I haven't been blogging enough...

At least that's what Tim says. And he's Tim.

So, to tide you over a bit here's an old column I wrote last year.

Waste of time to vandalize campaign signs

Robert Lahue
Opinion Columnist
September 22, 2004

I wanted to kill it. Torture it. Stab it over and over and rip it apart into tiny little pieces that would scatter in the West Sacramento Avenue breeze.

One my friends' neighbors had put up a John Kerry/John Edwards campaign sign in front of their house. If I had eaten lunch yet, I would have lost it. In case you haven't caught on yet, I'm not a big fan of the tax raiser/ambulance chaser ticket.

But I didn't do anything to the sign. That would be wrong. Unfortunately, not everybody gets that.

People are committing theft and vandalism against presidential campaign signs, and doing so is detrimental to the political process and the general intelligence of the human race.

You might think, "Gee, that's bad, but Chico's not too bad, right? We wouldn't do silly stuff like trash signs."

Think again.

"That stuff happens pretty frequently on this campus," said Shaun Curry, president of the Chico College Republicans.

Curry said he had campaign signs for the president in his backpack and had them torn up when he went to use the restroom during class. Signs have also been vandalized with markings such as swastikas.

Bob Ray of the Student Democratic Club said the local Democratic headquarters loses more than $1,000 worth of signs every election.

"People lose their signs every day," Ray said.

And Chico gets it mild. If you head north to Jackson County, Ore., the situation is more volatile. The Democratic headquarters in Medford had sign bulbs broken out and spit on the doors. Cars in an Ashland apartment complex had their windows smashed--but only the ones with Bush/Cheney stickers. One 74-year-old woman got so tired of having Kerry signs stolen from her yard that she climbed a ladder and put a sign up a tree.

Come on. Having a 74-year-old woman feel like she has to climb up a tree? Over signs that cost $5, tops?

I'm wondering what goes through the minds of these morons when their thought process (if they're capable of that, which is in serious doubt) comes to the conclusion to smash up a sign. I think it goes something like this:

"Sign. Sign for that one guy. Me hate that one guy. Maybe me should talk to sign owner. Debate policy. Have open communication. Respect each other. Nah, too much effort. Me just pee on sign for that one guy. That'll teach them."

Seriously, what do these people think they're accomplishing by messing with a sign? It's not like John Kerry is going to get up on a podium and say, "Hey y'all, I just got word that somebody threw ketchup on a yard sign along Hazel Street in Chico, Calif. In light of this, I'm withdrawing from the race. Two fingers, four more years, I'm outtie."

Well OK, I can hope he'd say that, but it's not going to happen.

All trashing campaign signs does is make the perpetrators look like idiots. It gives the community a black eye. Not to mention, vandalism is a crime.

Probably the dumbest thing is that the energy it takes to vandalize a campaign sign could be used to actually talk about politics. It's like when I was in high school and I lost the remote control to a television. I spent hours devising a Rube Goldberg machine that allowed me to change the channel while in bed. If I just spent that time looking for the remote, my problems would have been solved.

But that's common sense, and very few people have that.

So ditch the swastika drawing, thievery and 74-year-old women climbing trees. Leave everybody else's signs alone, go get your own and show them off with pride.