Yes John and Hillary, we are that dumb (and prediction time!)

Ok, let’s say you have this friend, we’ll call him Fred. And, let’s say that Fred is a super nice guy who just happens to be addicted to heroin. Now, Fred knows he’s addicted to heroin and he really is trying to stop but at the moment, well, Fred’s feeling a little itchy because his dealer got picked up for shoplifting lollipops at Target and he hasn’t had a fix in a couple of days.

So what kind of advice do you think we should give Fred. Should we:

a.) Tell Fred to go to stick out the withdrawls, go to rehab and for God’s sake brush his teeth?

b.) Tell Fred to sell his grandmother’s china to get one more fix from the new dealer down the street who Fred’s never met but doesn’t quite think is a cop but possibly could be a cop since he drives and unmarked lincoln and has a buzz cut and a mustache?

Well, this is pretty much what this whole gas tax vacation is about. In this case, unfortunately, we are Fred and John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are our friends. Now, John and Hillary really really want us to like them so they are probably our co-dependent stripper girlfriends in this scenario. And, because John and Hillary want us to like them so much, they are going ahead with the grandmother’s china idea.

Barack Obama is our nice guy friend who has his own life together but, for some reason, still puts up with our shit even though we stole his grandmother’s tv and sold it for, you guessed it, heroin. He’s telling us to go to rehab.

Anyway, the gas tax vacation idea is a bad idea because it is an extremely temporary solution to an extremely long-term and complex problem. Not only will it take revenue away from the government in the form of $9 billion but it’s not really going to save you any money.  You can read a nice little experiment on what it would take save a $100 on gas here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/05/05/one-mans-quest-to-save-10_n_100218.html. But I will save you the time reading and just say that if you want to save $100 in gas money, be prepared to drive 979 miles per day all summer. Enjoy!

So what’s it gonna be Fred? Do we listen to the stripper girlfriend who’s standing there eating peanut butter out of the jar and wearing one of our shirts or do we listen to our buddy who’s grandma hasn’t been able to watch Murder She Wrote in three weeks? 

I guess we’ll find out today in Indiana and North Carolina.

Finally I am going to do a little something different since trying to be right all the time gets boring. I am going to go out on a limb and predict what I would like to see happen rather than what the conventional wisdom (read: polls) say is going to happen:

Obama wins both. It’s over.

The only rationale I can supply for this is a huge black and early voting turnout in Indiana and North Carolina. And the “state next to the state” effect that Illinois will have on Indiana.