So what you are trying to tell me is that neither of these candidates are worth a fark? Wow, that's just shocking.

TFA: (estimated; the actual total is undoubtedly much higher, since exploration has been banned)

That makes sense. I'll have more money in my bank account if I never check it.

I am really glad that he has made tire inflation a central campaign issue, and it clearly deserves two greenlights today. For all the incredible gaffes and misstatements that McCain has made, I guess it was just a matter of time before Obama gave the right something to talk about other than Paris and moose-limbs.

I generally throw out everything a candidate says and does during the campaign, especially as is hits the summer heat. It's all BS and empty talk catering to the special interest du jour. A review of McCain's lengthy, and Obama's much shorter, personal and professional records tell me all I need to know about each candidate's views, and allows me to make an educated guess about their actions and reactions to issues should they become president. You can guess what my conclusion is.

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.

This is the proper way to write an introduction to a calm, objective analysis of the facts.

FTFA:

Oil shale: 1 trillion barrels

That article is a complete load of crap. Properly inflating your tires can increase your gas mileage 3%. What the writer did, was to half that number to 1.5%, calculate how many barrels of oil it would represent, and then compare that number to EVERY DROP OF OIL UNDER THE UNITED STATES that isn't currently being removed, if it were all pumped to the surface INSTANTANEOUSLY.

Sounds pretty rock solid to me...

valloned: That article is a complete load of crap. Properly inflating your tires can increase your gas mileage 3%. What the writer did, was to half that number to 1.5%, calculate how many barrels of oil it would represent, and then compare that number to EVERY DROP OF OIL UNDER THE UNITED STATES that isn't currently being removed, if it were all pumped to the surface INSTANTANEOUSLY.

Well, at least we'd have cheap gas this month.

valloned: FTFA:

Oil shale: 1 trillion barrels

That article is a complete load of crap. Properly inflating your tires can increase your gas mileage 3%. What the writer did, was to half that number to 1.5%, calculate how many barrels of oil it would represent, and then compare that number to EVERY DROP OF OIL UNDER THE UNITED STATES that isn't currently being removed, if it were all pumped to the surface INSTANTANEOUSLY.

Sounds pretty rock solid to me...

Natch...every conservative in this thread will throw logic to the wind and projectile vomit McSame's talking points on you....

valloned: That article is a complete load of crap.

You were expecting otherwise?

It is historic in that it is the first time that politician's hot air has actually found a practical use.

Suicidal Writer: 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.

This is the proper way to write an introduction to a calm, objective analysis of the facts.

I personally liked how it represents the right-wing blogs RUNNING with McCain's "celebrity" ad.

Look, Obama was RIGHT. He didn't actually give a timeline, he just said inflating your tires properly would save oil. And it will. Eventually.

What more do you want?

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.

Oh, FFS. I don't really argue with people who think, for whatever reason, that Obama is empty or "all talk" or whatever else. But this whole "script written for him by others" crap is tiresome to me.

Does he have speechwriters? Yes. Have almost ALL of his most memorable speeches, including the ones that put him on the proverbial map, been written by him himself? You betcha.

Whether you like what he has to say, think it's substantive or not.. the man is MORE than capable of forming an independent thought and putting it onto paper in a proper fashion.

Also.

Oil shale: 1 trillion barrels

Uh-huh. If only we could fuel our cars from all that straw you just grasped.

SSP: valloned: FTFA:

Oil shale: 1 trillion barrels

That article is a complete load of crap. Properly inflating your tires can increase your gas mileage 3%. What the writer did, was to half that number to 1.5%, calculate how many barrels of oil it would represent, and then compare that number to EVERY DROP OF OIL UNDER THE UNITED STATES that isn't currently being removed, if it were all pumped to the surface INSTANTANEOUSLY.

Sounds pretty rock solid to me...

Natch...every conservative in this thread will throw logic to the wind and projectile vomit McSame's talking points on you....

Hahahahahaha, was he hoping he would slide that one buy us? I lol´d when I saw his oil shale number. What an a-hole.

valloned: That article is a complete load of crap. Properly inflating your tires can increase your gas mileage 3%. What the writer did, was to half that number to 1.5%,

No, 1.5% is a decent estimate. Because some people have good air pressure, some not so good, and some bad. The 3% only comes in when tires are really under inflated.

calculate how many barrels of oil it would represent, and then compare that number to EVERY DROP OF OIL UNDER THE UNITED STATES that isn't currently being removed, if it were all pumped to the surface INSTANTANEOUSLY.

Yes, he screwed up big time there. You won't get that much oil out of ANWR, for example. Same with oil shale.

