Quote of the day: Have you noticed that Senator McCranky's head is filled with cockamamie notions he considers "obvious" which aren't even true?

Is it time for intrepid reporter Roland Hedley

to venture into the terrifying terrain of
yet another would-be-presidential brain?

"I think it’s obvious that the lowest-income Americans drive the furthest and probably they spend more on gasoline because of the age of their automobiles."
--the one, the only Senator McCranky

I don't want to talk about our Senator McCranky's infamous gas-tax holiday as such. Howie's been keeping tabs on that, not to mention the more recent shocker about the collapse of that Minneapolis bridge:

The bridge in Minneapolis didn't collapse because there wasn't enough money. The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork-barrel projects.

This was so alarmingly stupid and out of touch with reality that it sent even GOP loyalist (and apparent front runner for McCranky running mate) Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty running for cover.

No, what interests me is that all of this gibberish comes from nowhere, at least nowhere connected to reality. It simply seems to be lurking in the miasma that is McCranky's mind. Older readers will recall the heroic forays of intrepid Doonesbury TV reporter Roland Hedley into the terrifying wilderness of then-President Ronald Reagan's brain.

Let's return to the gas-tax holiday follies for a moment. Over at Think Progress's Wonk Room, blogger Brad did a useful recap of the festivities, "McCain's Gas-Tax Holiday From Reality Continues":

Two weeks ago, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) proposed a summer-long “gas tax holiday.” Since then, he’s been faced with the challenge that such a moratorium may sound good but would be terrible policy.

When it was pointed out that the federal gas tax funds critical transportation infrastructure and jobs, a spokesman said McCain would pay the $11 billion tab from the “general revenue.”

When it was pointed out that cutting the federal gas tax would minimally affect the price at the pump, McCain then said his proposal was just “a little psychological boost.”

When it was pointed out today by MSNBC anchor Mika Brzezinski that the tax cut is an expensive and environmentally unsound policy that would do nothing to help American drivers, McCain finally erupted:

Mika, you know what? All it is is it’s not the end of Western civilization as we know it according to some, quote, economists and some around America. It’s just to give Americans a little relief.

He then exposed how out of touch he is with the realities of America by saying:

I think it’s obvious that the lowest-income Americans drive the furthest and probably they spend more on gasoline because of the age of their automobiles.

In fact, lowest-income Americans drive the least, and most of the benefits of the gas-tax holiday would go to high-income Americans.

No amount of bluster can disguise that this proposal--just as it was when Sen. Bob Dole proposed a similar gas tax holiday as the Republican presidential nominee in 1996--is a violation of the responsible economic principles Sen. McCain has formerly espoused.

The first point of interest is McCranky's incoherent argumentation--and then how this bit of prodding by interviewer Brzezinski produced an eruption of Mt. McCranky. And the form the eruption took was a belittling of his own cockamamie proposal. Just the other day I was hypothesizing a hypothetical McCranky who fobbed off his ridiculous health-care "plan" as the result of a "thought" process that might have gone: "Everybody says I gotta have a health-care plan but I don't wanna have no health-care plan and nobody can make me have a health-care plan. Luckily American voters are really, really stupid, so I'll just sling 'em a line of bullshit."

One of Brad's links will take you to this chart:

It's well established that, as he points out, lowest-income Americans drive the least, and most of the benefits of the gas-tax holiday would go to high-income Americans. And this is the point I wanted to get to. Listen to the Crankyman again:

"I think it’s obvious that the lowest-income Americans drive the furthest and probably they spend more on gasoline because of the age of their automobiles."

Well, senator, not only isn't it obvious, it's wrong. And this for me is the heart of the matter. It would be no big deal if it was an isolated slip. But I think this is really a clue to the Miasma of McCranky's Mind: It's filled with stuff like this--stuff that the Crankyman thinks is obvious which in fact is sheer nonsense.

Of course we've had a president for near on to eight years with pretty much the same mental facilities. He, though, was fortunate and weak-willed enough to have handlers who somehow managed to conceal this grim reality from an awful lot of the American people. I guess what it comes down to is the remarkable ability of people to see what they want.

Let's just hope they see, in time, what our friend Cliff Schecter so aptly calls The Real McCain. (This isn't actually a book plug, but if you do want to check out Cliff's book of the same name, here is the Amazon link.)