Propaganda Series Followup: Lies?

"You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time." Abraham Lincoln.

If this is true, why would the Bush administration put out a record number of lies in support of their agenda?

Sorry, don't have time to get into the debate as to whether or not Bush lied - Google bush lies you will get 13,200,000 hits.

I guess somebody in the Bush administration decided that it might just be possible to fool 51% of the people all of the time. And they really didn't need any more than that. Obviously, I am going with the conclusion that the Republicans under Bush lied, they lied big and they lied often. So the only question in my mind is "How did they get away with it?" Because usually lies backfire.

I do have a theory. Bush came in to power following a president who lied once. Clinton told a lie, under oath, about having sex with Monica Lewinsky, and it almost aborted his presidency. You would think that in the next presidency, the only thing that would be sacred would be telling the truth.

But the very nature of Karl Rove was to go at things head on - never to be cornered. He knew that given George Bush's personality that telling the truth would be impossible for more than a week. So in a clever tactical move, Karl Rove set about, using spin and/or propaganda, to develop an environment where lying was acceptable to the public. We can start first with the presumption that each side is forever accusing the other of lying, it is not a bad smokescreen for a compulsive liar.

Here are the key elements to soften up the public (if you just need to lie, you can't help yourself)
1. Start lying early, about inconsequential things, get people used to it.
2. Lie about things that are called national security secrets, to give it an air of how you're just deceiving the enemy. The British did that in WW II when they said they were going to invade at Calais, and actually went to Normandy. The British people understood the need to lie in their national defence.
3. Make really obvious lies, so obvious they are almost funny, everybody knows you're lying but it's a joke.
4. Pretend to be so dumb you wouldn't know the difference between truth and falsehood just out of ignorance.
5. Make out that people who can detect the lies are intellectual liberal elites and therefore out of touch. (and possibly traitors)
6. "The Big Lie" theory, why not use it and see how it works?
7. Call it all spin, sounds better than propaganda.
8. Make sure you get control of at least some media, say Fox News, Talk Radio, Washington Times, New York Post.
9. Never lie under oath. i.e. Never take an oath except the oath of office.

If you set the situation up properly, you can avoid the negative backlash of the lies when they are found out. But still benefit from the support you first get based on the lies themselves. And if you keep up the endless barrage of new lies, your opponents will not be able to keep up.

Bush came to office with the expectation that he would NEVER tell a lie. Not after what happened to Bill Clinton. Instead Bush became arguably the biggest liar that the Presidency has ever known. He lied early and he lied often. He lied when needed and when not needed. He almost never spoke without lying. And somehow he made it work, analysts will be pulling this one apart for decades to see how it ticked.

Raised Windshield Wipers in Winter

Is there any topic on earth that cannot start a controversy? I am asking this question seriously after reading a bunch of comments on the Internet about raising windshield wipers when parking a car in the winter.

I first noticed some people doing this last year, and it probably took me a day to figure out what it was all about. So for anyone wondering why, I was finding that my windshield wipers were getting stuck to the windshield, not only stuck but seemed to be locked in about an inch of solid ice. So even when I managed to get them free, I had to chip the ice out from between in the multiple links. If anyone thinks this doesn't happen, they probably don't live anywhere near me. But in any case, there is logical reason why it happens, and I will explain for those who don't live here. With the melting and freezing temperatures, not to mention the warm car cooling off while parked, snow, water and ice slide down the warmer windshield to the wiper blades, which are colder. Then the water stops and freezes, in ever increasing layers.

Why I didn't think of raising the blades all by myself, I don't know. But I started trying to remember to lift the wipers when I park, and typically they are free of ice and snow when I'm ready to drive. All I have to do is sweep or scrape the ice off the windshield, flip down the wipers and I'm ready to go. Why would I want to spend any more time than that in the freezing cold? It's bad enough already. Now if I forget to raise the wipers, I mentally kick myself and try harder to remember next time.

Many questions. Why would there be a controversy? Why would someone want to call people sheep for doing this? Why insults? And more than anything, why can people not figure it out for themselves once they see what people are doing?

Nobody suffers if other people do this. It doesn't cause an eyesore in the neighborhood, lowering property values. Nobody ever lost a finger when flipping down the wiper blades. No migrating birds are killed. Even if somebody can't figure out why people are doing it, they shouldn't care. Yet apparently they care enough to type comments on the Internet.