But the main point stands, proper car maintenance never will come close to what we'd get through using domestic oil sources. Obama just made a funny gaffe.

/Dear Fark gods, please don't let this turn into a number-tweaking flame war.
//Wonders what Fark gods actually look like.

Whatsleft: Hahahahahaha, was he hoping he would slide that one buy us?

No, it's not YOU he was hoping to get it past.

It's those just slightly disinclined to vote for him, but potentially sway-able.

helix400: But the main point stands, proper car maintenance never will come close to what we'd get through using domestic oil sources. Obama just made a funny gaffe.

I disagree, given the timeframes involved in both. However, "why can't we do both" is still a valid comment.

Objects in the mere may be closer than they seem.

I think I've figured out how this works.

McCain flips more often than pancakes at IHOP
He yaps about the Iraq-Pakistan border
He wants us all to visit Czechoslovakia
He claims Sunni terrorists are being trained in Iran
He claims we will stay in Iraq for 100 years
He claims that a 16 month timeframe to get out of Iraq is his good idea
He is against torture when he is getting whacked with a rubber hose
He is ok with torture when other American citizens are getting waterboarded
He is against tax cuts for the rich when he wants to run against Dubya.
He loves those same tax cuts when he is looking for political donations from Dubya's doners
He whines about Obama getting too much press coverage
He snubs the press and refuses to talk to them on most of his campaign stops to get money from suckers donors.


No big deal

Obama stresses conversation and mentions one method of conversation as an example of how minuscule the effect of offshore drilling will be in solving our energy problems?
ZMOG OBAMA IS TEH DUM1!11!LOL MCSAME WIL SAV UZ!!!

Eight years of hearing about "bushisms" from liberals, and their new golden boy can't go a day without saying something every bit as stupid as the worst 'Bushism.'

It turns out that sometimes, there is justice.

helix400: Yes, he screwed up big time there.

Well, I wouldn't say he "screwed up" so much as he deliberately misled. But that seems to be a prerequisite for getting press/attention on this issue.

Honestly, it wouldn't bother me so much if I had seen just ONE honest ad/PR campaign from the pro-drilling side. Just one.

But every single article/ad I've seen has deliberately fudged the numbers to make it sound as if we'd get something any even minimally knowledgeable person (i.e. you and me) knows is not only unlikely, but impossible.

"Lower gas pries"
"Energy independence"
"Combat inflation"

These (among others) are all promises the pro-drilling lobby and the right-wing politicians following their leads make EVERY time the issue is brought up in pubic. We both know it's total bullshiat. THEY know it's total bullshiat. DOGS know it's total bullshiat. Yet these irrational predictions make it into EVERY high-profile conversation on the topic.

Yet you seem inordinately upset by Obama bringing up tire pressure and proper tuneups ONCE.

Sorry, man. That just seems really petty to me.

Of course if he wants to do those sorts of math on a statement, maybe he needs to apply a fuller analysis to his own figures. For example the 1 trillion barrels of oil shale the vast majority is hard enough to extract that it is expected that at least 50% of the oil will be used to get it out of the rock and into something we can use, so there goes 400+ billion barrels right there. Let us note also that even the most liberal official estimates of the amount of oil shale in the US have lower bounds of 500b and upper bounds of 1.1t, so if we were to take the average rather than a number very near the top of the estimate we could take another 200b barrels out of the reserves.

Now they still aren't particularly comparable, but then neither is the actual requirements - getting hundreds of billions of barrels of oil out of the ground, refining them and transporting them to where they are needed is slightly more work than getting everyone to check their tire pressure from time to time.

Not to mention the very principle of the article seems to be dodgy: there is quite a bit of this stuff left, so we can still be lazy and waste lots of it for no reason.

I think it's funny how none of this was big news when Arnold Schwartzenegger said it months ago. But as soon as Obama mentions proper tire inflation saving as much oil as the small amount we would get from ANWR and the other proposed new offshore sites, everyone's up in arms.

Hypocrisy: Let me show you it.

official estimates of the amount of oil shale

insert recoverable into the above sentence fragment where appropriate to avoid later complaints that I am not totally accurate either. Clearly there is a fair chunk of oil shale that isn't worth extracting with any known or planned method. Who knows maybe someone will find a way, but that would be exceptionally speculative to include it in such a calculation.

maddogdelta: I think I've figured out how this works.

