Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ~Oscar Wilde
In a recent Foreign Policy article a few of Sen. McCain’s worst ideas were laid out. Ten in fact. It is here that I found my latest post.
We start with the gas tax holiday, which I’ve always been against:
“I propose that the federal government suspend all taxes on gasoline now paid by the American people—from Memorial Day to Labor Day of this year. The effect will be an immediate economic stimulus—taking a few dollars off the price of a tank of gas every time a family, a farmer, or trucker stops to fill up.” This was in a speech in April.
The problem I saw with this was always that at the end of the holiday prices would jump and that would cause a big time drawback. Foreign Policy adds to my thoughts by pointing out that dropping the 18.4 cent tax would hurt the Highway Trust Fund. That is frightening because I only just saw an article the other day which said that the fund is near bust as it is.
We’ll move on though. Next: “Drill Baby Drill” or “Drill right here, right now.”
“Gas prices are through the roof. Energy costs have seeped into our grocery bills, making it more expensive to feed our families. … It is time for America to get serious about energy independence, and that means we need to start drilling offshore.” This statement and the “right here” quote came less than a month ago, while the infamous “Drill Baby Drill” from a surrogate a week or two ago.
Of course the whole time the Base has been chanting this the “angry left” has been pointing at the government studies that say “production of the new supplies would not even begin until 2017 and would have little effect on what Americans pay at the pump anyway—just a few cents a gallon by 2030 under the best-case scenario.” Even better is the Thomas Friedman quote where he says, “When I hear McCain pounding the table for ‘drill, drill, drill,’ it reminds me of someone pounding the table for IBM Selectric typewriters on the eve of the IT revolution.” I don’t know what people think would happen if we opened drilling. It’s not Jed Clampett out there. This is a tough job.
This one infuriates me: “The McCain administration would reserve all savings from victory in the Iraq and Afghanistan operations in the fight against Islamic extremists for reducing the deficit.” What the hell does that even mean? We have been borrowing to pay for the damn wars in the first place. How can we “profit” from victory? Besides which the article in FP points out that McCain isn’t even willing to say what “victory” would be. I don’t think winning a war is a sensible deficit reduction plan.
I don’t know much about this next one but I sure had a good laugh over the answer. McCain on contraceptives: “Asked on the campaign trail if he thought grants for sex education should include instruction on contraception, McCain turned to an aide for help, saying, ‘Brian, would you find out what my position is on contraception—I’m sure I’m opposed to government spending on it, I’m sure I support the president’s policies on it.’ The reporter asked, ‘Do you think contraceptives help stop the spread of HIV?’ After a long pause, McCain replied, ‘You’ve stumped me.’” To be fair that quote came back in ‘07 before Davis and McCain had raised the iron curtain. I don’t blame the man because there are a metric ton of issues but it is comical none the less.
Here’s another that makes me angry, “If I am elected president, I will set this nation on a course to building 45 new reactors by the year 2030, with the ultimate goal of 100 new plants to power the homes and factories and cities of America.”
The article points out that by the time we build these 45 plants they may be obsolete -not to mention vastly more expensive- but I have another point to add. I’ve read articles about this subject and one of the major problems is that fissile material is not exactly cheap and available. With China going nuclear it is at an even higher premium then it was ten or even five years ago. Beyond that there is the environmental impact from the coal plants it would take to run the nuclear plants. That’s right, the process of enrichment is so energy heavy that some of the largest polluters in America are actually providing energy for nuclear enrichment plants.
There are others on the list but these were the ones that tripped my trigger.
~Forth
P.S. Tropic Thunder was better than Pineapple Expres, and Tom Cruise was spectacular.
4 responses so far ↓
TheBeardedMan // 10 September 2008 at 9:13 am |
I am loving the kick that Jon Stewart is on lately where he is comparing the recent promises and plans of our beloved candidates (mostly McCain, but some Obama) and how they compare to their ideas of a year ago. The most notable example is how both candidates were openly against drilling at home and have now adopted this as their plan of action.
