Obama:On Tires, Autos and Dishonesty

Photo Copyright: AP

Barack Obama, seen here riding a bicycle with at least one flat tire last June, is clearly too ignorant to know how to inflate a tire.

First Barack Obama, a failed lawyer has lectured the populace on one subject that he is completely ignorant on, economics, now he has found time to lie on some other subjects that he and his followers are ignorant on, automobiles, oil and tires. Many Democrats insist that if my taxes go up (see: expenses) I will hire more employees and I will be giving all of my employees more health care, family leave, raises, more time off and other such perks. That of course is ridiculous, when the expenses of a business rise faster than than that business' income then that money will come from somewhere, both the owners and the employees will suffer. Most liberals do not understand this, sure when confronted with the above facts some may hedge a bit but others will announce that the business owners are evil and that they are "taking" from their employees. Let me be blunt, I am not waiting with baited breath for the feds to raise my taxes so that I can increase the compensation and perks of my employees. Period.

Now on to automobiles. Regular readers of this blog have probably figured out that I am somewhat of a car guy, one of my Porsches is a race car and I have restored another Porsche. For racing folks tires are important, we can actually obsess over such issues. Barack is correct that a properly inflated tire will raise a car's gas milage, an over-inflated tire will raise it even more! Of course an over-inflated tire is dangerous as it puts less of the tire's tread on the road giving the car less grip. However with modern tires under-inflation is less of an issue due to the strength of the modern tire's sidewalls. After some point every under-inflated tire will require more rolling force to move the car but one point that Obama and his people are likely ignorant of (my experience is that many people cannot maintain their cars due to lack of rudimentary knowledge) is the fact that modern tires keep their shape at less than optimum inflation levels. I had a slow leak in one car's front passenger-side tire (a nail) and until the tire lost dramatic amounts of pressure you could not tell that the pressure was low by simply looking at it. I keep that tire at 30 psi and even at 20-22 psi the tire shape was the same, meaning that the additional force required to roll the tire was very low. That example is of a tire that has lost 26-33 percent of it's air pressure. So to obtain Barack's magic 3% - 4% improvement in gas mileage I would have to leave the tires with much less than 70% of optimum pressure.

It is also notable that many new tires are being mounted after being filled with nitrogen. This is a racers trick, as tires roll they gain heat and the air inside expands (does Barack even know this?) and we racers like to have optimal tire pressure thus racers use nitrogen because it is an inert gas, the volume will stay the same as the tire heats up and cools off. We also use tire thermometers but that is a different story. Nitrogen molecules are also larger than oxygen molecules, thus nitrogen is less likely to leak out, especially around the rim seals which is a typical spot for leaks. I recently found out that Costco inflates the tires that they sell with nitrogen. You can find more here, although I am dubious of some of their claims. There are of course some folks who refuse to believe what us racers have known for years, I found a post by Cecil Adams who writes the Straight Dope, Cecil should really stick to what he knows best, strange sex information.

John Hinderaker of Powerline has put up another excellent post questioning Barack's numbers (or should I say numerlogy?). The real world numbers do not add up to what Barack has been claiming. Barack is of course wrong in his assertions that if Americans just kept their tires full that we would not need any additional oil. Go read the Powerline post. Barack and his pals are dead wrong because they don't have what Americans know as "common sense", they must not have many life experiences outside of their limited worlds. There is also the problem that like some children some of them will say anything to get their way.

 Obama said this about his detractors "Its like these guys take pride in being ignorant" and "You know, they think it is funny that they are making fun of something that is actually true. They need to do their homework." What an ass. Homework Barack? Is the guy still living in high school? Look, the inflation issue is one that makes sense to those who didn't actually "do their homework", those who are ignorant of the specifics concerning how oil is consumed (can you say "plastics" or fertilizers or electricity or airplanes?). Let me put it this way, I am much more accomplished than the failed lawyer Obama, who has one single accomplishment to his name, he won an election to the US Senate with the help of a dishonest press that lied to us about Obama's church and went after every credible opponent that Obama has thus far faced. Oh yeh, and Obama knows nothing about automobiles, if he did he would have would have advised that people fill their tires with nitrogen. Barack needs to do his "homework."

Thanks to the Gateway Pundit for posting the photo of Obama and his bicycle.