Forget the czar! Try a hot dog instead!

You know what time it is? It’s voting time! That’s right: Early voting will begin Saturday (Oct. 18) and continues for two weeks, before we traditionalists go to the polls on Election Day, Nov. 4.

If you’re registered to vote, you’re halfway there. Now, you have two more things to do: Get educated, and vote! You should have received a sample ballot by now. (If not, go here to find out what district you live in and who your current representatives are.) Read up on the candidates’ positions, decide who you like best, mark your ballot and then head to the polls! Democracy depends on you now.

In the meantime, we’ve totally got an Ebola czar now, but it’s not who you might think (say, the acting Surgeon General of the United States, or the Secretary of Health and Human Services, or even the colonel who commands the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md.) Instead, it’s the lawyer and former Al Gore aide who lost the Florida recount fight in the infamous 2000 election! (He was famously played by Kevin Spacy in the HBO film Recount.)

Feel safer? Yeah, me either. That’s why I recommend the best Ebola cure I know of, the Weinerschnitzel chili cheese dog, with mustard and onions. (Pro tip: Get the all-beef version.) A couple of those bad boys will kill anything that menaces your system, although you may experience some Ebola-like symptoms initially. But don’t give up! I’ve been using this method for decades, and I’ve never gotten Ebola, so it must work!

And now, on with the Slashback!

• All I’m going to say about this story involving the Clark County School District making a $100,100 payout to an insurance company suing the district without telling the school board is this: The district is damn lucky that I’m not a school trustee. Because if I was, there would be some uncomfortable words exchanged, and they would not be the kind of words that could be quoted in a family newspaper. I’m not going to go so far as to say the trustee involved in the case should resign, as her election opponent has, but I will say this is certainly no way to do business.

• In business, it’s all about assessing return on investment. If you aren’t going to get back more than you put in, it’s probably a bad deal.

That’s the way you’ve got to look at the $2.5 million raised by opponents of The Education Initiative, the 2 percent business margin tax that will appear on the ballot as Question 3. For the business leaders against the tax, this is a solid investment, because if Question 3 passes, they’ll end up paying a lot more than they are now on their revenue, which is zero.

In fact, if anything, $2,5 million is low. Those ads talking about the “deeply flawed” tax (deeply!) aren’t going to put themselves on TV! Those billboards aren’t going to build themselves! C’mon, running dogs! Dig deeper!

• No, really, it’s OK. Southern Nevada would probably only have wasted this $70 million on roads that our residents would use to get to their jobs. By all means, North. Take the money and run.

• You know what would totally suck? If this comet actually hit Mars, sending a huge plume of Martian rock into space, slowly and deliberately tumbling toward Earth, containing a deadly extra-terrestrial virus that would wipe out our entire population! You know, sort of like the reverse of War of the Worlds, where Martian invaders are killed by Terran viruses? But if that happens, we should have plenty of advance warning, and that means only one thing: Head to Weinerschnitzel!

• Warning to navigators: Avoid downtown! No, not because of the abnormally high hipster population or the hit-and-miss parking situation. It’s time again to turn the entire place into a hipster game preserve, complete with fences, street closures and the young people’s music. Come friends! Let us away (to the suburbs)!

• Democratic Attorneys General, take down that ad! That’s the message Republican lawyer Adam Laxalt is sending to TV stations in Nevada, over an ad that quotes job-performance evaluations compiled at his former law firm, Lewis Roca Rothgerber. The Laxalt campaign contends that a remark calling him a “train wreck” as a lawyer — among other disparagements — represents the individual view of the reviewer, not the opinion of the entire firm, as the ad says. Thus, Laxalt’s lawyers contend the ad is false and should be taken off the air.

And the demand letter is accompanied by a statement from the law firm saying Laxalt made excellent contributions and served his clients well. The letter also says the firm would like to apologize for its illegal and immoral campaign of terror waged against the peaceful people of North Vietnam. Only kidding, only kidding. But the point is, the likelihood is high that Laxalt’s former firm is trying to minimize its legal exposure after internal personnel documents were leaked.

