Randi Rhodes: Pump Politics

You can tell how good the unemployment numbers are starting to look by the fact that the only numbers Fox News wants to talk about are gas prices. When Bush was president, Fox News blamed high gas prices on everything except Bush. The only surprising thing is that Fox News even mentioned high gas prices when Bush was president. Back around 2008, high gas prices were this uncontrollable thing that a heroic president was doing his best to contain. In 2012 high gas prices are part of an evil president’s plan to turn us all into Volt-driving pinkos. Now that Barack Obama is president, Fox News thinks that there’s a button the president can push to control gas prices—and Obama just refuses to push the button.

Greg Gutfeld on Fox News says that “feminists should be outraged” over high gas prices because they limit women’s access to birth control. High gas prices aren’t the problem—the problem is that some women have to drive hundreds of miles to get to a women’s health clinic. Gas prices do become a problem—when rightwing nutcases in state government shut down most of the women’s clinics in a state… and gut the funding for public transportation on top of it. This isn’t a case of gas prices limiting women’s access to birth control—the thing that limits women’s access to birth control is a perfect storm of intentional Republican policies.

Mitt Romney just can’t seem to wash away the story of him putting his poor dog on the roof of his car. Look on the bright side, Mitt—at least it’s a break from all these stories about how ridiculously rich you are. It would have been worse if the story also reinforced the “rich guy” theme, like if the car had been one of Ann’s Cadillacs.

A senior Santorum campaign strategist mentioned the dog story on CNN. They should be careful—Rick Santorum has at least one rather embarrassing dog quote of his own. Rick compared gay marriage to “man on dog sex.” It’s a toss-up whether “Man on dog” is more disturbing than “dog on roof.” Word to Mitt—if a guy like Rick Santorum has any leeway at all to call you weird, then your campaign has some serious problems.

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