Tips. 100%.

Aw, shucks.  Who'd flame this?  

Oh, I forgot about those guys.

who is as diehard a Hillary supporter as they come, has decided to vote for Obama instead of sitting this one out - something she swore she would not do - after seeing how I have evolved from Hillary supporter to, "he's our nominee so I'll vote for him," to, "hmmnn, I'm beginning to warm up to this guy," to, "Wow! I am really jazzed about Barack Obama." If I were an enthusiastic Obama supporter from the get go, I don't believe she would be voting for him now. Actually, I believe she wouldn't be working for me now (she is my seamstress for my Upholstery business).   ;-}  

oh dear, condi, you should know by now that the only dkos/mydd approved method is to call the old guy a "deadender" or "hillbot" or accuse him of being a paid repuke troll and then do your best to get him "banned"...

After this week no one could call me enthusiastic for Obama, not anymore.

Cole, given the number of times we've exchanged "pleasantries" back and forth, this is a milestone moment for you.

I was thinking the same thing. In fact a better spokeman than some.

I think that helped (that I mentioned who I supported in the primaries and it wasn't Obama).  As another poster stated, it might have given me more credibility.

thanks!

of course, too bad I am not a paid blogger after I got hit with the bill from Firestone this morning :)

gas prices don't affect you?  Economics doesn't affect you?

I think that the economy will be bigger than the war in Iraq - in fact, I hope it will be.  Because Obama will win in a landslide if it is.  

think PUMA-ism comes in many flavors,

Some are narcissists? This one seems to be a solipsist.

He/She is wrong of course, 8 years of just appointing district court and USSC court
judges will affect EVERYTHING?

Or deciding HOW the FDA is staffed?

We are going to have a Supreme Court that rules on Genetic Engineering, maybe even artificial life?  

And sooner then you think?

Certainly artificial enhancements, radical drug therapies?

What if parents CAN selective decide to screw with their kids genes IN VITRO?

Who do you want running the FDA?  Republic appointees selected for religious purity?

I'm not even saying I KNOW how that should be ruled, but I want the best and brightest on the court, not just someone who kissed Federalist Society ASS for the last 20 years.

None of the issues in this election actually affect my life.

You would have to be from a different planet to avoid being affected by the issues in this campaign. Everything from USA foreign affairs to economics affects the whole world. If nothing else, you will be affected by the decisions made by future Supreme Court justices. You might be immune to downturns in the economy if you are independently wealthy, but then you will be more seriously affected by tax policies. You might have your own health insurance, but even then any changes to health policies in this country will affect you.

Come out of your cave and join us in the real world, bsavage.

International war and peace does not impact you at all? Or the global and national economy? How about the fate of the global ecosystem?

Do you live naked in the deep forests of the Canadian wilderness? And even if you did, would you really want the rest of the world to suffer under 4 years of John "Bomb Iran" McCain?

No offense intended, but are you elderly and independently wealthy?  Without kids or grandkids?  Because that seems like the only way global warming, gas prices, melting ice caps, the Iraq War, terrorism, and abortion won't affect you.

Or have a tomato on your burger?  The reason we have all these food scares is because the FDA is one of the agencies that has been rendered impotent by the Republicans.

I think I know what this commenter means.

Obviously a lot of things will be different whether a Democrat or a Republican is in charge. But a lot of the things that we most care about aren't likely to affect us personally.

My primary issue is health care (and I still think Hillary was by far the best candidate on that), but right now I'm lucky enough to have health care and whether or not we get universal health care won't affect me personally.

I'm an environmentalist, but I'm not likely to ever visit ANWR, and I won't notice if we drill for oil there or not. Offshore rigs will be ugly, but I may never see them. If we log this forest or blow the top off that mountain, I'll probably never know about it unless I read about it in the news.

Telecom immunity is ridiculous, but would I actually notice if they had to fork over a few hundred million dollars in settlements?

Gay marriage is a long overdue step towards equality and justice, and I think the people who are leading the charge will be remembered fondly by history. I do have a few friends who will probably get married now, and I'm happy as hell for them, but again, it's not an issue that affects me directly.

The death penalty is an obsolete act of official revenge, but I don't plan on committing any capital offenses, and would probably prefer it to life without parole in any case.

I live in a state where abortion will almost certainly always be legal, no matter what the Supreme Court does.

Does this mean that I don't care about these issues, or what they mean to other people? No, of course not. But most of these are abstract things to most of us. We care about them not for ourselves, but for society at large.

my brake pads were only 50% worn.  The problem, as explained by the guys at firestone, is that the winter time, with the salt on the road, pits the rotors and ages them.

I don't have a garage, so I can't keep my car inside.  I guess I will have to turn a high pressured water hose on them weekly in the wintertime to get rid of the salt buildup.  

I have a mazda and they have those "open" hubcaps and that allows the salt to get in easier.  

You're not a Hillary supporter, and the last time I checked, we won't have a nominee until the convention when all the delegate votes are counted.

Hi there.  I was just thinking about how all the articulate and intelligent Clinton supporters such as yourself swallowed their pride and did what they had to do to get a progressive in the white house (especially that includes Sen. Clinton herself), and all the nasty ones either trotted off to no quarter or morphed into bona fide trolls.

During the primary there were lots of allegations from both sides that a bunch of people here were paid bloggers, which I think was more or less nonsense.  The same charge gets tossed at some people on the site right now, but I think that if they're being paid, their employers are getting ripped off.

what is hypermiling?

I know that I have been doing all of my errands after work, on the way home, for several years now (almost 13 years).  That has helped me in extending my gas.  

I also have a manual, so I am very interested in it.

The world is running out of oil, imho.  Oil is fossil fuel and we've probably tapped out on it.  At any rate, I am a firm believer in tapping into cleaner and more enviro-friendly fuels for the future.  Even if we had another 100 years of oil, we should be weaning ourselves off of it now.  

"Running out of oil" is complicated thing to discuss because it depends on how much you are willing to pay for it. There is plenty of oil that is very expensive to access, but if we are all willing to pay $6/gallon for gas, that oil becomes profitable and will be tapped. At $10/gallon there is even more, and so on.

But do we really want to spend even more money digging out even more oil to pollute the environment even more than we already have?

As for environmentalists causing high gas prices, I enthusiastically urge you to do a little research on the topic. There are many, many factors driving up the price of oil and environmental activists are hardly a factor when compared to the 3 billion people in the developing world who all just decided they want to drive cars, or the international cabal of mostly-authoritarian regimes that regulates oil output, or the instability in major oil producing nations, etc etc etc etc etc

I found a tiny mom-and-pop tire guy. I will only take my car to him for tire stuff now.  Never again will I go to one of those big chains.

I like that I'm helping to keep this nice, honest man in business and keeping his family's income going.

It'd be so nice to see this country return to mom-and-pop retail.

my firestone is pretty good - I've been going there for a few years now.

the rotor thing is new to me.  The factory installed ones - replaced after 2 years by the dealership when it was still under warranty and now 2 1/2 years later, replaced again.

it is the salt in the winter and the open hubcaps on the mazda.