Oil company coverups make Obama the best candidate in 2008

ExxonMobil claims on its website that that "Fuel prices are impacted by a number of factors, including changes in the price of crude oil, supply and demand, fuel specifications, government regulations, taxes, and transportation costs."

On the face of it, this is probably true. But it's so vague as to be noninformative.

What they do not tell you is the whole story. On the other hand, there is a good, well-researched resource for facts that the oil industry would like to hide from you. These facts affect your finances, America's addiction to foreign oil and the ecology of the entire earth.

Here are some shocking facts, many from Antonia Juhasz' new book, The Tyranny of Oil:

• "Drill, baby, drill, and drill now." This 2008 Republican National Convention mantra drives and/or reflects the lie that many believe: that drilling now will save us economically. But oil companies are already drilling in the US and off our shores. And they are increasing their already large stockpiles of oil.
• Debate has raged recently about how much the US Department of Energy's rising stockpile raised gas and oil prices in Fall, 2007.
• More drilling now will not affect oil prices for 10 years or more.
• Oil companies simply don't sell to Americans much of the oil they've found here. As a typical corporation, they sell it to the highest bidder. There is no requirement to sell fuel found on our territories to us--so they don't do it.
• Oil companies choose not to refine the oil they've stock piled, in order to drive prices higher. They are largely responsible for fuel prices in areas they can control--like the amount to refine.

Meanwhile, John McCain seems to be talking about green living and sustainability to the press, but to his Republican base he talks mostly about nuclear power and drilling for more oil. Who is the real McCain here? Is he simply pandering to Republican and/or conservative voters, who largely don't care about, and don't understand the environment and it's relationship to our lives?

An Obama presidency would likely be more sustainable, based on Biden's record, examined by Living on Earth, NPR's environmental news program recently.

Actions you can take for change:

• Contact your Congressperson. This site makes clear just how big a supporter of Big Oil your Congressperson is. It shows the percentage of votes that support the oil industry, and how much Big Oil paid to support your rep: http://oilmoney.priceofoil.org/
• Support Obama/Biden in 2008 for a greener, safer, cleaner and less addicted America.

Resources:
Factors in Fuel Prices - ExxonMobil website:
http://www.exxonmobil.com/Corporate/energy_issues_gasprices.aspx

Oil Change International: http://priceofoil.org/

Living on Earth: Sound Journalism for the Planet: http://www.loe.org/index.htm

Is Sarah Palin Smart? (More Reasons Not to Vote for McCain)

John McCain's running mate, Governor Sarah Palin, goofed big time. Again.

Associated Press reports that Palin just misinformed a group of third graders, saying "that the vice president is the president's 'team mate' but also 'runs the Senate' and 'can really get in there with the senators and make a lot of good policy changes.'"

The AP report clarifies that her description oversimplifies the VP's role, and that it does not "match the office's traditional role in Senate activities."

In other words, Governor Sarah Palin is exaggerating and getting it plain wrong about the office she's running for.

She can't name any renowned newspapers or national magazines on policy and politics for CBS news reporter Katie Couric. Palin also thinks being the executive of a state next to Russia gives her deep foreign policy credentials. Now this.

Is this the mentality of a person who must be capable of replacing the President and running the nation in case of a tragedy?

An analogy on the foreign policy expertise: I live in the Detroit, Michigan area--right across the river from Canada. Since I have visited a couple of bars in Windsor, Canada, carry Canadian quarters in my spare change and camped overnight in Ontario twice--I must be an expert in foreign relations! I love my new-found expertise! Yippee McCain, hire me for VP! (For one thing, I'm smarter than Palin--and so are you.)

We don't need a Caribou Barbie making mistakes all over America in the Veep's office. Wouldn't this just be Bush all over again?

We don't need doddering old McCain trying to remember the name of--gee, who's running Russia today?--and failing to exercise diplomacy by refusing to meet with foreign leaders in the office of President of the United States of America.

Elect Obama/Biden in 2008 for a safer, smarter America.

McCain says he's honest, and many who have worked with him agree--but his campaign ads often tell lies about Obama and Biden. (Even Saturday Night Live skewered his campaign's lies in a recent episode.) Click here to fight smears and lies by the Karl Rove acolytes poisoning McCain's campaign.

