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MUDGE’s Musings
How can you tell a Rovian Republican is lying?
His lips are moving.
It’s less than three months to election day, and the Rovian machinery of mis- and disinformation has lurched into gear.
Jerome Corsi’s new No. 1 bestseller is beneath contempt; the Obama campaign seems to have learned from the stricken paralysis that was the Kerry campaign’s reaction to Corsi’s Swift Boat slander, and one can only hope that the Corsi’s latest spurious attacks will be swiftly deflected.
But there’s a lot more going on in the Fantasyland that is the Republican commentariat.
Take oil, for example.
Did you hear that Alaska has more oil than the Middle East?
Busting the myths about cheap and unlimited oil being broadcast by Rush Limbaugh, Jerome Corsi and other dinosaurs.
By Peter Dizikes
Aug. 18, 2008 | Petroleum may be in short supply these days, but the United States does have a related surplus: myths of oil abundance.
You don’t have to drill deep into our political discourse to find suspect stories about oil, with politicians peddling the flagrantly false notion that China is producing oil off the coast of Florida, while right-wing activist Jerome Corsi claims oil is not a fossil fuel but “a natural product the Earth generates constantly.”
Such declarations serve a political purpose: to make oil drilling seem like an easy solution to our current energy crisis, to marginalize warnings that we are running short on oil, and to stymie efforts at conservation or developing alternatives to fossil fuels.
The same wingnuts who gave us creation science deny the ancient organic origins of petroleum.
The upshot: Oil is a finite resource that takes a long time to create, but we use it quickly. So wouldn’t it be great if oil were an inexhaustible, inorganic substance? A few researchers, notably Soviet scientists in the 1950s, have tried unsuccessfully to make this case. Corsi, known for his attacks on John Kerry, and now making the media rounds with a loopy book on Barack Obama, also promotes this view. In 2005, Corsi coauthored a book, “Black Gold Stranglehold,” asserting that oil is inorganic and abundant, and he continues pumping out related columns at the conservative current-events site WorldNetDaily.
No, China isn’t drilling for oil near Florida. No, supplies in Alaska isn’t anywhere near as plentiful as in Saudi Arabia. No, what oil there is in North Dakota is much less bountiful, and much more difficult to extract, than the noisy Limbaughs would have you believe.
Oil, Alaska, Bakken, Middle East | Salon
Laughable. But millions take these dopes seriously.
So they’re dangerous, especially if they dissuade the public that petroleum independence for the U.S. is feasible at this late age.
Drilling in Gulf waters, or in protected Alaskan spaces? Profits for George III’s oil buddies; not much gain for the average citizen, whose brief respite from $5/gallon would come at the cost of the permanent loss of precious natural resources, like tropical corals and Arctic wilderness.
So, next time the guy in the next cube tries to persuade you that there’s plenty of available oil out there, because Rush has told him so, you’ll know how to respond.
I believe in science, not fantasy.
It’s it for now. Thanks,
–MUDGE
Left-handed Complement 