Obama Plan: Inflate the... Numbers

Obama makes the off-hand prediction that if all Americans would inflate their tires and maintain their vehicles regularly, we could offset all the oil we are losing by not drilling off our own shores. McCain calls him on it. Most of us realize how preposterous this is. But wait... suddenly there is all kinds of evidence that doing this would save more than quadruple the amount of oil anticipated from off-shore drilling.

Now, I know Time and CNN are media gods, and if they say it, it is true... but would it be so difficult for them to give us one (1) little bitty source? Maybe just a little insight into their calculations of how I can personally save one whole barrel of oil this year?

Let's see... inflating my tires... tried that... I pick up about one half mile per gallon. Using Time Magazine's method of computation, I am saving 400 gallons per year. (Prove me wrong.)

Maintaining my vehicle regularly. Change my oil every three months or 3,000 miles. At 5 quarts per change... per vehicle... I am using some 50 quarts of OIL per year. But I am gaining another half mile per gallon of gas. So, using the same scientific computation as above, I can not only cancel out all that oil, but decrease my gas consumption by... oh, let's see...(carry the 1)... 200 gallons per year. Let's make it sound really good, and say that each barrel of oil produces some 10 gallons of gasoline, and voila! Obama is not only on the right track, but has underestimated his own energy policy, as I am saving 60 barrels of oil this year!

Isn't number crunching fun? Using this method, I can save $30,000 this year by simply eating 1 egg and 1/2 piece of white toast for breakfast.

Seriously, do these number crunchers take into consideration the impracticability of rebuilding one's home to make it more energy efficient. From what I've seen, it would cost some $20,000 of remodeling to save $2,000 of energy per year. Over the course of 10 years, you'd wind up having to upgrade, at a cost of another $5,000 to $10,000. Not to mention the amount of interest your paying for your remodeling. The new appliances are all made with plastics... which come from... OIL.

And even if we could save some 200 million barrels of oil each year by inflating our tires, does that diminish the advantage of expanding our domestic drilling and building new refineries? Is it enough to simply decrease usage? Is it not plausible to decrease usage and increase production? If we do decide to save on oil, would it be so wrong if the oil we were saving on came from our own shores?

Come on, mass media people, do you really think we are so stupid that we don't know that inflating our tires increases fuel efficiency (and saves on tires)? But do you really believe that this is the key to breaking our addiction to foreign oil? Really?