Peter Kinder, the Horny Toad, and the dinnertime ad we really didn't need to see

 This is what Missouri has become.

 Secretive businessmen, maybe even the same ones who are pouring money, quite legally under the Wild West system in place in this state, creating an untraceable, most likely non-existent except as a record in the secretary of state's office organization, and then immediately pouring $100,000 into an attack ad ripping into Peter Kinder for his dalliance with a stripper.

 Kinder, apparently not learning any lessons from Gary Hart, who obviously lacked judgment when he had Donna Rice on his lap on a ship named "Monkey Business," was caught at a nightclub called the Horny Toad.

 You have to wonder, why is this kind of money being spent on a lieutenant governor's race?

 A lieutenant governor's race, for heaven's sake!

 Of course, it features an incumbent lieutenant governor who embarrassed a couple of our multi-millionaire (or billionaire) businessmen with his dealings with strippers. Maybe they want to make sure he pays for it without getting their hands dirty.

After all, it is one thing to contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars directly to his opponent's campaign. That's just the rich continuing their efforts to reshape government to suit their own needs, something that is growing more and more commonplace in our society.

 It's altogether different for the rich to be associated with an ad that talks about horny toads and strippers.

 That's so unseemly.

 Or an even scarier thought- what if it's some secretive billionaire that we don't even know about? In Missouri, and on the national level, we are reaching a point where people who want to remake the world do so without any of us ever knowing who is pulling the strings.

 That is not freedom of speech; that is speech that will eventually take our freedoms away from us.