Rov_Scam
56m ago
Average US gasoline price in October 2006 was $2.32/gallon, or about $3.87 in today's money. Accounting for fuel economy is harder to do, but I would caution that while economy has improved as far as specific cars are concerned, the market has shifted toward less economical vehicles. In 2006, passenger cars accounted for 11 of the top 20 best-selling vehicles in the US. In 2026, they accounted for 4, and that's giving the Tesla Model Y credit for having infinite fuel economy despite being an SUV. The modal American appears to have replaced a sedan that gets 25 mpg with an SUV that gets 25 mpg. But this is all pointless because nobody is comparing gas prices now with what they were 20 years ago. Fuel economy was about the same one year ago as it is now, and gas was significantly cheaper. Hell, if you look at the 2024 election, it was over a dollar a gallon cheaper. People notice when it costs an extra $20 to fill the tank, and it's not exactly an occasional purchase.
Rov_Scam
13hr ago
It's not so much about them remembering it as it is him not having anything to run on. You said it yourself, what's he going to run on, his COVID policy?
Rov_Scam
15hr ago
He had his shot and didn't follow through. His entire schtick was that he was a fighter, and he wisely kept his distance from Trump throughout 21 and 22. But when he entered the race, he refused to go after Trump, even though Trump had no problem going after him. Maybe voters will forget how spineless he looked four years prior, but I think he lost his chance.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
Calling it an ad is a bit of a stretch, since it evidently never aired on television, or indeed anywhere other than social media posts. Anyway, this was posted on the 23, the NYT evidently had an article about it last Monday, and this is the first time I'm hearing of it, and I'm following the elections somewhat closely. My guess is that this is completely irrelevant and will have no effect on the election. Six million views sounds like a lot, until you realize that most of those views probably don't come from Michigan voters, and they're heavily concentrated among people who are following political commentators on Twitter, who presumably aren't among the category of people whose voting decisions aren't going to be changed by an ad run at the last minute.
Rov_Scam
3d ago
The guy he's interviewing is clearly an idiot. I can't find much information other than that his name is Jess, not Jeff, and he's some kind of ceramic artist from South Dakota who claims to live on a farm but apparently lives in the suburbs. Anyway, the other thing Tucker clipped from this interview is the guy claiming that the CIA paid Jackson Pollock large amounts of money to make "art" that was terrible for the express purpose of fucking with the Soviets, who wouldn't understand it. There seems to be some kind of agreement on Tucker's part that the abandonment of all the aspects of traditional painting that the Russians supposedly valued is indicative of American decadence blah blah blah, complete with pro-Russian undertones and blaming drug overdoses on bad art.
Aside from the entire premise being ridiculous, it evidences a complete lack of understanding of art history, which probably makes the opposite point that Tucker (and by extension his target audience) would intend. The Russians would not be shocked by something like Pollock, least of which because there was an entire Russian tradition of avant-garde art, the most notable proponent of which was Vasily Kandinsky. This mostly dates from the beginning of the twentieth century, but it was suppressed following the Bolshevik revolution for being "bourgeois". Abstract art did not appear suddenly in the late 40s, but developed for a half-century prior to that, longer when you consider that movements like Impressionism were considered abstract at the time relative to traditional court painting. The Soviets not only knew about this, but consciously rejected it. The emergence of an artist like Pollock would have proven the Communist point about the decadence of capitalism, but is this the point that a conservative like Carlson wants to make?
You or I could also say that, but it doesn't really get us anywhere, since neither of us are anybody. The race isn't going to be about who can recite generic party lines into a microphone. There has to be a reason why he, Ron DeSantis, should be president over someone equally as capable of holding generic opinions, and the reasons that existed in the past are no longer relevant.
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