First up was the McCain Uphill Slog Penalty. John McCain has done plenty of struggling in his life, and trudging to the top of the very tall mountain that is the United States Presidency is tough enough under any circumstances… but what about when you're dragging the dead weight of an unpopular lame-duck administration, during tough economic times, and most of your own party hates you? What's that like? Well, we figure it probably feels similar to donning a rubber McCain mask and pushing a Ford Taurus SHO with seven burly guys sitting on it the length of the pit road in the muggy petro-enhanced Houston air… so that's what we had this miscreant do after he did Badness on the track. Bet he thinks twice before trading paint with a CRX at the next race!


The jeering crowds liked that so much that we figured we'd McCain-ize the next driver black-flagged in for too much aggro on the track. It's a lot easier when the car is a BMW 2002 and your team only has four members, so we had the Loverman add his weight to the load. Man, that McCain mask gets sweaty fast!


Then there's Barack Obama, who promises change and plenty of it. You know what, though- change can often be painful, hard work, and it can force you to throw away a lot of sweat you've already invested! That's why we figured the Obama Change You Can Believe In Penalty had to be hard mental and physical work that undid a lot of the team's previous efforts. The way it works goes like this: we give the team members spray paint, tagger-grade fat permanent markers, colored tape, etc., and the team needs to completely change their car's theme before we'll let them continue racing. Not only that, we have to believe in the change, so half-assed efforts get sent back to the penalty box for more work.


By far the most impressive Change We Can Believe In victims were the guys on the Svedish Slaabs Saab 900 Turbo team. Their original theme was a sort of IKEA-meatball-style mishmash of Swedish Chef and ABBA iconography, but they managed to change their car to the Exxon Valdez in about six minutes flat.


Got to admit, we were freakin' awed by their accomplishment (which stood in stark contrast to their typical LeMons Saab on-track performance, which generally involves completing less than 20 laps and then nuking the engine). "Dancing Queen" became "Leaky Queen," for starters.


The Swedish Chef doll became Captain Hazelwood, complete with beer cans ziptied to his body. We liked this accomplishment so much that we gave the Slaabs our created-on-the-spot Judges' Choice Award (12-pack of Shiner Bock) after the race.


Other teams didn't quite measure up to the incredibly high bar set by the Svedish Slaabs; the Enginerds went for a "We're Sorry" theme, apparently figuring we'd stop punishing them if they showed remorse.


When they beat the shit out of their formerly-dent-free car with hammers, their new theme became "Sorry Piece Of Crap," and we let them back on the track.


Then we had the über-recidivist Unintended Acceleration Audi team. The kind of Audi you can get for 500 bucks is almost invariably gonna be one evil-handling beast in a LeMons race, and this one was no exception; we hit these guys with every penalty we had (though they successfully pleaded their way out of the metal-shavings-in-the-crankcase one), but every time we turned around they'd be back in the penalty area with sheepish looks on their faces after spinning out and/or hitting something… again.

By that time we'd used up most of the spray paint turning Neons into Civics and Mustangs into Camaros, so these guys were limited to white appliance paint and red duct tape for their Change We Can Believe In penalty. They opted to make the move from "Unintended Acceleration" to "Peace And Love," complete with hearts and peace signs in white and red. Even though they were spending most of their time in the Crime Scene impound yard by this point in the race, they were still driven mad by race fever and threw on the new theme in record time; they managed a very respectable 25th place and a pretty good 1:21.105 best lap time.


We also had a Hillary Clinton mask and a couple of genuine Hillary signs picked up by a friend who was on the floor at the Democratic National Convention, so we figured we'd do a Hillary punishment as well. To symbolize the broken dreams of Clinton supporters, we taped the posters to the car and had the miscreant (in this case, one of the Punisher Racing Caprice drivers) put on the Hillary mask and sit, disrespected and forgotten, at the judges' table for 30 minutes.


Hillary haters- no shortage of them in Texas- got a big kick out of the "Hillary: To Enslave And Torture" logos on the Punisher's new/improved door emblems.

We don't mean to indicate that Sarah Fisher isn't a capable driver or team owner, it's just that she's never won a race and her best finish is 17th. We think that "top woman" honors should go to Danica Patrick, who actually won a race. Still, after this we predict a 15-point spread for Hillary in Indiana. (h/t Hyman_Decent)

[NYTimes]

Of course then the tax holiday would end and the 18.4 cents on the gallon tax would be added right on top. Clinton even went on to advocate for paying off the hole in the budget which would be left by levying a windfall tax on the huge profits of the oil companies. Now, we're not really whooping and hollering at the idea of high gas prices, but discouraging the profit motive of corporate energy producers in favor of short term political gains seems like a recipe for disaster. Who knew you could mix two different disaster recipes from the same list of ingredients? Oh, and let's not forget the additional consumption would mean additional profits for big oil, something that would just rub salt in the wounds of the fuel-buying public — especially given the record profits released today by the two biggest oil-producing companies. [Reuters via Yahoo News]
photo from redstatearizona

Individual donors that stand out include GM CEO Rick Wagoner, who gave to Romney, and Roger Penske of Penske Corp., who gave to Giuliani. The good thing for all involved is that, after the primaries, everyone can make sure their company gives enough to the remaining candidates to make sure no one feels left out. [Automotive News]

According to the NHTSA, "back-over" incidents kill 183 Americans every year, more than vending machines and schnauzers combined. The unlikely senatorial duo of John E. Sununu (not to be confused with John H. Sununu) and Hillary Clinton are introducing the Cameron Gulbransen Kids and Cars Safety Act, which would mandate safety equipment that alerts a driver to a child behind the vehicle. As an added dollop of safety goodness, the bill would also require power windows to auto-reverse when rolled up on a child's body part. Automakers are less than ecstatic, feeling that glow-in-the-dark trunk releases should be enough safety for anybody. – Murilee Martin

Bill would make cars kid-safe [Detroit News]

Related:
He's Ba-a-ck! [internal]

Listen, we spend enough time doing 55 or less on the Dime as it is (I-10 is not the most uncongested freeway in Los Angeles), and the last thing we need is for Hillary Rodham Clinton to undo the work her husband signed into law a decade ago allowing the states to set their own speed limits and freeing us from the tyranny of stupid-low speed limits. According to Clinton, "The 55-mile speed limit really does lower gas usage. And wherever it can be required, and the people will accept it, we ought to do it." Hillary, we the Jalopniks are of the people. And we do not accept it. Go stick your nose somewhere else. [Thanks to Al for the tip.]

Hill Drive for '55' [New York Post]

Related:
Texas to Raise I-10 Speed Limit? [Internal]