Maybe there is a very strong undercurrent in this country that no new ideas should ever be tried. This is what we call the "conservative" way of thinking. So far I have not yet seen this topic debated on Fox news, but I hate to think what kind of controversy would develop if some large corporation stood to lose money when people raised their wipers.

French American Relations

Where did all the anti-French anger come from in the USA? Didn't the French help the Americans win their war of independence? Wasn't it the French who gave the Statue of Liberty to the US? As far as I know, there has never been a war between the USA and France, while USA has invaded Canada 5 times. But so far we have not seen "Canada Dry" renamed as "Freedom Dry". It seems it's the French who are a problem for the US. And yet as far as I can tell, Americans are still generally admired by the French.

I have to wonder, how do Americans even come to know anything about the French. Speaking as a Canadian, Americans know practically nothing about us, and we're right next door. The only thing an average American would know about the French is what they see in National Lampoon's European Vacation.

So I did what I always do when these puzzling problems arise, I consulted Google. And I found out that yes indeed, a large number of Americans know about France from personal experience. I should have remembered, they were in France during and shortly after WW2! But that should be good, because the French welcomed the Americans a liberators. Instead there was friction that developed between the Americans and the French. It was bad enough that the US Army felt it necessary to put out a million pamphlets explaining to the GI's that the French were not so bad, and why they acted as they did.

http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/841724.html

A pamphlet titled "Instructions for American Servicemen in France during World War II" was sent out, and I will copy a bit from the web page I linked to above.

Like the vehicles and the ammo, the guide did its part to win the war. Soldiers were proselytized on the need to liberate France and the worthiness of the French to be liberated. Neither assertion was necessarily obvious to most GIs. France in 1940 had made a separate peace with the invading Germans, and the first enemies fought by American troops across the Atlantic were French soldiers and sailors in Morocco and Algeria during the North African invasion of November 1942. That was to be forgiven, if not quite forgotten, since many Frenchmen had since thrown in their lot with the Allied cause. “We are friends of the French and they are friends of ours,” the guide instructs. “The Germans are our enemies and we are theirs.”

But many American soldiers, preferred the Germans to the French. Germany seemed cleaner, the people seemed smarter and more compliant. The French seemed stupid, dirty, sullen and did not seem eager to please. Of course, this could be explained by the fact that the French were not the defeated enemy, they were supposedly allies. The fear of being shot apparently works wonders for the population. The French were not afraid of being shot, and acted as normal people would - although they were people who had just endured an occupation where they were enslaved and starved by the occupiers and bombed and shelled by their allies.

I think this situation could be argued to have sowed the seeds of some animosity towards the French among returning GI's. Animosity that remained dormant for years and then was revived by Bush's war on Iraq, which the French warned would be long and difficult, but Bush administration said would "pay for itself" and doubted it would last 6 months. You know, in hindsight it might have been a real good idea to put out a book "Instructions for American Servicemen in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Liberation". I am not the first to think of the idea, see this web site.


To present a more complete picture of Franco-American relations, there were issues after WW II: some Communism in France, the French didn't want to see Germany rearmed while America did, and France had colonies that the USA wanted to see independent.

Can You Ride a Scooter?

It is hard for a motorcyclist of the male persuasion to imagine what it is like to have a scooter. Now that Mary Ann has the Burgman 400, and she lets me ride it when I want to, it is time to get these ideas onto the internet.

The scooters are competent enough, but they have a less "macho" image than motorcycles. Can you tell before buying one if this is important to you? Picture this: Your male friends have come over for a beer to watch the hockey game on TV. While they are having a beer, you are having a "Pinot Noir". Can you handle that? Be honest.

Another characteristic of scooters is that they have no clutch or gears. Their progress happens without the total control that you would have over a motorcycle with the manually adjusted gearbox and clutch. Again, you need to imagine how you will feel in this situation. I'm going to use a TV analogy again. You and your wife (or anyone of the female persuasion) are settling in to watch some TV, now hand over the remote control to her and try some channel surfing. One the plus side, you will not get cramps in your thumb and callouses on your fingers from flicking between 4 shows that you are watching simultaneously. On the minus side, things will not happen exactly when or where you would like. For example, what's on TV suddenly gets interesting, then *click" "Hey go back to that one!!!" "Sorry, where was that again?" "Never mind it's too late now." Just as a note, if you find yourself at a red light beside a potential drag race opponent, do not rev the throttle or Ms. automatic clutch will launch you into the intersection immediately. This is another part of the "Non-macho" image mentioned earlier.