Exposed: the true, destructive goals of conservatives

Conservatives have deceived and led America down a path of destruction, greed and pain since Nixon first took office in 1968. They have used underhanded techniques to undermine democracy and aggregate power in the hands of a very few ever since.

Conservatives have even used the FBI, under the sick leadership of J. Edgar Hoover, to protect the power of the few at the expense of the many--and the economy. These trends continue today.

Led by corporate, Christian, conservative economic terrorists, the government, under Republicans George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, has spent more than any Democratic administration in history--even as they hyocritically criticize Democrats for taxing and spending.

How do you battle this tide of fear, pain and greed? Here are three helpful suggestions:

1. Elect a Democrat
2. Blog and contact friends and family to spread the progressive politics of compassion, humanity and ecology
3. Understand the conservative agenda and argue to win against conservatives

After all, most conservatives don't even know that they support a regime that works toward them getting a lower and lower wage. They support a bankrupt system--the free market--that virtually guarantees that the rich get richer and that often the economy, ecology and human rights get trampled. Many who don't benefit from conservative ideology are hoodwinked by distraction toward social issues, like stem cells and abortion.

Toward understanding and winning arguments with conservatives, Phillip Agre clearly exposes the destructive goals of the conservative (aristrocratic, power-amassing) agenda in his essay, What Is Conservatism and What Is Wrong with It?:

Liberals in the United States have been losing political debates to conservatives for a quarter century. In order to start winning again, liberals must answer two simple questions: what is conservatism, and what is wrong with it? As it happens, the answers to these questions are also simple:

Q: What is conservatism?

A: Conservatism is the domination of society by an aristocracy.

Q: What is wrong with conservatism?

A: Conservatism is incompatible with democracy, prosperity, and civilization in general. It is a destructive system of inequality and prejudice that is founded on deception and has no place in the modern world.

These ideas are not new. Indeed they were common sense until recently. Nowadays, though, most of the people who call themselves "conservatives" have little notion of what conservatism even is. They have been deceived by one of the great public relations campaigns of human history. Only by analyzing this deception will it become possible to revive democracy in the United States...

Agre offers much more on the site. It's a virtual blueprint for winning back the government to serve the people, not just Wall Street and Big Oil.

It's clear that the conswervative agenda has made the lives of most Americans worse. Incomes have fallen for workers, many jobs have moved overseas and corporate executives have increased their bonuses from an average of 42 times a worker's salary in the 1970s to over 411 times a worker's salary today. They rob our economy to serve themselves --possibly fueling the current financial meltdown--while paying workers everywhere lower and lower wages.

And it's not just the US economy. It's worldwide.

This means you're losing while they rake in millions, even billions of dollars. If you elect a Republican, you're feeding the sharks that feed on you to survive.

Elect a Democrat today. Elect Obama/Biden and all other Democrats running in your state and locality. Tell your Congressional representative that you won't stand for losing your home and job while corporate executives gain huge bonuses. Get email updates on Congressional votes and more here.

Al Franken needs your support in Minnesota

Al Franken, a Democrat, progressive talk radio host and former Saturday Night Live comedian, is running for a US Senate seat in Minnesota.
You can help by calling a friend or neighbor to encourage them to vote Democratic.

Franken writes:

Dear Friend,

Three recent polls have me leading Norm Coleman -- but it is close. And we have three weeks (and a day!) until Election Day.

We can win this thing -- but I need your help today.

Our work isn't done -- in fact, as we head into the home stretch, we need to keep expanding our campaign for change to every corner of Minnesota to pull this thing off.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO HELP US KEEP OUR MOMENTUM GOING STRONG!

Right now, we're getting ready to deploy the biggest, most powerful Get-Out-The-Vote operation in Minnesota history. And we're going to finish this race the same way we started it: with a grassroots, people-powered movement for change.

But we cannot afford to let up now that we've pulled ahead. Our staff is working longer hours than ever, Franni and I are campaigning harder than ever, and now is when we need you more than ever.

Your contribution of $10, $25, $50, or whatever you can afford will go directly towards building our organization for the critical final days of the campaign. This race is going to come down to the wire -- and we're not taking anything for granted.

CLICK HERE TO MAKE A CONTRIBUTION TODAY!
Franni and I are so grateful for all you've done to get us this far. But we need your contributions and support from here on out to help us finish strong. And, with your help, we're going to win this thing and I'll be able to join Barack Obama in Washington to change the direction of our country.

