[sailaway21]

Proving once again that no man's wallet is safe while Congress is in session our elected representatives have outlawed the light bulb and are screwing around with Detroit again. These rocket scientists have not figured out what every used car lot in the country already illustrates; demand for gas-guzzlers is falling and light fuel-efficient cars are cool. But the Congress is going to mandate the over 30mpg for all cars AND light trucks. Light trucks are about to get really, really light.

And that will mean that light trucks will no longer be capable of doing what you bought a truck to do. You can carry the washer, but loading the dryer in may induce trauma to the suspension-forget the frame, it got eliminated due to weight considerations.

Ah, the light bulb. In a nation where one no longer towels one's hair dry but must use an implement of roughly the wattage of a good size commercial microwave oven, the lowly light bulb has been retired as too profligate with energy. You've seen the replacement; it looks like something you used to buy at the Tastee Freeze. Once they warm up, they work really well, unless you want to read, pull a splinter out of your finger, or perhaps find your black snow shovel in the garage.

You say you've got the feeling you've been here before? Yeah, I remember Jimmy Carter, too. The new light bulbs kind of remind me of those first ten years worth of low capacity toilets; the one's that use so little water, but you have to flush three times as much unless you're in the habit of bulking up on the jalapenos. The light bulbs are even better as they're not only poor at lighting, but contain hazardous waste. Everyone you break is an EPA reviewable event as they contain mercury. We're in a nation-wide panic over lead in the paint of Chinese manufactured kid's toys, which might stunt little Johnny's growth somewhere about the one hundredth pound consumed, and we're pushing mercury filled light bulbs as fast as Al Gore can say carbon offset. Do you have a recycling bin marked "Haz_Mat"?

And we get this timely legislation in the absence of possibly the only legislation that the US Congress could pass that is capable of making an almost immediate impact on energy consumption and emissions. And the federal government is the only entity that can take on the liabilities concerned making federal legislation an imperative. Legislation designed to reduce the difficulties in building and bringing on line nuclear power plants would change the entire US energy landscape tomorrow. Let the federal government assume the liability, they already control every other meaningful process in the string of nuke energy production. Open Shoreham on Long Island, NY tomorrow!

In typical fashion the congress has done the most ambiguous at the expense of addressing the most obvious. The time for Nuke's is NOW. We've got nuclear power plants, with much less assurances of safety, tied up to docks in every major port in the US and have had, without incident, for over a quarter century. We build and supply their stationary cousins to every industrialized nation in the world som it's not like we don't know what we're doing. Let's do a new version of a thousand points of light. Let's build a thousand new nuclear plants in the next ten years and get some light bulbs back in the bathroom so that shaving is not regarded as a martial art.