His Special Purpose
Is checking your tires.
To make sure they're properly inflated.
So we can reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
Or something.
"The Lord loves a working man, don't trust whitey, see a doctor and get rid of it. Bye Grandma!"
Labels: photochops, politics
posted by scalpel at 4:52 AM
27 Comments:
*snort*
Did you even listen to his whole speech that outlines his comprehensive plan? No, you probably just get your news from the abortions of journalism such as O'Reilly, and Hannity. Do your research before you start making fun. Also, whilst Hannity was making fun of this very point a car commercial came on stressing the importance of properly inflated tires. One of his sponsors. Hypocritical, much?
This post has been removed by the author.
Well, at least he's not that old white hair dude. Go get him, Paris. Sorry. I thought the video was kind of cute. Brainless, but cute.
MJ
A small niblet of a whole speech scalpel. Kind of reminds me of O'Reilly's "journalism" (and I am using the term losely). Just think where this country would be with energy independence if that laughingstock of the right's energy policies, Jimmy Carter had stayed in place. Instead we get 25 years of head in the sand attitudes, and now have to play catch up. I don't know about you scalpel, but I was around during the early 70's oil shocks, that appears to be nothing compared to the future. But do continue with the worthless soundbites. They might mean nothing, but you will get some laughs.
Wait a second - McCain now AGREES that keeping your tires inflated saves gas.
"whilst" and "niblet," are you anonymi even Americans?
Let me give you a niblet, or perhaps a nugget. A pearl of my wisdom if I could be so foreward as to proffer it to you.
What the hell does bashing on the "right-wing" media have to do with this political discussion? What does it have to do with energy policies? Don't throw in the extraneous jabs man, just get to the damn point. You don't like anyone finding fault with your new messiah. You're probably all for free speech, unless it's free speech that you don't like.
Silence those voices of dissent with your pompous Queen's English while the rest of us have a little fun. We are absolutely allowed to poke fun at a ridiculous political campaign on both sides if we want to. It's one of the many beauties of being an American.
And Carter was a fool and still is. Ummm...oh...and those "head in the sand attitudes" are the direct result of pompous librals like yourself. Had they allowed free enterprise and capitalism, we wouldn't have this stupid politician made energy crisis.
Gee--I remember the "gas crisis" of the 70s too. Those were the Carter years, right? And after Reagan was elected, gas prices came down and stayed down. Some crisis--the real crisis was Carter.
I didn't hear the whole speech, but I heard the whole paragraph. Proper car maintanance will surpass the oil available in the US if we drill. He's wrong, and he either knows it or he's not bright enough.
No anon a little history lesson:
The gas crisis of the early 1970's was due to the arab oil embargo due to the 1973 war. Supply goes down price (and availability) goes up. Kind of like now with emerging markets soaking up any excess oil. Yeah, in the short term oil is going down, but simple supply and demand will play a role in it going back up. Unless, you know of some vast untapped reserves.
Amy:
That would be "pompous LIBERAL" not "pompous librals". If you want to throw out an insult, at least spell correctly. Yeah, I am sure you have done your research and know we have vast untapped oil reserves in the US....not. Tapping ANWAR and off-shore oil reserves will help (which I am not against, my "libral" views notwithstanding), but very simply this will not wean our foreign oil dependence. We are not going to drill are way out of this mess in the long term sweetie. Remember, amy I am talking about Carter's alternative energy policies not his foolish misguided attempt to rescue the hostages out of Iran (I am sure you remember that right). Why don't you actually review this policy before opening you mouth next time. But then again, if you are some type of O'reilly fan, I shouldn't be surprised you haven't done your research. Soundbites sound oh soooo much sexier than actually knowing your stuff. Kind of like the tire comment.
toodles.
When all else fails, attack looks or spelling.
*rolls eyes*
ee:
Read for comprehension
Well, anon, I'd hate to fight with a friend.
I do realize that we do NOT have untapped unending resources of carbon fuels. But if you check the actual number they could get us pretty far for quite some time. Meanwhilst we could be working on those elusive alternative technologies and how to actually make them available to the public.
I realize that I came on a bit strong, it always irks me when people have to resort to bashing the media in lieuu of a good argument. Or attacking spelling for that matter. Well and that insomnia makes me a bit grouchy.
It was my understanding that a lot of the reason for high oil prices had a lot to do with oil speculation. Make more supply available, speculation and cost go down. And I don't watch O'Reilly. And I don't hate him either. I actually don't watch the news anymore. Can't stomach the political race or the candidates. They both have equal potential to wreck our country in my eyes. As for my spelling error, I type 80+ WPM. Sometimes I miss a key when I'm going fast and tired. Toodles.
