At a town hall meeting in Berea , Ohio, today, Senator Obama (D-iva), called John McCain and his campaign ignorant for mocking Obama’s tire inflation plan.

You know the other day I was in a town hall meeting and I laid out my plans for investing $15 billion a year in energy efficient cars and a new electricity grid and somebody said, ‘well, what can I do? what can individuals do’

So I told them something simple, I said, ‘You know what? You can inflate your tires to the proper levels and that if everybody in America inflated their tires to the proper level, we would actually probably save more oil than all the oil we’d get from John McCain drilling right below his feet there, or wherever he was going to drill.’

So now the Republicans are going around - this is the kind of thing they do. I don’t understand it! They’re going around, they’re sending like little tire gauges, making fun of this idea as if this is ‘Barack Obama’s energy plan.’

Now two points, one, they know they’re lying about what my energy plan is, but the other thing is they’re making fun of a step that every expert says would absolutely reduce our oil consumption by 3 to 4 percent. It’s like these guys take pride in being ignorant.

You know, they think it is funny that they are making fun of something that is actually true. They need to do their homework. Because this is serious business. Instead of running ads about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears they should go talk to some energy experts and actually make a difference.

First, as Jake Tapper points out, this is not exactly what Obama said “the other day.”  In fact, he said, “we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling if everybody was just inflating their tires.” (Note the background laughter in the audience after he says this.  Perhaps someone at the pep rally was also proud to be ignorant.)

There’s something more devious, however, than Obama’s merely recasting what it is he said to make him look less of an idiot.  By slight of hand, he also converts a 3-4% increase in fuel economy to a 3-4% decrease in demand, and puts words in the mouths of experts who never said any such thing.

So what would this air inflation savings really mean?

1. Only about 1/3 to 1/4 of drivers have underinflated tires.  That means that the average fuel economy increase would only average out to 1-1.33%. (taking the pro-Obama number of 1/3).
2. Fuel economy is inversely proportional to fuel demand.  Put another way, a 4% increase in fuel economy is not a 4% decrease in demand.  For example, let’s say your car has under-inflated tires and gets 20 mpg as is.   If you drive 1000 miles a month, you use 50 gallons.  You then inflate your tires to get a whopping additional .8 mpg (a 4% increase).   It now takes 48.08 gallons (a savings of 3.8%).  This effect is even high as your percent increase increases.  (For example a 10% increase is only a 9.1% reduction in fuel demand.  A ).  It may seem like a small difference, but .2% of total fuel consumed in the US is 14.6 million barrels per year.  In any event, this 3.8% reduction in demand only applies to 1 out of every 3 drivers (at most), meaning it’s really a 1.27% decrease in overall demand for gasoline.
3. Finally, gasoline is not the only product made from crude oil.  Jet fuel, plastics, lubricants, waxes, asphalt and other products are made from crude oil.  Gasoline is only about 50% of a barrel of crude oil, so a 1.27% decrease in our gasoline demand may not, necessarily, result in a 1.27% decrease in overall demand for crude oil.  That would depend on what is driving demand for crude.  My guess is that gasoline and deisel are the drivers, but that may not be true year-round.

The point here is that no expert has ever said anything of the kind.  Just like Clinton’s ridiculous claim that “Russian missles are no longer pointed at our children,” this comment is made of thin air.

The media have been screaming bloody murder over Exxon’s recent quarterly results. Even the Anointed One has decreed that these profits are “excessive” and has announced a blatantly socialist plan to further tax Exxon so that he can buy votes with $1000 stimulus checks.

While it’s true that Exxon’s net profits of $11.7 billion is a record quarterly profit for any company, the numbers are far more interesting.  Mark Perry at iStockAnalyst points out that Exxon paid 3 times that amount in taxes already!

As I noted briefly in his comment section, if you simplify Exxon to be solely a gasoline vendor, here is how the average $4 per gallon price breaks down:

That means, all tolled, the government (federal, state and local) receives $1.23 per gallon and Exxon receives $0.31 per gallon.

So, who’s making the windfall profit?

By the way, the $2.46?  That mostly goes to foreign governments who own the only lands our Congress will allow us to drill.  I’m sure that will end well.

