The American Spectator

Question: How so?

There can be no doubt that Cuba needs everything from infrastructure to clean water; from food to underpants.  Could America completely fulfill each and every one of those needs” Absolutely. But if there is a need, and the business opportunity is to fill those needs, there is yet a “third leg” to this economic milking stool: getting paid.

Cuba’s money is useless and its not the best currency to use even in Cuba. But that’s OK because Cuba doesn’t pay its just debts anyway. It’s a communist country, my friends and fearless readers, despite Hollywood’s contention that it is a paradise. Cuba has written off its huge debts to Latin America and Europe.

So the huge opportunity is that we go to Cuba, provide literally billions of dollars in construction, medicine, clothing, water purification and food. Then the American taxpayer pays for it through our government loans made to Cuba to cover the cost of all this, then Cuba defaults and the American taxpayer is forever stuck!

Sounds like just one more ill-thought-out stimulus plan by our breathtakingly incompetent Congress.

Any American, any one of you, who votes for any member of this lunatic Congress next election cycle, Republican or Democrat, deserves to have your freedoms taken away, and you hard earned wealth confiscated for ill use of this bunch of Congressional idiots.
— Jay Molyneaux
North Carolina

AN ENERGETIC DENUNCIATION
Re: William Tucker’s There’s Plenty of Energy at the Bottom:

Thanks very much for letting Mr. Tucker lay out the the reality we will eventually have to face in clean and simple terms. If they ever succeed in making solar cells cheap and durable, so that we can roof our houses with it, it will help ease peak consumption pressures on a hot afternoon, but that is about it. Don’t get me wrong, I will be grateful for such an advance, but the rest is really a pipe dream. And wind is a joke. Even Pickens’s plan requires the government to make him richer.

Fission is the way to the future. One little quibble. All matter whose mass is greater than just a few nuclei was created in solar processes. So fission is solar derived energy, just not from our sun. (Even Einstein can be wrong.) Fusion on the other hand mimics solar processes, using Big Bang derived elements to make energy, though lighter solar derived elements can be used too. Unfortunately, creating our own solar seems to always be just out of reach. Until then, fission is the sure way to prosperity for everyone.

And the truth is that prosperity brings a cleaner planet. It took us until after World War II to get prosperous enough that our concerns were no longer dominated by surviving, but instead turned to enjoying the world we live in. And we cleaned up really fast in the 70’s.

But the owners of the clean-up movement are crack-pots. They attack all forms of energy. They have stopped us from making dams, squelched making new nuclear plants, their tirades never stop. They have attacked coal, oil, natural gas, the list just goes on and on. They have even attacked wind. The truth is they seem to be against anything that would help mankind progress.

If they really wanted Africans to protect their environment, the would be working on ways to bust the corrupt leadership, and follow that with providing cheap energy to everyone. Then no-one would need to poach to survive.  And they would protect and cherish their wildlife as the treasures they really are.

But Mr. Tucker left out some important details. Most of a fuel rod, new or used, is a safe form of uranium. Both the fuel and the waste are a small fraction of a rod. Yes, the remaining unused fuel, the safe materia, and some of the byproducts can be recycled for more fuel. But the waste isn’t all bad. We have lots of good medical uses for some of that material. And good industrial uses for some more of it. That is why the remaining material that we have not yet found a use for can be kept safe in such a small storage. France gets most of their energy from fusion, and they reprocess lots of other peoples fuel, yet all the waste is stored in one room. Think of that. No need for Yucca Mountain.

You can thank Jimmy Carter that the technologies we invented aren’t being used to help us. He did horrible things to this world. Iran, thank you Jimmy, problems in Central America and Columbia, thank you Jimmy, Afghanistan a mess, thank you Jimmy. We quit using the only sane path to the future, thank you Jimmy.

Only thing is our current president is quickly making Jimmy look like a piker. He seems intent on not only messing up the third world, but on turning us into one. We will not have a sane future with him or his buddies Nancy, Harry, Chris and Barney in charge of anything.