On the heels of McCain's admission yesterday that his support of President Bush's proposal to open up the US coastline to offshore drilling would have ZERO short term effect on gas prices and would only give Americans a "psychological benefit" (read: voters think it sounds nice), here's another doozy.

Today, McCain pledged that America would have "strategic independence" from foreign oil by 2025.

Doesn't that sound nice?  Do you have any idea what that means?  Neither do I.

[Cross-posted on my blog.]

McCain's mysterious new phrase sounds an awful lot like McCain a couple months ago:

My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will -- that will then prevent us -- that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East.

If "strategic independence by 2025" is the same as "eliminat[ing] our dependence on foreign oil", here's the big problem with that (via the Carpetbagger Report):

[T]here isn't an energy expert in the world -- not one -- who thinks we can "eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East." It's a child's fantasy, but McCain spouts this stuff as if solving our problems really were just that easy. It reminds me of his solution to the fighting in Iraq: "One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, `Stop the bullshit.'"

McCain, you are tiring me out this week.  Can you come up with any energy proposal isn't a lie, distortion or an ineffectual pander?

As everyone expected, Barack Obama has asked his top fundraisers to help retire at least part of Senator Clinton's campaign debt.

Democrat Barack Obama on Tuesday asked his finance team to help Hillary Rodham Clinton pay off a debt of at least $10 million from her failed presidential campaign, setting the stage for joint appearances by the two former rivals later in the week.

Obama's green light to his money bundlers came two days before he and Clinton were scheduled to meet in Washington with some of her top fundraisers in a show of unity after their bruising contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. On Friday, the two planned to campaign together in New Hampshire.

I knew this was going to happen sooner or later.  Good for Obama.  

Can this be the last impediment to unity?  On to Unity, NH! :)

[Cross-posted on my blog.]

I was digging through the new Bloomberg/LA Times poll today and had an interesting thought based on the following observation in the story:

On a four-man ballot including independent candidate Ralph Nader and Libertarian Bob Barr, voters chose Obama over McCain ... 48% to 33%.

Nader ... and Barr ... both appear to siphon more votes from McCain than they do from Obama. When Nader and Barr are added to the ballot, they draw most of their support from voters who said they would otherwise vote for the Republican.

Now, factor this in to the following with respect to the head-to-head match-up between McCain and Obama:

The great majority of Clinton voters have transferred their allegiance to Obama, the poll found. Only 11% of Clinton voters have defected to McCain.

Based on these numbers, I wonder if the addition of Nader to the mix is siphoning off a large chunk of the 11% of angry Clinton voters that might otherwise choose to support McCain as a second choice in a protest vote resulting from Clinton not getting the nomination.

After all, you'd hope that those 11% would be rational enough to realize that McCain would be disastrous for most of the policy positions that Hillary Clinton supports and that Nader would be much closer to Clinton that McCain would be (at least on most issues).

Could it be possible that in this kind of calculus, Nader could actually be worse for McCain than for Obama?

Hmm...

Funny how the world changes but the feckless Republican leadership stays the same...

When Reagan went to Moscow in the 80s to discuss arms reductions with Mikhail Gorbachev (which ultimately paved the way for the dissolution of the USSR), the Conservative Caucus (with cheerleader Newt Gingrich) called Reagan an appeaser and likened his summit to Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of the Nazis in the 1930s.

Sounds just like recent events, doesn't it, with Bush, McCain and the conservatives calling Obama an appeaser for pledging to meet with hostile leaders?

[Cross-posted on my blog]

This is really beyond the pale. Over the last few months we kept hearing statements like the following from Bush and McCain opposing the recently passed bipartisan enhancements to the GI Bill:

McCain: "I want to make sure that we have incentives for people to remain in the military as well as for people to join the military."

Bush administration: "The last thing we want to do is provide a benefit -- or the last thing we want to do is create a situation in which we are losing our men and women who we have worked so hard to train."

We're all too familiar with Bush's strategy of opposing popular legislation only to do a 180 when it passes and claim credit for it (think of the creation of the 9/11 commission). Now McCain shows himself to be just as craven as Bush:

McCain: That has always been my primary concern with respect to the Webb bill. ... With the addition of the transferability provisions sought by Senators Graham, Burr, myself and others to give service members the right to transfer earned G.I. Bill benefits to spouses and children, we will have achieved in offering vastly improved educational benefit.

Bush: Throughout the past five months, President Bush and members of his Administration have worked hard to ensure that an expansion of GI benefits includes transferability. ... The President is pleased that Congress answered his call.

As noted on Think Progress:

Bush and Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) -- the two most vocal opponents of Webb's bill -- are trying to take credit for it. They are claiming that they always supported the generous benefits -- their main concern was just ensuring the benefits' transferability.

 

We need to call them out on the BS that this really is.

[Cross-posted on my blog.] Update: Please digg this story here.

Obama pledged Sunday to close the so-called Enron Loophole.  As a bit of background, the Enron Loophole is a provision that was slipped into the Commodities Futures  Modernization Act that exempted energy trading on electronic  platforms from regulation and oversight.

Guess who slipped the loophole into the law?  That's right, McCain's chief economic advisor Phil Gramm, who was at the time a powerful Texas  senator.

Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday that "as president he would strengthen government oversight of energy traders he blames in large part for the skyrocketing price of oil." Obama "singled out the so-called 'Enron loophole' for allowing speculators to run up the cost of fuel by operating outside federal regulation."

The Obama campaign "blamed the loophole on former Sen. Phil Gramm," who serves as Sen. John McCain's campaign "co-chairman and economic adviser."

 

 

I am proud of Obama for standing up against McCain's latest ineffectual pander.

Just like McCain's absurd "gas tax holiday" proposal (which all economists agree would save Americans either nothing or $28 on average), McCain's recent proposal to open up America's coastal waters to offshore oil drilling operations (which is, to boot, a 180-degree flip-flop from his earlier position) is a shameless, useless sop to voters that assumes that Americans are too stupid or ill-informed to realize what crap it is (according to recent polls, Americans may indeed be just that stupid ill-informed).

Here is Obama on the latest McCain silliness:

Believe me -- if I thought that there was any evidence at all that drilling could save people money who are struggling to fill up their tanks by this summer or this year or even the next few years, I would consider it. But it won't. And John McCain knows that.

I knew this was coming.  

With all the anger, accusations and hand-wringing during the primary contest over the DNC's stupid decision to strip Michigan of 100% of its delegates (they should have just gone with a flat 50% cut), the GOP was bound to come out with an ad like this and highlight the Democratic vitriol (and false claims and assertions) that swarmed around the Michigan nomination.

I post the ad to highlight that all actions have consequences.  We all should have handled the Michigan issue more civilly and with greater attention to the facts and fairness.

Although this ad is pretty misleading, I'm sure a not-inconsequential number of low-info voters are going to respond positively to this.