Sunday morning toons: Public safety pro tip

If you're a cop and you're going to kill someone who is unarmed, and you want to skate on the charges, you can either inadvertently allow yourself to be videotaped or you can be seen putting what appears to be a drop piece by the body, but apparently you can't do both. Any cartoonists who jumped triumphantly on the Walter Scott story from this week (in which a cell video led to an officer being charged with murder) without remembering that the choke-hold killing Eric Gardner in police hands last summer was also caught on video (but the officers walked anyway) might not have made the cut this week.

And, although IANAL, I stand by my position that body cams for police officers are a good idea, but they have to stay on. Shutting off or otherwise disabling a body cam should be the equivalent of refusing a field breathalyzer: Automatic probable cause.

Today's toons were selected from the week's offerings at McClatchy DC, Cartoon Movement, Go Comics, Politico's Cartoon Gallery, Daryl Cagle's Political Cartoons, About.com, and other fine sources of toony goodness.

p3 Picks of the week: Mike Luckovich, Scott Stantis, Darrin Bell, Chip Bok, Chris Britt, Steve Kelley, Jim Morin, Ted Rall, Matt Wuerker, and Monte Wolverton.

p3 Best of Show: Rebecca Hendin.

p3 Legion of Merit: Mike Keefe.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 1): Lalo Alcaraz, Robert Ariail, and Rob Rogers.

p3 Certificate of Harmonic Toon Convergence (Part 2): Robert Ariail and Signe Wilkinson.

p3 Gold Medal for Recycling Things That Were Settled in the 1990s: Chip Bok.

p3 World Toon Review: Ingrid Rice (Canada) and Agim Sulaj (Italy).

Ann Telnaes is more optimistic than I am. Or than Sinclair Lewis (albeit imperfectly attributed) apparently was.

Mark Fiore has a message for all you squirrel-eaters: Embrace the apocalypse!

Tom Tomorrow has bad news and good news: God is riled, but he's got other things on his to-do list.

Keith Knight looks at the reason white movie-goers are furious. (Background, in case you don't religiously follow Deadline.)

Tom the Dancing Bug watches as a potentially awkward moment at Scientology headquarters finds its happy ending.

Red Meat's Ted Johnson neglects to mention the safety word. Perhaps it's "barmaid."

The Comic Strip Curmudgeon employs a phrase you never thought you'd see – or at least I didn't: Spidey wordlessly peacing out. Walloping web-snappers: that's not how you get an appearance in the next Avengers movie!

Comic Strip of the Day sez: This is what we've come to. Can't really argue.

But laddie – I've got some better dates! Although you'll find a lot of links that say "The Spirit of '43" was banned, there's no evidence that it happened. The Donald Duck propaganda short, directed by Jack King in that titular year, with Clarence Nash voicing Donald Duck (and an early version, some say, of what would become Uncle Scrooge) and Fred Shields as the narrator, stressed the importance – especially in wartime – of paying one's income taxes. "Spirit of '43" was a follow-up to 1942's "The New Spirit," a joint production of Disney and the US Treasury Department, and in fact uses quite a bit of footage from that earlier film. Still more sketchily-documented rumors suggest that the Treasury Departments laggardly payment of their half of "New Spirit" is the reason that production costs were kept down for "Spirit of '43" by recycling old footage. (Also, relax: the filing deadline was moved from March 15 to April 15 in 1955.)

The p3 Sunday Comics Read-Along: Pearls Before Swine, Doonesbury, Rhymes with Orange, Zits, Adam @ Home, Mutts, Over the Hedge, Get Fuzzy, Prince Valiant, Blondie, Bizarro, Mother Goose & Grimm, Rose is Rose, Luann, Hagar the Horrible, Pickles, Rubes, Grand Avenue, Freshly Squeezed, The Brilliant Mind of Edison Lee, and Jumble.

The Big, And Getting Bigger Since We Bent The Rules And Welcomed Back The Departed, Oregon Toon Block:

Ex-Oregonian Jack Ohman almost, but not quite, gets it right.

Very Possibly Ex-Oregonian Jen Sorensen does a Family Circus mashup that (a) the culprits totally deserve, and (b) gets better and better until the final panel.

Matt Bors updates the war on terror. It's mostly going as well as you think, so that's good news.