Thank you for everything,

Al Franken

Al Franken is one of the leaders of a new movement, along with Obama and Biden, a movement that represents the vast majority of Americans and focuses on meeting our needs for a strong, secure, prosperous and kinder America than Bush and Cheney's ever growing list of misdeeds and scandals have given us. This progressive movement is sweeping aside the aristocratic politics of conservatism that have led to the subprime mortgage crisis, rampant unemployment and other economic woes that keep hitting the poor and middle classes harder and harder.

Support Al in his Senate bid with your blog entry and/or a donation. Help bring humanity, compassion and the middle class back to America.

McCain's Keating Economics Wrecking Our Economy?

From Obama's website:

Watch the video to see why John McCain's failed philosophy and poor judgment is a recipe for deepening the [US economic] crisis: http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo

http://my.barackobama.com/page/community/post/stateupdates/gGxM9J

And here's information on economic inequality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_gap

McCain wants to ignore economy - because he helped cause it to fail!

John McCain has been attacking Obama using a "kitchen sink" technique," throwing anything below the belt at him--yet avoiding facts that discredit the attacks themselves.

The problem is that McCain and Palin are too dumb to lead America. They don't care enough about you to lead America. And they are lying just to get your votes.

One example is the recent McCain/Palin ad that labels as "dishonorable" Obama's statements about the war in Afghanistan--statements Obama took directly from a general in charge at the time.

This is a pathethic attempt to distract the nation from our huge economic crisis, which arose from Bush/McCain policies and lack of proper oversight.

From Obama/Biden Campaign Manager David Plouffe's email, October 5, 2008:

Over the weekend, John McCain's top adviser announced their plan to stop engaging in a debate over the economy and "turn the page" to more direct, personal attacks on Barack Obama. In the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to change the subject from the central question of this election.

Perhaps because the policies McCain supported these past eight years and wants to continue are pretty hard to defend. But it's not just McCain's role in the current crisis that they're avoiding. The backward economic philosophy and culture of corruption that helped create the current crisis are looking more and more like the other major financial crisis of our
time...

During the savings and loan crisis of the late '80s and early '90s, McCain's political favors and aggressive support for deregulation put him at the center of the fall of Lincoln Savings and Loan, one of the largest in the country. More than 23,000 investors lost their savings.

John McCain, as the recent chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, was directly responsible for many of the failures of oversight in economic policies that led to the crisis now facing our nation.

One blogger--Daniel Libit, in Politico.com--analyzes repercussions of McCain's tenure on the committee:

Supporters credit him with being open-minded and say he ran the committee with a steady, moderate hand during his stints in the chair. But critics who worked with the committee at the time contend that McCain avoided policy debates and sometimes seemed apathetic — and that his staff was too cozy with lobbyists.

Experts who have worked with the committee or follow its deliberations paint a picture of McCain’s tenure as unremarkable and sometimes contradictory — and often (but not always) fueled by a deregulatory bent.

“He tended not to be a leader, strangely enough,” said the Heritage Foundation’s James Gattuso, who covers regulatory issues for the conservative think tank. “You had a lot of initiatives where it would be [former Sen.] George Allen or [Sen.] John Sununu or some other Republican taking [the lead] on a particular issue. Maybe he was picking his battles carefully, but he wasn’t out front, which was strange.”

One of the cardinal sins of the Bush/Cheney Misadministration is getting in bed with corporations. They let the foxes guard the henhouse, and the economy is in shambles as a result. McCain followed this example in many case as the Commerce Committee chair.

You can prevent this kind of chicanery and pain in 2009. Stop electing dumb leaders like George W. Bush. Bush has embarrassed us too many times. Sarah Palin has embarrassed the McCain campaign several times--most recently with failures to name any newspapers she reads when asked directly by Katie Couric!

The exchange, published by the British news agency The Telegraph:

In the latest clip, which is already being viewed on video-sharing site YouTube, Ms Couric asks: "When it comes to establishing your world view, I was curious, what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and to understand the world?"
Mrs Palin replies: "I've read most of them, again with a great appreciation for the press, for the media."
Ms Couric: "What, specifically?"
Mrs Palin: "Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years."
Ms Couric: "Can you name a few?"
Mrs Palin: "I have a vast variety of sources where we get our
news, too. Alaska isn't a foreign country, where it's kind of suggested, 'wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, D.C., may be thinking when you live up there in Alaska?' Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America."