UPDATE: By the way, if Obama’s $50 billion stimulus plan were enacted, the taxes would (as they are now) merely be passed on to the consumer.  Meaning that, assuming for simplicity sake, everything else remained constant, Obama’s $50 billion would add $1.32 to the price of gasoline.  Even if you assume Exxon’s profits went to zero, the price of gas would instantly go up to about $5.00 per gallon.

$5/gallon gas in January?  Yes We Can!

UPDATE #2:  One reader pointed out that Obama’s plan would spread his “windfall profits tax” over 5 years (and presumably more oil companies than just Exxon).  That would only increase the price to about $4.30 or so.

The media and John McCain are finally starting to turn against poor Barack Obama.  Even Obama admits it, warning that, what Bush and McCain “[are] going to try to do is make you scared of me,” Obama said.  “You know, `he’s not patriotic enough, he’s got a funny name,’ you know, `he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills.‘”

McCain and ABC’s Jake Trapper have rightly pointed out that this is Obama playing the race card.  No person speaking on behalf of Senator McCain or President Bush has even remotely mocked or referred to Obama’s appearance, skin color, the phonetics of his name or his racial history.  What they have done is criticized his woeful lack of experience.

Not one to ever stick to a statement, when questioned, the Obama campaigned feigned surprise, claiming, incredulously, that Obama was not saying anything about race:

Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs said “What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn’t get here after spending decades in Washington,” Gibbs said. “There is nothing more to this than the fact that he was describing that he was new to the political scene. He was referring to the fact that he didn’t come into the race with the history of others. It is not about race.”

Really? There are 8 U.S. presidents on currently circulated currency.  Only two of them have more than 10 years of political experience in washington (and only then if you count Jefferson’s Ambassadorship to France as time he spent as a “Washington insider”):

Arguably, the $2 bill and the silver half dollar are not even in common circulation.  I have excluded military service, as I don’t think anyone could reasonably call Washington, Ike, Grant (or their equivalent in General Patreaus) “Washington insiders” simply because they commanded the military in war time.

Of course, the flip side of the coin is that, if Obama (God forbid), is elected president, he will have served 4 years in the Senate, making him more of a Washington insider than any president on currency (other than JFK and Thomas Jefferson).

Jim Gereghty at the Campaign Spot points out Obama’s flimsy New Math on tire pressure.  I agree with Jim in general, but I think there’s an easier way to make the point.  First, Obama’s connecting this with offshore oil drilling is ridiculous.  That’s like a doctor telling a man with a cold, if you lay down part of the day, you’d cough less and you won’t need so much cough syrup.  Okay, but why don’t I do both, would that be better?

In any event, Obama is claiming that properly inflating tires would have a significant impact on gas prices.  Let’s take Jim’s assumptions and see:

Assuming:

• The average commuter commutes 33 miles per day;
• The average car gets 24 mpg (unlikely, but okay);
• Improper tire pressure decreases efficiency by 2.5 mpg (average of 2-3 mpg);
• And 1 out of 3 commuters has improper tire pressure.

Take three random commuters: two travel 33 miles each at 24 mpg (1.375 gallons per day) and the other at 21.5 mpg (1.53 gallons).  The evil, unAmerican commuter is wasting .16 gallons per day.

To put into perspective, this means that uninflated tires increase domestic demand by .16 gallons for every 4.125 gallons.  (All three commuters with properly inflated tires would use (1.375 * 3 = ) 4.125 gallons.)   Put another way, this is an effect of less than 4% (.16 / 4.125).

Assuming you believe in the law of supply and demand, a 4% decrease in demand should correspond to at most a 4% decrease in price.  This ignores effects like stockpiling and the cost of the federal beauracracy needed to ensure compliance.  If the average price of gas is now roughly $4.00 per gallon, a 4% decrease would make it $3.84, saving $.16 per gallon.

To sum up, forcing every motorist to properly inflate their tires would save, at most, $.16 per gallon.

In contrast, the federal tax on gasoline is $.184 per gallon.  Wasn’t there a candidate who said that eliminating this tax was a “typical Washington gimmick” that wouldn’t amount to any real savings?

