What's Missing From This Picture?

A member over at Huffington Post commenting on this article pointed out that in the above picture, Ron Paul was the only one not wearing a red tie. But I noticed something else missing. Something obsequious during the last presidential election cycle, something that was an issue in certain cases.
Of course, I'm talking about the flag lapel pin that every politician wore to show people that he was his own man and didn't bow to any pressure they were a real American. Don't get them, wrong, the Republicans are still trying to sell themselves to voters as the party of America, Ronald Reagan, Jesus Christ and working people. Well, their definition of "working" people may differ from mine of yours, what we call workers, they refer to as "whiners", lousy ingrates who work long hours for less than a living wage and want the government to enforce job killing safety regulations.
No, their definition of "producers" are the bean counting misanthropes who try to squeeze every drop of sweat from those whiners while trying to squeeze every last dime out of consumers. And if the government would just let them privatize everything, we'd all be better off because more of us would have jobs hauling these 'producer's' big bags of money back to the panic room of their McMansion in a gated community. Hooray. Yippee.
So the GOP is trying to sell itself as the party of change-remember when they mocked candidate Barack Obama for that whole "hope-y change-y thing"? No lapel pins, vote for change, it sounds like the GOP is trying to morph itself into a whiter, older, and meaner version of Our President. The only thing that might possibly stand in their way is the next two years of Republican obstructionism in the House of Representatives, which will remind people of what they really stand for, which is rich people getting richer while government services to the victims of their economic policies are removed. None of this will create jobs, but it will continue the Middle Class removal program started under the Reagan years.

You CanTell It's An Election Year When..........

Yesterday at work we received a printout of this warning from the USFDA about food defense and terrorism, which, after bringing much laughter and derision ( What with MFN Chinese government still sending us food laced with melanine), reminded me that this is an election year and once again the politicizing of government agencies to put fear into voters continues unabated under he Bush administration. (Remember the Justice Department's investigation into ACORN in 2004 which was carried out because Bush had politicized the DOJ?) Is this another case of manipulating terror threat levels right before an election?
Another way you can tell it's an election is falling gas prices, which also happened before the 2006 election. There really hasn't been any major changes in the oil markets to indicate why this has happened, nor have we begun drilling offshore, yet gas prices have fallen almost a dollar or more in the last couple of weeks.
So besides these two things, along with lawns cluttered with signs (because I really care which way a homeowner is going to vote) and rampant vote theft by the GOP what are other indications this is an election year?