Tuesday, July 22, 2008

Drilling for Dummies

The thing I least miss about teaching writing is responding to student papers. It was real work, trying not to just "correct" a paper and instead use it as a site of learning, which is just a fancy way to say as a way to get the students to think about alternatives or understand why a certain usage was improper or an attempt at logic seemed fuzzy.

Today I thank the rhetorical lord I never had Congressperson Michele Bachmann in one of my classes for I would have no doubt been fired for trying to beat some sense into her.

TBogg took this on, but I need to, too, as it infuriates me so--why is it that citizens vote for stupid people? Evil people, people I don't agree with--fine. But let the idiots do things they were meant to do, like test if a socket is working with a fork or deny evolution while winning a Darwin Award.

Bachmann wrote this brilliant treatise at NRO, so admittedly she doesn't have much editorial guidance, as these people shine on the work of dolts like Jonah Goldberg (author of Liberal Doody-heads: The Secret History of People I Don't Like, Who I Will Lump with People You Don't Like), too. But any piece that attempts to convince you by announcing "Like I knew it would, the American Energy Tour unveiled the truth," makes it clear she had her tiny little mind made up before spending an entire weekend looking at Alaska from a plane and thereby using her PhDs in Geology and Animal Science to determine we should be drilling in ANWR. Talk about evidence--she even has photos from a great height that show us no caribou! How safe it must be!

Then there's the size issue. We won't even go into environmentalists' (excuse me, "the environmentalist left"--as opposed to the "trash the fucking country right," I guess?) claims that the 2000 acre figure denies all the auxiliary infrastructure it would take to actually get the oil. Sure 2000 acres isn't much in Alaska, but the NRDC writes "the 12-lane-wide New Jersey Turnpike, which stretches more than 100 miles across the state, covers only 1,773 acres." So basically ANWR can be Elizabeth NJ when the oil companies get done with it.

But no line of writing will match this one this year:

We know that nine months out of the year this area is hidden under snow and ice and three months out of the year the area is covered in complete darkness.

Just think, that's a mere nine months less than the period darkness floats between Bachmann's ears.

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3 Comments:

Blogger Rickey said...

Frankly, Rickey is surprised that she didn't cite "Journey to the Center of the Earth" in her argument for drilling in ANWR.

So dark cold and snowy makes for a reasonable spot to drill for oil, eh? As opposed to all the warm and tropical places that (according to these right wingers) is just fine for slash and burn logging? Just despicable.

6:18 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Unfortunately Bachman represents a District that does not exhibit a lot of brain power and they drive a lot of SUVs. (I should know, I worked for the Congressman (D) that represented the district in the 1980s). All they hear is $2.00 gas and they think that Bachman is looking hard for their best interests.

5:39 AM  
Blogger Noah said...

Just think, that's a mere nine months less than the period darkness floats between Bachmann's ears.

Good hit.

All they hear is $2.00 gas and they think that Bachman is looking hard for their best interests.

The problem with these folks' thinking is that it won't be nearly $2 per gallon...until at least...at least...2020. 12 years from now, their gas prices will finally drop. Yippee!! In 12 years, we may not be driving internal combustion, fossil fuel burning engines any more.

12:18 PM  

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