Romancing the Road

540,000 miles from one car, one owner. And they are both pretty cool! The owner is 89 and the car is a 1964 Mercury Comet. She aways gets lifetime warranty replacement parts (16 free batteries so far) and carries a pistol (licensed) for protection on the long trips. Really worth watching.

These are the people and cars that made America great. I guaranty this car has done less damage to the environment for all those miles of travel than the average Prius owner does today. Why? Because once it was built, it was never discarded. If you really want to help the earth, rescue an old classic from the junkyard and pay a local hard working mechanic to restore it.

A (very) dark poem

This is the darkest thing I've ever written. 

Like everything written, it’s a lie (I didn’t see that in Iraq, I was in the gulf, not in the country, but I’ve seen it in through others eyes and in pictures online) and it is inspired by another poem from a dear friend which has been eating at me (in a good way) for years.

It's about MY war guilt. If you are a veteran or show it to one, keep in mind this is MY war guilt, not anyone else. Don't cry that I'm saying anything about the service, 'cause I'm not.

This also isn't about politics, so don't say that this party did that or that president did this. The consumers did it; the consumers elected the leaders; the lobbyists paid off the leaders with money they got from consumers purchasing corporate products.

It's about MY consumer guilt. If you’re a consumer, then yes; it’s also about YOU. Take 5 seconds to think about what you’re grown in oil, plastic packaged; transported 'round the world, life is doing to other people.

There are a lot of references to things I guess some people might not recognize. If it doesn’t make sense, click on the stars. If there are too many of those, I guess it won’t reach people.

Thank you for reading this… what I would really like is harsh, honest, painful feedback on whether or not it reached you at all and how it could be changed to reach more people, and in a better way. Please tell me what parts had an impact and what parts left you cold or confused. 

And most of all, now that I’m holding this foul little thing, what do I do with it?

GODLESS BABY KILLER

I lost my God outside Iraq

She walked away from me

A beautiful little Arab girl

with half a face I see*

Amazing grace how sweet that sounds

B’what saves that wretch from me?

My own little girl has both her eyes

god help her eyes to see.*

Did we pray "rain!" for our crop was dry

and curse our neighbors yield?

For he had watered all along...

and can't eat a rotting field.*

Today her neighbor is next door

and half, the wide world ‘round

and how she prays for cheaper gas

says where the guns are bound

There are too many of us now

for just one god to know.

I’m scared to pick a god to fear

if again, this gun must go.*

If I could ever sleep again

and never see that eye*

and only see my daughters face

and never wonder why…

the butterfly flapped it's lovely wings*

around the fuel pump fill 'er

And told the lords of war that I

must be a godless baby killer

Sustainability = frugality over the long term

here is the big secret:

Actual sustainability = frugality over the long term.

If it costs more over its lifetime, it is NOT sustainable. So, when gas is at $2.50 a gallon, the Prius is NOT always sustainable.

Proof: The cost of any item, in the end, is the energy required to make it. All the metal, plastic, glass, etc.. needed to make a Prius is just setting in the ground, free for the taking. The real cost of making it into a Prius is the cost of the energy required to dig it up, ship it to the foundry, refine it, ship it to the parts factory, form it, ship it to the car factory, assemble it, ship it to the lot, and sell it to you. All of the equipment and people involved in those processes are, again, the cost of the energy required to make and operate.

Just about ALL of that energy is fossil fuels. So how does it make sense to spend $22,000 (http://www.toyota.com/prius-hybrid/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 51/45mpg, when you could spend $12,000 (http://www.toyota.com/yaris/trims-prices.html) worth of fossil fuel to get 29/35mpg? You are saving about 20mpg, or 12.5 cents per mile, for an expenditure of $10,000. You would have to drive 80,000 miles to make that worth doing. Given a 5 year average vehicle life, you would have to drive 16,000 miles per year or an average of 45 miles per day. So if your commute is less than ½ hour each way, a Prius actually HURTs our Mother more than it helps.

Of course, the numbers REALLY make a jump when you consider a USED car vs a NEW Prius. A 25mpg 2001 Camry for $10,000 with an average useful life of 20 years turns out to be a much more sustainable choice than a new Prius for that same 30 min commute.
http://www.truedelta.com/models/Camry.php

The REAL green people drive old cars and support their local mechanic until the repair bill exceeds the savings.