Jesse Springer frets: There's mental illness, and then there's mental illness. Good luck, Oregon!

Test your toon-captioning firepower at The New Yorker's weekly caption-the-cartoon contest. (Rules here.) And you can browse The New Yorker's cartoon gallery here.

Bad dreams

Over the last year I have, from time to time, been sort of a buzz kill -- a political Eeyore, if you will -- in conversations with friends at DL, on FB , and such places, when talk of  a “GOP dream ticket” like Bachmann/Palin for 2012 comes up. (It's considered a dream ticket from the left's point of view, of course, on the assumption that it would be so self-evidently dreadful that Obama could coast to re-election. Me, I'm not sure why we'd want to give Obama even more sense of freedom to drag his feet on issues I care about, but let that pass.)

My objection at this point usually runs along these lines:

Yes, yes, it's funny to imagine such a “dream ticket” for 2012, one that would expose the ridiculousness, the fecklessness, the foolishness of American conservatism as it currently exists in the GOP. The trouble is, the mainstream media won't treat them as foolish -- it hasn't so far, has it? And the Obama 2012 campaign won't call them out on even the craziest things they say, so the “center” point for every issue I care about will be dragged inexorably to the right -- further to the right, I should say.

Case in point, this headline from ABCNews.com:

By Gary Langer
Oct 25, 2011 3:00pm

Flat Tax Outpaces 9-9-9 in Poll, Notably Among Conservatives

A flat tax like the one proposed today by Republican presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry engenders a split decision in public opinion — if not the warmest reception, a better one than the public’s broader disapproval of his rival Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan.

While a flat tax divides the nation overall, moreover, it resonates most strongly in a group of particular interest to Perry – “very conservative” Americans, a key GOP voting group. They hold favorable views of a flat tax by a broad 68-28 percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll, suggesting a strategic rationale for Perry’s initiative.

More broadly, there’s greater division: Americans overall split by 47-48 percent on the notion of a flat tax – that is, removing most income tax deductions and charging all taxpayers the same tax rate, instead of charging higher rates on higher incomes. That’s almost identical to the 48-48 percent split on a flat tax in a different ABC/Post question back in August 1996.

The nub of article is the question of which flat-tax proposal would be more popular, and the polling numbers give the horse-race treatment a comforting scientific sound.

But you can read that article first-to-last and never find the word “regressive,” never find a hint of the almost certain consequences of flat-tax policies for government programs that the readers might happen to like, never find any clue that the debate between the Perry tax “plan” and the Cain tax “plan” is simply haggling over details about the best way to redistribute the federal tax burden from the top brackets onto the middle and lower class.

It's all very interesting, in a reality-TV kind of way, to read how these competing flat-tax schemes poll, but what would really be nice is coverage of what they mean.

There's a mention in the article's final paragraph that as education level increases, voters might be more skeptical of the whole flat-tax idea, but it's a stretch to equate more education with more information on the issues. So it's by no means certain that even that group's skepticism is because they've rejected the underlying framing of the issue.

If political coverage like that goes on unchallenged and uninterrupted for another twelve months (and remember: the more knavish and anti-expertise the GOP finalists next fall, the more, not less, of that kind of  "even-handed" coverage you should expect to see), then a lot of voters might well think that this is what the tax reform debate is about: Which regressive flat-tax plan is better?

Quote of the day: Locking it in

Here's Charles Pierce on the competition for the most gimmicky tax plan among the GOP presidential candidates:

This isn't really about taxes. It's about establishing a permanent plutocracy and about locking in income inequality. And "starving the beast." Oh, and about looking tough for the mouth-breathers.

Tough to argue with that.

Yes, I enjoy watching those TV ads about state parks in Oregon too

But let's get some perspective, shall we?

The Oregon Office of Economic Analysis, the state agency that forecasts revenue and expenses, said that for the 2011-2013 biennium, the lottery should net the state almost $1.1 billion compared with just under $900 million from the corporate income tax. And while corporate tax revenue should grow as the economy recovers, the lottery will continue to bring in more through at least 2017, the most distant year the forecast covers.

In other words, in Oregon those least able to afford it, those who benefit least from America's economy, are being cajoled into bearing a heavier share of the burdens of government.

