Mr. McCain - sunscreen is not a healthcare policy!

McCain emphasized that skin cancer is preventable, and implored Americans to wear sunscreen, especially over the summer. What’s wrong with this advice? Not a thing. It’s a smart, sensible thing to say.

But imagine if Obama and his surrogates said the entirety of McCain’s healthcare policy is sunscreen application. McCain doesn’t really care about cancer, they could argue, he just wants everyone to run out at get some SPF 30. Those vying to be Obama’s running mate started holding up bottles of Coppertone during their speeches, saying things like, “We want you to wear sunscreen, you know, it will very mildly improve your chances of not getting sick. But wearing sunscreen is not a healthcare policy for the United States of America.”

This, of course, would be insane. And yet, that’s pretty much what’s become of Republican campaign rhetoric of late.

The McCain campaign and its surrogates have been mocking a recent comment by Obama about some common sense tips to save energy and money. The outrageous suggestion -- inflate your tires and get your car tuned up.

McCain has actually been handing out tire gauges to reporters and you can get one from his website for a donation of $25. (you can get a plain one at the gas station for a buck or two)

As this post (quoted above) over at CarpetBagger Report points out its like they've got a new toy to play with. They also link to the fact that California Gov. Schwarzenegger, Florida Gov. Christ and NASCAR all point to tire inflation and tune ups as energy saving tips.

Maintenance Tips
Inflate Your Tires. Keeping your tires properly inflated is simple and improves gas mileage by around 3%, saving up to 20 gallons of gasoline, or up to $75.

Tune up. Fixing a car that is noticeably out of tune or has failed an emissions test can improve its gas mileage by an average of 4% – saving up to 25 gallons of gasoline and up to $95. (source)

Saving $170 on gas may not be a big deal for the McCains (he spends over $500 for a pair of shoes after all), but for most Americans that's nothing to sneeze at.

Then you've got to consider the cumulative effect if people heed this advice.

According to the US Bureau of Transit Statistics for 2006 there are 250,851,833 registered passenger vehicles in the US. If half of those cars followed the basic suggestion then we are talking about saving 5,644,166,242 gallons of gasoline. Over 5 and a half billion gallons of gas saved per year.

Offshore drilling "would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030." That's according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

So the Bush-McCain plan to start drilling in areas currently banned would take 22 years to have a significant impact. By then, inflating our tires and keeping our cars tuned up will potentially have saved us over 123 billion gallons of gas.