Free Republic

Yeah, ABC just broke into their main feed with the announcement as well. Just a few sentences in, they are already picking on experience.

Yes, its a shame those numbers are all faked up. ‘Cause when you look at the real ones, it is still pretty shocking that in 1980, when we really didn’t have much going on in terms of active battle, we were losing more men per year than we have in the worst of the insurgency in Iraq. We had a third more men in 1980, but still...

Be sure to click on the PDF link, which is not bogus. Scroll to page CRS-7, then keep reading to the next pages. In the very next table, you will find that great strides have been made in keeping accidents and homicides down, but in recent years, the amount of deaths due to accidents is near the amount of deaths due to hostile action. In fact, hostile action deaths are about a third of the total deaths.

I wonder what the death rate due to accidents are for the general population, especially if you skewed towards under age 35.

Yeah, it works very well for busses, which generally fill up in a yard where they can keep a huge tank of CNG or LNG under very high pressures and fill the bus up probably faster than they can fill it with diesel.

With cars, you can do this sort of fill at home, but the problem is the nat gas the comes to your house is under super low pressure. So you have to have this filling system that can really crank the pressure up for you. Honda uses this system called Phill.
http://automobiles.honda.com/civic-gx/refueling.aspx

Takes 16 hours to refill the tank! No advantage over an electric car except for maybe a bit more range (and the fuel and car both are cheaper).

Iran is converting cars to natural gas because they can hardly refine any of the oil they pump themselves. It must be shipped elsewhere to be turned into gasoline. So Iran ends up importing more gasoline (as a percentage of use) than we do oil. Their government hugely subsidizes gasoline purchases by the populace, so this is actually costing them a lot of money they’d like to be keeping. So instead, they’ll try to use natural gas, which they also have a lot of and their own industries can produce without outside help.

Natural gas is not a very convenient fuel for use in automobiles because it is in a very non-dense gas form (of course) and you have to compress the heck out of it in order to store enough for the car to use, but its probably the third best practical fuel for such use (sugar-cane ethanol being the second most practical).

BTW, Mexico has a similar refining problem and imports a hell of a lot of its gasoline from us (after shipping us their oil).

Anyway, Pickens’ use of Iran as an example for natural gas as a transportation fuel is disingenuous. If Iran could refine their own oil, they would never bother with natural gas.

Dying is pretty inevitable for the young, as well. In fact, despite advances in medical technology, the risk of death for all humans remains at 100%.

Isn't this situation vastly different than Zimbabwe? I mean, in this case, from the article at least, it sounds like the property was wrongly taken in the first place. Secondly, the current farmers are being paid off decently. I don't recall Mugabe doing that...

That Areva ad on the page you linked is pretty funny. It is a much shorter version of one they ran a year ago that showed Uranium being dug up in Canada, then processed in large ships as it went over to China, where they put it into reactors cores to supply the city. They've made the ad shorter and cut out the ship part, but you can tell the the futuristic city they show has an Asian look to it, even though they try to pass it off as Kansas City in the zoom out.

One thing I've always admired about the French is that they have never put up with any protesters or other bullcrap getting in the way of their nuclear ambitions, either weapons or electrical power. Since the French and the Japanese have the best record of building and running nuke plants, it should not be surprising that all of the American talent in this area has withered on the vine and is all sold out to these two countries.

Now if we want nuke plants, we have to put up with Sierra Club lawsuits and then outsource the job to get it done. Talk about adding insult to injury...

I'm conflicted about this. It seemed to be peaceful protest, probably similar to what the Woman's Christian Temperance Union did prior to getting Prohibition passed. But I have a supspicion that this will lead to wilder things, especially in an area dominated by squishy libs.

Anyone have stats on how many times in CA a 13-17 year old has gotten an abortion and not notified her parents?

Dude, everything was voted down, it is like the election didn't take place, there are no new rules on your head, what are you sweating about?

Excellent primary strategy. Ignorant general election strategy.

I'd have to say the CA Governor election returns of 2002 shows both strategies to be ignorant. Republicans fell right into Gray Davis' trap in the 2002 primaries.

And the leftist labor radicals spent perhaps as much as a quarter billion to stop Arnold's agenda. That's a HUGE silver lining. They can't keep doing that for very long.

Well, the fact that 75 lost means that, yes, they can go on doing that for very long.