Sorry before you correct my anonymi, it is correctly lieu, not lieuu. See I stand corrected having done it myself.
"Barack Obama will require you to buy a tire pressure gauge. He is going to demand that you keep your tires properly inflated at all times. He will insist that you shed your apathy towards tune-ups and oil changes and that you follow your automobile manufacturer's recommended maintenance program. You will have to leave your comfort zone and find an Auto Zone.
Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed, and underinflated."
-Michelle Obama
I just added air to my tires yesterday - and you know what? The car doesn't pull to the side anymore when I hit the brakes. I am curious to see any mileage improvement.
I always keep my tires well-inflated. In fact, I put in a little extra, and I work hard to make sure that my car is properly maintained.
Perhaps if The Messiah is elected president he will take some of my extra air and distribute it to those who are unwilling or unable to effectively manage their own tire pressure.
It sort of sounds like Obama is saying about proper tire inflation/maintenance what you probably say about good diet/exercise. Both would do lots of folks some good, but the problem is that lots of folks aren't doing either.
If you're already doing both, both sound like they won't help. But if you're not, they might help a little, and a little might help in the long run. Unfortunately, we see how poorly that little works in terms of diet/exercise; there's no reason to believe that suddenly people are going to maintain their tire inflation well if they haven't after YEARS of experts telling them to.
According to Time, if you do the math for offshore drilling and for improvement in fuel efficiency with properly inflated tires, Obama is actually right.
http://www.time.com/time/politics/
article/0,8599,1829354,00.html
Sarah
I am going to have my husband fill the air in my tires tomorrow!!
Barack Obama's suggestion that we can't drill our way out of the current energy shortage, but we can solve the problem through tire inflation, has been the source of much hilarity. We did the math here, and found that it would take approximately 11,308 years of tire inflation to equal the energy we can obtain by developing our own petroleum resources.
Now, remarkably, Time magazine has rushed to the defense of its candidate, arguing that "Obama is right."
The author of the article, Michael Grunwald, mixes apple-and-orange statistics to try to create the false impression that there is more to be gained by inflating tires than through offshore drilling:
The Bush Administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. per day by 2030. We use about 20 million bbl. per day, so that would meet about 1% of our demand two decades from now. Meanwhile, efficiency experts say that keeping tires inflated can improve gas mileage 3%, and regular maintenance can add another 4%. Many drivers already follow their advice, but if everyone did, we could immediately reduce demand several percentage points. In other words: Obama is right.
Grunwald is trying, through sleight of hand, to conceal certain basic facts: Obama said that tire inflation could save energy equal to "all the oil that they're talking about getting off drilling," not just the outer continental shelf; the outer continental shelf, ANWR and Rocky Mountain oil shale contain an estimated one trillion, 28 billion barrels of oil--an estimate that is undoubtedly low--while the maximum savings that could be attained through tire inflation and tuneups, assuming that every single vehicle in America is driving around with semi-flat tires and has never had a tuneup, is a mere 420 million barrels per year.
But there are more devious errors lurking behind Time's claim that "Obama is right." Notice the curious formula that Grunwald uses to quantify the energy potential of the outer continental shelf:
The Bush administration estimates that expanded offshore drilling could increase oil production by 200,000 bbl. [barrels] per day by 2030.
That equates to 73,000,000 barrels per year. Which may sound like a lot, but amounts to only four-tenths of one percent of the OCS's 18 billion barrels. Further, why is Time not only putting out an absurdly low number, but also talking about the year 2030? The implication seems to be that the oil wouldn't flow until then, or maybe wouldn't peak until then, but such a claim would be patently false.
To get to the bottom of the puzzle, I tracked down the source of the statistic that Grunwald attributes to the "Bush administration." I'm pretty sure this is it: the Annual Energy Outlook 2007 with Projections to 2030, as published by the Energy Information Administration. This graph, I'm confident, is the source of the "200,000 barrels a day in 2030" claim:
As you can see, the projected recovery from OCS drilling in 2030 is around 200,000 barrels per day. EIA projects recovery to begin around 2018, but as you can see from the graph, EIA projected that only a tiny percentage of the 18 billion barrels (minimum) under the OCS would be recovered.
The explanation, obviously, lies in the set of assumptions used by the EIA in creating its forecast. The forecast was not based on the amount of oil that the OCS actually contains, it was based on the amount that was predicted to be economically remunerative at the then-prevailing price of oil. The EIA report makes this explicit:
Although a significant volume of undiscovered, technically recoverable oil and natural gas resources is added in the OCS access case, conversion of those resources to production would require both time and money. In addition, the average field size in the Pacific and Atlantic regions tends to be smaller than the average in the Gulf of Mexico, implying that a significant portion of the additional resource would not be economically attractive to develop at the reference case prices.
