On Nuclear Power

 

                                        On Nuclear Power

        This is, in essence, a repost from several years ago following the continuing lunacy of too many world wide, such as Germany, decommissioning their safe, economical nuclear power plants and now facing the Russian gas shortage. Their Nuclear industry was by far the safest and most eco-friendly mode of electric power production, other than hydro, available, but "Green" politics got in the way. This is not a rant against environmental conscientiousness but rather a truthful look at a much maligned (due to ignorance) energy source. Generating electrical power with nuclear power plants is the second most economical (after hydro, which is location limited) means of energy in the world, much cheaper and more reliable than solar and wind. The original post begins below.    

        I am sick unto nausea of seeing a Pam Bondi lookalike exhorting me to vote "for energy," followed by a multi-ethnic panel of paid actors who parrot the same party line. What is saddening is that this is presented as if it was just a common sense, non-partisan, effort sponsored from the largesse of the energy industry. Make no mistake - we are held captive by these people to a degree. The fossil fuel purveyors are the money behind these ads. Dig deep enough into the background of this commercial (for that's what it is, in truth), and the Koch Brothers, frackers too numerous to mention, and the coal industry are lurking there.

        Sadly, we, as a nation of sheep, were frightened away from nuclear power by an accident which has had zero measurable effects on the general population or the environment over the subsequent 37 years other than the higher cost of electricity as the utility recouped their self-inflicted monetary loss over the following years. The site was called Three Mile Island, for those with short memories or too few years to remember. Within the same week, a film (The China Syndrome) scared the beJesus out of many who understood little of all that was wrong with it, conceptually.

      I worked in a nuclear industry, the  Submarine Navy, for 26 years as an educator and operator/supervisor. Our hundreds of thousands (more likely millions, by now) of nuclear accident-free operating hours under conditions far more challenging than stationary power generation, are testimony to the safety of the types of reactors used in US nuclear facilities. The Chernobyl tragedy was largely due to the type of reactor involved, and the lack of both judgement and training of those who initiated the event, not the nature of the use of nuclear power. Even the more recent Fukushima catastrophe in Japan was caused by inadequate backup provision for power, and a site location and design which would not have been licensed in the US, nor would a US plant have been at risk of a once in a lifetime tsunami. What passed unnoticed, is that no one died because of nuclear issues of any sort, but several were killed by the initial event (earthquake/tsunami) itself.

        Since its inception in 1948, the U.S. Navy nuclear program has developed twenty-seven different plant designs, installed them in 210 nuclear-powered ships, taken five hundred reactor cores into operation, and accumulated over 5,400 reactor years of operation and 128,000,000 miles safely steamed. For some perspective that's over 550 trips to the moon! Additionally, ninety-eight nuclear submarines and six nuclear cruisers have been recycled, with fuel reprocessed and reclaimed, minimizing waste.

        The U.S. Navy has never experienced a reactor accident. By comparison, there have been more than one hundred fatalities in the US involving Liquid Natural Gas (LNG) one of the "safe" fossil fuels hyped by the Energy Lobby. Between petroleum, LNG and Coal industry accidents, thousands have died, including the flattening of one square mile of Cleveland and 132 dead by an LNG explosion in 1944, and 362 in just one West Virginia coal mine explosion. This of course ignores the continuing litany of cancers caused by carbon fuel off gassing, especially earlier coal fired plants.

        Both solar and wind powers are attractive, no fuel, no carbon, options, but at great carbon and financial price for the initial installation, and for wind power, as the Danes are finding out, a lifetime intense maintenance commitment, in the current state of wind technology. Solar ...well, it only works when the sun is up, and current technology options for energy storage for later use are in their infancy. It will also almost assuredly be shown that while initial solar installations are less costly than wind energy, storage will be far more so. Hydro is of course fuel free, but requires significant altering of the natural course of rivers and the accompanying loss of various habitats, while having the obvious downside of needing high volume flows to maintain output. Hydro is also subject to the effects of changing weather patterns on the amount of water available. The record low levels in Lake Mead are exemplary. In the meantime, safe nuclear energy offers a far better alternative than coal (no carcinogens) and fracking (fewer drill induced earthquakes).