Quote of the day: What "anti-tax" actually means

Digby:

The anti-tax sentiment among middle and working class people actually means "stop giving my money to people I don't like" (and among the Peterson level deficit fetishists, it's "taxes are for the little people.")

The unforgiving minute

If it weren't for the folks--including friends of mine--who live in California and have to live with the consequences of a booby-prize governor and a breathtakingly dysfunctional system of government, I'm not sure I'd know who to root for here:

A group of the biggest U.S. banks said they would stop accepting California's IOUs on Friday, adding pressure on the state to close its $26.3 billion annual budget gap. [...]

The group of banks included Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., among others. The banks had previously committed to accepting state IOUs as payment. California plans to issue more than $3 billion of IOUs in July.

But Californians can thank their lucky stars that they don't have the unjust burden of those vehicle registration fees that former Governor Gray Davis wanted to restore.

Minute's up.

Sunday morning toons: Special "What's Goodbye for GM" Edition

Good news and bad this week: Good: GM gets a long-overdue flushing out. Bad: Domestic terrorism in the heartland again; Good: Obama talks to the Middle East and only the American right-wing media responds hysterically. Bad: The craziest person in the world who doesn't have his own cable news program is testing nukes.

This week's Daryl Cagle toon round-up has it all: The good, the bad--and possibly even the ugly.

p3 Picks of the Week: Mike Luckovich, Nate Beeler, Pat Bagley, Mike Keefe, John Trever, John Darkow, Jimmy Margulies, Adam Zyglis, Milt Priggee, and Drew Litton.

David Fitzsimmons knows when the genie's been let out of the bottle.

The p3 Legion of Merit (with black crepe) goes to R. J. Matson,

The p3 No Pussy-Footing Around citation goes to John Sherffius.

p3 World Toon Review: Stephane Peray (Thailand), Michael Kountouris (Greece), Humberto Lázaro Miranda Ramírez (LAZ) (Cuba), and Peter Pismestrovic (Austria).


It's an unprecedented Ann Telnaes three-fer this week: The family business, Spring cleaning, and The Sixth-and-a-Halfth Commandment.


Miss it at your peril! Spike & Mike's Sick & Twisted Festival of Animation comes to Cinema 21 in Portland next weekend.


p3 Guest Toons: I saw my share of professional conventions back in the day but, save maybe the first one or two when I was still a virgin in Babylon, I never came away as jazzed up as The K Chronicles' Keith Knight did after crashing the National Cartoonists Society convention. He even came away with A Dream. (Dude--lobby for Portland!)

Carol Lay celebrates--if that's the word we're looking for here the emerging medium for public debate. (Oregon even gets a nod!)


Protecting Our Endangered Toonists: Red Meat reflects on the natural impulse to set things right.

(Thanks to John Sherffius for permission to use his "Signature Loss" image. Click to enlarge.)


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman offers a toast.


Genius! As loyal p3 toonophiles have probably figured out, I'm not the world's biggest Disney fan. But there's one exception: As Roger Rabbit marveled,

Nobody takes a wallop like Goofy. What timing! What finesse! What a genius!

Goofy's forte was the cheerfully accident-prone everyman--think of Fred MacMurray as the dad on "My Three Sons," but heavy on the wallop--in a series of "How to" films. From 1942, directed by Jack Kinney (who also directed (Der Fuehrer's Face), the national pastime gets the Goofy treatment in "How to Play Baseball:"

p3 Bonus Toon: When it comes to tax cuts, Jesse Springer wonders why it seems so easy to get voters to vote against their interests. Does it have anything to do with how refreshed they feel when they wake up?



And don't forget to browse Dan Froomkin's weekday political toon review.

Reading: Paul Krugman on the (in)ability to deal with the economy responsibly

Sometimes it only takes a word or two to let you know that, if you hadn't already realized that things are going badly, you should realize it now: When you hear a thoracic surgeon say "uh-oh," for example, or when you hear a newly-licensed teen driver tell his buddies, "Watch this."

Or when you hear Paul Krugman describe himself as "rattled."

On Friday I shared my worry that Oregon, influenced by political trends that began in California some years ago and gradually crept northward, could find responding to the current economic troubles a more difficult task than it might otherwise.

