a world, what a world, what a world. Hurry up, Tuesday.