AP: Dean had his OWN secret energy group.

[chequita guevara]

Yes, but you're an idiot.

[JohnT]

Winning friends and influencing people again, eh Che?

[TCO]

You are a commie. Do you think Dean wants to be associated with self-proclaimed out and out commies? Fellow travelers need to stay under wraps.

[chequita guevara]

JohnT, always.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Dean is such a dink...

Sad thing is I think he has a much better chance of getting the nomination from the democrats, however I think only Kerry has a good chance of beating Bush in an election.

Its like a catch 22 for the democrats.

Oh, and for the record, I'll be voting democrat in the next election (yes, I can vote).

Imran: You never struck me as the type of person to vote demo... I would have guessed you'd back Bush.

[chequita guevara]

He talks a good conservative game, but Imran's actually a flaming commie.

[TCO]

Imran's a little softie. I'm the Cro-Magnon that wants to napalm your babies.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
He talks a good conservative game, but Imran's actually a flaming commie.

Haha, I wouldn't go that far! But he's probably like me, I'm fairly conservative, but I just think that Bush's time in office has been, shall we say, "over-stayed"... its time for a new face.

Hey, has anyone started a poll yet that had all the candidates on it? I'd be interested to see who would win in a mock apolyton election...

[Agathon]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


Not necessarily. Some of it certainly does, but there's no clearcut answer to the question of how much does the consumer pay for what level of reliability? Even if you take the corporate plundering out of the picture, you had a convegence of demand, capacity and economic issues that isn't likely to hit California that severely in the next fifty years or more.

Expecting sustained droughts across half a continent, including poor snowfalls in the winter, to coincide with record population and economic growth, coupled with the hottest average summer temperature on record to that date is the sort of thing that would have ratepayers and regulators screaming about goldplating and consumer gouging. Part of it really comes down to a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation where you can't afford so much redundancy in system capacity, because nobody will pay for the excess capital outlay.

If you look at California now, there are unused peaking plants all over the place that are never getting called on. A huge number of planned projects that were part of the last minute crisis planning have since been abandoned at various stages of development, and the state has a significant overcapacity once again, even though very little (about three percent of normal annual peak demand) new capacity was added from 1999 to 2003. That three percent added capacity is tiny, when you consider that California now has about 27% overcapacity, and minimum reserve requirements are about 15% overcapacity.

What a mess. That makes it a bit clearer. I've been wondering for a while about the causes.

Our problems in NZ would have been averted by keeping the power generation public, but altering its structure to make it a state owned enterprise. If the government had stopped there, things would have been better, as almost everyone now admits.

I guess it matters where you start from.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Tripledoc
MichealtheGreat.

Geographic labour mobility has been a symptom of American capitalism for well since since the ineption of the U.S.A.

This would have been planned for, since it would have entered into the statistics. The rise in single person households is a new socially determined factor which has perhaps not entered any calculation(?)

Labor mobility has had different root causes, however - first, general expansion, then you had the California oil boom, significant industrial displacement to the Pacific Northwest for WW2 logistical reasons (and the expiration of the subsidized 40 and 50 year Bonneville Power Administration contracts related to that WW2 displacement was a key issue in the California power mess in 2000)

Ultimately, you can't plan accurately for major labor mobility changes in the US, because so much of that is now tied to commercial and technology sectors, rather than traditional heavy industries, so the lead times for major work force and energy demand displacements is far less than it has been, and is far less than the lead time for adding generating or transmission capacity on a utility-level scale.

Most of the California problem really came down to loss of alternate capacity sources, rather than in-system capacity and demand issues. It was a classic example of a catastrophic loss of elasticity in a commodity market that is highly dependent on supply elasticity.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Tripledoc


You have discovered one case of 'sleaziness', which frankly is somewhat reactionary since it is obviously a response to the accusatons of Cheney's sleaziness. It's the usual " he did it, so why can't I do it too?" routine.

Can you present anyone with further evidence of Dean's socalled sleazyness. Some sleazyness which does not serve the purpose of making a relativization out of Repblican sleazyness.

He's a mother****ing draft dodger. That's enough in my book, although if there was ever a draft that deserved dodging, the one for 'Nam was it.

[JimmyCracksCorn]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


He's a mother****ing draft dodger. That's enough in my book, although if there was ever a draft that deserved dodging, the one for 'Nam was it.

Draftdodging is one of those things I don't mind so much. I don't think the state has a right to tell me I have to pick up a gun and fight, or even join the forces period. Same as they don't have a right to tell me I have to work at Wendy's.

Leave that kind of stuff to the Europeans...

[Fake Boris]

All right John. I vaguely remember hearing about these myself.

I admit that if Osama really said this, then he must have been the brain behind the operation. Then again, it will be up to the court to decide if the recordings are really from him. I'll only have absolute trust on the origin of the recordings if an independant trial can prove they are from Ben Laden.

So I persist: What Dean did is a purely political mistake, not an ethical one. He was right in saying what he said, however clumsy it may have been (especially when quoted out of its context, which the medias love to do).

As a foreigner, I sincerely hope he gets elected. It will be better for all of us- including Americans, who may not always realize the accumulation of hatred towards them in the international community.

[Tripledoc]

Originally posted by Oncle Boris
As a foreigner, I sincerely hope he gets elected.

[Ming]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara
Allegations warrent investigation.

then why have you already convicted them... but that's right, since it is Bush and company, you have already judged them without any facts to really work with