I’ve also seen discussions of requiring candidates to wear NASCAR-style jackets emblazoned with the names of their sponsors that they have to wear at all campaign events.

The main thing all the rules governing money in politics do is encourage folks to find new and sneakier ways of giving to their favorite causes. So I say “screw it.”

If a candidate wants to sell himself or herself to some special interest, then let ‘em. Just make damned sure that the voters know about it before election day.

Let’s get the lawyers and accountants out of politics, and instead get the tailors in on the act.

J.

It also shows that it’s not so clear-cut. Certain areas give more to certain candidates. You wanna have some real fun, take a look at the ratio of donations between Obama and McCain from unions, and some of the promises Obama’s made the unions… such as backing the obscenely-misnamed “Employee Free Choice Act” which will strip workers of the ability to hold secret ballots for unionizing, and ending the consent agreement that has had the government keeping an eye on the Teamsters to keep the mob out.

On that front, can we put out a “Mafia/Obama ’08″ bumper sticker? Stick a picture of Obama next to Tony Soprano?

J.

Would you feel better if it was just “Oil Industry-McCain ’08?” I mean, four times Obama’s industry donations and all…

Well, sure, he’ll just pass a law that mandates everyone go to bed at 7:30, like him.
Problem solved.

Hell, I’m still waiting for him to correct his prior piece when it turned out the big donors he cited as McCain donors turned out to have been Hillary Clinton/Rudy Giuliani donors, and NOT McCain donors.

J.

But we CAN believe that Barry’s plan for us all to inflate our tires properly and get tune-ups will solve all of America’s energy problems!

Almost as much as we can believe that Johnathon Sidney McCain the Third‘s plan for us all to turn the lights off five minutes earlier every night will solve all of america’s energy problems! Right?

You shouldn’t really point out and mock stuff like this when the candidate you support has made strikingly similar statements of his own. Sometimes some people look at that sort of behavior as a bit hypocritical…

[blink]

What – Wrecking 3 planes and languishing in a POW camp makes someone a foreign policy expert? How about the only member of the Keating Five to keep his taxpayer-funded job probably makes McCain a economic policy wiz as well, right?

Obama’s position is what can we all do.
McCain’s position is what can corporate America.

One is everyone pulling together to get us out of a jam.
The other is increasing profits for an industry, while, at best, postponing the problem.

Seriously, my family minivan got a wonderful 17/23 mpg. By changing the way I drive I stretch that to 22/30 mpg. I cut at least 25% off my utilities by lowering the temp on the hot water heater, using cfl light bulbs, hanging most laundry out to dry, washing in cold instead of hot, running appliances at night instead of day (off-peak). All things that don’t inconvenience me, and in many ways benefit me beyond saving me a few bucks.

I’ve slowed down on the road, I don’t feel stressed when driving, I relax. I don’t get pissed off or feel competetive when people pass me on the road. I’ve lost 10 pounds because I walk more.

So, yes, that kind of conservation mind set can have a big impact on an individual basis, and a large impact on a cumulative basis. So mock away John McCain.

Translation: “Fuck anyone under 65!” That’s the GOP for ya.

By 1987, Obama was a young man of 25 and McCain had had a successful run pressuring regulators to go easy on his good friend and campaign contributor Charles Keating, which enabled Keating to pull off the Lincoln Savings & Loan ripoff, one of largest of the savings-and-loan swindles of the S&L implosion, costing thousands of elderly investors at his bank their life savings and costing taxpayers millions via the Resolution Trust Corporation.

…fixed it for ya.

Big Oil (I hate them) 08 annual profits = 160,000,000,000
Taxes due (currently 46%, love the gov) = 76,000,000,000
After tax profit = 84,000,000,000

Windfall Profit Tax (rebate)= 150,000,000,000

Oil companies Net = – 66,000,000,000

Let’s put the oil companies out of business and plug in our cars to the grid. Oh yeah, let’s also consider the gas tax revenue given over to the government by you and me: It looks something like this:

With BP, Exxon-Mobil, and Shell reporting record profits, the Tax Foundation reminds us in its latest Fiscal Fact that the biggest beneficiaries of gasoline sales are federal and state governments, not the oil industry:

High gas prices and strong oil company earnings have generated a rash of new tax proposals in recent months. Some lawmakers have called for new “windfall profits” taxes—similar to the one signed into federal law in 1980 by President Jimmy Carter—that would tax the profits of major oil companies at a rate of 50%. Meanwhile, many commentators have voiced support for the idea of increasing gas taxes to keep the price of gasoline at post-Katrina highs, thereby reducing gas consumption. However, often ignored in this debate is the fact that oil industry profits are highly cyclical, making them just as prone to “busts” as to “booms.” Additionally, tax collections on the production and import of gasoline by state and federal governments are already near historic highs. In fact, in recent decades governments have collected far more revenue from gasoline taxes than the largest U.S. oil companies have collectively earned in domestic profits….

[F]ederal and state taxes on gasoline production and imports have been climbing steadily since the late 1970s and now total roughly $58.4 billion. Due in part to substantial hikes in the federal gasoline excise tax in 1983, 1990, and 1993, annual tax revenues have continued to grow. Since 1977, governments collected more than $1.34 trillion, after adjusting for inflation, in gasoline tax revenues—more than twice the amount of domestic profits earned by major U.S. oil companies during the same period:

Now McCain has gone from mocking tire inflation to embracing it. Dumbass.

I don’t think that expression means what you think it means.

Because shut up, that’s why!

Also, the fuck is a “successful four year tour” in the house of representitives? Like he was drafted or something, and since he survived he was entitled to become a senator or something?

Also, “the legal age of 21″ means what exactly in reference to drugs, which are, in fact, illegal? What nonsense are you actually trying to spread here?

Also, get fucked.

First of all, that’s a lie.

Second, I would like to thank you for pointing out (again) how old and tired Senator McCain is and how it’s time for a new generation in DC.

*Brought to you by the High Fructose Corn Syrup lobby.