A Great Way To Save Gas!

Not safe for work.

She's One Of Us!

Because she pumps gas! Or maybe not...

...The Clinton campaign arranged for Mrs. Clinton to “commute” with a sheet-metal worker on his way to work; she rode shotgun in a white Ford pick-up truck and to stop by the gas station to fret over the cost of filling up.

No shock, but David O. Selznick could not have staged the thing better.

The Marathon gas station was effectively closed to other customers for more than an hour as 30 reporters and photographers gathered at the station to await Mrs. Clinton’s visit. A caravan of 10 vehicles – 10! – finally arrived, including a van carrying cameramen to record the drive, and a white Ford pick-up truck driven by the “commuter,” Jason Allen Wilfing, with Mrs. Clinton in the passenger seat.

And it turned out the pick-up belonged to Mr. Wilfing’s boss; they used it so they could fit a Secret Service agent and Mrs. Clinton’s traveling aide in the back seat.

Reporters speculated beforehand about whether Mrs. Clinton would pump the gas herself, but it was not to be...

...Mrs. Clinton said she had not pumped gas in a long time, given the Secret Service role in her life since 1992.

No elitist here. Oh, no. ...Ooh look, the numbers turn fast!

Surprising that she wouldn't pump her own gas after endorsements describing her as making "Rocky Balboa look like a pansy" and having "testicular fortitude." I shit you not.

Here's her reaction after the comparison to being ballsy.

Of course, it was meant as a compliment. If an opponent had said something like this, well, who knows what the campaign reaction would be or what claim of misogyny they would come up with.

But are we really surprised what comes out of the Clinton campaign anymore? A staged event, making a man drive forty-five minutes out of his normal commute to pick up Clinton at her hotel in a truck that isn't his, only to have her talk on her cell phone the entire length of the trip and then to stop for a fill up at a gas station that's been closed to other customers for security and press reasons (who knows how much money they lost during that time) and then speak to the press about how she knows the hardships of Joe Average even though she hasn't pumped gas for herself in at least the last 16 years if not more.

Yes, she is "in touch" with the average voter. There's always the full service pump, Hill.

Here's Keith's take on it.

McThuslelah's Big Gas Price Solution

Here's the skinny: John McCain is suggesting a gas "tax holiday" between Memorial Day and Labor Day - about 3 months - 13 weeks. I'll do the math for the extreme end of savings. 18.4 cents per gallon multiplied by a 15 gallon tank equals $2.76 per tankful. Assuming you fill up your tank weekly, multiply that by the 13 weeks between Memorial Day and Labor Day... that equals $35.88. For a 20 gallon tank, the total savings is $47.84. The savings for a 12 gallon tank is $28.70 or basically less than a tank of gas. Great solution, huh?

Yet McThuselah calls Barack Obama "out of touch" with what poorer, low-income people need because Obama rejects the idea of a tax holiday for two reasons: it does little to ease the strain on the pocketbooks of consumers and it would deplete the highway trust fund by $9 billion and would cost 300,000 highway construction jobs. The man who married a $100 million beer baron heiress - Mr. Campaign Finance Reform, who had been using his wife's private jet for campaigning through a loophole in the rules - thinks he's more in touch with the common folk.

Here's Obama telling the truth himself.

Obama: Half a tank of gas. That's [John McCain's] big solution...this is at the same time he is proposing hundreds of millions of dollars of more tax breaks for corporations and the wealthiest Americans...that's typical of how Washington works, there's a problem, everybody's upset about gas prices, let's find some short-term, quick fix so that we can say we did something, even though we're not really doing anything...and then we pretend like we did something. So I'm here to tell you the truth. We could suspend the gas taxes for six months, but that's not going to bring down gas prices long term...we have to go after the oil prices and look at their price gouging, we've got to go after windfall profits...and we have to stop using less oil, that means raising fuel efficiency standards on cars, and developing alternative fuels, that's the real honest answer to how we're gonna solve this problem, that's what you need from a president, someone who's gonna tell you the truth, who's gonna tell you not what you want to hear, but what you need to hear.