        "Be an energy voter" is partisan to the max while pretending not to be. Don't be suckered.

Trump's Greatest Hits

 

                           Trump’s Greatest Hits                              

    A compendium in his own words demonstrating why Donald Trump was the worst President ever and should be exiled to Bithlo. (For the uninitiated, Bithlo is a  rural Florida hamlet east of Orlando where  the mayor is a possum and hopes and dreams go to die.) 

 Trump is a bigot:

“I have a great relationship with the blacks. I’ve always had a great relationship with the blacks,” (really? Read on!)

“Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” (!!!)

“Who the f knows? I mean, really, who knows how much the Japs will pay for Manhattan property these days?” (He responded to a real estate question using a racial slur for the Japanese.)

This is court record: He argued in 2016 that Judge Gonzalo Curiel — who was overseeing the Trump University lawsuit — should recuse himself from the case because of his Mexican heritage and membership in a Latino lawyers’ association. House Speaker Paul Ryan, who had initially endorsed Trump, later called such comments “the textbook definition of a racist comment.”

Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle: “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor. It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.” (And he "loves" black persons?)

Trump is a sexist pig:

Trump on how to handle the fairer sex. “You have to treat ’em like shit,” (Trump quoted by former friend Philip Johnson)

“Rosie’s a person that’s very lucky to have her girlfriend. And she better be careful, or I’ll send one of my friends over to pick up her girlfriend,” Trump continued. “Why would she stay with Rosie if she had another choice?” (Mind numbingly sexist and stupid)

“I’m going to be able to do things for women that no other candidate would be able to do, and it’s very important to me.” (But he didn’t, unless we count packing the USSC with justices who would overturn Roe v Wade, which was done to women, not for them.) 

“You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” (Poor Megyn Kelly, apparently bleeding out right on camera.)

“When a man leaves a woman, especially when it was perceived that he has left for a piece of ass—a good one, there are 50 percent of the population who will love the woman who was left.” (What a swine!)

“'I’ve said if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps I’d be dating her.” (Yuck!)

“You know, it really doesn’t matter what the media write as long as you’ve got a young, and beautiful, piece of ass.”

“You know, I’m automatically attracted to beautiful — I just start kissing them. It’s like a magnet. Just kiss. I don’t even wait. And when you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything....grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.” (Including have an affair with one while your wife is pregnant?)

“I am the greatest” (with apologies to the late Muhammad Ali who actually was)

“'I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.” (News flash: Mexico hasn’t paid a cent for the wall)

'My IQ is one of the highest — and you all know it! Please don't feel so stupid or insecure; it's not your fault.' (This explains why he threatened Warton with a lawsuit if they ever released his actual grades, Additionally the graduating program from Warton lists him as “graduating” with no honors whatsoever)

“I went to the Wharton School of Business…I’m, like, a really smart person. (Really smart individuals don’t have to tell you they are. For another take on this: Wharton professor William T. Kelley had another view. After Kelley’s death, a close friend of Kelley revealed that the professor felt the president was a fool. “Professor Kelley told me 100 times over three decades, and I remember his emphasis and inflection — it went like this — ‘Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had’)

“Apologizing is a great thing, but you have to be wrong. I will absolutely apologize sometime hopefully in the distant future if I’m ever wrong.” (Start now, you have a long list!)

'I was down there, and I watched our police and our firemen, down on 7-Eleven, down at the World Trade Center, right after it came down' (How odd it is, that not one person saw him)

“Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart…I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star, to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius…and a very stable genius at that!”

Writes and speaks like a Fourth grader:

'[The New York Times] don't write good. They have people over there, like Maggie Haberman and others, they don't - they don't write good. They don't know how to write good.  (Turns out he don't talk good either.)

“I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.” (This may be be the most revealing and insulting comment yet, on his sheer willingness to say anything, no matter how inane and insulting which pops into his great orange head. He dodged the draft, citing a non-existent bone spur  with an excuse from a doctor who rented from his (Trump’s) father, and then says he wishes he had a medal awarded only to those who are wounded in military service.)   

“I think I am actually humble. I think I'm much more humble than you would understand.” (Yep, he’s the “humblest” ever, no one knows more about humility then him!)