It's too bad scooters do not look tough, but then again there are advantages to "cute". Run over a pedestrian on your Harley chopper, and you will get the evil eye. Run them over with a Vespa, and the pedestrian will say "Sorry for stepping in front of you." Also women of normal repute are more likely to ask for a ride on a cute scooter.

Is there anything you can do to compensate for the Burgmans' unmanly attributes? What I would love is a machine that can go back and forth from a cute machine to a macho machine. It would neat if a flick of a button could do any of these things:
1. Go into manual gear shifting mode, and more importantly, let you rev the engine at a red light, and do a wheelie off the line.
2. Louder exhaust with a manual control, where you can just open an exhaust door and let it roar.
3. Retracting the windshield and rear fender.
4. A more sportbike like riding position (handlebars lower and further forward, feet in typical rearset position, Which should be easy with no foot controls to move.)

Some other things you could do with your riding outfit to mitigate the problem. Wearing camouflage riding pants and surplus army boots which is actually typical attire for young moped club members. So is an army surplus parka.

On the scooter itself, pick a paint colour that is more muted and less flowery. Silver, white, black, olive drab, sand brown, or even camouflage colour schemes would help avoid the worst of the cuteness. You shouldn't need to mount a rocket launcher for people to get the idea. Also, maybe remove some of the body panels and give it a more mechanical look. That would make it easier to service, too. The down side is that the more macho the bike, the less likely people are to believe it's your girlfriend's that you are testing after stripping down the transmission. Either way, it's your call.

Starter Bike

It's an easy concept, a starter bike (aka beginner bike) is a bike you start out with before you are ready for something bigger, more exciting, more expensive, and harder to ride. I have no problem with the idea, only with where the line is sometimes drawn.

Take for example the Kawasaki Vulcan 900 LT, which according to some riders would be a starter bike. To be fair, the salesman who sold me my bike never once brought up the starter bike topic. But I can imagine other salesmen mentioning it to some customers, and it definitely gets mentioned on Internet forums.

To me a starter bike would be more like a 150-250cc bike that is capable of hitting 95+ kph., weighing under 350 lbs. And costing much less than a car. For the $10,500 price of my Vulcan, I could have bought a Hyundai Accent with $500 change! Yes I know that some Harleys can cost over $30,000 (in Canada), but I'm just being practical when I compare the bike to the car.

Everybody has their own reality, depending on their own life experiences. When I see the Vulcan 900, I see a big, heavy motorcycle. Even though I have had more powerful bikes, this is still a high powered, long distance machine for me. Why do I think this when others might call it a beginner bike?

For one thing I started on a Honda 175, and after that for 10 years I had a Yamaha 250 that was powerful enough for me. In fact I crossed the continent twice with a passenger and camping gear. Experiences like that will colour your judgement of the line between big and small bikes. Later on, I had bigger and more powerful bikes, a Honda CBX and a BMW K1100LT, but neither was much bigger than the Vulcan physically, although the seats were higher. The Vulcan engine is about 50% lower horsepower than either of those. So? It's actually kind of nice to be riding a bike that lets you know when you are riding at an outrageous speed. Those more powerful bikes would lull you into thinking you were crawling along while they were moving you at double the speed limit.

I actually know of several people who bought Vulcan 900's after decades of riding lots of different bikes all over the place, and for them this topic just never comes up. But for newer riders, the idea that they might be riding a "starter bike" begins to gnaw on their consciousness after a few months, tempting them to trade the bike in on something that is really bigger than they need.

The Vulcan is simply too expensive, heavy and powerful to be a beginner bike. If others see a beginner bike in it, I guess that's what no money down, and zero percent financing can do for ya.

Telemarketers and Do-Not-Call List

Before every news organization in Canada gets caught up in the outrage over the national do-not-call list, everyone should be aware of a fake list. This fake list sounds like it is the actual cause of the problems. Click HERE for the story.