Who are you going to believe? John McCain or your lying eyes and shrinking wallet?

(H/T Bob Cesca)

Thanks, George.

Fear and Loathing in Pennsylvania

I haven't had much time to blog lately as my two days off were spent starting a major project at home followed by a 15 hour day at work. However, I couldn't let the day go by without acknowledging Hillary Clinton's Pennsylvania primary win yesterday.

It looks like fear mongering works and Hillary's sticking to it. Here's her latest campaign ad released the day before the votes were cast in the Keystone State and you'll understand what I mean.



Nice touch, huh? In 30 seconds, Clinton manages to squeeze in the Stock Market crash of 1929 leading to the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor, the Cuban missile crisis, the 70's gas shortage, Osama bin Laden and New Orleans drowning under Hurricane Katrina. It's like a fear monger jambalaya! Mmmm... tastes like scary!

I'll just leave you with a quote from a certain Democratic political figure from 2004:

"If one candidate's trying to scare you, and the other one's trying to get you to think; if one candidate's appealing to your fears, and the other one's appealing to your hopes; you better vote for the person who wants you to think and hope."

The politician who said that: Bill Clinton. I wonder if he remembers saying that considering he called it "one of Clinton's laws of politics."

Norquist: CAFE Standards = Death

How do these guys sleep at night? Here's what conservative activist and lobbyist Grover Norquist said regarding the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, which President Bush signed into law last December, slowly raising corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards to a paultry 35 MPG by 2020:

The government itself has calculated that around 2000 people a year are killed because of those CAFÉ standards and our cheerful government has just voted to increase them, to make cars lighter, smaller. And more people will die. I mean 2,000 people a year die because the environmentalists think that you should be in a smaller car because it offends their sensitivities that you’re using gasoline.

What the fuck? I'd like to see what "government calculations" he is using to state that ridiculous claim. Not only is he a moron, he is absolutely fucking nuts.

Fuel efficiency is killing us! Go out and buy those Hummers everyone. Use those stimulus checks to buy a tank of gas at $4.00 per gallon!

The sad part is I used to like Grover back in the day before he was a lobbyist with his fuzzy, blue head and his gravelly voice, but since he's been in Washington, he's become such an asshole.

Prius Kicks Explorer Ass

Financial Times: Americans bought more Toyota Prius hybrid gas-electric hatchbacks last year than Ford Explorer sport-utility vehicles, the top-selling SUV for more than a decade.

...While Americans' love for powerful gas guzzlers remains strong, a slowing economy and high gasoline prices are forcing buyers to lower their sights.

When are US car manufacturers going to figure out that they need more R & D and make hybrids for the US market? Looking at Chevrolet for example, they have one hybrid on the market. The fucking Tahoe! It's their second largest truck which can now average up to 21 mpg. We're supposed to get excited about that? ...woo-friggin'-hoo...

Ford comes out with a Focus averaging 35 mpg, the current CAFE standard goal for 2020 thanks to the new energy bill. Make it a hybrid averaging 50 mpg and now we're talkin'. You'd see Ford sales shoot through the roof along with Ford stock and we wouldn't have to bail them out year after year.

At least the consumer is finally starting to get it.

Terror Free Gas!

I just caught this on MSNBC. A gas station in Omaha, Nebraska is advertising itself as "terror free", claiming it is using non-Middle East oil. According to the owners of the gas station, any money used to buy gas that is manufactured using Middle Eastern oil is directly going to "Islamic Terrorism" and there are signs on the gas pumps to prove it!

This is a nice sentiment, but not very likely. The oil used is blended in pipelines, so there is no way to guarantee that it is coming solely from a location that isn't using oil from the Middle East. It is disturbing, however, that the gas pump has a lovely little logo on it, using images of the World Trad Center, the Pentagon and containing the flight numbers of the four jets that went down on 9/11.

Call me a pessimist, but it seems to me that this is a marketing ploy to tug at the patriotic heartstrings of passers by looking to fill up. Otherwise, why bother with the fancy logo?