I’m beginning to think there must be some standard rounding error over in the McCain-Palin camp that they use to calculate the size of each exaggerated claim they make. For example, when Senator McCain went on the View last week, he insisted that Governor Palin had made no earmark requests from the federal budget, he ended up being off the mark by, according to conservative estimates, a couple hundred million dollars in 2007 alone.
And then there is McCain’s claim that Obama would raise taxes on 100 million Americans (it actually only raises the taxes of the top 1% of wage earners, those who make more than $250,000; everyone else actually gets a tax cut). But McCain advisor Carly Fiorina said it best, well, actually, worst, when she made made the wildly inaccurate claim that Obama had not proposed “a single tax cut,” and that he would raise “every tax in the book.” If you would like to get the facts on both of the candidate’s tax plans, the Washington Post has posted a great graphical summary that is easy to digest.
So, it comes as no surprise, then, that when Sarah Palin sat down to her interview with Charlie Gibson that she would claim that “produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.” So, it turns out not to be true. More like two standard deviations from the truth. The actual number is 3%.
The Associated Press, in reporting on Palin’s “inflated” energy claim, contacted the Alaska Resource Development Council and confirmed that its 20 percent figure is badly out of date. It quoted Carl Portman, the group’s deputy director, as saying that the figure is an average for the decades of the 1980s and 1990s, which The AP noted was “long before Palin became governor at the end of 2006.”
So, does that still make Sarah “the person who probably knows more than anyone about energy?”
Inform Your Consent 
FoolBeater said
Obama should get on the “I’ll cut your taxes” bandwagon much in the same way McCain became the candidate for change. Better yet, Obama should tell the American people that he will send everyone a check for $500 if elected president. I think that has worked in the past.