May 2006 has been very good to Al Gore.

The Republican, corporate sponsored smear campaign against him has failed comically. Conservative media trotted out lawyers claiming to be scientists. Campaign style advertisements were played on TV. Right wing blogs and radio hacks said 'alarmist', 'chicken little', and 'unhinged' over and over, to no effect beyond making themselves look hysterical. The rest of the media was more inclined to make fun of the broken noise machine itself, rather than help promote the anti-Gore propaganda.



On every front, the smear attempt was a failure. Not only is there more interest in the Al Gore's movie, there is significantly more awareness about outfits like CEI and NCPA. Seemingly cornered, does Republican leadership finally begin to discuss real solutions to oil consumption?

Of course not, there is always the nuclear option.

Yesterday, Solution to Greenhouse Gases Is New Nuclear Plants, Bush Says. "Let's quit the debate about whether greenhouse gases are caused by mankind or by natural causes." Without directly acknowledging the science of global warming, he yields the argument. Don't be fooled. Absolutely nothing will change with regard to the administrating policy of more oil consumption at higher prices. Only the propaganda used to distract from that policy will change. The noise machine is being reprogrammed to announce the benefits of new nuclear reactors.

Bush has promoted nuclear energy before, but it was abandoned. Even as some environmentalists opened to fission as a lesser evil to burning, key questions could not be answered. Today, none of the Key Questions from the 2001 effort have been answered. The reasons is because no research or effort has been made to answer them. The Administration is re-activating the campaign as political stunt. Otherwise, the effort is all Nonsense.

Jessica Holzer closed her article today in Forbes with "And building more nuclear power plants won't do much to improve our energy independence either, since they compete with coal- and gas-fired plants. The U.S. imports just a small portion of the natural gas it uses and is blessed with a more than 150-year supply of coal. All this makes one wonder why the Bush administration is plugging so hard for nuclear." Good question.

This is an Atomic Red Herring.

Bush is flogging power nukes only for the political benefits. And there are potentially plenty if we allow them to get away with this stunt. Bush can completely dodge the real issue, oil consumption. He can point to congress and blame regulation. There are plenty of highly regulated corporate interests eager build lead balloons to whatever specifications congress might belch out in support of this campaign. As an added benefit, this atomic campaign may get environmentalists debating and bickering among themselves.

Don't fall for it. Oil consumption is the issue, and it needs to be dealt with first, and now.