All I Know Is That I Don’t Know Nothing
WP Factchecker has an interesting item. Let’s put things a bit more starkly.
During a September 11 interview with ABC News, John McCain said that Sarah Palin “knows more about energy than probably anyone in the United States of America.”
Sarah Palin, during her interview with Charlie Gibson said that Akaska producers “nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.”
That was a lie. And people in the press pointed out that it was a lie. So Palin changed her line. And she told a rally in Colorado yesterday that “My job has been to oversee nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas.” But this is also a lie! Here’s what I found on the Energy Information Administration’s Alaska page:
Alaska produces much less than 20 percent of the nation’s oil and much, much less than 20 percent of the nation’s gas. And yet this is the person John McCain regards as the country’s foremost expert on energy issues — someone who doesn’t know how much energy her own state produces, someone who’s too arrogant and lazy to look it up, and someone with such a casual disregard for the truth that even after getting called on getting her facts wrong and changing her line she doesn’t bother changing it to something true:
But here’s a hint. According to the EIA, Alaska does have 18.5 percent of the country’s estimated oil reserves. So maybe she wants to say she oversaw almost twenty percent of that.
50 Responses to “All I Know Is That I Don’t Know Nothing”
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September 16th, 2008 at 10:36 am
I’m busy overseeing our untapped reserves of magma in the Earth’s core.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:47 am
Kudos to you sir.
There’s our energy security right there.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:55 am
This is another example of liberal deception. She clearly meant whale oil. Since native Alaskans are just about the only ones allowed to hunt whales, Alaska is surely responsible for at least 20% of our critical supply of whale oil. Why do you belittle their contribution to our national greatness?
September 16th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Sir, you have it all wrong. See 3.5% + 12.8% + 2.3% = 18.6%. That’s close enough to 20%…
Like my neocon math?
September 16th, 2008 at 10:56 am
she’s still lying about the bridge to nowhere, which she didn’t even have to look up, so of course she’s lying about this….
September 16th, 2008 at 11:02 am
First, obviously the “gas” in “oil and gas” doesn’t mean natural gas, it means gasoline, so really that just means oil.
As for oil, 12.8% rounded up is 15%, and 15% rounded up is 20%.
Problem solved.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:03 am
You really can’t trust all of these fact check sites. They are run by libruls, just like the rest of the media.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:04 am
They might be playing on an ambiguity in the expression “domestic supply”. There is a difference between
Alaska is responsible for 20% of the oil and gas supplied to US markets by domestic producers.
and
Alaska is responsible for 20% of the oil and gas supplied to domestic US markets by all producers.
I don’t know if the first is true. But it seems plausible, while the second is demonstrably false.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:11 am
What’s the matter with you people, you’ve never heard of “creationist math”? The 9th Law of Thermodynamic Statistics? Intelligent Design Graphology? Geez………
September 16th, 2008 at 11:15 am
estimated oil reserves. So maybe she wants to say she oversaw almost twenty percent of that.
What are you implying – that reserves don’t need oversight?!
~
I think what Karl Rove is saying above is that reality has a well known liberal bias…
September 16th, 2008 at 11:15 am
Pardon me for a second. What does she mean “oversee”? She didn’t have spit to do with oil production. She’s on the collect the tariff side of the equation.
This whole shebang is just a jacked up version of CV padding. There’s your “natural gas” right there.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:17 am
Facts are for faggots and other j00z. Facts matter only when you use reason, which is much inferior to gut-feeling and (even more so) Action, which are what Real Men do, and for those you just need images and authorities.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:21 am
There’s really no way to keep up with these lies is there? I doubt she’ll ever have to answer for the vast majority of them.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:21 am
OPERATION IVY!
excellent.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Matt,
First Promise Ring a few weeks ago and now Op Ivy! You are a man of good taste sir, keep the indie band references to troubled times going!
September 16th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Obviously, when Sen. McCain said that Gov. Palin knows more about energy than “anyone else in America,” he meant “anyone else in America who doesn’t know anything about energy or anything”. To interpret that any other is a discredit to his service as a POW, and Gov. Palin is certainly not a pig.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:25 am
Bye-bye expertise through knowledge. Hello expertise through faith and fiat. This truly will be a new American century.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:26 am
None of this means diddly. The fact is that Senator Obama allowed the Rethuglican smear machine to define him and he’s dead meat. The Democrats needed Harry Truman, they got Michael Dukakis. The fact is that, given the Iraq mess and the economic mess, the Democratic candidate should be at least 10 points ahead. The fact that the Democratic candidate is behind is almost unbelievable.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:27 am
Brian beat me to it.
Anyway, Americans don’t care about numbers, they care about results! The Bush economic plan has resulted in the biggest meltdown since the Great Depression. McCain will continue those economic policies because the only sure way out of a crisis is to entrench all the policies that you got you into the crisis in the first place. The fundamentals of the economy are strong, never mind the unprecedented bankruptcies behind the curtain. If we just didn’t talk about them then no one would know about them.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Dan Kervick,
The “Share of U.S.” in the chart refers to Alaska’s share of U.S. production, not U.S. consumption. If you click through, by the way, it turns out in 2007, Alaska averaged 722 thousand barrels/day in production (the whole U.S. averaged 5,064 thousand barrels/day, so that was actually an average of about 14% in 2007). Meanwhile, the U.S. consumed around 21 million barrels/day of oil and petroleum products. So you are right that your second number would be much lower than the first (on the order of 3-4%), but both are well lower than 20%.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:40 am
plus, if you add up those three numbers that Matt reports in the table, you get 18.6%, which is really really close to 20% even though the sum doesn’t mean anything at all.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Pardon me for a second. What does she mean “oversee”? She didn’t have spit to do with oil production. She’s on the collect the tariff side of the equation.
