The politicians most in debt

The Center for responsive Politics recently put together a list of the political campaign most heavily in debt

, and while Connecticut races don’t rank too highly, they do rank.

Top on the list is Maria Cantwell, whose campaign is more than $2 million in debt.

The campaign of Connecticut’s Elizabeth Esty, who won last November in a hotly contested race, is nearly $300 large in hock. she takes the spot at no. 31

Nearby Esty is Sen. Richard Blumenthal who, at $250,000 worth of debt, ranks 34th on the list. To find another Connecticut politician, you have to go all the way down to #102, Chris Murphy, whose Senate campaign is a comparatively measly $26,520 in debt.

Here’s the full list, if you’re seriously interested in drilling down that deep.

It’s fascinating to note that Blumenthal was recently named the richest freshman in Congress, his net worth listed in the neighborhood of $94.87 million. Esty, not quite as wealthy as Mr. Blumenthal, has already begun raking in the cash for her 2014 reelection campaign.
Yay for politics. So, they’ll repay their debt and raise money for the next campaign and the process will continue, into infinity, like some boulder of money that must be rolled back up to the top of the hill, yet again.

Sharknado: Everything that’s wrong with society in one made-up word

Sharknado. Or perhaps we should write it, #Sharknado.

If you have zero idea what a sharknado is, count yourself lucky and click away, dear reader — click away and save your very soul.

Still here? OK…

“Sharknado” is, assuming you don’t already know and are a weird, masochistic glutton for cultural punishment, a SyFy channel original movie in which, thanks to the help of a massive storm, thousands of man-eating great whites come raining down, mouths agape, upon an unsuspecting populace.

Really.

Here at DTOTW, we believe this heralds the coming of the apocalypse. When the trailer, below, premiered Twitter was, well, all a-twitter with the news. The story was covered by National Public Radio, among other respectable news outlets. Will Wheaton got into the act, as did Newark, N.J. Mayor Cory Booker.

Sharknado is a designed-to-be-bad movie featuring terrible actors — all apologies to Ms. Tara Reid, whose recent portrayal of Lady Macbeth at London’s Globe theater we heard was positively divine (not really). And yet folks — intelligent, successful, talented people (some of them, anyway) — line up to be a part of the fun.

The movie will do very well. People will tune in by the millions, knowing full well that it’s going to be unwatchable.

Now, we are not the first to suggest that filmmakers are following the “Snakes on a Plane” formula, combining two frightening things into one horrible amalgam of idiocy.

But “Snakes on a Plan” should have been the end. When, dear God, will it stop? Tarantulacane? ZombieNaziquake (in which the ground opens up to allow swarms of zombified Nazis the chance to take over San Diego)?

Now, the odd thing is, a sharknado is a real possibility. Not likely, per se, but possible. It has happened. There is, for example, a town in the Philippines that dealt with a rain of fish as recently as last year. Hell, there’s a burg in Honduras that has an annual festival devoted to fish-rain.

And, lo, the people gazed toward Heaven as the rivers ran with maple syrup and fish did fly as birds, and the people knew the end was nigh.