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Topic:
Who will the next US President be?
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TreeCave
Registered:
Jul '01
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Date Posted:
7/18/02 12:24pm
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
- Date Edited:
7/18/02 12:27pm (2 edits total)
Edited By:
TreeCave
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I know I said this wasn't the forum for a debate, but I'll just post one rebuttal and leave it at that, because this is very erroneous.
Also realize that the prominent liberal Californians pushed for extreme use of alternative energy sources, namely wind and solar power.
This never happened. CA is as woefully slow to study or adopt alternative fuel sources as most other states - there's no special push for alternatives here. What actually happened was that a mostly Republican state assembly under Republican governor Pete Wilson wrote a very bad utility deregulated bill (in 1997, I think) that went into effect at the end of their terms. De-regulation is a good idea, generally, but not the way they did it.
By the time the law took effect, we had Democrat Gray Davis as governor, and a nearly all-freshman, all-Democrat assembly (as de-regulation wasn't the only thing the Republicans did to irritate voters), and the voters expected them to fix the problem. The new assembly didn't know what it was doing, but I'm not sure there was anything they could have done.
Of course, these drove out all chances of other sources having a business there.
No, because this never happened. After the crisis began, there was some talk about "See, this is why we need alternative fuel!" This is all I can think of that you could be referring to. But this was a result - side-effect, really - not a cause, as you indicated.
And by the way, the technology IS possible, and since this happened (not before), many CA counties started offering to buy excess power from people who own solar panels on their homes and generate more electricity than they need. It now costs between $2-5000 to get these put on your home, and your power bill basically goes away. But again, there was no real push for this until 2000, by which time the the whole crisis had begun.
But back to what really happened. As soon as the badly-written deregulation made it possible, Enron and a couple of other corps bought nearly all the power plants in CA, then immediately shut them tons of them down "indefinitely, for repairs", and sold much of the power from the rest as "excess energy" to their other subsidiary corps in Wyoming and other neighboring states. So there never really was a lack of energy production in CA, except for what Enron & Friends manipulated into happening.
Then you can imagine the next step: Enron-related corps in Wyoming and the other states sold their CA-bought power BACK to CA at exhorbitant rates.
Then as the internal CA power companies began to collapse, some were bought by Enron and others pulling the same scam - and in the case of PG&E, they artificially inflated their stock prices, made $5 billion for the stockholders, then went bankrupt. Sound familiar?
As further proof that this is what happened: other parts of CA that had their own municipal power sources had a lot less trouble - what blackouts and rate increases they did suffer were due to sharing some of their power with neighboring areas in a state of total catastrophe. By maintaining municipal facilities, these guys essentially bypassed the bad deregulation law and the exploitation by Enron & Friends that it allowed. So this gives a good example of exactly what happened, and why.
So who's to blame?
1) A nearly all-Republican California state assembly that can't write a good deregulation law.
2) Greedy companies like Enron who took advantage of a technicality in that law.
California is normally about 50/50 Democrat and Republican (don't forget, we are entirely responsible for the political career of Reagan, who is even loved by some people who generally hate the Republican party). SF is more liberal, LA is 50/50, and the agricultural areas are more Republican or conservative. So it normally balances out.
But as you can see by CA's dumping so many of its Republicans - Wilson and much of the state assembly - a couple of years ago, we're trending Democrat right now.
Anyway, some Californians feel Davis didn't do enough to fix things, but many hailed him as a hero (I'm in between there, definitely not his biggest fan). If the state political machine decides they have it out for Bush (and this seems to be the current feeling), Davis is their logical candidate to back. AND the voters are definitely not loyal enough to Bush or his party to put up any roadblocks.
I personally am not nuts about the idea of Davis in the White House. But I can't think of anybody I really like for it. I'm with comedienne Elaine Boozler - "a lot more people would vote if you could just vote against somebody". 
EDITED for clarity.
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BKK
Registered:
May '02
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Date Posted:
7/19/02 2:16am
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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2004-George Bush will probably win again.
2008- Colin Powell becomes the 1st black
president.
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JediStryker
Title: TFN FanSite Reviewer
Registered:
Mar '00
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Date Posted:
7/19/02 6:34am
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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I would be perfectly happy to serve under President Bush again. He has been a great leader to those of us in the military, much better than Clinton ever was. I know I and many others in the military will be voting for him.