“Eventually we're going to get something done and it's going to be really, really good.” (He was talking about “his” healthcare bill here, which never in four years saw the light of day, let alone actual Congressional debate)

"I think I could have stopped it because I have very tough illegal immigration policies, and people aren't coming into this country unless they're vetted and vetted properly." (Referring to the events of 911 which were perpetrated by persons legally in the country.)

Trump on sharing his financial success

"I look very much forward to showing my financials, because they are huge." (Yet he is still suing to keep from being forced to do so, and no US Bank will lend to him!)

Trump on Covid-19

“We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China. It’s going to be just fine.” (Of course, it will!)

“Within a couple of days,” Trump announced, “[infections are] going to be down to close to zero. One day, it’s like a miracle. It will disappear.” (Still waiting)

Regarding killing coronavirus with ‘light inside the body’: “Suppose that we hit the body with a tremendous, whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light,” Trump said at a White House coronavirus briefing, before continuing: “Supposing you brought the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or in some other way.” (Meanwhile Dr Fauci turns his head and vomits. What’s really the joke here is that tanning salons use Ultraviolent lamps, and the sun emits UV rays. By Trump’s lunatic logic, anyone who tans should be COVID free!)

He said, “it’s an amazing thing” that the coronavirus “affects virtually nobody,” (This statement was made literally only a few hours before the United States officially surpassed two hundred thousand deaths from the pandemic. Ignorant and an almost pathological liar – a bad set of faults in President)

"Is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? It sounds interesting to me, so we'll see. “But the whole concept of the light, the way it kills it in one minute. That's pretty powerful." (Call Alex Jones, maybe he has an answer!)

And, because it shows him at his stumbling , mumbling, semi-literate best: Speaking of his own ‘positive negative’ test result, Trump actually stated that he “tested very positively” during his now-daily Covid-19 test. “In another sense, I tested positively toward negative, right? So no. I tested perfectly this morning, meaning I tested negative. But that's a way of saying it. Positively toward the negative.” (Another “way of saying it” would be “I’m a f***ing moron”)  

“Everybody (Everybody? Really?) says I’ve done a tremendous job with COVID. My leadership has been extraordinary, best in history. My quick actions have all but wiped out the virus, saving millions of lives, and I’ve got the economy ready to roar back to better than ever before. I think a little gratitude would be nice. Maybe a big ‘thank you Mr. President’ is called for. (No, the economy hasn’t “roared back” and the virus is nowhere near “wiped out.” Vaccines have saved millions of lives, aided by social distancing and masks. Anyone believing Trump showed real leadership during the pandemic is obviously suffering from the dumbshit variant.)  

“The closest thing is in 1917, they say, the great pandemic. It certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 to 100 million people. Probably ended the Second World War. All the soldiers were sick.” (First and foremost, the Flu epidemic didn’t end WWI; massive German battlefield losses did, since it was only eight months since the outbreak. However, Trump says it “probably ended WWII” which began twenty-one years later. It should be deeply disconcerting to any sentient person when a college graduate of Trump’s age and office doesn’t know when the two World Wars were fought. This is coincident with Trump asking, according to an aide who was there, while at Normandy, who the combatants were, and referring to them as “losers” for dying in battle after seeing the cemetery.)

Various other ludicrous or dangerous statements:

“Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish, the second amendment [the right to have a gun].” He continued “if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the second amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know. (The referral to “Second Amendment people” sounded a lot like an encouragement for one to “take out” Ms. Clinton)

"I'm an environmentalist. A lot of people don’t understand that. I think I know more about the environment than most people." - Despite his public stance against the existence of global warming. (Again, claiming to “know more about” something just because he’s a “stable genius.” This is similar to his “I know more about” comments on nuclear power because he has an uncle who actually does. In truth, The Trump administration rolled back more than 100 environmental rules.  Over four years, the Trump administration dismantled major climate policies and rolled back many more rules governing clean air, water, wildlife and toxic chemicals. If Trump is an environmentalist, Pee Wee Herman is an NFL linebacker.

Speaking about China's President, who repealed the country's term limit laws. "He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot someday." (Just like Putin, too, huh? Heaven forbid!)

