There's never a free lunch or gas card

I should know that by now, but it looked legit. Just answer a few questions, vote for your candidate, and we'll send you a gas card, depending on the availability for your zip code. By the time you do all that and get to the end, I found a $14.95 offer for a fax service I couldn't opt out of, so I didn't finish. But the election choice was interesting. There were two very nice photos of Obama and McCain, no one looking surly or decrepit or ugly or dark. Then these bios from encabulat.com:

Barack Obama: A Senator from Illinois; born in Honolulu, Hawaii, August 4, 1961; obtained early education in Jakarta, Indonesia, and Hawaii; continued education at Occidental College, Los Angeles, Calif.; received a B.A. in 1983 from Columbia University, New York City; worked as a community organizer in Chicago, Ill.; studied law at Harvard University, where he became the first African American president of the Harvard Law Review, and received J.D. in 1991; lecturer on constitutional law, University of Chicago; member, Illinois State senate 1997-2004; elected as a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in 2004 for term beginning January 3, 2005.

John McCain: A Representative and a Senator from Arizona; born in Panama Canal Zone, August 29, 1936; attended schools in Alexandria, Va.; graduated, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, Md. 1958, and the National War College, Washington, D.C. 1973; pilot, United States Navy 1958-1981, prisoner of war in Vietnam 1967-1973; received numerous awards, including the Silver Star, Legion of Merit, Purple Heart, and Distinguished Flying Cross; elected as a Republican in 1982 to the Ninety-eighth Congress; reelected to the Ninety-ninth Congress in 1984 and served from January 3, 1983, to January 3, 1987; elected to the United States Senate in 1986; reelected in 1992, 1998 and in 2004 for the term ending January 3, 2011; chair, Committee on Indian Affairs (One Hundred Fourth Congress; One Hundred Ninth Congress), Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation (One Hundred Fourth through One Hundred Sixth Congresses, One Hundred Seventh Congress [January 20, 2001-June 6, 2001], One Hundred Eighth Congress); unsuccessful candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2000.

I thought it was odd that committees for McCain were listed, but not Obama, then I thought maybe only chairmanships were listed. Considering Obama's youth and few years in the Senate, that didn't seem quite fair, so I looked in FactCheck.org, found out that he IS THE CHAIR of a subcommittee on European Affairs of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is chaired by Joe Biden. By reading through that information, I see that's why there is a political ad from the McCain people on this. It seems he could have held hearings pertaining to the role of NATO in the war in Afghanistan, but he has not. In fact, the first year he was chair, he had no meetings at all. Now, I don't glue myself to the TV when these hearings are shown, but if this is how Joe Biden became an expert (he used to chair the subcommittee Obama heads now), shouldn't they be meeting--I mean, just to chat and get aquainted and give the staff researchers something to do?

Anyway, since McCain isn't currently the chair (that's for the party in power), I thought Obama's subchairmanship should have been listed. It's possible these bios predated that, however. While speaking to the press in the Israeli town of Sderot this summer, Obama mistakenly said he was on the U.S. Senate banking committee, but in a later clarification by staff, he says he meant to say "my bill."