There are two conflicting views of reality fluttering through the Democratic Congress and both involve the effects of speculation.  On the one hand, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are absolutely convinced that speculators are driving up the price of oil.  On the other, Chuck Schumer is equally convinced that his open and public speculation about the financial health of a bank had no effect on its immediate collapse and takeover by the FDIC.  The terrible truth is that, like Democrats on most issues, they are both provably wrong.

When a market participant decides to buy (or sell) a futures contract on oil, they are betting that the future price will rise (or fall).  These “evil, manipulative speculators” are people who use oil or gas and need to manage their risk.  For example, if you run an airline, a large portion of your cost is the cost of fuel.  Unfortunately, there is no market for managing the risk of refined Jet-A fuel, so you have to rely on the proxy of crude oil.  For example, let’s say the price of oil on July 1, 2008 was $140 per barrel.  You believe the price will go up in a year, so you buy several contracts that will, theoretically let you buy oil in a year at today’s price.  If, on July 1, 2009, the price of oil is $200 per barrel, you have a piece of paper that allows you to buy a barrel for $140 and the other party makes up the difference.  If, on the other hand, the price goes down to $100 per barrel, you have to pay $140 (in reality, you pay $40 to the counterparty and no oil changes hands).

So, if your company uses a lot of oil, and you’re worried the price will go up, you would buy a lot of these contracts.  If the price does, indeed go up, you have the “profits” from the future contracts to offset the increased cost.  In other words, you enter into 10,000 of those contracts, your cost of jet-A goes up by $400,000, you can offset that cost by the $400,000 you receive from the futures contract.  As you (hopefully) can tell from my description, no where in the futures market is the price of oil manipulated.  People are speculating (that’s a Harvard word for guessing) about whether the price will go up or down, but no oil changes hands.

This is very similar to betting.  I can assure you from personal experience that betting on a team to win will in no way effect their chances of winning.  If Harry Reid were right about this, the favorite would win every sporting contest.  (And his home state of Nevada would lose a ton of legal and illegal revenue).  There is no economist that I’m aware of who has ever said that speculating has an impact on price.  Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal pointed out, when the federal government banned commodity trading on onions the result was a disaster.  When market participants could not manage their risk, prices became more volatile, not less.  Learning from history, it seems, is not a part of the Democratic agenda.

Separately, Chuck Schumer (D-umbass) and senior senator from New York, decided he wanted to collapse a bank, apparently to prove he could do it, or more cynically, to advance the leftist anticorporate agenda.  His public letter questioning the solvency of Indymac led to two weeks of frantic withdrawals by depositors.  After the federal government needed to step in on Saturday and take over the bank, Schumer, surprising no one, tried to blame Bush.  after causing the bank collapse, Schumer charged that president Bush had “blamed the fire on the guy who called 911.”

This is how stupid or dishonest Chuck Schumer is.  Either he is so dumb that he doesn’t realize that openly questioning the solvency of a bank would cause its depositors to withdraw their money, or he is so dishonest, he believes that you are so stupid that he can get away with it.  When a sitting U.S. senator (frequently referred to as a failed lawyer) on the senate banking committee openly questions the solvency of a major bank, there are consequences.  People who either (1) still have faith in their goverment or (2) realize who monumentally stupid such a thing is to do; will rush to their bank and take out their money.  As Mr. Schumer appears immune to any real facts, he might want to re-watch “It’s a Wonderful Life,” as this was a major plot point.

Mr. Reid is the kind of idiot who thinks gamblers have an impact on the game.  Mr. Schumer is the kind of idiot who, when hiding with the Franks in the attic, sees nothing wrong with shouting “DO YOU THINK THE NAZIS CAN HEAR US?!?” in the middle of a ghestapho raid.

Today, the Supreme Court of the United States overturned a patently unconstitutional ban on hand guns in Washington, D.C. In light of the Court’s recent stupidity involving child rape and habeas corpus for terrorists, this is a refreshing departure from idiocy.

It does, however, raise an interesting point: if you’re an 8-year old child in danger of being raped by your stepfather or killed by terrorists, your only hope is to arm yourself.