M.A.S.H.

I've cried, and laughed, and cried for 2 hours tonight. There was a show on about M.A.S.H. (the TV series about a medical unit in the Korean war, but really just about all war) that reminded me of so many things.

- The most important is that our boys are still going through that hell. They are ALL coming back wounded, if they come back at all. Either dead, wounded in body, wounded in their minds, or wounded in spirit. Another generation with scars instead of innocence.

- I grew up watching that show, 30 years ago. I watched them talking about the insanity. How everyone was wounded. How Hawkey encouraged the strangling of a child who wouldn't stop crying when the enemy was near and he was afraid they would be heard and found. How, when it was cold, the surgeons would cut open the soldiers at the start of the operation and steam would escape and they would warm their hands over it. How so many innocents were lost. And I still joined the Navy and helped to kill people in the Gulf. I hope you and your children and young friends are smarter, better able to learn.

- There are so many examples, in the show, in real life, in war, and in peace where you don't understand what you are doing until it is done. So many times when we forget to thing about the consequences of our actions. I don't mean the times when we couldn't possibly know. I'm talking about the times when we figure out that if we had just pulled our head out of our own ego for a few seconds and thought about what the things we were doing was going to screw up the rest of the world. And then it's done. And it can't be taken back. And it can't be made right. That's where we are right now. They 9/11 terrorists were Saudi, not Iraqi. No WMDs in Iraq. No ties to terror. They used our fear to get us to put our boys and girls in harms way.

I would trade all that stupidity for the answer to this one: How do we avoid those times when we just aren't sure and it eats at us. When we are thinking, learning, knowing, and we still aren't sure. What if? If only I had, then maybe?

I can accept that a soldiers lot is, well, not very good. I can accept that I'm apparently incapable of learning from the examples of others (and therefor doomed to repeat their mistakes) and I can accept that I get so wrapped up in myself that I forget what I'm doing to others.

What I can't accept is that there isn't anything else I could have done. All the people I've talked to, the letters to my congress people, the politicians I've voted for, the web pages I've written, the pictures I've collected... the signs I put on my car... the T-Shirt I designed.

Could I have done something else to stop this war?

Please?

A friend of mine sent me one of those emails that circulate every veterans day where they show pictures of our boys and talk about how good we have it and how they are suffering to ensure our freedom.

I was totally with it until this one:

"You criticize your government, and say that war never solves anything.
He sees the innocent tortured and killed by their own people and remembers why he is fighting."

And that is a total load of crap.

1. While war does solve problems (in the least competent, most violent, way) I strongly question what the hell this war was supposed to solve. It SURE as hell wasn’t about preventing the torture and killing of innocents. All we did was trade our own boys lives for the lives of forigners. No WMD’s, No Nukes, No terrorist support. We were, at best, missinformed, and at worse, LIED to. And if we are all about preventing torture and killing of innocents, why did we do nothing in Darfur? Sudan? Congo?

2. Anyone who tells me I should criticize my government needs to pull their head out of there ass. And using our boys to justify that should be a crime. The American Sheeple have been manipulated into giving over more power to the government than ever before by shear terror mongering on the part of the American Wolverment. Go check this out:
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/war-machine.htm Really worth hearing. The USA is using the same tactics the Nazis (and every other government) used on it’s people. Hearing it from Hitlers Reich-Marshal has an impact, though.

3. Yeah, those boys need an excuse to keep going everyday. I used that excuse in the first Gulf War:
http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/incompetence.htm It was a lie. I lie I told to myself. There should have been better solutions. We are part of the problem.

4. If you just really get off on war pictures, see this:
http://techref.massmind.org/images/member/jmn-efp-786/war/index.htm

Damn it… Send this to the people you sent those pictures too…

And how about this last thought?

SUPPORT OUR TROUPS!
BRING… THEM… HOME!

Well, he got ONE right....

