Hope Someone is Tallying the Lies, I've Lost Track

Sept. 24, 2008 | Salon.com |By Joseph Romm

If this election is about judgment, then John McCain should lose in a landslide. He said of his V.P. pick, "She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America."

We can judge knowledge by both breadth and depth. Palin lacks both. She said in the ABC interview with Charlie Gibson:

Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that's with the energy independence that I've been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy.

FactCheck.org notes that this is "simply untrue." Instead of "nearly 20 percent," try "under 3 percent." On Sept. 14, Palin corrected that to: "My job has been to oversee nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of oil and gas." In fact, as the Washington Post notes, "according to authoritative EIA [Energy Information Administration] data, Alaska accounted for just 7.4 percent of total U.S. oil and gas production in 2005." The Post gives her its highest (which is to say lowest) rating of "Four Pinocchios" for "continuing to peddle bogus statistics three days after the original error was pointed out by independent fact-checkers."

Just for the record, the statement is not true even if you replace the word "energy" with "oil." Alaska accounts for only about 13 percent of U.S. oil production. But the point is, you can't replace all energy with oil, as much as the "Drill, Baby, Drill" Republicans would like to. Palin made the same exact same overgeneralization in her convention speech, when she said, "To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of the world's energy supplies ..." Oil, maybe; energy, definitely not.

From Salon.com