In that speech, Senator Sanders was not afraid to call loan sharking a moral crisis:

This is an issue I have been working on for years and years, and this is the issue of usury. I mentioned earlier, if you read the religious tenents of the major religions throughout history, whether it is Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and others, what you find is almost universal objection and disgust and a feeling of immorality in terms of usury. When we talked about usury in the United States, what we usually talked about were thugs, gangsters working on street corners who lent out money at outrageously high interest rates to workers, and when that money was not repaid back at the interest rates asked for, the thugs would beat up the workers.

In fact, I am thinking now about the first movie of Rocky. I don’t know if the Presiding Officer saw the first movie of Rocky with Sylvester Stallone, but before he became a successful fighter and the heavyweight champion of the world, that is what he was: a big tough guy who beat up people who did not pay back the gangsters the high interest rates they were asking for.

Well, the world has changed. Now the people who are committing usury are not the gangsters on street corners all over America. Their place has been taken by the CEOs of Wall Street financial institutions who are lending out money to desperate Americans at 25 or 30 percent interest rates. That, my friends, is called usury, and according to every religion on Earth, that is immoral. What you are doing is going up to people who are desperate, people who are hurting, and you are saying: You desperately need money, we are going to give you money, but there is a string attached. You are going to be charged an outrageous amount of interest on that money.

So here is the irony: The people who are hurting the most pay the highest interest rates. The people who need the money the least are paying the lowest interest rates.

So the Fed lent out billions and billions of dollars to the largest financial institutions and offered it at less than 1 percent. That is American taxpayer money–large corporations, less than 1 percent.

But if you are a worker today and you are having hard times–maybe you are unemployed–you are going to pay 25 or 30 percent interest rates on your credit card, and sometimes more. You have this Payday Lending where people are paying outrageous sums of money. I think that is immoral. I think we have to stop it, and it disturbs me very much that especially at a time when we bailed out these large financial institutions they are still able to charge our people 25 or 30 percent. People who have bailed them out get hit the second time around by having to pay 25 to 30 percent interest rates.

Right now, it is not even 25 or 30 percent. As a matter of fact, the tenth largest credit card issuer in this country, an entity called Premier Bank, is now offering a credit card with a 79.9-percent interest rate and a $300 credit limit. What do we make of that? The tenth largest credit card issuer in this country is charging 79 percent interest rates, and we allow that to go on. These are crooks. These are no different than the gangsters who beat up people on street corners when they didn’t get payment back, except now the gangsters are wearing three-piece suits and sitting in some fancy suite on Wall Street.

Barack Obama doesn’t talk like this. He doesn’t want to offend the loan sharks!

There’s a petition out there calling on Bernie Sanders to run for President. It’s stuffed to the gills. There are people asking for donations right now for a Draft Bernie Sanders for President campaign.

Show your support for the Sanders agenda — for the agenda of the people who don’t have to worry what they’re going to name their next yacht.

Bernie Sanders Speaks for Me Bumper Sticker

Bernie Sanders for President bumper sticker

Bernie Sanders Bumper Stickers

Draft Bernie Sanders Christmas Tree Ornament

Draft Bernie Sanders 2012 Button

Draft Bernie Sanders for President Magnet

Go, Bernie, Go!

… then reassure the aspirational part of your soul with this mathematical truth: there is no way to go but up.

I’m Voting for “That One”: Barack Obama for President bumper sticker

Here is an Exxon-McCain 2008 bumper sticker to help spread the meme, using the style of the George W. Bush 2004 bumper sticker to help reinforce the idea that John McCain is just four more years of George W. Bush.

The following are the ten most viewed liberal bumper stickers (not including our presidential election bumper stickers, which for purposes of clarity we rank separately) on our Zazzle webshop for the week of April 22-29, 2008:

1. Bitter: Ask Me Why

2. Customizable Bumper Sticker Against Right-Wing Congressional Kooks

3. Custom Candidate for Congress Bumper Sticker (Blue and Red background)

4. Customizable Congressional Campaign Bumper Sticker (Blue Background with Red Stars)

5. Support the Peace, Say No to War

6. Mark Twain Quote: “Loyalty to the country always. Loyalty to the government when it deserves it.”

7. Ben Franklin Quote: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

8. Is the Earth Getting Hot, Or Is It Just Me?

9. Fight Global Warming: Get On Your Bike!

10. Veterans Against the War

These messages are what liberals are looking for now. These searches capture the frequency of the liberal wavelength that’s resonating outside the presidential campaigns right now. Ask yourself: do they reflect what’s happening inside the presidential campaign?