There’s hardly a campaign that goes by in which at least one campaign demands an ad be pulled due to falsehood. Usually, the request is ignored. But occasionally, it works. The fact is, the contention that Laxalt is not good at being a lawyer is obviously damaging enough that he thinks it’s worth drawing even more attention to the aid in a bid to get it off the air.

• More Bernie! For those who don’t know, Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders visited Las Vegas this week, addressing a small but very appreciative crowd at the Culinary Training Center as part of a multi-state speaking tour. Sanders is mulling a run for president, and turned in a substance-laden, thoughtful critique of the American political system. As opposed to say, the cotton-candy, substance-light speech given by former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the UNLV Foundation’s annual dinner Monday.

Here are some more highlights from Sanders speech:

On whether he’ll run for president: “I am giving thought to running. I haven’t decided yet,” he said. “It’s important that we have voices out there for working families.” Sanders told the crowd that “If you do it [run for president], you have to do it well.” That means an unprecedented grassroots movement that would be needed to counter a campaign sure to be waged against a progressive voice by corporate interests. And, Sanders frankly said, he wasn’t sure if he was the right person to do it. President Barack Obama, Sanders said, got elected with the help of such a grassroots coalition, but he forgot that after he was in office. “We have to educate, we have to organize and we have to do it at the grassroots level,” he said.

On money in politics: Sanders was clear that the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC had to be overturned, and he embraced a bill advanced by New Mexico Sen. Tom Udall’s constitutional amendment to regulate political spending. But he said that’s just the start — ultimately, the U.S. should move to public funding of all elections.

On the Koch Brothers: Sanders called the Koch family the second wealthiest in America, worth $85 billion, a figure that increased by $12 billion last year alone. He said their goals were to try to buy elections while simultaneously depressing turnout. “And they’re succeeding,” Sanders said. “Let’s be clear: They are succeeding.” He compared their quest for additional money to addiction similar to alcohol or gambling. “It’s a psychological issue,” he said.

On modern politics: Sanders said the negative tone of modern political campaigns was no accident; big-money donors want people to believe that every politician is corrupt, and thus it’s no use voting. That depresses turnout, especially among younger and poorer voters, the very people who have the most to gain from going to the polls.

On the media: Sanders said there’s very little in the media about the plight of middle-class families. Free-trade agreements have resulted in factories and jobs being shipped overseas, but when is the last time you saw a story or in-depth report about that on the evening news? Now, quick, name the host of the next Oscar awards ceremony! See what he means?

On a progressive agenda for the country: A Sanders presidency would include higher taxes on the wealthy, which would be used to pay for an ambitious $1 trillion national project to repair crumbling infrastructure. That would create 13 million decent-paying jobs, he said. In addition, he said he favors increasing the minimum wage, equal pay for women, affordable child care for working families, reducing the cost of higher education for students, and leading the world in the development of green energy technology that could be exported to other nations. “As Americans, we have a moral obligation to get involved on behalf of our brothers and sisters to do the things this nation can do,” he said.

What’s the big deal, you ask? That’s the same agenda that Democrats are always talking about and Republicans are always blocking! Yeah, but Sanders actually means it.

The quips: Sanders doesn’t hold back on the zingers. Contrasting Denmark — where new parents get months of paid time off to care for a baby — with the United States, where there’s a much shorter period of unpaid time off, he said Denmark’s approach was better. “That’s called family values. Not cutting food stamps — that’s not family values.” Bazinga. “We live in a system where if you’re a rich person, you can do what you want. If you’re not, God help you,” he said. “Look at American society today: In every aspect, money prevails.”

Now that’s a political stump speech you don’t hear every day! Let that be your inspiration as you head the polls! And I’ll see you next week!