Jonathan Martin is having a field day bashing McCain for his tire gauge distribution today. Some things he’s said need to be sorted out, however.

First:

Obama has responded to this move with what amounts to his first negative ad…

Only if you’ve had your head in the sand for the past few weeks. Here’s Obama hitting McCain in an official ad back in early July.

He then moves on to this in another post, entitled “Two more tire gauges needed for distribution”:

As Obama’s camp notes, Republican Gov’s Charlie Crist and Arnold Schwarzenegger both said in June that keeping tires inflated was one way to save on gas purchases.

That’s thrilling, but it doesn’t back up Obama’s claim. No one doubts that keeping your tires filled is one way to help save money. It improves mileage, so of course it would help you save on gas. But this is what Obama claimed:

There are things you can do individually, though, to save energy.  Making sure your tires are properly inflated — simple thing.  But we could save all the oil that they’re talking about getting off drilling — if everybody was just inflating their tires?  And getting regular tune-ups?   You’d actually save just as much!

He wasn’t attempting to claim that keeping your tires filled would help lower gas costs. He was attempting to claim that keeping your tires inflated would save “just as much” as the oil 60-70% of Americans want recovered. That’s bull.