Who’s ignorant, Barry?

Barack Obama has taken offense to the McCain campaign making fun of his don’t-drill-just-inflate-your-tires nonsense.  So he complains about it in a town hall meeting, and in the process, gets his own facts wrong.

Here’s what he said (ABC News via Jim Geraghty, emphasis added):

“So I told them something simple,” Obama said. “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.“

In fact, using Obama’s own numbers, the reduction in oil consumption wouldnt be anywhere near “3 to 4 percent.”  Obama’s own campaign boasted that inflating one’s tires would “improve your gasoline mileage by around 3.3%” (Wall Street Journal).  For starters, this would still have no effect on the drivers whose tires are already at proper levels (which is about two-thirds – Jim Geraghty).  So now we’re down to 1.1% of gasoline reduction (at most, as this would assumes the increased gas mileage would not encourage drivers to drive more miles than they usually would).

We’re not done, however.  The average barrel of oil does not go exclusively to gasoline.  In fact, according to the Energy Information Administration, less than 44% of America’s oil is refined into gasoline.

So how much would oil consumption be reduced, at most?  Less than one-half of one percent.

So Obama overestimates the amount of oil usage reduction by a factor of six, at a minimum, and then has the audacity to accuse his opponents of takig pride in being ignorant.  What gall.