I do not support Brian Bilbray for congress... He has voted on the WRONG side of so many things: His racist attacks on the boarder issues and constant pandering to big oil make me sick. Which makes it all the harder to admit that on the bank bailout, he.. um... did the right thing. I was blown away when megavote emailed me that he had voted AGAINST the bailout. I wrote him an email asking why? This is part of his reply:

While I am in agreement with the Secretary that the state of the financial markets called for some form of government involvement, I held two serious concerns with his approach. First, I believe this plan would undermine the free market from promoting economic growth. Today, our system rewards innovators and entrepreneurs, but Paulson's plan subsidizes poorly managed companies at the expense of more responsible and competitive companies and the taxpayer. In so doing, this bill represents one of the greatest intrusions of the government into the free market in our history and it is a precedent I fear will be exploited to justify even greater federal intrusion into our own lives. Second, our government does not have the expertise or incentive to run Secretary Paulson's plan effectively or efficiently. Under the terms of the plan, our government would purchase thousands of mortgages and hold them for five years, or more, until the market improves. As it stands now we have neither the manpower nor the knowledge base to purchase, administer and sell mortgages on such a scale. For proof, we have to look no farther than the Recovery Trust Corporation from the Savings and Loan bailout of the 1980's which ultimately cost the taxpayer dearly because of mismanagement and private manipulation. Far too often in recent years people have looked to the
government for answers only to be met with waste and incompetence. We cannot allow that to happen again.

Ultimately, when the bill came before the House of Representatives on September 29, 2008, I joined with the majority of my colleagues to defeat the bill and it failed by a vote of 205-228. While I did not support the bill, I fervently believe that government should take some action to help restore accountability and stabilize our financial market. Not doing so would potentially risk that our credit markets would dry up and middle class Americans would be unable to receive car or home loans and small businesses would not have access to the loans they need to operate. To address these issues, I advocated for a mandatory insurance plan where banks would be required to insure their toxic debt with the government, which would have Wall Street foot the bill for much of their own bailout and greatly reduce the risk to the taxpayer. I also strongly supported raising the FDIC insurance limits to $250,000 to better protect the middle class from bank runs. Additionally, I fought to eliminate
mark-to-market mortgage pricing regulations for banks. This allows homes to be priced based on their long term value and not on recently imposed fair market accounting regulations that have turned mortgages whose owners have never missed a payment into toxic debt because the home is no longer worth the buying price. Moreover, I believe we need to update and more stringently enforce our financial oversight laws to reflect a twenty-first century economy and ensure that crises like this one cannot happen again.

Following the House's failed vote, the Senate passed the same measure, but only after adding more than $110 billion in pork to draw in additional support. These riders are laden with the type of wasteful pork-barrel spending Americans have come to expect, and fear, from Washington, including $192 million for Puerto Rico
and Virgin Islands rum producers, $128 million for auto-racetracks and $148 million for wool producers. Rather than working to forge a compromise that myself and many of my colleagues could accept the Congressional leadership added billions of handouts to Members of Congress as a way to buy their support. I believe that is a betrayal of the citizens we represent. As a result, when the Senate proposal came before the House on October 3rd I voted against the bill. Unfortunately, the bill did pass by a vote of 263-171 and President Bush has signed it into law.

Well, he nailed that one. Both the dems voted FOR it, Boxer doesn't get them all right.

Imagine Sheeple without loans.

Imagine a country; a fine country with more than enough land for all it's people to have a place to live, more than enough sun for everyone to have electricity and more than enough water for everyone to grow all the food they would need to eat, if only they would work a few hours a day in their gardens.

But, imagine the people of this country are addicted to power. Cheap power. Lots of power.

The people work for those few who have the power, instead of working for themselves.

Imagine a very intelligent young woman who attended university and became very educated as well as very intelligent. Imagine that she found a way to make power for everyone, or rather that she invented a machine that would allow each person to make their own power.

She built a prototype, and wanted to start a company to build these machines, so that all the people could buy one, then stop working for the people who had the power and go back to their gardens for exercise and food, instead of health clubs and fast food restaurants.

To build so many machines, she would need money to build a factory; so she applied for a loan from a bank. But the banks in this country were all owned or regulated by the government. And the president of the government was working for the people who had the power. They had paid for him to come to power though something called an "election" in which the people pick who ever they see on TV the most. And he picked up his phone, and made a call, and set a policy, and the bank would not loan money for anyone working on alternative power.