Aha! The obvious question, for anyone with the most rudimentary understanding of economics, is, What are the reference case prices? Here they are:
That's right: the EIA, writing in early 2007, assumed that oil prices would decline from their 2006 peak; that in 2008, the price of crude oil would be around $60 a barrel; that it would continue to decline until around 2013 to a low of about $50 a barrel; and that the price would then gradually increase to a little under $60 a barrel by 2030. Those were the assumptions on which EIA concluded that it would not be economically profitable to get most OCS oil out of the ground.
Earth to Michael Grunwald: that isn't what happened. The EIA was wrong. Currently crude oil is at around $120 per barrel, not $60. At the elevated prices we are now experiencing and are expected to experience in the future, vastly greater quantities of OCS oil (or ANWR oil, or shale oil) can profitably be exploited, and those resources can make a vastly greater contribution to our economic well-being.
When we read wildly inaccurate reporting in the mainstream media, it's often hard to tell whether the reporter is incompetent, or is deliberately trying to deceive. You can make your own guess. For now, suffice it to say that Time's attempt to rehabilitate Obama's tire-inflation gaffe is a failure.
To Anon 5:18
Facts and data, stop all that sexy talk. You're making me blush.
Um, haven't you guys known this since forever? My daddy, definitely not a liberal tree-hugging-lesbian, has /always/ told me that proper tire inflation increases gas mileage. I mean...how does anyone not know this? it just makes me scratch my head, outside of my liberal upbringing and more into my common sense.
A couple of points:
Sarah: It will take years before significant oil from previous off limits off-shore sites or ANWAR to come to market. It isn't a matter of just turning on the spigot. That is the fact.
Anon 5:18:
The simple fact is that oil shale (the green river formation) is not easily available. Yes, I have heard the figure that if oil stays above 60-80 dollars a barrel that conversion of oil shale to oil is feasible. HOWEVER, do you understand what this means with today's technology? It means strip mining the oil shale, then in the process of removing the oil, a huge amount of mercury contaminated waste (rock essentially) is left over that needs to be disposed of over. Throw into this mix the fact that a huge amount of water is needed in this process (from the driest area of the continent). You begin to see that talking about hundreds of billions of barrels in the Rockies is one thing, getting to it is completely another issue. This process was all started before in the late 70's and then abandoned in the early 80's when the oil priced collapsed. Presently the oil companies (Shell I believe) are looking at a way to heat the rock (in the ground) and then removing the oil thereafter. But this process is only being studied now and is years away from any clear results, positive or negative. In conclusion, the worthless soundbite given by scalpel in an attempt to make obama into a baffoon is idiotic and part of an overall speech on the subject that scalpel never even bothered to watch. It is a very O'reillyistic way of smearing somebody with a short clip taken out of context. Sadly, the McCain campaign is starting to resort to this type of behavior. I had hopes given the critical juncture we as a country are at, that an open an honest discussion of this issue would be made by both candidates so we could clearly compare the two. Instead I see politics as usual.
PS: Before labeling me a "pompous libral" again, I will have you all know I am probably the only respondant on this site who has actually VOTED FOR McCain IN THE PAST. But that was the John McCain of the 1990's, who was willing to speak out against in his party if necessary to do what was best for the country, not the John McCain of 2008, who has had to sell his soul to the party ideologues to get the nomination.
Everybody is forgetting about oil-based products such as plastic. Fueling up ones car is not the only demand being made on our world oil supplies. Look at all this cheap plastic crap being sold in North American stores. People have to reduce their consumption of consumer products and quit using plastic bags. Maybe then, oil prices might come down. We also have an exploding world population that needs to come down too. We are ruining our environment by over breeding. Making sure ones car tires are inflated is only a drop in the bucket so to speak in reducing demand for oil. Eventually no matter how sparingly we use our oil supplies we eventually run out of supplies because oil is a finite resource.
"According to Time, if you do the math for offshore drilling and for improvement in fuel efficiency with properly inflated tires, Obama is actually right."
(laughing hysterically) Time Magazine? Now there's a paragon of well-informed, independent, and reasoned thought...they're little more than liberal apologists.
"...they're little more than liberal apologists."
Yeah...WHATEVER that means
"roll eyes"
It means that conservatives take TIME to be about as unbiased as liberals take.. oh.. FoxNews or Guns N Ammo magazine to be.
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