So keep in mind that there is a fraudulent do-not-call list, targeting cell phone users when you read the Globe's article, and the hundreds of (mostly) knee-jerk comments posted on their website. The link to the Globe and Mail article is here.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com

According to Gloria Galloway, fraudsters have got hold of the national do-not-call list and are calling people deliberately, making the situation worse.

Her premise is illogical, as telemarketers already have a phone book which has even more numbers than the do-not-call list, and obviously has more receptive customers on it. People on a genuine do-not-call list are more hostile than average people in the phone book. However, I can see where people who get fished into a fake do-not-call list may be ripe for the plucking of a telemarketing scam, and therefore the fake list may be attractive to unscrupulous individuals.

A simple way for telemarketers to get phone numbers to call every number in sequence. That would actually produce better results for them than using the national do-not-call list.

Giving the do-not-call list to the telemarketers was the point of making the list, but apparently thousands of people signed up not knowing that.

Giving only a phone number with no name is not dangerous. There is way more personal information in the phone book, which has been around for a long time with no complaint. But beware of any do-not-call list that asks for further personal information.

Did the national do-not-call list work for me? Yes, it did, and for my mother. I used to get a lot, and now rarely get telemarketing calls. If some telemarketers are stupid enough to waste their time, I simply tell them I am on the do not call list. That ends it. And if not, I will ask them for an address and a name to contact the government with the information. If they don't want to give you an address, next time wait till they tell you where to send the money before mentioning the do-not-call list. They are always willing tell you where to send the money.

Why are so many people now getting worried about the national do-not-call list? I think a lot of people who say they never got a telemarketing call before they put their name on the list are on the fake list. They likely got caught by the fraudulent e-mail saying Telus was going to give numbers to telemarketers. By the way, be very suspicious of any email that you get telling you to "e-mail this warning to all your friends." 99 percent of those emails are fake.

This do-not-call system has worked in the US since 2003, and it is working in several other countries including Canada. And the Globe and Mail should be ashamed for slamming the national do-not-call list without looking in to the fraudulent list, and warning people about it.

The Big Lie

In my series on propaganda, maybe the second most controversial statement is that propaganda does not consist of lies. After all wasn't Hitler famous for the theory of "The Big Lie" that he wrote about in Mein Kampf? In case you were not aware of this famous Nazi technique, I will quote from a translation of Main Kampf" which in turn I got from the Wikipedia topic "The Big Lie":

a lie so "colossal" that no one would believe that someone "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously".


As Wikipedia explains, although this statement is commonly thought to be referring to Hitler's own methods, Hitler was not talking about his own lying, he was talking about the Jews. Later On Goebbels (Hitler's Propaganda Minister) again referred to the technique, but alleging that Churchill was using "The Big Lie". And the United States Office of Strategic Services also ascribed this technique to the Nazis, and actually that is the one that stuck best in people's minds when the Nazis lost the war.

Now don't ask me what particular untruth "The Big Lie" was referring to, I don't know. It is not mentioned either in the Wikipedia entry. I kind of suspect the whole thing is a myth. I mean you know they are lying, I know they are lying, but we just can't quite nail down what the lie is.

Well, from what I can see the Nazis actually were not lying. Yes, I know this is maybe the most shocking statement of all. So if anyone can come up with some Nazi lies, let me know. I'm sure there were some, in that lying is a part of human nature. However it is not good propaganda to lie about things, and there are so many other more effective techniques, and techniques that dont backfire on you, why lie. It is dangerous and unnecessary.

So what about the Nazi allegations of racial superiority, breaking treaties, or blaming the Jews for everything. At that time, such racist theories were current in America, England, Canada, and lots of other supposedly non evil countries. By my definition (hope I am not accused of changing the rules to make a point) when almost everyone believes something it is not a lie. I would call it an accepted theory for that age, which later fell into disrepute. Of course it's pretty convenient after the war and the holocaust to distance yourself from your previous beliefs - but not fair. And everyone breaks treaties, I don't call that lying either, but I can see how some people might.

It is very common for each side to claim the other is lying. Doesn't that constitute proof that there is a lot of lying in propaganda? Not really, as you can always find somone on the other side who is lying. Most often you will find that it is not the official propaganda, just an extremist sounding off without knowing the facts as well as they should. It happens a lot.

Even the Wikipedia entry says propaganda is understood to consist of a lot of falsehoods. But that is only because the Nazis admitted to using propaganda, and everyone "knew" the Nazis lied, therefore logical conclusion that propaganda consists of lies.