Again: John McCain and Sarah Palin are too dumb to lead America. They don't care enough about you to lead America. And they are lying just to get your votes.

Elect Barack Obama. Elect a smart, compassionate man who works for you, not for corporations, and not against you.

Redistribute Wealth and Heal the Economy: Elect Obama & Biden!

We need a president who will start focusing on supporting working and poor families, and providing and improving education and health care. Who is better qualified, more intelligent and more compassionate: Barack Obama or John McCain?

Huge wealth inequalities in the U.S. hurt everyone, and hurt the middle class and poor the most. But wealth inequality hurts even the rich. Think about it: if you and I and our neighbors don't make enough to buy the products and services that the rich invest in and sell to us, who will? The Chinese? Indians? Others who live oversees?

Who will be left to support the economy, if we all make less than $10 per hour???

David Chandler at "The L_Curve" states it nicely:

Our economy produces tremendous wealth but it also produces tremendous poverty. Sure, some people can be lazy, but when large numbers of hard working people live in poverty and the middle class is shrinking, it is a systemic, not an individual problem.

There is plenty to go around, but it doesn't adequately go around. It goes to the top, and leaves the masses to
fight over the crumbs. [My emphasis -- Ed.]

The aristrocracy--a tiny gaggle of conservatives like Rush Limbaugh, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John McCain and other wealthy aristocrats who make over $5 million/year--only want us to eat the few crumbs and leaks that "trickle down." This is the famous "trickle down" economic theory or "supply-side economics" espoused by Ronald Reagan and others--and now, John McCain.

Under policies supported by John McCain, Sarah Palin and Republican leaders from Reagan through both Bushes, Americans have been losing income and wealth for decades. (See the L-Curve and Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. In a video clip, Klein explains how these conservatives destroyed entire cultures, like in Chile when the sick US government teamed up with huge corporations and used brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet to overthrow the Allende government in order to make the country more favorable to US investments. In her book, she documents how in 1980, a CEO made 40 times a worker's pay. Now a CEO makes over 400 times a worker's pay!)

Do you want to yelping and scrabbling like a dog for even fewer scraps from the aristrocrats' feasts that might fall down?

If we can't afford to live and eat and buy in our own nation, who will? Will all the CEOs and upper managers emigrate to China, India, Korea, Taiwan, Mexico or other poor and authoritarian nations? I don't think they want to live anyplace else than the "land of the free"--right here in America.

Want to help yourselves and help others prosper and live in a fair, decent nation? Elect Barack Obama and Joe Biden for President and Vice President. Obama promises to cut tax breaks for the wealthiest -- those making above $250,000/year, leave taxes the same for those below that, and no taxes for seniors and others near the poverty line.

Go to http://www.barackobama.com/ for details on his economic plan--the only economic plan that:

1. Can save America from corporate greed and foolishness
2. Can prevent Wall Street meltdowns and credit crunches
3. Offers sound policies that support a strong middle class and offer a chance to uplift the poor
4. Offers a chance for prosperity for all.
   

Great sites for understanding wealth inequalities:

• Tour of the US Income Distribution,"The L-Curve" at http://www.lcurve.org/.
  The red line represents a graph of family income across the population. The height of the curve at any point is the height of a stack of $100 bills equalling that income...
  The US population is represented along the length of the football field, arranged in order of income.
  Median US family income (the family at the 50 yard line) is
  ~$40,000 (a stack of $100 bills 1.6 inches high.)
  --The family on the 95 yard line earns about $100,000 per year, a stack of $100 bills about 4 inches high.
  --At the 99 yard line the income is about $300,000, a stack of $100 bills about a foot high.
  --The curve reaches $1 million (a 40 inch high stack
  of $100 bills) one foot from the goal line.
  --From there it keeps going up...it goes up 50 km (~30 miles) on this scale!
• Visualizing Economics: 2005 US Income Distribution at http://www.visualizingeconomics.com/2006/11/05/2005-us-income-distribution/

More Census data! This time it is the U.S. income distribution for 2005 showing the number of households up to $250,000. (I have since added more graphs that include incomes above $250,000: 2005 US Income Distribution Part 2 and 2005
US Income Distribution Part 3)

Why elect Obama/Biden? Why not elect McCain/Palin?
See the next few posts for answers.