I posted a while back that John McCain was dead to me, for his panderific suggestion that the federal gasoline tax be suspended for the summer to give drivers a break. I thought it a dumb idea (still do), but worse, it showed me Mr. Straight Talk would be willing to throw anything under the Straight Talk Express if he would gain a few votes for doing it.

Dead to me or not, he keeps on talking. Yesterday, on the hustings at a wind turbine factory in Oregon, he again stated his support for a cap-and-trade system, which is good, but he still stoutly opposes a carbon tax, which of course amounts to roughly the same thing. But he's a Republican, so of course he has to oppose taxes.

And speaking of that, he also espouses full support for nuclear energy, which is also mostly a Republican thing, and I have to wonder why. What about nuclear power makes it a Republican cause?

Yes, it's true, as McCain says, that nuclear power plants do keep tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere. But while CO2 is the gravest threat to our environment, it isn't the only one. Even if we were to overcome global warming, doing so at the cost of even more radioactive waste is quite a booby prize.

I think Republicans support nuclear because only huge corporations could ever hope to build a nuclear plant, and Republicans have far greater experience and a much greater commitment to promoting the needs and desires of huge corporations. No doubt, they'll like wind and solar much more in a few decades, when those industries have mature companies whose water needs carried.