Citing an observation by Charlie Pierce, I wrote:

[T]he ongoing mess that our neighbors to the south have been facing for years isn't just a side effect of knee-jerk opposition to taxes and abuse of the initiative system on the structure of government--it's that knee-jerk opposition to taxes and abuse of the initiative system have become the structure of government.

Now comes Paul Krugman to tell me that, if I've erred, it could be that I'm not worried enough:

Despite the economic slump, despite irresponsible policies that have doubled the state’s debt burden since Arnold Schwarzenegger became governor, California has immense human and financial resources. It should not be in fiscal crisis; it should not be on the verge of cutting essential public services and denying health coverage to almost a million children. But it is — and you have to wonder if California’s political paralysis foreshadows the future of the nation as a whole.

The seeds of California’s current crisis were planted more than 30 years ago, when voters overwhelmingly passed Proposition 13, a ballot measure that placed the state’s budget in a straitjacket. Property tax rates were capped, and homeowners were shielded from increases in their tax assessments even as the value of their homes rose.

The result was a tax system that is both inequitable and unstable. […]

Even more important, however, Proposition 13 made it extremely hard to raise taxes, even in emergencies: no state tax rate may be increased without a two-thirds majority in both houses of the State Legislature. And this provision has interacted disastrously with state political trends.

For California, where the Republicans began their transformation from the party of Eisenhower to the party of Reagan, is also the place where they began their next transformation, into the party of Rush Limbaugh.

The result is a state--whose economy ranks below only a handful of nations in the world--that may simply be unable to take any responsible action to head off fiscal meltdown.

But surely political dysfunction on the scale Krugman sees in California can't spread to the nation as a whole, right? At least you'd think so. But that's where Krugman confesses to getting a little rattled:

America’s projected deficits may sound large, yet it would take only a modest tax increase to cover the expected rise in interest payments — and right now American taxes are well below those in most other wealthy countries. The fiscal consequences of the current crisis, in other words, should be manageable.

But that presumes that we’ll be able, as a political matter, to act responsibly. The example of California shows that this is by no means guaranteed. And the political problems that have plagued California for years are now increasingly apparent at a national level.

To be blunt: recent events suggest that the Republican Party has been driven mad by lack of power. […]

And that party still has 40 senators.

Fortunately for Oregon--at the moment--Democrats have a supermajority in both chambers. Not that Democrats are perfect. But if nothing else they're an effective brake on a minority party who, if they haven't yet begun barking at the moon like their colleagues at the national level, don't seem to be re-thinking any of their dysfunctional assumptions, either.

Krugman's article is going in the Readings list on the sidebar.

Reading: Pierce on "Rule by the essential political dynamic of drivetime talk-radio"

One of the things that I worry about on behalf of Oregon is that, too often, when California gets a dumb idea, it's only about 5 or 10 years before someone thinks we should try it here. (The day that they gave a booby-prize governorship to Der Arnold gave me chills, although--to be fair--the last time they elected a movie star as governor Oregon managed to resist any latent urges to do the same, so perhaps we'll dodge that bullet a second time.)

But Charlie Pierce notes that the ongoing mess that our neighbors to the south have been facing for years isn't just a side effect of knee-jerk opposition to taxes and abuse of the initiative system on the structure of government--it's that knee-jerk opposition to taxes and abuse of the initiative system have become the structure of government:

Back when I was a young reporter for an alternative weekly, Massachusetts passed a referendum by which property taxes in a specific municipality could not exceed 2.5 percent of the assessed value of the property therein. Prop 2 1/2, as it was called, and is still called today, was the east coast franchisee of the California "tax revolt" that began there with Proposition 13 in 1978. The basic attitude behind Prop 2 1/2 was summed up best for me by one of its authors who, when asked what would happen when the law forced local libraries to close, replied that it didn't matter because paperback books never had been cheaper. Well, we're nuts here but not that nuts. We stopped with this little bit of initiative distemper. California, it seems, has rendered itself utterly ungovernable by taking every ounce of the philosophy behind the campaign for Proposition 13--government by initiative, anti-tax phobia etc. etc.--and turning it into the very structure of government itself. It threw out Gray Davis and installed a comical buffoon in his place who seems to be unstrung by the actual job of being a governor. And, now, the voters of California have gathered themselves together again and produced something best described by an observer of Andrew Johnson's impeachment--"a towering act of abandoned wrath." I thought about the libraries when this happened this week and came to the realization that the basic philosophy behind this is that there is simply no such thing as a political commonwealth, that we, as a people, own nothing in common, nothing for which we have to be responsible to our fellow citizens, rich or poor, but especially the latter. This is what libraries were--common spaces, where people could gather and read--and surf the 'net, too--and places that we could be confident belonged to us all. They were examples of a lost idea in American life. California has determined, in a hundred different ways, that it will be ruled by the essential political dynamic of the drivetime talk-radio program. This is in no way a good thing.

