How anyone could possibly vote for a guy whose best before date has long since past and whose main claim to fame was to be not a good enough pilot to avoid getting shot down and captured is beyond me. America's gasoline with the exception of oil producing countries is still probably the cheapest in the world. I wonder how much impact the conquest of Iraq has on the price of oil. The military apparatus doesn't run on air. It runs on petroleum products. Strange that no one has seen fit to explore the issue. Perhaps the savings possible can be used as a valid reason to quit Iraq?

John Pull-My-Thumb McCain needs to explain to the American people how the federal government makes up this shrinking revenue stream while we pay for troop for another 100 years in Iraq - and then be sent for further observation for trying to make "short sellers" out of the rest of us who demand responsible government.

Talk about a gimmick! And what happens when the greedy oil companies rush in and jack up the prices to soak up the difference? What? He didn't think of that? Oh, my!

Jay Hanson pointed out years ago that when our fossil-fuel crisis really hits, our government will revert to a completely ad hoc approach to governance. and part of that ad hoc approach will be to point the finger of blame everywhere but where it belongs: at the guy/gal in the mirror.

Remember plausible deniability? That's what we'll have, on a national scale. With the Federal Government simply lying. Saying "who would have thought this would happen?"

That's the plan. To the extent there is one. Loot the national treasury for me and my friends, and when the bill comes due, blame someone else for it, and then make all the rest of America pay.

it has been ever thus, and the fact that millions upon millions of adults-of-voting-age continue to fall for this ancient bullshit again and again and again, simply proves the truth of Ben Franklin's dictat: "it's a Republic, if you can keep it."

I think it's clear now: we can't keep it. We're too short-sighted. Too adolescent. And, most of all, too lazy and ignorant to keep it. We will be like sheep to Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor: "feed us and we'll be your slaves."

Why anyone would think we could actually do it differently this time seems utterly mysterious to me. Not to mention bottomlessly naive.

Actually the Republican Congress wanted to give consumers a $500 tax credit ahead of the midterm elections. What really frosts me is the McCain suggestion that the government should manipulate gasoline prices ahead of the election, (like who gets credit for that?) The Bush team did an end run in the 2004 midterms, including jiggering the GSCommodity Index, and juggling SPR inventories. Truth being it only infuriated the electorate to a greater degree, not that the Democrats have a clue. Cheap gas or free gas, come on John, don't hold back.

Over at TPMCafe, Jared Bernstein points out that if you cut the gas tax, what's to prevent the oil companies from raising the cost of their product?

I have to agree, the gas companies already see that we can still afford this price, there hasn't been huge reductions in driving (yet), if you reduce the tax, the gas price can go back to where it is now and people will still buy it.

Just like that, your highway $$$ transferred directly to the oil companies... Then when it's time for the tax to resume, their will be a huge outcry.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/04/15/more_reasons_to_worry_about_mc/

That's McCain's title. Hands down.

We are witnessing the commencement of what Richard C. Duncan calls the "slide", the first segment of the time after reaching the peak of oil extraction as demand continues to climb. Available data seem to indicate that to be that the peak occurred in within the past four years. George W. Bush went begging to Saudi Arabia a few months ago for them to open up their magic oil spigots, but..guess what?...came home empty-handed because the spigots are already wide open!

The whole scenario of what will happen over the coming decades has been widely known in the petroleum industry since M. King Hubbert first announced in 1955 that oil resources were limited and extraction would peak around the millennium. My father, a man who made his career in the oil refining industry, discussed this around the family dinner table in the 1960's. Any politician who has not anticipated the problem of petroleum shortages has been living with blinders on or is being deeply dishonest with his constituents. In either case, we need to find leaders who have grasped the enormity of the problem and will take the necessary emergency action to produce a long term solution of sustainability.

The "slope" of oil production, with its unprecedented economic catastrophe and attendant social chaos is just a few years, not decades away.

Let's stop supporting band-aide solutions to what will amount to economic suicide by starvation. Stop voting for politicians who distract us from serious real problems with the phony "War on Terror".

McCain is terrible. He is totally clueless. He knows nothing, he cares about nothing. The price of gas has little to nothing to do with the tax levied on it. Shouldn't he know that lowering prices will just drive up demand, almost certainly returning prices to what they were with the tax? All it does is transfer that money from the federal government (which it uses to build roads) to private gigantic oil companies. Which might be the whole point.

I think most Americans are sick of welfare for rich people. I know I am.

Obviously, McCain's an idiot for making this proposal and trying to guarantee that the US will be in debt until eternity. But it occurs to me that maybe he, along with his right-wing cronies, really DOESN'T CARE. Try this on for size: the Republicans have become the party of the most obnoxious Christian believers, who spend their time screaming about morals and Judgment Day cometh. Has it occurred to anyone else that the reason these Repubs are so indifferent to what we're doing is that they really believe the Apocalypse and that Left Behind junk is going to come before we're called to pay the price?