McCain flips more often than pancakes at IHOP
He yaps about the Iraq-Pakistan border
He wants us all to visit Czechoslovakia
He claims Sunni terrorists are being trained in Iran
He claims we will stay in Iraq for 100 years
He claims that a 16 month timeframe to get out of Iraq is his good idea
He is against torture when he is getting whacked with a rubber hose
He is ok with torture when other American citizens are getting waterboarded
He is against tax cuts for the rich when he wants to run against Dubya.
He loves those same tax cuts when he is looking for political donations from Dubya's doners
He whines about Obama getting too much press coverage
He snubs the press and refuses to talk to them on most of his campaign stops to get money from suckers donors.


No big deal

Obama stresses conversation and mentions one method of conversation as an example of how minuscule the effect of offshore drilling will be in solving our energy problems?
ZMOG OBAMA IS TEH DUM1!11!LOL MCSAME WIL SAV UZ!!!

Obama = ratings, McCain =/= ratings

Nobody cares about McCain's statements as they fully expect him to say something stupid. See, the bar is set pretty low for McCain. In fact, the bar is about 3 cm off the ground.

I wonder how much oil we could save by buying fuel efficient vehicles, and if we needed a larger vehicle it was a hybrid?

Nah, too logical. I'll just buy a Hummer and complain.

Prospero424: Honestly, it wouldn't bother me so much if I had seen just ONE honest ad/PR campaign from the pro-drilling side. Just one.

I'm with you. And I haven't seen an honest ad from the anti-drilling side either. Obama frequently talks about independence from foreign oil with things like windmills. No, that's an electrical grid solution, not a vehicle fuel solution. The two have little overlap. Obama doesn't explain much how he'll give us more vehicle fuels.

McCain's no better "Obama is the man responsible for high oil prices." So efficiently stupid.

I just want to hear something like "It will decades to get alternative fuels in place. During that time, we'll still need lots of oil. Lets use our own resources instead of being stuck with what OPEC decides."

Sure, there's subtleties to that, but...that's the general idea.

Prospero424: Yet you seem inordinately upset by Obama bringing up tire pressure and proper tuneups ONCE.

And no, if you think I'm upset at that one statement, you need to calm down. I've repeatedly said Obama's gaffe was amusing, that he probably didn't believe it, and everyone should just laugh and let it go.

Did he calculate this for the available oil in all of the 57 states?

Is it November yet?

I am so damn tired of listening to the lies and trash talk that come from the supporters of each side.

It's bad enough trying to ignore it when it's not an election year, but I just can't farking stand it anymore.

Just let me get in the booth, vote, and get it over with. Please.

Millions of acres of oil-shale land/mineral rights are in private hands in Republican, pro-extraction states. Yes, a lot is in BLM land, but there has been nothing stopping the use of a lot of oil shale for the last 30 years. Guess how much has been extracted? Damn near zero. Know why? It's a damn poor energy source. Not worth extracting at $150/bbl (present value) or even $250. Eventually, as we work our way through the tail end of the conventional oil on Earth, we'll get to the shale shiat (and energy will be much, much more expensive).

What the oil companies want is big-time government subsidies to get started on shales. Sadly, they'll most certainly get them, too.

helix400: Obama frequently talks about independence from foreign oil with things like windmills. No, that's an electrical grid solution, not a vehicle fuel solution.

Yeah, but both are actually plausible long-term scenarios since electricity is widely considered the major possible alternative for powering vehicles, as well; plug-in hybrids and all that jazz.

Obama has made it clear many times that this is a long-term scenario, and that it won't happen overnight. He and Gore have both used 10 years as an optimistic target if we focus on it in a way akin to the Gemini/Mercury/Apollo programs were focused on.

The PR and spin from the pro-drilling side have made no such effort to explain to their intended audience that drilling has NO chance of positively influencing gas prices, inflation, or energy independence even in the short term. Considering all of these are damn near impossible even in the long run given the output predictions on these deposits, it's even worse.

Come on. I'd never claim that Obama's perfect or doesn't pander on occasion, but these things are in totally different leagues.

The rest of your post I totally agree with, and well said.

helix400: And no, if you think I'm upset at that one statement, you need to calm down. I've repeatedly said Obama's gaffe was amusing, that he probably didn't believe it, and everyone should just laugh and let it go.

I just mean that you've spent a lot of time trying to convince people it was a big error on Obama's part, that's all. Ignore the "upset" comment if it's not applicable.

You know I agree that the whole "tire pressure" controversy is really silly, anyway.

Don't mean to hit and run, but I gotta get out of here in a few minutes. I'll check back this evening.

Let's start drilling ...... for 4 more years! McSame, as retarded as he is, will still beat any man of color in today's racist America.

/sad, but oh so true
//4 more years of oil wars anyone?

Unless I missed it, nobody caught the fundamental flaw in his argument...You can't generalize something like that and then take it literal. It's like saying, "If you exercise you'll be able to lift 'more than' 100lbs." Well sure, but does that mean you'll ONLY get that much?

