It's Not Just Your Car...It's Your F R E E D O M"

Hillary's incomprehensible, detestable sell-out on the gas tax holiday has just about done it for me. It is so damnably, transparently, irresponsible demagoguery...

Dean Baker over on theBeat The Press blog explains as clearly as anyone could without using the words "dumb-ass" or "fuck-wit" why the Clinton/McStain "Gas Tax Holiday" is too stupid an idea to be accidental.

Does CNN Work for Clinton or Do they Just Not Know Economics?

CNN told its audience that Clinton's elimination of the gas tax for the summer would save consumers $30. This is not true. Since the supply of gas is more or less fixed, refineries are likely to be running at capacity, the price is determined by demand. This means that if the government eliminates the tax, the price will stay the same. The only difference is that the $18.4 cent a gallon will go to the oil companies rather than the government.

That is why economists call Clinton's tax cut a gift to the oil industry; unfortunately CNN missed the story.

It's bad economics. Bad economics.And dishonest politics (yeah, duh!). This is of course pure demagogic grandstanding by Hillary. Baker's is only the rational reason it is demagogic pandering. A couple more occur to me: It won't pass the House, where Mme. Pelosi is unalterably opposed (and when it's a Dim program to which she is unalterably opposed, she's adamant); It wouldn't pass either House over a certain veto. It has at least one up-side, albeit mainly for the privatizers: by removing hiway maintenance resources, it raises the incentives for States to to sell hiways ("commons") to private interests (toll roads).

Plus it's bad environmentics. It encourages the fantasy that Murkins are entitled to drive! WE are behind the wheel, motherfucker! WE are steering the fucking car. WE are deciding where, when and how fast you get there. WE OWN THE RADIO, TOO, ASSHOLE!

I still don't like both HRC or BHO, for varieties of really good reasons. Right now I like Hillary less, for this egregiously irresponsible stunt, a sign that screams she's irresponsible on the climate issue if there is the slightest political advantage to be won or held. BHO's stated willingness to negotiate Social Security was a similar moment for me. The willingness to betray their fondest constituencies is just too compelling to ignore...

Neither one of 'em, of course, can actually end the ICORP in Iraq. That's a foregone conclusion. Certain geo-political conditions which are nowhere near being met must be. Mainly for the proximity to both China and Russia, the Anglo/USer military corporatist establishment would rather have their forward bases in Iran than in Iraq.

In the end (i.e., now), I am now more and more pretty much convinced that I have been pretty much right all along, and the oligarchs are letting the Dims play out their little plebian status drama between avatars of the two traditional well-springs of the Democratic party's populist pretensions: Blacks and women. Given the monopoly they exert on what people think about the candidates, the (State) media have all but assured that those two will will mutually destruct--and that their most passionate advocates will be ineradicably scarred by the battle--in the media circus orchestrated by Rupert Murdoch; and in November, the country will coronate Johnnie McCancer: a toxic amalgam of John Wayne and Ronald Raygun. McShame: The guy your celluloid heroes would be if they'd actually served in wars and, you know, actually killed people, indiscriminately, with an all-Murkin smile on their rictus lips.