Many have rightfully criticized McCain’s June 3rd speech as stiff and awkward. In response, the McCain campaign has hired former Obama speech consultant Yuri Lee Sedthet. The results have been immediate and compelling:

• While visiting the destroyed Back To the Future set at Universal Studios in California, McCain asked “so does the time machine still work?“
• Speaking to a group of fellow veterans, McCain noted, “Many soldiers never came back, and I see some of those men here today.”
• When asked why he felt Californians would not vote for him over Senator Obama, McCain (R-Arizona) replied, “Sen. Obama, I think, is much better known, coming from a nearby state of Hawaii. So it’s not surprising that he would have an advantage in some of those states in the West.”
• Regarding the controversy over Reverend Wright, McCain said “The point I was making was not that Reverend Wright harbors any racial animosity. He doesn’t. But he is a typical black person who, uh, if he sees somebody in the government that he doesn’t know there’s a reaction that’s been been bred into our experiences that don’t go away and that sometimes come out in the wrong way and that’s just the nature of race in our society.”
• In a speech on foreign relations, McCain promised to “work with the President of England on trade issues in the European States.”
• Regarding his efforts to work with Democrats in office, McCain noted that “I’ve worked with members of the Democratic party in 57 states. I haven’t worked with anyone in Alaska or Rhode Island yet.”
• Speaking to a group of Pearl Harbor survivors, McCain, who was born in 1936, noted his connection with that day of infamy, “There was something stirring across the country because of what happened at Pearl Harbor. So Roberta and John S. McCain got together and John McCain Jr. was born. So don’t tell me I don’t have a claim on Pearl Harbor. Don’t tell me I’m not coming home to Pearl Harbor.”

I have decided to keep track of the Obama Gaffe Machine in its ever-expanding work to test the mainstream media’s limits of denial. It has turned out to be a bit more ambitious than I first thought, so it is not yet done. Given the frenzy today, I thought it appropriate to launch a bit early.

Please feel free to comment or suggest new gaffes on the permanent Obama Gaffe page.

I find it mildly amusing that Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean have all come out in the past two days promising to bring an end to the Democratic presidential campaign next week. While it is true that the party “leaders” can apply pressure to the unaligned super delegates, they cannot apply pressure to Hillary herself. What is needed to end this race is a concession speech from the runner-up. Does anyone really think that is forthcoming?

Let’s look at the carrots and sticks that the Democrats have over Hillary Clinton. First, the sticks:

• Campaign Debt. Hillary has amassed about $11 million dollars worth of campaign debt that, under McCain-Feingold, she must repay before the nominee is selected at the convention. $11 million is a lot of money, even to the Clintons, but most of it is owed to small suppliers. Has anyone ever accused the Clintons of looking out for the little guy?
• Obama’s Inevitability. The argument goes: once enough super delegates come to Obama, Hillary will have no choice but to concede to Obama. This argument is so utterly unhinged from the past 4 months, it borders on parody. Hillary Clinton has been mathematically eliminated since just after Super Tuesday. No one reasonably expected Hillary to be able to pull this out without a tremendous Yankees-lose-four-straight-to Boston style collapse by Obama. Once she lost those 10 straight primaries, the end was inevitable. Nothing has changed, and it won’t.
• Hillary’s Future In the Party. To think that Reid, Pelosi or Dean could threaten the Clintons with any plausible political damage is laughable. Half the time, Reid and Pelosi can’t even get their own colleagues to get behind legislation they themselves are backing. And trust me, Hillary Clinton covets this nomination far more than some farm subsidy.

And now the carrots. Ask yourself, what is it that Hillary Clinton is asking for:

• Florida and Michigan. If you think this is anything but a cynical ploy, you’re doing it wrong. Hillary does not care one iota about the voters or delegates of Florida and Michigan. How do I know? Before it mattered, her delegates to the DNC voted unanimously to strip both states of their delegates. The only reason Hillary cares about these delegates is that it gives her a reason to take the fight to the convention.
• The Vice Presidency. As I have mentioned before, Hillary does not want Obama to win. She wants him to fail miserably so that she and Bill can say “We told you so,” in 2012. If that is her strategy, she wants to stay off the ticket to avoid blame, while paying lip service to a united party. She will campaign for Obama, she may even hedge her bets by requesting a Supreme Court spot, a cabinet role or a choice ambassadorship, but she will not join the ticket.
• A speaking role at the convention. Try and deny her this. This is not even negotiable for Hillary. She will speak at the convention, whether Pelosi, Reid and Dean like it or not. With almost exactly half of the delegates on the floor being Hillary supporters, can you imagine the pandemonium if she is denied a prominent role? Moreover, the media, even with it’s pro-Obama drunken stupor, would have to cover Hillary’s competing press conference(s) and other distractions.

