Needed Bold Visionary Leadership On Energy

America and the world need bold and visionary leadership in the area of energy, unfortunately we’re not getting it from our political leaders.
The looming energy shortage especially the exhaustion of the world’s easy to get oil is perhaps the greatest problem facing the United States and human civilization today. Yet all our leaders are telling us to do is turn down the thermostat and buy more fuel efficient cars. These are half measures which will not alter or change the basic situation what is needed is bold leadership to open up new sources of energy.
Historically America has made bold steps because leaders presented us with a bold vision to live up to. Abraham Lincoln told us we could get rid of slavery, defeat the Confederacy and connect the country with a Transcontinental Railroad - we did, Theodore Roosevelt said we could build the Panama Canal -we did, Franklin Roosevelt said we could overcome the Depression and win World War II - we did, John F. Kennedy said we could land a man on the moon - we did, Martin Luther King said we could end segregation -we did and Ronald Reagan said we could win the Cold War - we did. Vacillating half measures like conservation got us no where, Jimmy Carter tried to deal with the energy crisis by turning down the thermostat and putting on a sweater the voters rightly rejected him.
What we need is a bold leader who will present us with a vision we can achieve. The best vision would be for America to use technology to become the world’s supplier of energy. This can be done by harnessing America’s three greatest resources - entrepreneurship, technology and imagination. There are three things in particular that America can do to solve energy problem, three things that could give America a booming economy and world leadership in the 21st Century.
The first thing America can do is harness a technology called Maglev which could give us the world’s fastest and most energy efficient ground transportation system. Maglev trains use magnetic levitation to float trains over a track and move at high speeds. Maglev is not science fiction it’s been tested in Germany and Japan for forty years and the world’s first operating maglev train system is up and running in China. The Chinese leaders are not fools they know the future and are preparing for it, so should America.
Suppose we Americans created a public/private partnership to build a nationwide system of Maglev rail lines in the same way that President Eisenhower proposed we create an Interstate highway system. Imagine a network of maglev trains moving passengers and freight between our cities at 200 or 300 miles an hour. This would take hundreds of passenger planes out of our sky, get millions of cars and thousands of trucks off our highways.
America would have the world’s most advanced, fastest and most efficient ground transportation system. It would also have a greatly stimulated economy, constructing Maglev would pump billions of dollars into the economy create millions of new jobs and stimulate new development and economic growth. Americans would have greater freedom to live where they want and could commute by longer distances. Imagine a future in which you could travel from Los Angeles to Las Vegas by train in just half an hour.
The second thing we need to do is look into oil shale, there is more oil locked into oil shale in the American West than in the Middle East. We have technology to turn shale into oil right now. If we develop a shale oil industry we could have a domestic source of oil capable of meeting our needs and perhaps we could become an oil exporting industry. Imagine a future in which OPEC tries to double the price of oil and America responds by simply selling oil off at a quarter of the price of OPEC. In a few weeks, OPEC will be broke and America could reap untold economic benefits. Meanwhile the Arabs could be rediscovering the joys of riding camels and the Ayatollahs could be hanging from the lampposts of Tehran or shopping for homes in Michigan. So perhaps its time to spend the money we’re wasting on ethanol to develop an oil shale industry.
The third thing we need to look into is solar power, not just solar panels but a source of energy from the sun that could provide vast amounts of cheap and clean energy. The solar power we’re talking about here is Solar Power satellites. It is technologically feasible to collect vast amounts of electricity in orbit using giant solar panels. The Japanese have actually tested the theory even though it was developed by the US government at taxpayers’ expense. These panels can operate 24 hours a day and are not obscured by weather. The power they could beam down to Earth is virtually limitless.
Imagine a future in which we can eliminate all of our coal, oil and natural gas burning power plants and the green house gases they generate. Imagine a future a future in which we no longer need to build nuclear power plants and dam rivers to get electricity. Imagine a future in which cheap electricity is available to all people in all countries. Solar power satellites could make that possible.
Suppose that America makes a commitment to build such a network of solar power satellites in conjunction with our Chinese, European, Japanese, Indian and Russian friends.
Perhaps we could construct a multinational base on the Moon where these satellites could be constructed and helium three which could be a key ingredient in fusion could be mined. That vision is no more crazy than Teddy Roosevelt’s Panama Canal or John F. Kennedy’s man on the moon. Or for that matter the Internet, home satellite dishes, private automobiles and personal computers.
There are other things we can do as well research into hydrogen, earth based solar power, fusion, nuclear power, electrification of the railroads, mass transit, hydrogen, etc. Of course all these things like the three big steps I just proposed wold require bold vision. The kind of bold vision our great leaders have always had and the kind of vision that the pack of moral and intellectual pygmies running for president seem to lack completely.

