Also posted at my little internet sandbox.  Now with less cat poop!

I know that most people who will stumble across this blog are aware that Republicans are not the party of "National Security."  The normal reasons we get into with our more politically elephantine acquaintances tend to involve discussions about The War on Terra, 9/11, torture, foreign policy and the like.

We also know about domestic concerns that are related to Terra, like inspecting cargo containers or physical access to power and water supplies.   What gets overlooked by us in our arguments are the more mundane things, like network security.

The words in the Title refer not to any condemnation of Torture, domestic wiretapping, or suspension of Habeas Corpus. They come from Herbert Hoover's Veto message of the Muscle Shoals Resolution--the second attempt by congress to establish what later became the Tennessee Valley Authority.

But what is sad is not that Hoover, in 1931, was caught in naive free market pressupositions. What concerns me is that, long after the success of TVA and rural electrification we in 2008 are still in the grips of the same mindset that crippled Hoover. A mindset that is the mirror image of the the folley of communists insisting on public ownership of hot dog stands.

I recently stood next to an electrical generator, big enough to power a city the size of Seattle (about 1,000 megawatts, known as a gigawatt). It was surprisingly small, no larger than a classroom with a tall ceiling.

      The generator’s spinning shaft could be seen where it connected to the steam turbine, next in line. And backing it up were three more turbines, helping to keep that long shaft spinning at 1,800 revolutions every minute.

      The generator doesn’t spin freely because every electrical light and appliance in that gigawatt-sized city is resisting it. It takes a lot of push from the four steam turbines to keep it up to speed. Some power plants create the steam in a boiler heated by burning coal, others by using nuclear fission of uranium-235 to generate the requisite heat. The cleanest method of all is harvesting steam from water sprayed on hot granite a few miles [5 km] underground.

Some of you may remember Peter Schweizer's hit-piece which the USA Today happily published as "news". Schweizer boldly claimed that "there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy".

Now it turns out, thanks to another right-wing hit-piece which then prompted some journalists to take a closer look at Gore's energy bill, that he in fact has signed up for green power big time, paying for 108 blocks ($432 plus/month) which covers his total electricity usage.

Funny how one wingnut can discredit another if both try very hard to discredit Gore.

The problem is that even some Kossacks switched to outrage mode at the sight of such blatant hypocrisy. Oh well...
It's not that Gore encourages people to use more green energy. It's that he wants them to move to smaller houses!

Whatever...