<p>“Boo Hoo. Both sides do this and I don’t see anything wrong with it, either way. As long as people aren’t making up lies why is this a bad thing? So what, it doesn’t look good, that’s the whole point. You think McCains 100 year in Iraq quote isn’t going to be flashing on your TV screens constantly this fall? He said it, he has to live with it. Just like Mrs. Obama said what she said and, as long as you don’t make anything up/lie about her, there’s nothing wrong with it.”</p>
<p>I think it’s stupid and weak politics to make a prospective first spouse the target of political ads. To me doing so indicates that the attackers don’t have ammunition to attack the presidential candidate. The attackers also look very cowardly to be attacking someone who’s a family member, not a person running for office.</p>
<p>Unless a prospective first spouse says something like, “If my spouse is elected I’ll use my position to spy for America’s enemies” or “My spouse is a liar, a bigot and embezzler, so don’t vote for them”, the person’s thoughts and words are inconsequential.</p>
<p>Both sides are saying things that don’t make any sense and are making arguments not because they believe them, but because they are being defensive. </p>
<p>None of these things even if they were true would have any relevancy to the presidency. Grow up.</p>
<p>If growing up means excuses everything, I will never grow up.</p>
<p>There are tons of relevancy. Barrack Obama has said repeatedly that Michelle is the pillar of the Obama family, one he draws strength from and consults with. She is someone whose views he respects and fair to say, shares. I want my commander-in-chief to not have any questions about his character - we already knew he had a racist pastor for 20 years. Tyler09, smoothing out everything and pretend not to see is not growing up, in my book.</p>
FYI, simply buying gas means you are propping up prices for oil producing nations. It’s inescapable (if you buy gas).</p>
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You don’t need a car, it’s a luxury. You don’t need to heat your house, it is a luxury.</p>
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Once again, it’s not where you invest, it’s where you consume. About 15% of the oil in this country comes from Saudi Arabia & Venezuela. So yeah, you support dictators and stuff.</p>
<p>edvest1, if you don’t want you commander-in-chief to have any lingering questions about his character, can I assume you won’t be supporting the candidate with the drug addict trophy wife who embezzled money from her own charity? Or do things like that only matter if it’s the Democratic candidate’s wife?</p>
<p>I think the spouse is a fair political target if (s)he jumps into current discussions. Michelle Obama made at least one regrettable statement, Bill Clinton has made several, Mrs. McCain won’t release her tax returns…but perhaps that is reasonable since she’s never filed jointly with her husband.</p>
<p>Edvest, the Financial Times has some coverage on that, in a rather lightweight article covering all three potential first spouses, see <a href=“http://www.ft.com%5B/url%5D”>www.ft.com</a> -</p>
<p>edvest1, it’s pretty common knowledge. You can check the Wikipedia article on her ([Cindy</a> Hensley McCain - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cindy_mccain]Cindy”>Cindy McCain - Wikipedia)) for some general background, and if that’s not enough there are numerous sources cited there which you are welcome to explore to broaden your understanding of the issue, and lts added another.</p>
<p>Past the “what, really?” response, though, I’m interested in whether that materially effects your opinion of McCain, or if such things are only relevant to Obama in your mind.</p>
I think the standard Republican dodge is that 1st husbands/wives are only eligible for attacks if they are actively campaigning for their husband/wife.</p>
<p>I don’t believe this is a “Republican” dodge, its allowing those not involved to remain out of the contest. Were Mrs. Obama, for example, to have remained out of the political discussion, I doubt she’d be pulled in. Members of the media may try and draw her in perhaps for any number of reasons, but usually, I suspect, staffers would limit such baiting.</p>
<p>p2n: edvest1’s criticism was not that Obama’s wife is actively campaigning and thus should expect flak, but rather that because she is Obama’s wife and one would therefore assume Obama holds her opinions in high regard, her ill-thought comment casts a shadow on him. That argument applies in absolutely the same way to McCain’s embezzling wife, campaigning or not. I’m personally just waiting for edvest1 to admit he’s just being blindly partisan.</p>
<p>"You don’t need a car, it’s a luxury. You don’t need to heat your house, it is a luxury"Mr. Payne</p>
<p>Since when are you clairvoyant, Mr. Payne? Do you know the temperatures where I live and how far I need to travel to work, the availability of public transportation, etc.?</p>
<p>"FYI, simply buying gas means you are propping up prices for oil producing nations. It’s inescapable (if you buy gas)"Mr. Payne</p>
<p>This may be true if there is a gas shortage, but all indications are there is not.
