The Low Road Express

Maureen Dowd:

Now John McCain is pea-green with envy. That’s the only explanation for why a man who prides himself on honor, a man who vowed not to take the low road in the campaign, having been mugged by W. and Rove in South Carolina in 2000, is engaging in a festival of juvenilia.

The low road. The low road seems lower if your tires are flat!

Doh! McCain Lets Air Out of Campaign Talking Point

McCain had us going there for a while, ridiculing the idea of keeping tires inflated. Of course it's common sense. Of course it's easily demonstrated that proper maintenance yields positive benefits. But he didn't think so. He thought it was some kind of liberal fantasy that reality had cooked up just to flummox conservatives.

O! how much effort his campaign put into this crazy business, that flat tires are just as good as inflated ones. Their points of course were well-taken: 1) It's only flat on one side; and, 2) It saves air for future generations.

But cruising along the road, McCain had a blowout, that is, he's blown the issue. Now he agrees with Obama. See, that wasn't so hard. Obama speaks the truth, McCain believes otherwise, then somehow, perhaps through the occasional serendipity that confusion gives, he changes his mind.

Now we can all rest easily, having believed all these years that air in tires wasn't a bad idea. We can repump them with a clear conscience and once again go on our merry way!

So what did the former maverick say?

"And could I mention that Senator Obama a couple of days ago said that we ought to all inflate our tires, and I don’t disagree with that. The American Automobile Association strongly recommends it."

Notice there's nothing about the experience we've all had for years with inflating tires and assuming it was of value. He heard it from the AAA -- it took their expertise in these matters finally to convince McCain. The word has come down, yes, that air in tires is actually a good thing. Whatever it took for him to arrive at this earthshaking knowledge, we all can rejoice!

Shouldn't CONSERVAtives want to CONSERVE?

I know labels don't necessarily mean anything. A turd by any other name would smell as rank. But I think it's true that the word "conservative" originally had a connotation of preserving, conserving, being frugal, being self-reliant (which would exclude wastefulness), and so on.

So we're having another round of the periodic Energy Crisis. And what is the solution, the only solution? Drill more! But what is left out and ridiculed? The fairly obvious, common sense idea that we CONSERVE what we have. You know, as in CONSERVative?

Time magazine looks at some of the Republicans' moronic ridicule of the idea of keeping your tires properly inflated:

But who's really out of touch? The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right.

You can improve gas mileage by 7%. And if it's only half true, that's still significant.

In your wildest dreams you never ever imagined that something as fundamentally true as the benefits of proper maintenance would become a partisan issue. It's like debating whether what goes up must come down or whether circles are different from triangles.

Silly season, indeed. Stupid season, on the part of these so-called CONSERVatives.

McCain Drives on Flat Tires

Tires. OK, Stupid, you think air in tires is a bad idea? Let all the air out of the tires on your bus and drive. You've stated the principles you want to live by, then live by them.