President Bush after he was beat up by a pretzel
-What's wrong with the media-
In a week that saw John McCain bring out a perfectly awful health insurance plan, McCain and Clinton trying to out-pander each other with a gas tax holiday, and the defection of a high profile superdelegate from Clinton to Obama, what was the first story I woke up to on CNN this morning?
Someone posted a video on YouTube of Hillary Clinton failing to get a self-serve cappuccino machine to work.
Thank you CNN. Thank you for not covering actual policy differences between the candidates. We just voters. We too stupid to understand big words.
Ha ha! Look at silly Senate lady not get coffee thingy to work. She not make good president. Presidents make coffee all the time. For foreign leaders and stuff. If Senate lady not make coffee for Vladimir Putin, Senate lady trigger WWIII.
On the other hand, our current president once lost a fair fight to a damned pretzel. At least Clinton didn't get a black eye out her ordeal. (YouTube)
-Headline of the day-
"McCain blames bridge collapse on earmarks -- then backs off."
It was a flop that it didn't take McCain long to flip on. In addition to blaming the Minnesota bridge collapse on pork, he also "startled reporters when he said Congress was partly to blame for the failed response to Hurricane Katrina" because of earmarks. This ridiculous crap didn't go over very well, so Baghdad John backpedalled.
"Do I know specifically whether it would have replaced that bridge in Minneapolis?" McCain said yesterday. "No, but I know that funding would have been available for higher-priority projects."
Here's the thing that no one's reporting here -- you know what pays for bridge repairs and reconstruction? A federal tax on gasoline. You know who wants to stop collecting the gas tax over the summer? John McCain.
So he's complaining about pork that had nothing to do with the bridge collapse, while arguing we should starve the program that's supposed to prevent bridge collapses. Don't you just want to pound your head against your keyboard?
Baghdad John McCain, ladies and gentleman, a man who lives about four miles south of reality. (LA Times)
-More Baghdad John-
McCain's "gas tax holiday" gimmick doesn't seem to be catching on among those with a functional brain. Michael Bloomberg says, "It's about the dumbest thing I've heard in an awful long time from an economic point of view." Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid opposes it -- meaning that it's almost certain to never come to a vote. It's pretty much dead in the water.
"You'd think that I was attacking Western civilization as we know it," John said in response to a voter's question about it. "The special interests [say], 'Oh, my God. This will destroy our transportation system in America. This will have disastrous consequences.' Look, all I think is we ought to give low-income Americans, in particular, a little relief."
Says MoJo's Jonathan Stein, "Experts and economists of all ideological types have criticized the gas tax holiday as braindead." He also points out that "special interests, specifically the oil companies, are cheering the idea." Taking the tax off gas is basically running a sale on it that doesn't reach into oil companies' pockets. Why on Earth would they be against it? It'd be guaranteed to increase consumption.
I guess, by "special interests," McCain is referring to those of us who'd rather not wind up in a river after an underfunded bridge collapses. You know, the screwy people who'd rather not put their lives at risk to save a few cents on a tank of gas. Nuts like me, who can't breath underwater.
And will it actually give low-income Americans "a little relief?"
Not so much, no. (MoJo Blog)
-Station note-
There wasn't a long post update today because I found out at the last minute that I'd be shooting a wedding this weekend. I've been running around trying to get everything set up. So all you guys get today is the roundup, while tomorrow I'll have a gig that includes beer, brats, and cake.
Sucks to be you. (My Life)