We'll probably never have a movie-star governor in Oregon--we're just a little too Gore-Tex and sensible-shoes for that--but Pierce's description sounds uncomfortably close to what we've been trending toward in Oregon for years: Professional initiative-filers and their out-of-state sugar-daddies larding up the statewide ballots with initiatives inspired by the conservatives' Closet of Anxieties. No one wins that arms race except the broadcasters who sell them air time for their ads.

So I'm watching with bated breath as the Democrats in Salem work to clean up the initiative system. It's a difficult balancing act, since reform will have to avoid throwing out the baby of First Amendment rights and genuine grass-roots participation in government with the bathwater of Sizemore-style fraud and racketeering.

Sunday morning toons: Special "Mad Tea Party" Edition

(Reminder: April is Portland Comics Month. Support the graphic arts.)


This week the right was in rare form: Mad as March Hares, or Mad as Hatters--take your pick.

"Take some more tea," the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.

"I've had nothing yet," Alice replied in an offended tone, `so I can't take more.'

"You mean you can't take less," said the Hatter: "it's very easy to take more than nothing."

"Nobody asked your opinion," said Alice.

"Who's making personal remarks now?" the Hatter asked triumphantly.

And there you have it: Lewis Carroll's prescient description of last week's pretzel-logic anti-tax (or at least anti-something) demonstrations scattered around the country, written 144 years before the fact. The events were instigated (and tragically misnamed) by subsidized right-wing bloggers, underwritten by Tom Delay's FreedomWorks, attended by right-wing members of Congress, promoted by FOX News as an authentic grass-roots expression, roundly and bawdily mocked by Olbermann, Maddow, and the left-wing bloggers, and largely ignored by taxpayers in general, who found the point of the exercise a tad on the fuzzy side.

And yes, personal remarks abounded.

Because their work is mostly intended for newspapers, America's political toonists didn't follow Olbermann and Maddow off the deep end of double entendre, but--as Daryl Cagle's round-up shows--they certainly had their fun with it.

p3 Picks of the Week: Nate Beeler, R. J. Matson, Pat Bagley, Jim Day, and Kevin Siers.

The p3 Best of Show Award (tie) goes to Jeff Parker and Jimmy Margulies.

The p3 "Sounded Better When Marlon Brando Said It" Award goes to John Darkow.

A heartfelt p3 thanks to Steve Sack, for this image we'll never get out of our heads now.

And a p3 salute to those determined (or oblivious) artists who noticed that there was plenty of non-teabag related news going on this week, having to do with such non-teabag oriented topics as Cuba, gun violence, a new dog at the White House, and--Arrr!--pirates: Mike Lane, Mike Keefe, David Fitzsimmons, Monte Wolverton, Steve Sack, and Adam Zyglis.

p3 World Toon Review: Cameron Cardow (Canada), Sergei Elkin (Russia), Victor Ndula (Kenya), and Christo Komarnitski (Bulgaria).


Ann Telnaes notes Alberto's near miss,


Guest toon: The K Chronicles concludes that cars don't kill people.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman sees encouraging signs for the economy.


Why is a raven like a writing desk? Here's the Mad Tea Party sequence from Disney's 1951 "Alice in Wonderland." And not an anti-Obama sign in sight.

p3 Bonus Toon: While everyone squabbles about the fate of the "Made In Oregon" sign at the west end of the Burnside Bridge in Portland, Jesse Springer has a modest proposal:



And don't forget to browse Dan Froomkin's weekday political toon review.

Sunday morning toons: Special 16th Amendment Edition

Not everyone is pleased with Portland mayor Sam Adams these days (can anyone say CRC? How about that other thing?). But we're going to cut Mayor Adams some slack today, because he's declared that April is Portland Comics Month:

Portland has deep roots in the comic-book publishing world, as it is home to scores of industry professionals and several of the nation's most prominent comics publishers (Dark Horse Comics, Oni Press, Top Shelf Productions, and Image--Shadowline). Moreover, the local comics community continues to see significant growth, which further bolsters the Rose City's defining ties to the creative arts and industries.

