Discussion of the cap and trade bill continues after the jump.

The Daily Show airs Monday through Thursday at 11pm / 10c.

He wants us to believe that?! Hey, Pickens! Come back when you're the 115th-richest person in America. Then maybe we'll talk…

Somewhere toward the end of the video, he hints that, to bring his genius plan to fruition in ten short years, we'll need the right president. But he doesn't say who he thinks that right president is. And, his website isn't much more message…

On January 20th, 2009, a new President will take office. We're organizing behind the Pickens Plan now to ensure our voices will be heard by the next administration. Together we can raise a call for change and set a new course for America's energy future in the first hundred days of the new presidency — breaking the hammerlock of foreign oil and building a new domestic energy future for America with a focus on sustainability.

Something somewhere in the back of my head tells me his choice isn't gonna be the Democrat.

Alternative titles for The Daily Show's coverage of Obama saying he wished he "could wave a magic wand to solve the problem of rising gas prices," a sentiment almost verbatim to one Bush expressed a month earlier:

* Half-Black Magic

* Magical Realism

* The Illusionists

* Hoodoo the Right Thing

* Barrel Fever

* Fossil Fools

* The Year of Magical Talking

* Abracadumbass

* The Rift of the Magi

* Pass the Baton

* Gas Hex

Of course, it's entirely possible some tofu-eating tree-hugger will throw a vegan pie at the GOP candidate, because last week McCain announced his support for offshore oil drilling at states' discretion. That's part of an even more important effort to maybe bring gas prices down a little bit.

You'd think freeway-happy Californians would get behind this idea…

[McCain's] newfound support for allowing states to decide whether to drill offshore, announced last week in Texas, carries risk. Having spent much of his campaign trying to distance himself from the current President Bush and Republican orthodoxy, McCain has now changed his tune to theirs on a hugely symbolic issue that has long helped motivate the independent voters whose support he needs to claim the White House.

Diana Cuttrell of Santa Barbara is one of them, and she fiercely opposes McCain's new stance.

"It's not going to solve the problem," she said of McCain's proposal to lift the federal moratorium on sea drilling. "It's a Band-Aid, basically. It's just pretty idiotic."

Okay, Diana Cuttrell of Santa Barbara. So I guess if you ever wind up in the hospital with six broken ribs and a gaping head wound, you'll just turn down a Band-Aid when someone offers you one.

It's so weird how some people refuse to let you help them.

The presumed Republican nominee is proposing a $300 million government prize to whoever can develop an automobile battery that far surpasses existing technology.

The bounty would equate to $1 for every man, woman and child in the country, "a small price to pay for helping to break the back of our oil dependency," McCain said in remarks prepared for delivery Monday at Fresno State University in California.

McCain said such a device should deliver power at 30 percent of current costs and have "the size, capacity, cost and power to leapfrog the commercially available plug-in hybrids or electric cars.

Yeah, because that's what's been keeping us from developing viable battery technology. That's what drives scientific breakthroughs: cash prizes. Such a better idea than taking that $300 million and actually putting it into developing something worthwhile.

And why aim so low? Why not ask for technology that delivers power at 130% percent of current costs and offer a $300 trillion prize? That'll really speak to the serious scientists out there.

Speaking of which, I am totally going to win this thing with the perpetual motion machine I've been developing in my downtime on the subway.

Now the Democrats have joined the white-hot debate: Hillary Clinton supports the gas tax holiday, Barack Obama has thrown the gas tax holiday under the bus (which costs $93 to fill up), and I have an adrenaline rush from all the punditry.

Thomas L. Friedman rages…

This is not an energy policy. This is money laundering: we borrow money from China and ship it to Saudi Arabia and take a little cut for ourselves as it goes through our gas tanks. What a way to build our country.

A member of Congress seethes…

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) waded into the contentious issue of a suspension of the federal gasoline tax this morning, saying categorically that the Democratic leadership of Congress has no intention of pursuing a policy that he said "would not be positive."

Wonkette sarcasts…

While the "tax holiday" looks nice to the Average American, because it is both a vacation AND an elimination of taxes, it is completely void of any economic sense.

Paul Krugman fumes…

It's Econ 101 tax incidence theory: if the supply of a good is more or less unresponsive to the price, the price to consumers will always rise until the quantity demanded falls to match the quantity supplied.

What? There's no graph with this. Can you clarify, Mr. Krugman?

Just to be clear: I don't regard this as a major issue. It's a one-time thing, not a matter of principle, especially because everyone knows the gas-tax holiday isn't actually going to happen.

Great. I was just getting a nice, angry lather worked up. Way to spoil everyone's fun, Krugman. No wonder they call it the dismal science.

What on earth am I supposed to be righteously pissed off about now?

[McCain] called for a hiatus in the 18.4 cent-a-gallon federal gas tax from Memorial Day until Labor Day — the period when vacationing Americans spend the most time on the road.

"The effect will be an immediate economic stimulus — taking a few dollars off the price of a tank of gas every time a family, a farmer, or trucker stops to fill up," said McCain.

Wow! Think of the severals of dollars we could each save next summer. Surely that'll let homeowners dig their way out of foreclosure. McCain is a genius.

"It's a quick fix for people who believe cheap gas is their birthright," said Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service, a research firm. "It's not a prudent thing to do."

Hey, oil analyst Tom Kloza, cheap gas is my birthright. That's because I'm an American. Born on American soil, baptised in premium unleaded that cost my parents $1.49 a gallon.

Kloza said the amount of money motorists would save would do little to stimulate economic growth, and said the revenue from the gas tax is much needed for road repairs.

There's an old saying where I come from (America!): if you can't handle the potholes, stay home.

He also said reducing demand is one of the best ways of lowering gas prices, and suspending the gas tax may encourage motorists to drive more — a move that would certainly benefit the oil companies.

"Look, somewhere down the road you have to use less," said Kloza. "As painful as it might be, higher prices do sway behavior toward a more energy disciplined America."

This is the most moronic thing I've ever heard. Stupid oil-hating, bathwater-recycling, granola-hugging naysayers. Besides, how are we supposed to get down the road in the first place if we aren't driving? Huh?

Barack Obama blamed the Iraq war for higher oil prices and skyrocketing debt Thursday as he sought to tie the unpopular war to the slumping economy in working-class West Virginia.

"When you're spending over $50 to fill up your car because the price of oil is four times what it was before Iraq, you're paying a price for this war," Obama said. "When Iraq is costing each household about $100 a month, you're paying a price for this war."

And that's not even counting the cost of a decent funeral these days. Used to be you could bury your son for under a grand. Man, those were the days.

Nuclear energy and coal are bad for the environment and national security.

Some sort of magic pixie dust would would be good.