It wasn't always like that. Once, the banks could decide for themselves to whom they would loan. But the bankers were also addicted to power, and they made foolish loans to people who could not really pay them back. Instead of letting the bankers pay the price for their mistake, the government took over the banks. They told the people that if the bankers were allowed to suffer, it would create a "financial crisis" and the people would suffer. Even though the vast majority of the people had next to no money in the bank, and only the richest people would really have lost anything, and even though all they would have lost was money, not food or land; still the people believed in the terrible "crisis". So the people, or the sheeple, allowed the government to take over the banks.

Before that, the sheeple had allowed the government to shut down a country that was a source of power, which had lowered the price of power^, because the government lied to the people, telling them that source was planning to make war on them with something called "weapons of mass destruction" which, it turned out, didn't really exist in that country. And even though some of the people realized the government was lying, when the "financial crisis" was announced, they didn't remember that their government was a government of liars, they just didn't want to face the crisis. They ran and hid and let the government take over the banks.

Stupid, stupid, sheeple.

Every year they worked harder for the power, which cost more and more every year, and the people with the power got richer and richer while the sheeple got poorer and poorer. The sheeple lost their homes, because even though the government told them it was O.K. to help the bankers, the government would not help the people keep their homes.

The sheeple could never see that they were surrounded by empty land, with water and sun and seeds and tools and enough power to work the land to make food and trees to make homes and knowledge and talent to learn and be entertained because they were blinded by power, too stupid to question thier government, and too frightened to make a stand.

"Why not vote for McCain and just drill the coast and in ANWR for oil?"

Drilling is a great idea. Just like giving the crack-addict another rock to tie him over until he has a chance to get down to the rehab center.

I’ve got no problem with more drilling, even in ANWR (Alaskan Native Wildlife Refuge) because honestly the liberals have very much overstated the value of that area to wildlife.

But the oil is going to run out sometime. You can argue that it will run out next year or in 200 years, but it’s going to run out. For the USA, it ran out a long time ago, except for ANWR.

It’s a question of crushed ice in your drink or block ice.

With a crushed ice drink (slurpie, shake, etc…) you never really notice any difference until you are totally out. You can just suck on it and it tastes just the same until suddenly you get that first rattle of an empty hole. And then there is very little left… the end is near. With a block ice drink (lemonade, ice tea, iced coffee, etc…) as you sip, the ice melts and the drink is diluted until you are drinking basically water. It’s a gradual change and you know about where you are in the drink by how strong it is.

Sweet light crude is a crushed ice drink. When a country is pumping up the last bit of oil, it doesn’t cost them any more than it did when they drilled the first well. And then it runs out. Ask the UAE. They are in transition from oil exporter to oil importer. They have been converting their economy to investment, real estate, and entertainment for years now.

http://www.ameinfo.com/71519.html Wow... good thing Kuwait has that oil from Iraq to process now that the Iraqi system is blown all to hell.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HF07Ak01.html (really worth reading)

Mexico is on the edge of running out and has no plan to offset the hit their economy is going to take. As usual, in Mexico, the people will bear the brunt of that failure. Talk about sheeple.

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/46360

Saudi Arabia is going to run out in the next 10 or 15 years. They desperately need to keep their prices up in order to make the profit necessary to transition their economy.

http://techref.massmind.org/techref/other/USAenforcesOPECprices.htm

The USA, of course, ran out years ago… except for our reserves… Like ANWR… I wonder why our government decided to “protect the wildlife” that doesn’t need protecting up there, instead of just letting the oil companies drill till we sucked up the last drop? Could it be that they were thinking ahead to the possibility of the Middle East being so screwed up that we would no longer be able to buy oil from them?

The long story short is that if the costs of crack… err… I mean oil… doesn’t go up, if the crack… oil… isn’t hard to get, the American capitalist economy will never transition to anything else until the very last second. This would make that transition painful; horrible in fact. Rent the documentary “Oil Storm” if you want a “best case” idea of what that would mean for us.