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Obi-Zahn Kenobi
Registered:
Aug '99
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Date Posted:
7/19/02 6:49am
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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I think that Hillary will not run. She knows she hasn't a chance.
I'd say Dick Gephart, Tom Daschle, and Gray Davis are candidates for the Democrats.
Bush will run without much opposition.
I'd say that unless something happens(Like he breaks a promise) that he will probably win reelection.
In 2008, I would say that Hillary will run for president 2 years into her second term as Senator. She'll be up against Daschle early on.
I can't say whom would win.
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Lord_Homer
Registered:
Apr '02
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Date Posted:
7/19/02 2:25pm
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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Well, I'll just say Bush will most likely be our next President. And please, call him Bush, Mr. Bush, or George W. Bush. Calling him Dubya is very disrepectful.
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JediStryker
Title: TFN FanSite Reviewer
Registered:
Mar '00
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Date Posted:
7/19/02 2:35pm
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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I say call him what you want. It's just as much a term of endearment as an insult...just like Yankee.
'Sides, I can't complain when I constantly referred to Clinton as Slick Willy, Billary, and countless others.
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JediLeiaSolo
Registered:
Jan '01
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Date Posted:
7/19/02 4:51pm
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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At this point I'm hoping Vaderize-03 and SidiousDragon take it in 2004.
All the best,
JediLeiaSolo
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TreeCave
Registered:
Jul '01
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Date Posted:
7/19/02 5:09pm
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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"Dubya" and "Slick Willy" are a little different. There is no implied insult in "Dubya" (it's his middle initial, and I thought a term of endearment the TX press used to distinguish him from his father), but there is an implied insult in "Slick Willy".
I have always noticed conservatives hurl insult-implying names around a lot more than liberals. I'm not even aware of any snitty little nicknames for Bush, his father or Reagan - do any of you recall any? Clinton and Hillary, OTOH, have tons of nasty nicknames. And conservatives have all these nasty names for liberals, like "bleeding heart". I don't know of any nasty nicknames for conservatives.
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Gutter_Monkey
Registered:
Oct '01
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Date Posted:
7/19/02 9:38pm
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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"Dumbass"? ?:|
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TreeCave
Registered:
Jul '01
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Date Posted:
7/19/02 11:48pm
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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I don't think that's specific to conservatives. I've certainly never heard it that way, at least.
I use that word as an adjective, not a noun most of the time, anyway. "That dumbass cell phone driver..." for example.
See, I don't think of people in big categorized groups. I don't think of everyone who disagrees with me on the boards as "conservative" or anything else. Most of those who consider themselves conservative don't agree with each other half the time, and that's as it should be - everyone thinking for him or herself.
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Gutter_Monkey
Registered:
Oct '01
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Date Posted:
7/20/02 12:24am
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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Ahhhhh...
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TreeCave
Registered:
Jul '01
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Date Posted:
7/20/02 12:29am
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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Ooooooohhhhhh....... 
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JediStryker
Title: TFN FanSite Reviewer
Registered:
Mar '00
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Date Posted:
7/20/02 5:33am
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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I would say that most liberals feel that the term 'conservative' in and of itself as an insult. I've heard Conservatives called 'backward', 'imbecilic', and more. Insults need not be specific to sting.
I think that Clinton was more of a target than any other president because of all the scandals he was a part of. Whether or not you agree that was really guilty of any of the things that he was involves in, you have to admit that he was involved in more.
Also, Conservatives have been attacked in more subtle ways by the media for nearly twenty years now. I think that, right or wrong, the little nicknames that were created for Clinton and liberals in general were a way of biting back. Also, most of it was meant in a humorous tone, but it got picked up by the media and Democrats who would turn it around and make it more an insult than it was intended to be. After all, who does America root for more than the pressed-upon underdog?
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Lord Bane
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered:
May '99
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Date Posted:
7/20/02 9:37am
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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Since there is a poll on this, it would be simpler to keep conversation in there.
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The Gatherer
Title: Manager Emeritus/TF.N Books Staff
Registered:
Aug '99
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Date Posted:
7/20/02 10:24am
Subject:
RE: Who will the next US President be?
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Not neccessarily Lord Bane... the poll only allows 10 choices, here in this thread, any candidate can be discussed.
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