Tariff = Tax, every state has that. Alaska takes it to the next level, the state owns all the mineral rights (West Virginia, for one, could have used that back in the day). So in fact, the governor of Alaska oversees all oil and gas production not only because the state’s police power to regulate health, safey and welfare; but also because its the landlord.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:44 am
*police power to protect public health, safety and welfare
September 16th, 2008 at 11:51 am
Ezra has a lovely USA Today-style bar graph on this subject.
September 16th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I get the sense on this point less that she’s lying than that she simply has no idea what she’s talking about. Neither scenario is comforting.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
The liar meme works among partisan Dems but not among independents and loosely affiliated voters who either expect all politicians to lie and exaggerate or don’t care. Keep it up. Obama is trading his aura of hope and change for that of a run-of-the-mill pol. As a pol, he’s just an inexperienced far-left machine hack — not The One we’ve been waiting for. Even the immature voters are starting to lose interest. The thrill is gone.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:20 pm
In what sense does Palin claim to oversee any energy production? Is she saying that the state of Alaska is a major oil and gas company? Is it a little niche of state socialist production in the nether reaches of uber capitalist America? What is the job of the govt in capitalist America, Ms Governor? Does the President of the US oversee the entire GNP and financial system and everything else, so that all credit and all blame go directly to the Chief Executive?
McPalin need to be pressed on exactly what the govt’s role is in the economy, now more than ever since Wall St is collapsing and McPalin are making vague remarks about overhauling the entire regulatory structure. What kind of overhaul? Historically, McCain’s pronouncements and actions would suggest that he would eliminate all regulation (Phil Gramm, anyone?). But Palin seems to run a Hugo Chavez type regime up in Alaska, with rebate checks substituting for Venezuela’s health and education projects. What do they propose for the US economy?
September 16th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
patriot games, unlike other states, Alaska owns all of its oil and gas resources. Alaska pols have for a generation been in the pocket of the oil companies. Palin ran against this systemic corruption and defeated it. She then negotiated much more favorable terms with the companies. Hence, her sky-high popularity among Alaskan voters, the owners of these resources.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:32 pm
Matt, you forgot the corollary: “…and that’s fine!”
You know the baby boomers can’t hang on to power much longer when commentators start making Op Ivy references.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
That’s it, O’Neal, keep talking about anything and everything except what the post was about. The McCain points are just rolling in.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:38 pm
yave begnet,
Agreed–but there is indeed a lie here, namely McCain’s claim that Palin “knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America”.
September 16th, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Maybe I’m just a liberal wag, but shouldn’t the foremost expert in the country be able to guess the energy their state produced within a factor of five? 20 vs. 3.5 is kind of a large gap. But then again, I’m no numbers expert either.
http://thesebastards.blogspot.com/
September 16th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Her understanding of energy policy is so thin she does not know the difference between supply and reserves. this is a frequent error made by Alaska politicians.
It shows the degree of her intellectual curiosity that she served on the Alaska Oil and Gas Commission and does not understand the concept of reserves.
September 16th, 2008 at 1:57 pm
Does this mean Arnold Schwarzenegger is responsible for 30% of our domestic movie supply?
September 16th, 2008 at 2:53 pm
Tariff = Tax, every state has that. Alaska takes it to the next level, the state owns all the mineral rights (West Virginia, for one, could have used that back in the day). So in fact, the governor of Alaska oversees all oil and gas production not only because the state’s police power to regulate health, safey and welfare; but also because its the landlord.
A landlord isn’t a good analogy. The governor doesn’t fix the production equipment when it goes bad. Alaska sets a tariff on extraction and then sells the leases. The governor doesn’t “oversee” production except in the most disingenuously broad understanding of the word.
Pardon the sexist adjective.
September 16th, 2008 at 7:10 pm
All I know is that Operation Ivy supplied 100% of our nation’s energy needs during the 1987-89 fiscal years.
September 16th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
thanks, Matthew, you’re the first i’ve seen, even among her critics, to get these numbers right. AK has almost a fifth of oil reserves only, not production, not ‘energy’ we’ve got gas (quite a lot of it), coal (too damn much of it), hydro (a big energy source in some regions), and even, now, a measurable and growing renewable energy supply. AK’s fraction of the country’s total energy supply then is actually, in sum, meaningful but modest.
she’s an idiot. on purpose. he is worse than an idiot, since he is exploiting this wounded puppy’s ambition for his own ends, but it is just exposing her towering lack of ability for all the world to see. this may be the end of her professional usefulness for anybody or anything, ever.
i hope
September 16th, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Isn’t it bizarre that Republicans view a valuable asset as controlled by a state as opposed to, say, the corporation that actually owns it.
The unreported story in all this is that Palin has demonstrated a Putin/Chavez-like brazenness when it comes to negotiating with oil companies. Her “standing up to Big Oil” was about taxing them at a higher rate similar to what Putin’s been doing with BP in Russia.
As they say: you can’t make this up.
September 16th, 2008 at 10:54 pm
Op Ivy!
Just like! As if! I’m not gonna change my mind!
September 18th, 2008 at 7:38 am
Op Ivy FTW!
For those like ed who work themselves into a chivalrous rage every time a blogger calls out the lies, I can only offer more op ivy:
“The position being taken
is not to be mistaken
for attempted education
or righteous accusation
Only a description just an observation of the pitiful condition of our degeneration”
Palin is a troubling sign that we’re much closer to becoming an Idiocracy than we thought.
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