He also held members of the media up who are calling for the press to back off of Palin because she is a woman. Nevermind these were the same people who claimed that Hilary was not fit to lead because she would run and hide from “the big boys” when things got thick.
It is sad that I rely on The Daily Show and BBC for my news coverage of American politics.
Back // 10 September 2008 at 11:40 am |
I would blame McCain, as well as any other breathing human for not realizing that contraceptives, or condoms anyway, significantly reduce the amount of diseased sex juices from causing death.
In other news, I love Oscar Wilde.
Dani // 10 September 2008 at 12:51 pm |
Senator Obama while serving in the IL State Senate supported a gas tax holiday, but he doesn’t now when Americans across the country are hurting. As someone who works on energy policy EVERY single day, I know a little something about this subject. The Democrats have not proposed a single energy bill in this congress alone. Speaker Nancy Pelosi hasn’t brought the energy issue to a vote, but instead went on summer vacay. She tells people that they should stop driving their SUV’s yet (and I know this for a fact since Speaker Pelosi lives across from my place of business) Speaker Pelosi hops into an SUV followed by another SUV on her way to the US Capitol. Now as someone who has work on advance teams and all, I know for a fact that Speaker Pelosi doesn’t needs to roll around in and SUV, she could simply go to work in a regulars Capitol Police crusier. Majority Leader Harry Reid took an SUV 2 BLOCKS from the Capitol Building to his office in Hart Senate Office Building. Waste of gas, YES, but yet it’s ok for them.
Opening ANWR and becoming more energy independent will help this country. My home state Colorado has one of the largest supplies of Oil Shale in the Western United States. If mined, Colorado and the rest of the U.S. would become the Saudi Arabia of oil shale. However, Governor Ritter and Senator Ken Salazar are trying to stop all efforts of this. I guess they don’t see the economic benefits of and how much money it would bring to the state.
I support alternatives, however it will cost more right now to invest in alternatives than it would to start drilling on the OCS or the GOM. Cuba has granted drilling rights to China (ah Communism) to start offshore drilling in 2009. China is already on the Western Slope of Colorado mining for Oil Shale. We should use our resources here, move away from Iran (Obama wants to meet with them without pre-conditions) Saudi Arabia etc. and use what we have there while we are still developing alternatives such as coal, natural gas, wind, solar, tidal. These things take time, but if we do it now, we will be better off in the long run.
Many Congress should actually listen to the voters that put them there and start opening uup the OCS and mining for oil shale, than maybe their approval rating wouldn’t be sitting at a historic low of 9% (lower than President Bushs BTW)
TheBeardedMan // 11 September 2008 at 10:32 am |
I agree with your last statement. Our govt. needs to start acting like they work for the voters and not for the deepest pocket.
However, I think that we have passed the point where drilling at home will have any significant benefit. This is the problem with listening to American voters. They want what is cheap and easy. If drilling at home means that they can keep their SUV and not have to worry about alternative fuels then they will support it and any politician that can sell it.
Too often I hear people complain about taxes and in the same breath complain about the shape of our schools, roads etc. I say increase my taxes if you must, but stop spending it on crap like missiles that can target all of the people in a city that are wearing blue today, or on determining if a woodchuck could really chuck wood if he wanted to. Instead, lets take that 2 billion that they spend on one plane that will fly 16 missions and then be sold to some eastern Euro county for scrap and invest it in job programs, food shelters, park systems, teachers salaries, clean energy and foreign aid to the people we bombed in the first place.
-Please don’t think that I am an anti war nutbag who thinks that we should never be involved in any conflicts. I simply think that we need to start sharing the burden with other countries and work a little harder to be the worlds friend instead of the worlds watchdog/bully.
It’s time that we started to take care of our own country and THEN take care of others, and frankly I am not convinced that either candidate will make that move.