Another guest on F&F was suggesting that we need more capacity, and that we ought to build more power plants, even nuclear power plants. Which is simply not going to happen.

There are currently zero nuclear plants under construction in the United States right now. And that has been the case since 1995. The last one that we were building was stopped before it was finished. The TVA decided it wasn't economically feasible due to all the legal wrangling involved in building a plant.

Nuclear plants operate on a 40 year license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The oldest commerical nuclear plants are in the Northeast, because that is where they started building them. Rather than face the cost of relicensing, these plants are being decommissioned.

Some people are glad that this is happening. Besides, don't we have nice clean, renewable, hydro energy to replace it? Well, at least until we breach the dams.

UPDATE: Another guest just came on and said that states Attorneys General have used the Clean Air Act against power companies that wanted to upgrade the grid.

Watching Fox & Friends this morning and they are reporting on the blackouts. One of the hosts (the replacement guy) was asking a guest whether people should be more prepared, that he probably had one candle and maybe a bottle of water at his house.

People laughed at Tom Ridge and Ready.gov, but they have been recommending preparing an emergency kit for your home. If you had one, you would have been, you know, ready, for this event.

Here's what's in my kit.

Had a 3 and a half hour drive today, listened to Rush a little, thought some. Hearing how cagily Rush is couching his not critique, but analysis (that's how he is spinning it) of Arnold Schwarzenegger, I realized that one thing he does well is generate ratings. His critique, I mean analysis, of Arnold has gotten him a lot of attention lately. On TV and in print.

But the blogosphere doesn't talk about Rush much. Until now. Again, his comments can be spun out of - he was quoting what someone else said. And the blogosphere is suddenly talking about Rush Limbaugh.

And we fell for it.

The fact that GEN Clark is working for Jackson Stephens got me thinking. Of course the whole Arkansas factor is there, but it seems to me that it means that the Clinton machine really is working to help W out in 2004 so that Hillary can run in 2008. It is way too late in the money game for Clark to enter the race for President this year, but the fact his name has been spoken in those rarified spaces gives him political credibility.

So the ticket for 2008 is Hillary-Clark. You get your geographic diversity, and your military credibility with that package. And Stephens is keeping Clark well compensated (not that a retired 4-star Rhodes scholar would be hurting for work) so that he can be financially prepared, as generals aren't necessarily rich. I guess the next thing to check to see if T-Bone is his wife's financial advisor."

Jackson Stephens. Mochtar Riady. Bill Clinton.

And Wesley Clark.

I got to this Krugman thing from Phil Carter via Instapundit, and if you ever wanted any proof that Paul Krugman knows absolutely nothing, this one sentence should do it:

The U.S. military has always had superb logistics.

That just elicits from me a big BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Can he possibly be serious? It's ludicrous.

War story time. I was the Property Book Officer (PBO) for my unit in Athens, Greece. You have everything on your inventory in there, and if you don't have an item, you have the acquisition status on it. I had stuff in my property book in 1989 with "DUE IN" status dates in 1995. Almost 6 years in the future. Imagine that at any civilian company, requisitions that would be fulfilled 5 years in the future. That was just crazy. In the civilian world, I've had requests denied, or put off for a quarter or two, but no manager in the real world would attempt to manage to acquisitions a half decade out. Especially for little crap like fire extiguishers.

During Desert Storm, I knew people who had supply sergeants simply order 5 of anything they might need when they were deploying in hopes that they might get one on the other side.

I think it says a lot about the Bush haters that they will go out of their way to praise military supply as a model of efficiency as a basis for whacking Bush.

Phil Carter thinks Krugman's problem is that he is listening to Hackworth. That is pretty charitable, in my opinion.

But lots of people like to quote Hack because he is critical of the military. I'd love to see one of Hack's fawners ask him why he "lived the ex-pat's life in Australia" for so long.

My search engine hits are up! But no, I have nothing here about the Blaster virus. And no, it isn't me! I like Microsoft! Really!

On the radio right now, endorsing him in the strongest terms.

Rich Galen has an interesting take on Rush bashing Shwarzenegger:

Arnold Schwarzenegger can't be labeled (as Gray Davis and his eight remaining Democratic supporters in California would like to do) as a "right-wing extremist" because Rush Limbaugh has said that Arnold Schwarzenegger isn't a Conservative at all.

If one were to believe in the vast right wing conspiracy, then maybe Rush is doing this on purpose to help Schwarzenegger out. Because being called a liberal by Rush has got to be worth some points in California.

We are losing Iraq! Pepsi is more popular than Coke!

Listening to his radio show (don't worry, this is probably the second time I have ever listened. It is on as background noise.) and he is dumping on Schwarzenegger, too. No wonder the Republicans have lost California.

Much is being made of the recent article in the Hill regarding blogging and Rush Limbaugh, and his response to it. This is another thing I think Rush is wrong on. I mean, I don't have a journalism degree, I have an engineering degree. Whatever. But other radio people are getting the blog thing. There is the Lileks-Hugh Hewitt thing, and if you have listened to G. Gordon Liddy lately, I would say that most of his commentary now references blogs. I have heard Liddy reference Rachel Lucas, Matthew Hoy, Instapundit, and Lileks in just the past week.

For an issue oriented show, seems like blogs would be an important tool for research. Rush uses items from Drudge and Best of the Web and Inside the Beltway and Inside Politics a lot, so obviously he thinks compilers are useful. And even 2 years ago, if you used those sources for the radio, you could be way ahead, and different, than the mainstream. But the daily afternoon publishing schedule of BotW cannot keep up with the blogosphere. Instapundit is instant - if he hasn't found an item himself, people have gotten it to him for posting. Glenn Reynolds has displaced Matt Drudge to me as the clearinghouse for news, fast.

Haven't seen these all in one place, so I'll do it. From Instapundit:

A HIGH-RANKING al-Qaeda operative in custody disclosed that Iraq supplied the Islamist militant group with material to build chemical and biological weapons, the White House said today.

"A senior al-Qaeda terrorist, now detained, who had been responsible for al-Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan, reports that al-Qaeda was intent on obtaining (weapons of mass destruction) assistance from Iraq," the White House said in a report.

The 25 page document was released as US President George W Bush holidayed at his Texas ranch.

From Drudge:

WASHINGTON -- Former international weapons inspector David Kay, now seeking Iraqi weapons of mass destruction for the Pentagon, has privately reported successes that are planned to be revealed to the public in mid-September.

Kay has told his superiors he has found substantial evidence of biological weapons in Iraq, plus considerable missile development. He has been less successful in locating chemical weapons, and has not yet begun a substantial effort to locate progress toward nuclear arms.

Senior officials in the Bush administration believe Kay's weapons discoveries should have been revealed as they were made. However, a decision, approved by President Bush, was made to wait until more was discovered and then announce it -- probably in September.

LONDON (AFP) - The British government is soon to present new evidence that Iraq (news - web sites) had produced biological weapons, it was reported.

Intelligence officials were producing another dossier on Iraqi arms, and "there is said to be hard evidence of cover-up programmes designed to conceal weapons of mass destruction", the British magazine "The Economist" said in its latest issue.

"We would hope to be able to demonstrate in the fullness of time that almost all the information in the dossier (published by the government last September) was accurate", a government insider told the magazine.

Government sources "say that several new bits of information will emerge including evidence based on interviews with Iraqi scientists that biological weapons had been produced in quantity", the Economist said.