“We cut taxes more than, you know, the biggest tax cut in history. My Administration and I built the greatest economy in history, of any country, turned it off, saved millions of lives, and now am building an even greater economy than it was before. Jobs are flowing, NASDAQ is already at a record high, the rest to follow. Sit back and watch! (Trump is serially lying here. His was not the biggest tax cut in history, and it has increased the federal deficit by $1 trillion every year since it went into law. As to the “Strongest economy: During the last two years of the Obama administration, annual median household income increased $4,800. This is three times more than the $1,400 increase during the first two years of the Trump administration. Additionally, economic growth through the last eleven Obama quarters was virtually identical to Trump’s first eleven. Unemployment was near historical lows under Trump, and yet growth in gross domestic product was well below what several previous presidents achieved, and other metrics such as wages and business investment ranged from average to simply mediocre.)

“You must go forth into the world, with passion, courage in your conviction, and most importantly be true to yourself. I did it!”

(Trump said this during a Commencement speech at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia. Sound familiar? It might, since Reese Witherspoon as Elle Woods said it first, in Legally Blonde, during her graduation speech. And no, Trump didn’t attribute the words to her)

Campaigning against Joe Biden: “He is going to do things that nobody ever, would ever think even possible because he’s following the radical left agenda. Take away your guns, destroy your Second Amendment. No religion, no anything. Hurt the Bible. Hurt God. He’s against God. He’s against guns.” (Just the litany of nonsensical and absurd claims about Joe Biden, who is an avowed Catholic, as opposed to Trump who, as an adult has been to church only when he married one of his serial brides.)

“I went in yesterday and there was a television screen, and I said, ‘This is genius.’ Putin declares a big portion of the Ukraine — of Ukraine — Putin declares it as independent. Oh, that’s wonderful,” (Remember, he still wants to build a hotel in Moscow! Trump signed a letter of intent to develop the building, provisionally named Trump World Tower Moscow, in October 2015.)

When asked what, as President, he would do to help Ukraine  during Russia's invasion Trump spouted this rambling litany of word salad:  “Well what I would do, is I would, we would, we have tremendous military capability and what we can do without planes, to be honest with you, without 44-year-old jets, what we can do is enormous, and we should be doing it and we should be helping them to survive and they're doing an amazing job." (This may be the world record for a non-answer answer.)

“I listen to [Vladimir Putin] constantly using the n word. That’s the n word, and he’s constantly using it: the nuclear word. And we never talk of, we say, ‘Oh, he’s a nuclear power.’ But we’re a greater nuclear power. We have the greatest submarines in the world, most powerful machines ever built. Most powerful, and they got built under me. Most powerful machines ever built, and nobody knows where they are. And you should say, ‘Look, if you mention that word one more time, we’re going to send them over, and we’ll be coasting back and forth up and down your coast.’” And finally, several things leap out here: We (the US military and especially Pentagon planners) never, ever discuss submarine deployment strategies publicly, and neither should an ex- president. Second, Trump’s claim that “They got built under me is diametrically false. No submarine whose construction was authorized under Trump has been commissioned. None, Period. This is a categorical lie and vintage Trump.  Additionally, Russia has only a sometimes ice-bound Arctic coast and a Pacific coast, neither within less than 2000 miles of Ukraine. Without going into more specific details (and I could!) suffice it to say that Trump’s comments on “coastal” patrols are irrelevant from a nuclear standpoint, and just demonstrate the huge scope of his ignorance.

I have assembled this small sampling of Trump’s blithering drivel just to show how, in his own words, he almost screams “I am not even fit to pick up dog turds off the White House lawn.” And he wants to run again in 2024!

Thank you and have a nice day. 

In the Aftermath

 

                                    In the Aftermath

 

        So, what's going on this week other than that election "thingy" on Tuesday.” First (and worst) of all, we still have many Far-Right members of the GOP scurrying to convince the deplorables that the attack on Paul Pelosi was the act of a “lone wolf” and not in any way engendered by their rhetoric. Texas’s Ted Cruz shared a tweet calling the attacker "a hippie nudist from Berkeley" and dismissed the idea that the attack was motivated by right-wing ideology as "absurd." Others have actually claimed the FBI orchestrated the attack as a “false flag” to discredit the GOP’s radical wing. The attacker was a known Far Right loony who might well have killed Speaker Pelosi had she been home. We now have many of the GOP, including multiple members of Congress, treating this incident as Alex Jones did the Sandy Hook school shootings.