The Pickens plan is great… It will keep American dollars in American so we can afford to buy CCC (cheap Chinese crap). It puts in place PART of what we need in the long term for alternative energy (the wind farms in the central USA) although that does not really work all that well for the coasts where most of the power is consumed since power transmission lines are very costly and inefficient. I would go with floating nukes on the coasts, and wind inland but that’s just ‘cause I’m a mad scientist. Heck, no one is bothered by that H bomb they lost off the coast of Georgia, why worry about an air craft carrier with a few high tension lines?
http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/09/13/lost.bomb/index.html
<http://books.google.com/books?id=svfKD4-MMT8C&pg=PA153&lpg=PA153&dq=aircraft+carrier+"generates+enough+electricity"&source=web&ots=mxnLS9n9jD&sig=kpgyMEGTzLGS_Jr6vsXcYAFtV9k&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result>

Anyway, NG for the cars, wind (or nuke) for trons and keep working on that Hydrogen infrastructure. Oh, and something to make the hydrogen with… The worst part of the Pickens plan is that we will just move from smoking oil to mainlining NG until the NG starts to run out; thereby solving the problem once and for all. But wont… ONCE AND FOR ALL!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqPjxsAuUxk 

There is nothing wrong with a corporation making a profit. But when that profit is at the cost of an unquestioning public, it just encourages further exploitation… *cough* I mean, “profit taking” which must eventually lead to a separation of the rich and the poor, which eventually leads to a revolution. A population of sheep must beget a leadership of wolves. And yet the American Sheeple buy Hummers, and fail to take a pay cut so they can telecommute, or pay extra for organic food (avoiding the use of oil based fertilizers and pesticides). They don’t see that the weak front of wolves on the left and right are herding them into the narrow valley where it will be easy for the pack to pick off as many juicy little lambs as they like. As the price of oil goes up, and the profit is taken, a few Sheeple are jumping about, trying to find an exit; buying the Prius or electric car (which, due to its higher cost of production, uses just as much oil to make as they will recover over the life of the car).

Obama is backed by “BIG COAL” and so he will push laws that remove environmental air quality protections from around coal fired plants. But at least it will be American coal instead of Saudi Oil. McCain will win points with the greenies by pushing laws that increase air quality requirements and cause more power plants to switch to NG (a byproduct of oil drilling which we still have volumes of in the USA). The bulk of the money for oil goes to the Saudis. A people who hate the USA to a man. A vote for McCain, is a vote for Oil, is a vote for the Saudi royal family, is a vote for Saudi peoples, is a vote for…

POP QUIZ: What nationality were the 9/11 hijackers? A) Iraqi? B) Afghan? C) French? D) None of the above. See below for the answer which is printed upside down.

Summery: We need a slow transition from Saudi oil to American NG + wind/nuke then to fusion? Solar? Something? Keeping the price low, in a free market economy, makes that transition happen very suddenly about the time the oil runs out. Bad. Forcing the price high by artificially restricting demand (keep ANWR closed, bomb Iran, invade Iraq) allows for the “free” market to adjust. Adjusting to a resource we have lots of in the USA (NG, coal, nuke) keeps our dollars here and out of the hands of the devils playthings. Adjusting away from oil makes oil companies very, very sad. Oil companies will ask McCain (and to a lesser degree Obama) to help them maintain a cheap supply of crack… err… oil. Vote for the lying pig bastard politician who isn’t supported by big oil.

Or maybe big oil is taking the long view and helping us to ease the transition to new fuels? Naw... couldn't be.

 

 

ıpnɐS ǝɹǝʍ sɹǝʞɐfıɥ tt\6 ǝɥ+ `ǝʌoqɐ ǝɥʇ ɟo ǝuoU (| :ɹǝʍsuV

More NeoCon lies about Obama...

Email from the neocons:

Do you know how I can find the following Obama stuff?

1. Occidental College records -- Not released
2. Columbia College records -- Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper -- 'not available'
4. Harvard College records -- Not released
5. Selective Service Registration -- Not released
6. Medical records -- Not released
7. Illinois State Senate schedule -- 'not available'
8. Law practice client list -- Not released
9. Certified Copy of original Birth certificate -- Not released
10. Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth -- Not released
11. Harvard Law Review articles published -- None
12. University of Chicago scholarly articles -- None

13. Your Record of baptism-- Not released or 'not available'

14. Your Illinois State Senate records--'not available'

15. And why did you place your hand on the Koran when you were sworn in as senator if you are a Christian?

My response.

