Posted on 07/31/2008 5:49:13 PM PDT by pissant
Barack Obama is a lot like Sean Penn or George Clooney. If you give him a script, he can deliver it pretty well. But if he tries to talk without a script that has been written for him by others, he quickly reveals that he is poorly-informed if not downright ignorant. Today he delivered another classic, by claiming that if only we would all properly inflate our tires, we could save as much gasoline as "all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling." Seriously:
(see video at link)
The stunned silence with which the crowd greets this howler suggests that most Americans have a more practical understanding of energy consumption than Obama.
Just for fun, I did the math. Properly inflating your tires can improve gas mileage by 3%. Of course, many people already keep their tires properly inflated, and many more are at least close to being properly inflated. Let's be generous and assume that one-half of the total possible savings would be realized if we all inflated our tires properly; that's a net gain of 1.5% fuel efficiency.
Americans drive approximately 2,880 billion miles per year. If we average 24 mpg, we use around 120 billion gallons of gasoline in our vehicles. If, through perfect tire inflation, we improved our collective fuel efficiency by 1.5%, that would be 1.8 billion gallons. A barrel of oil produces around 20 gallons of gasoline, so the total savings available through tire inflation is approximately 90,000,000 barrels of oil annually.
How does this stack up against "all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling?"
ANWR: 10 billion barrels Outer Continental Shelf: 18 billion barrels (estimated; the actual total is undoubtedly much higher, since exploration has been banned) Oil shale: 1 trillion barrels
So, on the above assumptions, it would take only 11,308 years of proper tire inflation to equal "all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling."
Obama is a curious case. He gives the impression of being an intelligent guy, but through his unscripted comments we have learned that he knows little about history, science or mathematics. He also seems rather shockingly short on common sense, as this most recent gaffe illustrates.
Off script, he’s a moron. Remember is sincere statement that 12,000 people had been killed by a tornado?
He’s clueless, the “Being There” candidate.
the magic negro is a maroon .... excuse me messiah magic negroe.... Says a lot about his supporters. We will all be changed .. cause change is good.
“alls(sic) we can say is merci beaucoup...”
“the bomb they dropped on Pearl Harbor...”
“57 states...”
Headline I’m waiting for:
Obama says, “Inflate tires!” - Price of oil drops $25 a barrel.
He might be able to read a teleprompter out loud with a speaking voice that people find attractive, and he may have been book smart while in school, but he just doesn't seem like the sharpest knife in the drawer, or the brightest bulb in the candelabra, or ...
I'm tired of conservative pundits saying "Obama is intelligent but...". How many gaffe's do you get before people decide you're a moron? He's not intelligent. He's ignorant, and he's stupid.
We are told that more people would want to have a beer with Obama at their backyard barbecue than with McCain.
I wonder who they’d rather have as a next door neighbor.
“THAT Flanders....”
Talk about arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. The bottom line is this: as long as we are dependent on foreign sources of oil, it doesn't matter how much we conserve. As long as our oil comes from outside sources, all our sources have to do is turn down the spigot if we start using less.
Drill here. Drill now. Period. End of story.
hussein obama is a liar of the worst kind, a panderer. Case closed.
That’s an insult to Chauncey Gardners everywhere.
Obama will promise other nations whatever they want so that they don’t look down their noses at us and think about shutting off our oil.
So you’d better get used to turning off the AC, eating less, and no longer having the best health care available in the world.
Obama is being run for president, he’s not running for president. There is a difference. He has handlers.
” He’s not arrogant, he’s stupid.”
Or as my cousin in Montana says, all hat, no cattle.........
Let’s put it this way: if Tiger Woods were to golf as Obama is to politics, he wouldn’t qualify as a caddy.
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