Maybe Wally should double-check the Beaver's homework assignments

Over at National Review, the seemingly innumerate or, more likely, numerically hyperbolic Jonah Goldberg struggles with this week's homework assignment.

The theme: When it comes to environmentalism, "there's one rule for the rich and one rule for the rest."

The topic: a proposal to build a wind farm in the waters around Cape Cod, a project known as Cape Wind.

The slant: The rich oinkers of Cape Cod, including lots of piggies named Kennedy, are against a proposed wind mill farm.

Here's how Jonah sums it up:

The basic situation is that some environmentalists and a company called Cape Wind want to build 130 windmills way out in the ocean to help offset energy costs in the region — and to satisfy all those demands that we find substitutes for evil fossil fuels.

Wrong. The turbines will not be way out in the ocean. This is according to Bloomberg News:

As president of Cape Wind Associates LLC, Gordon, 52, has proposed planting 130 wind-driven turbines -- each 417 feet (126 meters) tall -- across 24 square miles (62 square kilometers) of Nantucket Sound's sandy shallows. The sound is bounded by Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and its popular vacation islands of Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Cape Wind says its project, with a 420- megawatt maximum output, would supply as much as 75 percent of the Cape's electricity needs.

Does "Nantucket Sound's sandy shallows" sound like "way out in the ocean" to you?

Of course, lying and saying the turbines are way out in the ocean -- where? international waters? -- makes the Cape Cod oinkers seem just that much more piggy.

Now, I'm not an environmentalist, so I don't know how to evaluate the environmental concerns raised about the proposed placement of the turbines in the Cape Wind project. You'll have to come to your own conclusions about that, as well as about the project's "aesthetics." But I do I know I resent being lied to.

I also resent this bit of silliness that Goldberg throws in:

A very quick search of the LexisNexis news database reveals that Senator Kennedy has called for more "sacrifice" from the wealthy roughly eight kabillion-jamillion-gazillion times during George W. Bush's presidency (and forget about during Ronald Reagan's!). He's excoriated Bush's tax cuts, the war, healthcare policies, and just about everything else for not demanding the rich share more in the "national sacrifice."

That's right -- roughly eight kabillion-jamillion-gazillion times.

Mama Goldberg must have a lot of secretly tape-recorded conversations in the vault. My guess: roughly eight kabillion-jamillion-gazillion.