IMHO In My Humble Opinion

McCain recently aired an ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton, saying basically that he's a big celebrity, but "is he ready to lead?" I'm not entirely sure that's a great slogan for McCain, because every time I hear it, I think about what a horrible leader McCain would make.

Paris Hilton has a different view:

I honestly tried to avoid Paris Hilton before, but this was a good one.

Although I also wonder if she's misrepresenting Obama's energy policy. As far as I understand it, he's against off-shore drilling in places that are currently environmentally protected. The energy policy that the Democratic leadership is pushing (so, at least Nancy Pelosi's energy policy) is that there is plenty of off-shore drilling is okay: there are many places where drilling has already been approved that the oil companies aren't exploring. I don't know that Obama has signed on to this, but it strikes me as unlikely.

McCain and the rest of the Republicans, however, seem to think that opening up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for drilling will somehow reduce current prices substantially even though the oil won't be available for 10 years. Now, there's some economic sense to the idea that current prices are dependent on oil futures, but most of what I've been seeing suggests that the volumes of oil coming out of the ANWR would reduce prices by at most 10 cents a gallon (probably significantly less.)

So those signs I'm seeing saying $4.50 a gallon will go down to $4.40? I can get 2% of off gas just by switching to the right credit card! But there are other things one can do to save, on average, even more than this right now: inflate your tires properly (average savings at current gas prices: 12 cents a gallon). And this method has the advantage of working right now, while actually reducing the amount of petrochemicals consumed, which means that the oil we're consuming will last longer.