In my opinion, there is just no leverage to force Hillary out of the race. Hillary truly believes that Obama will be exposed before November as the Chicago political operative he is (she would know), and she has faith that McCain will not run for two terms. No matter the numbers, no matter the odds, Hillary will drag this out to the convention. She will make a big speech, a thinly veiled warning to those who vote for Obama. She will force a vote (maybe even several platform votes to embarrass Obama). She will set the stage for four years hence, when her new campaign theme will be “I told you so.”

I had a uncle who was one of the, um, who was part of the first American troops to go into Auschwitz, and liberate the concentration camps. And the story in our family was, is that, when he came home, he just went up into the attic and he didn’t leave the house for six months. Now, obviously, something had really affected him deeply. But at that time, there just weren’t the kinds of facilities to help somebody work through that kind of pain.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama, Las Cruces, New Mexico, May 26, 2008 (Memorial Day).

For those without access to the “right” wing of the internet, I will let you in on an open secret, U.S. troops never entered Auschwitz. The concentration camp at Auschwitz (Poland) was the largest in the German-controlled territories. Being east of Berlin (the furthest advance of U.S. and allied troops), it was liberated by the Soviet Union’s Red Army. Of course, Obama’s recent gaffes on geography may be signs he has “lost his bearings” completely, and he may have forgotten that Poland is east of Germany, just as he forgot that Kentucky borders Illinois. (Obama is apparently channeling Haley Joel Osmet in seeing dead people, so perhaps he’s not fit for the rigors of such a long campaign.)

It is true that the United States Army did, however, liberate several Nazi concentration camps, and I am sure that the horror of uncovering these camps in April of 1945 was overwhelming and lasting. It’s still early days in the latest Obama gaffe/whopper, but time will (hopefully) tell as to whether Obama was (a) merely misstating a (presumably true) family legend (certainly a mere gaffe, confusing Auschwitz with Dachau or another camp); (b) unknowingly repeating a false family legend or (c) making this up out of whole cloth (as he did his “claim on Selma“).

The first two are not so troublesome, as many of us take as gospel that which our grandparents told us (even if they are typical, white racists). For example, my grandmother (not a racist) told me that my late grandfather liberated the town in Italy where she was born. It’s a heart warming story, and I may repeat it in public one day. There’s no reason to issue a FOIA request for Grandpa Al’s records, but then again, I’m not claiming he liberated Auschwitz.

There are some troubling side stories here. There are questions as to whether Obama even has an uncle on that side. In addition, the fact that he would mention his grandfather’s tenuous connection (again to the wrong Nazi camps) in a 2002 speech and this (apparently long lost) uncle’s direct connection in 2008 also undermines the credibility of the uncle’s story. And finally, much like outing grandma as a racist, where is the compassion for this uncle’s suffering? If you had lived through the Great Depression, seen your country attacked by Japan, marched across Europe and Africa, watching your best friends die in combat, only to discover the truly disgusting depths of the human capacity for evil, would you want your slick nephew airing your dirty laundry, bragging about the most trying times of your long life to score political points?

In any case, I am sure that, if and when the media picks up on this gaffe/lie, we will be told that this is a “distraction” meant to keep us from “focusing on the real issues.”

On a less personal scale, of all things not to be taken lightly, the Holocaust should be at the top of anyone’s list. Auschwitz is a name that will live in the annals of evil for as long as humans walk the planet. If you’re going to raise the issue, if you’re going to connect yourself with those who, when earth’s foundation fled, took up arms against evil on Earth, you really need to get your story straight. Those who fought Germany and Japan, those who endured the Bataan Death March, the landings at Normandy, the shivering cold of Bastogne, they all deserve our loyalty and respect. To offhandedly make a claim on their legacy to make political hay is despicable. To fabricate such a claim is neigh treason to their memory.