For information on Maglev see...
http://www.transrapid.com/

For Solar Satellites check out
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/solar_power_sats_011017-1.html

For Oil Shale

http/money.cnn.com/2007/10/30/magazines/fortune/Oil_from_stone.fortune/index2.html

The Conservative Coalition Unravels

The big story of the 2008 presidential election is the unraveling of the great Conservative Coalition that has dominated American politics since Ronald Reagan’s day.
Reagan, like his idol Franklin D. Roosevelt, was a political genius who put together a coalition of disparate elements that dominated American politics for a generation. Like all good coalitions, Reagan’s coalition was a compromise, a compromise being an agreement that nobody likes but every accepts because it achieves a common good. The Reagan compromise was to get religious conservatives, social conservatives, Anti-Communists, libertarians and moderate Republicans to put aside their differences and win elections.
The Reagan coalition has broken down because the Reagan compromise has broken down. Reagan convinced social and religious conservatives not to talk about economic issues, moderates to bite their tongues when foreign policy was discussed and Libertarians and Cold War Anti Communists not to talk about social issues. Much of the Reagan compromise was based on the threat of Communism and the widely held belief in 1970s and 80s American that the Soviet Union was somehow winning the Cold War. The members of the Coalition were so afraid of Communism that they put aside their differences to fight it. Religious conservatives were afraid of Godless Communism, libertarians of Soviet socialism and traditional pro business Republicans were afraid to buck the anti communist trend because of patriotism.
Today the Reagan coalition like FDR’s coalition is completely broken because of changing times. Two major Republican presidential candidates, John McCain and Mike Huckabee are viciously attacking the President’s foreign policy in language reminiscent of the Democrats. A religious conservative, Mike Huckabee, is advancing the idea that government should help the poor and intervene in the economy, entirely Biblical courses of action that are undoubtedly making Barry Goldwater spin in his grave. A moderate law and order Republican, Rudi Guiliani is trying to win votes by staking out middle of the road positions on social issues like Abortion and gay rights. John McCain is doing something even more loathsome to social conservatives , he’s simply ignoring social issues entirely. Every time somebody mentions gay rights McCain starts ranting about the war on terror and his time in the Hanoi Hilton. An insurgent libertarian, Ron Paul is trying to sabotage the party establishment. A Southern good old boy, Fred Thompson is running simply because the Republicans need a Southern good old boy in the race and so on.
For the first time since 1980 there is no conservative coalition, the Republicans like the Democrats are at each others throats. Neocons with visions of American Empire in their heads are attacking Bible thumpers. Bible thumpers are railing against liberal Republicans who want to return to the days of Herbert Hoover. Liberal Republicans are railing against neo cons and Bible thumpers. Paleocons have deserted the party entirely because Ron Paul is too liberal for their tastes. If Pat Buchanan doesn’t run in 2008 they won’t vote.
This means that the Republicans for the first time since 1912 when Teddy Roosevelt’s Bull Moose insurgency split the party are disunited. Even in the darkest days of the Depression/World War II FDR ascendancy Republicans presented a united front. Now the Republicans are as disorganized and as confused as the Democrats. The average Republican doesn’t know who his candidate is or what the party platform is. He tunes in Rush Limbaugh and finds that Rush is as confused as he is.
This gives Democrats a leg up they’re used to a disorganized party with no real leadership.
They’ll rally around a second rate figure like Bill Clinton because he can win office. Republicans don’t know what to do there is no leader no heir to Reagan on the horizon only a collection of second rate hacks with some money and a little street cred. Democrats are used to this situation they’ll rally around a guy like Slick Willie Clinton and his Fembot of a wife (even though they’d never invite him to their homes the stereo might not be there after he leaves for the evening) because he can deliver elections. It’s been so long since they had a real candidate they’ll take what they can get. Republicans remember Reagan survey the presidential field and throw up. Democrats yawn and say he or she can win the election so vote for that person.
The Republicans have an interesting choice before them, either find some way to resurrect the Reagan coalition (which might be impossible without Reagan) or swallow their pride and vote for whatever Republican can out shyster the Democrats. Either way it’s going to be a sickening choice that will lead to more government and higher taxes.