This particular flavor of bullshit goes all the way back to well before Donald Trump's pre-election statements of 2016 and has continued right on through to the present. When we got stuck with Donald Trump, we saw a complete departure from presidential restraint and consensus building. What once were the natterings of isolated groups of malcontent morons, became mainstream poison. I've been politically aware since the Eisenhower administration and have never heard an American chief executive be as confrontational, derogatory, or vengeful as Donald Trump.

 Sadly, many of those Americans who have lurked in these shadows harboring feelings of racism, anti-Semitism, and dissatisfaction with the misery of their own lives, have come to feel empowered by this new openness of hate speech. To be frank, in the modern era Trump did not invent this concept of publicly digging into the hidden frustrations and bigotry of some Americans. Dissatisfied Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) went there in 1948, when Harry Truman urged the inclusion a civil rights plank in the Democratic platform. They left the party and ran vile racist, Strom Thurman as an alternate candidate. It should be no surprise that they then became Republicans by 1952, in time to become a thorn in the side of Dwight Eisenhower. Later, Newt Gingrich refined this to a great extent, largely through his own rhetoric and even more so because of his support for people like Rush Limbaugh who became, in essence, “Alex Jones lite.”

When, in 1987, Ronald Reagan essentially quashed the FCC’s “fairness doctrine” which required media outlets to allow the presentation of both sides of controversial issues, he opened the door to the current plethora of unaccountable broadcast liars such as the Hannitys, Carlsons and Ingrahams.

The fairness doctrine consisted of two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been cited by many social observers as a prime contributing factor in the escalation of party polarization in the United States.

By the time this op-ed sees publication, we will know the outcome of Tuesday’s vote. Some recent political candidate ads were markedly more aggressive than the pre-Trump era. The tragic aspect of this is that many of the candidates who were running the most aggressive and confrontational ads are people who still see any indication of not supporting Trump as a negative among voters of their party, ergo they will say things they may not even believe in campaign ads because they don't want to anger the great orange Wizard of Oz. One current example would be Nevada Senate GOP candidate Adam Laxalt who like a disappointing number of other Republicans continues to use the words “open border” or something similar to imply that the current administration has “dismantled border security” (Laxalt’s words). In fact: funding for Customs and Border security in the Biden administration is precisely comparable to that of the Trump administration. Border Patrol staffing under the Biden administration is consistent with the Trump administration. And finally, the laws and policies to prevent immigrants from remaining in the US illegally continue under the Biden administration to remain exactly the same as they were. In point of fact, for fiscal year 2022 Congress appointed over a billion dollars more for border security than any of the four Trump budgets.

On a local note, we saw similar claims from Marco Rubio. We have seen him claim that Val Demings, his opponent, “votes with Pelosi 100% of the time.” (Just like he voted with his party?) He has falsely implied that Congresswoman Demings would support defunding the police when, in fact, she was one of the few Democrats who voted against a bill to open the doors to that happening. We were also exposed to Governor Ron DeSantis claiming that he's keeping Florida “free” while restricting the ability of public-school teachers to do their jobs. We also saw DeSantis decrying the economy under former governor Charlie Crist, which ignores the fact that Crist’s governorship coincided with the major economic national recession caused by eight years of inadequate supervision of financial markets and the housing bubble collapse. In other words, like Barack Obama would be in 2008, Charlie Crist was also the recipient of a bad economy that affected the entire world, not just the state of Florida.

As of my writing this, I am hopeful, but by no means optimistic, regarding the results of the election. We surely deserve better than we have in Rubio’s (and Scott’s, but he didn’t run this cycle) Senate seats and in the Governor’s mansion. I loved teaching my 20 years at Boone High school, but I don’t think I’d make it a full year teaching real history under current restrictions. Stay strong and please remain politically active.