And some may say that Nazi propaganda lied "by omission". Maybe, for example, they forgot to mention killing the Jews. No, I don't think so. It was mentioned several times, in a general sense - not exactly how many, and who, where and when. Besides, when most people think of lying they think telling an untruth. Lying by omission is fair game to most people unless you are questioned under oath, or worse yet, being questioned by your mother.

And finally, for everyone emerging from a Bush administration where apparently lying was common - I'm going to have to put that one off for while. Were they really lying? Or were they lying by omission, or maybe quoting "facts that everyone knew?" It's a big topic, I'd like to get into it later. For now I'm trying to focus on the Nazis, as they were the ones who most famously used propaganda and boasted about it.

Propaganda Topics 1&2

Here is a quote, which if you think of propaganda as fairy tales, makes some sense: "Fairy tales do not tell children dragons exist, they already know dragons exist. Fairy tells tell children dragons can be killed." G.K. Chesterton

The second topic in my outline is the one I will deal with first, as it appears to be the most controversial. Not only did I get a comment in my blog about it, but I was talking to some people today, same reaction!

The topic was: are educated people more susceptible to propaganda than uneducated people?

This was also a point made in the book "Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes" by Jacques Ellul, written back in the sixties.

I agree with his point because of my definitions of "educated" and of "propaganda". I realize there is a big problem with calling uneducated people unintelligent. So let me restate in a less dramatic way. Instead of "educated", I should have said people who are interested in politics and current events, know something about history, and consider themselves thinkers. Whether or not they have a higher education is not really important. It is these people I am saying are susceptible to propaganda. Maybe I should call them high information instead of educated.

If people are not interested in the news, geography, history, they can barely remember the name of the person who runs their country, then they are not targets of propaganda. To win over this type of person you do it by lowering prices, lowering taxes, winning wars, sending checks in the mail, cancelling their debts. Not by any type of argument. There is a level of propaganda that you can direct at such people, but it is generally the type that goes on bumper stickers and t-shirts. I could call that a low level of propaganda.

And as for propaganda, we have a tendency to think that the "other" side uses propaganda, ours does not. That is completely false, as no matter what issue you can come up with, I assure you both sides are using propaganda, though one may be better at it than the other. That means if you or I have an opinion on say, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, no matter which side we are on, we have consumed some propaganda, and very likely without knowing it. So we have to set aside the idea that only the enemy uses propaganda or we will never be able to understand what we are being influenced by.

Now the next point, and it is merely a logical extension of the first. The most vulnerable people are those who absorb the news and who think they are too well educated to fall prey to propaganda. And that is because good propaganda is one step ahead of them. It is not a bunch of lies (although Wikipedia does characterize it that way). It is most often the truth, but selective and using a lot of more advanced techniques. And furthermore, propaganda is not trying to change your mind, it is reinforcing your beliefs that coincide with the government's (or whoever is providing the propaganda, and increasingly that is not the government - another topic). That is a much easier job than trying to argue against what you believe.

To restate the point, people who consider themselves intelligent and take an interest in the news are the ones targeted by propaganda. And people who think that by their very intelligence and education, that they are immune to propaganda are actually most at risk of falling for it. Especially if they think that propaganda can be detected by fact checking.

And low information people don't succumb to propaganda directly, but simply get on the bandwagon once the high information people have been spurred into action by propaganda.

Information Wars: Propaganda

I want to start a public service series on propaganda. This is going to be a tough slog, so I'm going to start with just the course outline. Each point may have to be explained more in depth in its own entry later.

This is not a course on brainwashing, as many of you know, the difference between brainwashing is Communists use brainwashing, Nazis used propaganda.

Outline of Propaganda Course:

- Propaganda's purpose is not to change a person's mind, it is to change public opinion, which actually can be done without changing anyone's mind if necessary.

-Propaganda attempts to reinforce ideas individuals already have of their own free will. "Propaganda does not tell you what to think, but what to think about."   

-Propaganda is most effective with intelligent, well educated and well informed people who think they are immune to being controlled.

-The immediate goal of opinion control is to provoke people into action to help spread the support of opinions - whether it be sending out letters to the editor, speaking up at a meeting, marching with banners, phoning in to talk shows.