Why Canadians Hate America.

Why is there so much Anti-Americanism in Canada? I’ve been asking myself this question since the 1980s when I visited my mother’s homeland as a teenager and had some interesting experiences?
An uncle of mine, a conservative guy, (a veteran and a member of the Canadian Legion the kind of guy who would have picked up his gun and fought to the death if a single Communist soldier had stepped foot on Canadian soil) passionately defended Fidel Castro to me and even claimed that the Cuban people supported Fidel. He also praised Mikhail Gorbachev and bashed Ronald Reagan. A cousin of mine, a very sensible man bought a piece of junk car built in Russia (the Lada) because he wanted to support Canada’s trade deal with the Soviet Union. My cousin’s Lada wouldn’t run but he was proud of it even as he was begging a ride from his neighbor who had bought a Toyota. I’m sure lots of Russians who will stare at this in disbelief.
Since then I’ve wondered about Canadian anti-Americanism and I think I have an explanation. Canadians have an inferiority complex when it comes to the USA, after all what does Canada have when compared to America? Americans won World War II and the Cold War, landed men on the moon, invented constitutional government, television, light bulbs, electric street cars, the Internet, personal computers, Rock N Roll, Jazz, football (real football the kind we play in the United States and Canada), baseball, pro wrestling, movies, comic books, hamburgers, hot dogs, Coca Cola, air conditioning, the machine gun, the atomic bomb, the helicopter and a zillion other cool things. What do Canadians have to compare to that? The Mounties, Hockey and socialized medicine? Okay Alexander Graham Bell did invent the telephone and he was Canadian but he invented it in Massachusetts. To add insult to injury Canadians are usually mistaken for Americans when traveling outside their country.
If that wasn’t bad enough Canadians have no real history, no great wars were fought there, no Revolutions were held on Canadian soil and no great political ideas came out of Canada. There was no Canadian Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln or Martin Luther King. I can’t think of a single great Canadian general or statesmen, or for that matter even a single great Canadian writer or philosopher. Hemingway wrote a few articles for the Toronto Star but he was from Illinois.
This situation is made worse because until about sixty years ago there was nothing like modern Canada. Canada was simply the British Empire’s outpost in North America, Canadians’ patriotism centered around His Majesty the King. Hundreds of thousands of Canadians fought and died for King and Empire in both world wars. Then one day the empire disappeared and Canadians had nothing but Mounties and Maple leafs (what sort of a nation takes as its symbol a leaf?).
Since then Canadian patriotism has been based on one thing and one thing alone: “we’re not Americans.” It’s been stoked been stoked by slimy politicians in particular Pierre Trudeau (the loathsome Canadian Prime Minister who traded Canadian grain for Soviet built tractors that didn’t run). Trudeau (a great Canadian patriot who grew up in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and a World War II draft dodger) had Fidel Castro as a pallbearer at his funeral.
The situation is made worse by the fact that almost any Canadian who succeeds in his or her field moves to the greener pastures of the USA. William Shatner, almost every NHL player including the Great One Wayne Gretsky himself,, most professional wrestlers, Peter Jennings, Dan Acrkoyd, John and Jim Belushi, Donald and Kieffer Sutherland to name but a few. All made their fame and fortune and chose to live in the USA and so did my mother. Who can blame them?
I grew up listening to my mother telling me how she grew up without electricity and indoor plumbing and ended up picking tobacco to pay for college in civilized Ontario in the 1950s. So I have to wonder what’s so great about Canada and chuckle a lot when I hear some American liberal talking about moving to Vancouver (let them, they’ll be back after seeing their first tax bill).
Still I do feel really sorry for Canadians. What I wonder will happen to them in the year 2030 when China is the world’s most powerful nation? They won’t be able to claim moral superiority for not being Americans and have no glorious history to look back upon. So I suppose they will have nothing while we Americans will be boasting about little things like the Constitution, the Emancipation Proclamation, the A-Bomb and the first Moon Landing? My guess in that year, most Canadians will go around claiming to be Americans in order to give themselves a heritage they never had.