This is so completely stupid that it would be funny if people weren’t actually dumb (and hate filled) enough to believe it.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/obama.asp in general... This is a list of the LIES and distortions the NeoCons have propagated against Obama. Even the ones that show as true are not as damaging as they seem. E.g. the flag was removed from the /tail/ of the aircraft but not from the side, and the tail still shows red white and blue in a flag like pattern.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/50lies.asp college records, law practice, etc…

http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/citizen.asp Birth cert is public. You don’t think the DNC checks these things?

http://www.snopes.com/politics/religion/ellison.asp It wasn’t Obama with the Quran and bibles are not used anyway.

 

Some of the items in this list have not (yet) been refuted by snopes, but they don’t mater. 

- Why do we care what his medical records say? The neocons are just trying to cover for McCain being the oldest candidate ever.

- Has McCain released his schedule? Why do we need to see Obamas?

http://deepbackground.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/07/24/1219454.aspx Columbia didn’t require a thesis at the time… He never wrote one. 

 

McCain is buying the election. 
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121988099541678063.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

And who is loaning him the cash?
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/sectors.php?sector=E “Energy/Natural Resources” which consists of Coal, Utilities, Waste, and…

 

…BIG OIL!

 

I wonder why he supports drilling off the coast of California? (even though it is true the inflating your tires properly will make as much of a difference in the price of gas as will screwing up our coat line) 

I wonder how he feels about Exxon never having paid for the Valdese incident and turning the greatest profit EVER for a single quarter? (they made $1,500 each and every SECOND the first quarter of the year, while we paid $4/gallon at the pump).

McCains voting record shows who holds his leash.

Here is the vote the video is reffering to: 2007 Vote 425 on HR 6 to add amendment 3841, the amendment is massive but I believe the part they are reffering to is Sec..1562 "Elimination of the different treatment of foreign oil and gas extraction income and foreign oil related income for purposes of the foreign tax credit." It is interesting that the amendment would have added some corporate welfare for coal producers (see Sections 1509 and 1510), so McCain is apparently NOT in the pocket of big coal...

We needed 60 votes to prevail, and 59 of them were in. But John McCain ducked the vote.

As a result, instead of powering millions of homes with clean energy and building next-generation solar technology, we're giving ExxonMobil and other companies billions in tax breaks at a time when they're already making record profits.

Notice that by not voting, McCain can say that he never voted against removing those tax breaks, while still ensuring that they continue to get them.

Does the USA enforce OPEC prices?

It may be that we invaded Iraq, not to increase production and access to oil, but to slow and control its production for the benefit of OPEC, and perhaps, our own benefit as well.

read more digg story

From your pocket to Exxon.

Exxon Mobil just broke the all time record for more quarterly profits than any company in U.S. history at $11.7 billion dollars in one quarter. That's nearly $1500 per second. Can you guess whos pockets that profit came from?

It's long past time for real energy independence in America and that starts by making sure oil companies pay their fair share, by getting rid of $13 billion in wasteful tax breaks each year and maybe making them pay a windfall profits tax.

This debate isn't just about dollars and cents. It's not even about the rape of our earth; does anyone remember the Valdez for which they STILL haven't paid damages! It's about real people whose lives are suffering while corporations continue to rake in record profits.

Honestly, I can afford the higher gas prices. What I can NOT afford, is to raise my kids with this sort of greed as an example of life in the USA. My kids need better schools, to show them that we care about our future; about the kids. They need better health care, to teach them the importance of taking care of each other. They need to learn that taking unfair advantage of others will NOT be tollerated.

If you are mad and frustrated, taking a few minutes to visit this site will make you feel better:
http://www.StopThePainAtThePump.org

Yes, actually, checking your tire pressure will do as much as offshore drilling to reduce the price of oil.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/automotive/how_to/4276844.html?series=19 Pop Mech has a conservative bent and they checked out Obama's recent comments about proper tire pressure doing as much as offshore drilling to ease our Oil issues.... And even they say he is right!
Offshore drilling will increase our oil supply by about 1 percent and inflating our tires correctly would also save about 1 percent.
Check the pressure on a cold day before driving long distances. Apparently, the correct tire pressure for your car is printed on a plate in the door frame of the drivers door. Honestly, I didn't realize any of that... Pretty clueless of me, I should know better.
Anyway, the McCainites should think long and hard about who is financing his campaign*, and try not to let the fact that Obama was right prevent them from checking their tires and the Obamarinies should take the pledge to inflate their tires and stand with Barack against offshore drilling:
http://www.TrueMajority.org/ObamaPledge