io9 features sci-fi inspired political ads. Take a wild guess which one made the list...

Behold the 8 Weirdest Real-Life Science Fiction Political Ads as assembled by popular geeky/techy website io9.

And yes, that school board commercial of mine from 2006 is on the list.

But check out this ad - also inspired by Star Wars - that West Virginia Governor Joe Manchin aired when he successfully ran for re-election two years ago...

Hey, Manchin shot a TIE Fighter out of the sky with a rifle! That's a hella lot better shootin' than the Imperial Stormtroopers ever did.

But John Waite of Spokane, Washington blows away everybody with what he did when he ran for city council. The comic book store owner campaigned while wearing a full set of space marine armor from the StarCraft computer game series! Nevermind Spokane City Council: we should send Waite to Washington D.C.: that whole town is overrun with worse than the Zerg ever were.

Blast on over to io9 for more. And tip o' the hat to good friend Todd Williard for finding this!

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Rest in peace Senator Robert Byrd

There's not a town in West Virginia that doesn't already have a bridge or a horse trough named after him... so how are they going to memorialize Robert Byrd?

His propensity toward pork barrel spending always irked me. And he was in the Senate way, way too long: nobody has any bidness holding the same elected office for 52 years.

But I must admit: I did have some admiration for Robert Byrd. He was certainly one of the better-read and more eloquent holder of high office in the past century of American history.

Thoughts and prayers going out to his family and the people of West Virginia today.

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