I really thing it is a mistake to "look on the bright side" here. Because a hard lesson was taught about CA politics tonight, and it is important that the RP take away some lessons.

This state is now under control by some hard-core liberals who seem to have a guaranteed 5% bloc-vote advantage in this state. On top of that, Grey Davis gave us the quick rise of the governmental unions. I mean, the teacher's union has always been strong in this state ever since they got their a$$es handed to them in 1976 with Prop 13. But now we've got other unions, like the prison guard union, who tip the scales even farther. And their power wasn't pushed back tonight.

The only reason there is even a RINO occupying the statehouse is due to Arnie's star power. Even had the recall passed without the possibility of an Arnie run, Bustamante would have beat McClintock easily.

Someone in the RP who is truly serious needs to sit down and get some strategery going. It might even have to be an outsider, 'cause frankly, the insiders appear completely clueless.

I knew the RP was done for in this state when it chose Bill Simon over Richard Riordan in the 2002 primary. And guess who played the RINO card the best? Grey Davis accused Riordan of being a RINO in attack ads, 'causing pro-life Simon to be chosen. Even though Democrats had to hold their noses when voting for Davis, they could not countenance a pro-life Governor. Being pro-life in this state is simply a politcal impossibility for a statewide office at this time. The demographics are going to have to change big-time first. Come on, this is the state that elects and re-elects Boxer and Feinstein to the Senate, for cryin' out loud! If the RP does not acknowledge that reality, maybe they could give up their permanent ballot status to the Libertarians, who might then have a better shot at actually getting someone elected.

Maybe in the Central Valley, but I saw absolutely no effort at all in Santa Barbara County from the pro 74-77 crowd. No phone calls (tons from the opposition), no mailers, no signs, no local TV adverts, no rallies, no web advertising. I knew nothing about the props until a week ago. For that matter, I didn't really get much from the anti 74-77 crowd, except a ton of voice messages.

Glad to hear the RP has life in at least some parts of this state.

"social conservatism" is against things like abortion and gay marriage - "social liberalism" is not. SC puts a high value on traditional ways, SL does not.

Most everyone has an SC streak in them because people generally seek out what is normal to them. They are really SC on the things they value. That's when you see the SC of what we call Liberals today come out - with the "free speech zones" and no smoking laws.

"social Liberalism is all about government interference into your life"

I don't know what to call it (social socialism? social authoratarianism? - heh), but what you've described is not the "normal" definition of social liberalism. Just like what W and the Congress are doing right now is not the "normal" definition of fiscal conservatism.

As for Arnold, I didn't vote for him in the first place. I voted for an actual conservative, not a Kennedy with an "R" by his name.

And you wonder why the RP has problems in this state...

Arnold gives a 10% budget hike to the Dems and they scream that it's a "budget cut" because he didn't give them the 20% increase that they wanted. I'd like to see a "fiscal Conservative / social Liberal" make it in that environment.

In the example you've given, a fiscal convervative / social conservative would fail as well. However, if the core Republican Party in CA actually had Arnie's back, he might have been able to do something. However, most of the "true conservatives" in the party simply turned their back on him.

"Social Liberalism cannot exist without fiscal Liberalism."

Keep the government away from me (social liberalism) and my money (fiscal conservatism).

Unfortunately, one cannot be a fiscal Conservative and a social Liberal at the same time. Those are mutually-exclusive goals; especially in California.

I'm a libertarian (note the size of the "el") and I live in California. My exposure to normal middle-class people who vote Democrat (I'm talking outside of San Francisco) in this state is mostly that they are completely opposed to Conservative social goals. They all hate high taxes and mispending, but are more afraid of the "religious right" boogeyman. Prop 13 is still very popular out here, as you might expect with the high home prices.

The Rep Party in this state is completely incompetent. For example, instead of embracing Arnold, they still ran McClintock who siphoned off enough Republican votes to potentially scuttle the deal if there hadn't been enough traditional Democrats voting for Arnold. The RP in this state is hung up on principle. What good is principle when you are getting your clock cleaned 24/7 by the Dems? Go have a look at the Libertarian website. They are "The Party of Principle". They are also the party of irrelevance, now down to half their membership since W took office. Well, the RP in California finds themselves in the same tough spot. When you have the votes, you can have principle. Get the votes first, and do it on one thing even Democrats agree upon - the Dems have been in power too long and cannot be trusted with the purse strings.