Point is, if my car had seriously under inflated tires and I put them to the proper pressure, I'm sure I would see greater than 3%. Even the article he quoted said "more than 3%."

In fact, it has been said many times that tires can lose 1-2psi PER MONTH. If you take the average person who maybe checks it yearly (if that) you may have losses of 12-24psi. Of course people tend to catch it well before it leaks off almost all its pressure, but you get the point.

Lets say you let it go for a year and only lose 12psi. The article he quoted said "Under-inflated tires can lower gas mileage by 0.4 percent for every 1 psi" so that would mean a mileage loss of 4.8% or using his math, 5.7 billion gallons of gas and 288 million barrels.

I'm not defending obama in any way, I'm just illustrating how you can't make an argument like the blog owner is trying.

NeverDrunk23:
Nobody cares about McCain's statements as they fully expect him to say something stupid. See, the bar is set pretty low for McCain. In fact, the bar is about 3 cm off the ground.

3cm? 3cm? You keep your communistic, New World Order metric system out of our presidential discussion. What do you think you're trying to do? Do you realize that no major industrialized nation has switched to the metric system in three decades? Do you realize that under the metric system you probably weigh about 1,000 units and your room is around 295 degrees? Yeah. Commies, all of you.

Came for the Obamaniac wharrgarble. Was not disappointed.

bacccc: McSame, as retarded as he is, will still beat any man of color in today's racist America.

Hey! He's not a deep-south democrat!

Sarcasm aside, it's rather off-putting to be told "You're racist if you don't vote for Obama."

That kind of insult will not help him when everyone is in the privacy of the voting booth.

So, I guess what I'm trying to say is, keep saying it.

WHARRGARBL: WHARRGARBL

Sorry, man. All I got was

Prospero424: Sorry, man. All I got was is

FTFY

For lowering the price, inflating tires is still a better solution, no oil for 10 years=no price change for 10 years. Reduced demand from less driving has already been credited with lowering prices a little in the past month (15 to 20 cents near me). If demand decreases further from better air pressure the price will go down further within a month.

Stop calling this a gaff, there are no accurate numbers for drilling and counting oil shale as 1 trillion barrels shows that this guy has no argument, if that was really easily accessible the 10 billion in anwar would be meaningless. And massive amounts of Canadian oil shale is waiting to be used.

That has to be one of the silliest diagram ever.
Anyone in marketing or business presentation would put a red marker through that, give you an F- and tell you to stop wasting their time.
Just glance over it from a consumer point of view. Whats it trying to say? I mean it's trying to break down behaviour patterns but the headings are tiny and far too general to make any lasting impression. The 'quotes' don't sound familiar at all and are far too hard to read.
The red and black hurt my eyes and I had to strain to read it. I have decent eyesight so do the good people behind this pocket guide have something against the visually impaired?
I was fascinated by the shiatiness of the whole thing but anyone else would just glance over that and pass on to the cool picture of the dog getting blasted by the garden hose.

ILostMyPassword: Stop calling this a gaff

why? because that would dent the aura of infallibility y'all have worked so hard to sell?

valloned: FTFA:

Oil shale: 1 trillion barrels

That article is a complete load of crap. Properly inflating your tires can increase your gas mileage 3%. What the writer did, was to half that number to 1.5%, calculate how many barrels of oil it would represent, and then compare that number to EVERY DROP OF OIL UNDER THE UNITED STATES that isn't currently being removed, if it were all pumped to the surface INSTANTANEOUSLY.

Sounds pretty rock solid to me...

He probably halved that number to account for the people (like me) who already keep their tires properly inflated, and people like my father who actually over-inflate (saving even more gas, but using up tires quicker).

You can't assume a 3% across the board improvement for two reasons. First, some people are already doing it, so no improvement there. Second, some people will *NEVER* do it, or only check it very rarely. So to me a 1.5% overall improvement seems reasonable (and desirable in it's own right).

WHARRGARBL: wharrgarble

danlpoon, is that you?

Gyrfalcon: What more do you want?

1. Occidental College records Not released
2. Columbia College records Not released
3. Columbia Thesis paper not available
4. Harvard College records Not released
5. Selective Service Registration Not released
6. Medical records Not released
7. Illinois State Senate records not available
8. Illinois State Senate schedule not available
9. Law practice client list Not released
10. Certified Copy of original Birth certificate Not released
11. Embossed, signed paper Certification of Live Birth Not released
12. Harvard Law Review articles published None
13. University of Chicago scholarly articles - None

we'll start with those...

He should have said proper tire pressure and driving the speed limit.