and these guys run nuclear power stations....

Ah you mean Socialism.
I can't imagine anywhere much less Socialist than California. There are
areas I rather like BTW, like the Sonoma valley.

What it does have is a democratic system skewed towards minority pressure
groups against the majority will. I cite the reaction to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Proposition_8_(2008)

But isn't it getting more and not less Conservative as the proportion of
catholic hispanics increase?

And San Francisco rocks.

 

Thats right, my brain is full today. Rode in the rain , hail, and snow of
sunny California.

 

Kinduva boring Sunday over there, eh?

 

Indeed and far better thread than the usual old boring oil, helmet,
tyre thread that winters usually revolve around.

 

Yep. I'd done a few jobs on the bike and decided to spread a bit of
festive cheer around the World.

 

Simon dropping the French and nukes into the same thread left the door
wide open for some global involvement so we can save the 'other'
subject for a bit longer.

 

Heh. Try throwing 'Iraq' into the equation as well.

 

Why stop there when there's North Korea and Iran to get involved?

 

The pre-war TPV was a _very_ different beast to what was released in
1948. Somebody was busy through the war.

 

Me too. Especially as it betrays such a woeful ignorance of the
difference between Stalinism and Communism/Socialism, which they think
are all the same thing.

California has one or two laws which are slightly less right-wing and
veering towards what the yanks would call 'liberal' attitudes. It's
one of the reasons that it's the only part of the US I can actually
stand to be in.

Sadly, our Palo Alto office has closed down and all functions moved to
South San Francisco. Shame, as PA's a really nice little student town,
and hardly American at all.

 

Broken window fallacy. Their jobs for life cost us all.

 

Indeed. The standard of American political debate makes us look marvellous.
Anyone suggesting anything that doesn't involve bending over for a
corporation is immediately branded a Communist. They nearly scuppered their
bank bail out plans arguing about it.

 

In fairness, Obama is also being called a `socialist' because the
government did bail out the banks.

 

Post corrected.

 

Obama supported the bail-out when he was a candidate and he has
extended it in office.

 

Looks like ))

 

Well, quite. Oddly, the warmongers[1] on reeky tend to dodge that one.

[1] By no means as many as you'd think, actually.

 

Sure, but I was pointing out the hypocrisy.

 

[...]

What's one generation's "hazardous waste" is another's generation valuable
resource.

EVERY form of energy, even the expensive ones, carries with it a legacy
of death that is routinely ignored. Coal energy has much more deaths per
one TWh than nuclear energy. Heck, rooftop solar has more deaths per
TWh than nuclear energy (working at heights is dangerous). Even
wind power has more deaths per TWh than nuclear energy.

However, the voters don't care about hard data, they make their
decisions based on emotions.

 

http://xkcd.com/610/