-A converse goal of propaganda is to encourage opponents to remain passive - that their interests are not at stake, that they are not being singled out for punishment, so to simply stay out of the discussion that does not concern them.

-Propaganda avoids what is "factually wrong" for all its worth. The propaganda may be irrelevant, may be selective, may use flawed logic, and while not actually wrong, can at the same time also not be right. It is counterproductive for propaganda's purpose to deliberately use wrong or disprovable facts. Though it happens on both sides of any issue, everybody makes mistakes.

-Working off the previous point, effective opinion control vigilantly fact-checks the opposition. Sometimes fact-checking veers off into unethical tactics - for example, the "Straw man" technique which invents weak arguments and attributes them to opponents in order to knock them down. Also promoting "debates" in a controlled situation where your side can use selective editing to ensure a win.

-A goal of propaganda is to make people see how their own interests are at stake. How each person may profit by or suffer from ideas, and to convince people that their interests are best served by the propagandists's agenda.

African Pop Music of the Sixties

While I was in Africa I was lucky enough to take in a concert while Dr. Nico was touring Sierra Leone. I guess I didn't appreciate the significance when the concert was held back in 1970 because I almost didn't go in when I found out it was admission of one dollar. Anyhow, Dr. Nico is one of the legends of African guitar music. I have to admit I never found the singing that exciting, partly I didn't understand the lyrics, but the guitar and the drums made up for it.

And today is the US inauguration. Go Obama! What a day.

Rear Wheel Drive vs. Front Wheel Drive

Now that consumers in North America have come to the conclusion that they can't afford trucks and SUV's I'm guessing that more people than ever will be buying and driving front wheel drive cars. This is going to be quite an adjustment for them, and may also be dangerous.

I have been driving front wheel drive since 1984. I drive a lot in winter and I don't like getting stuck, so the front wheel drive suits me. Over the years I have gotten used to the differences between rear and front wheel drive. I'm comfortable with front wheel drive, I have rarely gotten stuck, and I've saved a lot of money on gas and on the purchase price of the cars also.

A front wheel drive car allows more interior space and less weight for the same outside dimensions. Without the bulky and heavy drive shaft and differential in the rear, all the back end of the car can be built lighter and have more room inside. And yes it's cheaper to build, so that may explain the lower average prices.

Is it safe to drive? Front wheel drive is still relatively new, and if you don't learn new habits, you may be in for a hard time with it. Number one would be the old idea of buying snow tires only for the rear of the car. With a front wheel drive vehicle, you must buy winter tires for all four wheels. That is because if you put the winter tires only on the front and not the back, the rear will spin the car around and you will lose control.

That brings us to the the most dangerous characteristic of the front wheel drive cars. If you are in a low gear with the engine revved up rounding a corner, and you suddenly back off the throttle, you may provoke a rear wheel slide that will spin the car around. This situation does not come up a lot, and probably never in the lifetime of careful drivers. But aggressive drivers need to learn the behaviour of a front wheel drive car if they are going to drive one. In my mind, this is a fair requirement, but I also know it's not going to happen one hundred percent. Aggressive driver does not mean good driver, sad to say. And what is the best way to regain control? Well, put the car in neutral, or push in the clutch, which makes it work like a rear wheel drive car. (Although a very nose-heavy one) Another way is to push the accelerator, which may not come naturally to many old style drivers. Anyway, many new stability control electronic devices are starting to become available, which can eliminate most of this problem.

A front wheel drive has more weight over the driving wheels, which gives more traction to get moving or keep moving in slippery situations. Not only do you have the extra weight, but you can point the driving wheels where you want to go when stuck. With rear wheel drive, the only way to get unstuck is to have the front wheels pointing straight ahead, in line with the rear wheels. To reinforce the difference between rwd and fwd, watch traffic stopped on an uphill section waiting for a traffic light in a snowstorm. When the light turns green, and rear wheel drive cars sit and spin their tires through the entire green light. Sometimes they slide sideways to the curb with no forward progress. Front wheel drive cars with the same type of tires in this situation will be able to make it through the light (unless they are stuck behind the rear wheel drive car!)

U R What U Drive

Am I imagining things or do Conservatives like to drive this kind of vehicle more than they like to drive a Prius?

That might explain why most Conservatives live in Alberta, where all the oil is. Or maybe Texas.