Barack Obama’s out attacking Republicans for mocking his “inflate your tires” line today, calling McCain and the Republicans “ignorant”. He had this to say:

“Let me make a point about efficiency, because my Republican opponents – they don’t like to talk about efficiency,” Obama said.

“You know the other day I was in a town hall meeting and I laid out my plans for investing $15 billion a year in energy efficient cars and a new electricity grid and somebody said, ‘well, what can I do? what can individuals do?’ Obama recalled.

“So I told them something simple,” Obama said. “I said, ‘You know what? You can inflate your tires to the proper levels and that if everybody in America inflated their tires to the proper level, we would actually probably save more oil than all the oil we’d get from John McCain drilling right below his feet there, or wherever he was going to drill.’”

No one debates that keeping your tires inflated improves fuel efficiency. But as Jake Tapper notes, his claim is inaccurate. Inflating your tires doesn’t save the same amount as we would take in by expanding domestic drilling. A Time magazine columnist attempts to claim Obama’s right, but he doesn’t explain the numbers he seemingly pulled from the air, attacks Republicans as being in big oil’s pocket throughout the rest of the article, and uses an Obama fanboy slogan in closing it. Pardon my skepticism, especially when other non-partisan sources are saying Obama’s wrong.

Obama’s attempting to make Republicans look stupid on this by painting it as if they oppose conservation and doubt that keeping your tires properly inflated helps increase fuel efficiency. He knows very well that that’s not the point of their mockery and that he was wrong, but he’ll keep pushing the false narrative.

Instead of running ads about Paris Hilton and Britney Spears they should go talk to some energy experts and actually make a difference.

Would these be the same “experts” that Obama quoted when he said the surge wouldn’t reduce violence in Iraq?