No Nukes! Unless Obama Wants Nukes…

[Ed. Note: Since this article was written but before it was published, actor Alec Baldwin has come out against nuclear power at the Huffpo, though the name “Obama” is noticably never used.]

I don’t want to start a new conspiracy theory but a small and dedicated group of Americans has gone missing. Vanished without a trace! Where are the American anti-nuclear people? What has happened to the “No Nukes” crowd? Since President Obama announced his support for new nuclear power plants in his State of the Union Address I have been patiently waiting for the leftist/environmental/green/anti-nuclear power movement to resurface.

Here we are a full month after Mr. Obama has pledged billions to utilities like Southern Company to kick start a “new generation of safe, clean nuclear power plants in this country” and as of yet not a peep from them. No rally at the Capital, no rock concert extravaganza, not even some of those cool death mask costumes worn by a guy on stilts. At least I think he was on stilts. Maybe his growth hormones were horribly affected by his growing up near Three Mile Island! It makes me think something awful has happened to this band of aging hippies!

Back in 1979 there were over 200,000 demonstrators at an anti-nuclear power rally in New York City. That was followed by a five day series of concerts at Madison Square Garden and a multi-million selling album featuring James Taylor, Jackson Brown, Tom Petty and Bonnie Raitt. If our younger readers are unsure of whom these folks are, ask your parents or grandparents they’ll fill you in. They will also be able to tell you what an “album” was. They were difficult to “illegally download” because you had to “upload” them under your sweatshirt in the aisle of the “record” store. Of course that was back when stealing music was still frowned upon.

Recent protests have been a little smaller than in days of old. A recent walk to protest the re-licensing of the Vermont Yankee Nuclear Power Plant was attended by 175 people! Most of them were “part timers” only doing a part of the walk. Knowing the way the media counts if you were crossing a street anywhere in Vermont during that time you may have been added to the total. That means in the past thirty years some 199,825 nuclear protesters have disappeared. Sadder still was the 2009 protest by Frances Crowe which get her and her two friend who showed up arrested.

As recently as early 2008 there were reports on left-wing websites like ispnews.net that the anti-nuclear energy movement was alive and well and living in rural Georgia, sort of like the Allman Brothers Band.

“Waynesboro, Georgia , Jan 14, 2008 (IPS) – Residents and environmental activists are in a bitter dispute with large U.S. energy corporations and the federal government over the safety of nuclear power, as more than a dozen corporations plan to, or have filed, paperwork to open new nuclear power plants, primarily in the U.S. South.

Energy giants like Southern Company, Entergy, and Florida Power and Light are attracted by billions in governmental incentives offered under the George W. Bush Administration.”

That was back in the waning days of the evil Bush Administration when the Government was still the enemy of the planet. So where are the No Nukes folks? Perhaps they have been abducted by aliens. Perhaps they are all on a commune somewhere in New Hampshire having a “think in” on how to protest the first African-American President and not be mistaken for those racist Tea Party people!