Digital Chum - Virtual fish guts and other nonsense

pipeline

You’ve got to be kidding me.

I just watched a video on Fox News of a Sean Hannity interview with McCain and Palin. It had its share of the usual claims that you would expect from either party’s candidate during a campaign, so that was no surprise and was expected. Both McCain and Obama regularly make claims about the other that are misleading (and sometimes blatantly untrue).

What really struck me in this interview, though, was McCain’s statement that Palin is “probably one of the foremost experts in this nation on energy issues.” He backed that up by saying that she was responsible for a 40 billion dollar pipeline bringing natural gas from Alaska and that she’s been on a board that oversees natural gas, oil, and other Alaskan resources. He says, “There’s nobody more qualified to take on our mission of becoming energy independence.” That’s not a typo. That was the quote.

I was dumbfounded by the claim that Palin is one of the foremost experts in this nation on energy issues. …Because she was the governor of Alaska? I suppose if you consider “energy” to be only oil and natural gas, that claim might not be quite so outrageous, but it’s still pretty far out there.

The 40 billion dollar pipeline claim is partially true, but misleading. She was partly responsible for moving the project closer to realization, but construction has not been started and the project isn’t a done deal yet. TransCanada, who is to be the builder, estimates that it will take 10 years to complete and will cost about 26.5 billion dollars, not 40 billion.

Either way, claiming that, because she’s been governor of Alaska, Palin is one of the leading experts in the country on energy is like saying that I have foreign policy experience because I can see Russia from my back yard.

Oh, wait…