The Oil Cartels refuse to produce more to keep the prices high.</p>
<p>“You don’t need a car, it’s a luxury. You don’t need to heat your house, it is a luxury.” Mr. Payne.</p>
<p>I really like Mission Beach in San Diego, but I really don’t want to live on it.</p>
<p>“McCain’s wife is an embezzler? When was she convicted?”</p>
<p>Cindy McCain stole drugs to which she was addicted, from her charities. This doesn’t meet the exact definition of embezzle, however. When her drug addiction was about to be made public, she scheduled a confession on a morning new’s show. Eventually, she repayed the charities from which she stole.</p>
<p>She became a drug addict from pain related to a back surgery, which is a very common thing.</p>
<p>But why would a rich, highly connected person need to steal (or embezzle drugs?)</p>
<p>Surely her family had a physician who would prescribe her anything.</p>
<p>The issue is she is a dishonest thief. More of what is now running our country. Do we want more?</p>
You can move. You can buy thicker clothes. You can change jobs. There is a lot of different options. People like to talk big talk about energy conservation and all that jazz, I see very little action though. The simple fact of the matter is that we don’t want to reduce our standard of living and if that means guzzling gas at a rate twice as high as other countries, so be it. I don’t have a problem with people doing this. I have a problem with the hypocrisy some people display about with their opinions of the oil & gas business and their own personal consumption of its products.</p>
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There might be a slight increase in price because OPEC refuses to produce the additional 1-2MM barrel capacity it has. If they were producing at full capacity i doubt the price would drop below $80/bbl. The fundamentals are there. We are reaching peak oil.</p>
<p>“You can move. You can buy thicker clothes. You can change jobs. There is a lot of different options. People like to talk big talk about energy conservation and all that jazz, I see very little action though. The simple fact of the matter is that we don’t want to reduce our standard of living and if that means guzzling gas at a rate twice as high as other countries, so be it. I don’t have a problem with people doing this. I have a problem with the hypocrisy some people display about with their opinions of the oil & gas business and their own personal consumption of its products.”</p>
<p>How do you know I can move? How do you know I’m not in the final stages of cancer? How do you know my age, education, job skills? How do you know how much gas I guzzle. You don’t. You have no idea of any of these issues.</p>
<p>How do you know I don’t want to change my standard of living? I do. I want to be much richer and much more secure. I also want to sleep more.</p>
<p>Are you deliberately sticking your head in the sand or are you actually ignorant of what Cindy McCain did at AVMT?</p>
<p>I already linked to the Wiki page for anyone interested to get a general outline of what she did. There are even further links on that page if you’d like to delve more deeply into the actual news stories and so forth surrounding the issue. It’s not like these are unsubstantiated rumors - she outright admitted to being an opiate addict and to stealing the drugs from her own charity.</p>
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<p>She wasn’t convicted. Tom Gosinski, one of the directors at AVMT was fired (on budgetary grounds) after discovering her theft of drugs, and subsequently reported her theft to the DEA. Her lawyers managed, as happens often with rich people in positions of power, to negotiate with the U.S. Attorney’s office a punishment involving financial repayment and rehab. This was all kept hush-hush until Gosinski sued her for wrongful termination and she was forced to publicly admit her misdeeds to avoid the greater public relations harm that would’ve come from having it exposed in the media (which was about to happen).</p>
<p>The real question in my mind is why you didn’t know this.</p>