The month-long schedule of activities celebrating our comic book heritage culminates on May 2nd with Free Comic Book Day. Yes!

Now, down to business:


It's been a toonilicious week at Daryl Cagle's round-up: whackjobs with nukes, financial skullduggery, well-armed paranoics . . . and pirates!

p3 Picks of the Week: Nate Beeler, Mike Lane, David Fitzsimmons, Jimmy Margulies, John Trever, John Cole, David Horsey, Sandy Huffaker, and Cal Grondahl.

The p3 Award for Best Adaptation from Another Medium goes to Pat Bagley, Steve Sack, and John Darkow.

Filed your taxes yet? (Reminder: the Form 4868 gives you an extension on filing, but not on paying, which you still have to do by the 15th. Go figure.) While you're going through that shoebox of receipts one last time, here are toons to mark the occasion from Steve Breen, Dave Granlund, Bruce Beattie, and Randy Bish.

p3 World Toon Review: Cam Cardow (Canada), Patrick Chapatte (Switzerland), Stephane Peray (Thailand), Riber Hanssen (Sweden), and Jianping Fan (China).


Wait, doesn't 2012 GOP presidential wannabe Newt Gingrich have "history professor" somewhere on his résumé--I think it was a study-by-audio-tape program? Anyway, Ann Telnaes gives him a brisk refresher course. [Link fixed 9/16/09](And here's a handy p3 hint for those who missed the reference.).


p3 Guest toon: This is odd: Last week's Frank Rich column from the NYTimes online op-ed page has vanished, and with it, a great Barry Blitt illustration. Fortunately for p3 toonophiles, I bagged the link. Even without the Rich column, it has a certain pizzazz.


On May 9th, the USPS will release a set of 5 stamps honoring each member of the Simpsons family--Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa, and Maggie. Fans are invited to vote for their favorite character stamp although, somewhat reminiscent of the 2000 presidential election, your vote won't actually decide which stamp gets issued--they all will. p3 salutes the Simpsons' creator, Portland's own Matt Groening.


Portland homeboy Jack Ohman documents the search for missing components in our military hardware budget.


Taxes to keep them flying! Taxes to keep them rolling! The last time Disney's Donald Duck made a p3 appearance, he was learning the democratic virtues of hard work (with a Dixieland soundtrack) in the 1943 "Der Fuehrer's Face." From the same year comes "Spirit of '43," and this time Donald learns the lesson (suspended during the reign of George Bush, the other "43") that major wars actually have to be paid for somehow.

p3 Bonus Toon: Jesse Springer wonders if it's possible for an "honest pint" to be just a little bit too honest. (Click to enlarge.)




And don't forget to browse Dan Froomkin's weekday political toon review.

Blumenauer takes on the federal gas tax windfall

Good for Earl.

The problem with the McCain (and, alas, Clinton) proposal to suspend the federal tax on gasoline at the pump this summer--currently 18.4¢ /gal--goes beyond the obvious fact that lowering pump price will drive up consumption, and that the public goods paid for by the federal gas tax will go unfounded, although those are considerable.

There's a more obvious problem, as anyone who remembers the behavior of the oil companies during the second price spike of the 1970s will quickly recognize:

Yes, the tax may go away, but there's absolutely no reason to think the oil companies will pass any of that on to drivers (except perhaps a pittance for PR purposes) rather than pocketing it themselves and leaving prices where they are.

Ferengi Rule of Acquisition #1: Once you have their money, you never give it back.


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The unforgiving minute

(Meant to get this out Wednesday, but one thing led to another.)

Not a big Tom Friedman fan myself, but he does get off two memorable observations in his most recent column. Regarding the McCain (and, disgracefully, Clinton) proposal to cut the federal gasoline tax this summer:

This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering.

And this:

The McCain-Clinton gas holiday proposal is a perfect example of what energy expert Peter Schwartz of Global Business Network describes as the true American energy policy today: "Maximize demand, minimize supply and buy the rest from the people who hate us the most."

Minute's up.


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