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5'000 miles of empty road doesn't support 5'000 miles of electricity transmission because the road needs very little maintenance, and can have a few cracks without any problems, whereas the electric cables need a lot of maintenance, and can't suffer even a tiny amount of wear.

Nope. Roads need lots of maintenance, a few cracks lead to lots of problems, and are under continual strains of wearing them down, whereas electrical cables need little maintenance and hardly suffer any wear.

The two technologies simply aren't congruent. So unless you're going to enjoy other benefits from the electricity, it simply ain't gonna work.

Oh goodness, not only are you wrong above, we ARE going to enjoy other benefits from the electricity. WIN WIN!

Not to mention that transmitting electricity that far is about a 50% loss start to finish.

A) There are no 5,000 mile long stretches of empty road, let alone a reason to worry about electrical transmissions.

B) We already solved that problem anyway.

You seem to be a little naive my friend.

Common characteristics of a police state, wide spread spying on citizens, warrantless arrest and detention, torture, rigged judicial system and trials, execution of citizens without due process, suppression of a free press, suppression of opposition parties, censorship, seizure of property, targeting of opposition groups and minorities, prevent freedom of movement.

You do realize the U.S. and U.K. have engaged in all of these. I can run through examples of each if that will help enlighten you. The U.S. and U.K are not particularly iron fist police states, they prefer more the velvet gloved fist. They aren't particularly wide spread or oppressive police states yet, just give them time and a few more excuses.

It is no secret the U.S. has tortured people on a wide scale and very recently. This precedent has been set and the people who did it got away with it. Obama has dialed it back some, preferring to let third parties do it so he can claim the U.S. isn't torturing but the U.S. is still actively participating in and bankrolling it.

Obama has executed at least three American's by drone, which is the new prefered means of execution. Thre is no judicial process or if there was it is secret. One the the people killed was a 16 year old boy who apparently was targetted because he was the son of someone the U.S. hated.

Obama has been he most aggressive adminstration in targetting journalists in recent history, especially ones who are telling stories the U.S. doesn't want told. Obama had a journalist in Yemen jailed for 3 years for exposing a cruise missile strike that killed civilians and interviewing Anwar Awliki.

Try bring any of the recent abuses of our Constituion to a court of law and most are shut down by State Secret privlideges. Many abuses of civil rights are currently untriable.

The U.S. pretends to have opposition parties but in fact the two parties we have are two sides of the same coin pursuing the same agenda on most issues that count, and only differing on wedge issues or where tax money is squandered. Third parties are ruthlessley suppressed, marginalized and muzzled in the U.S. especially ones which challenge the status quo.

The U.S. doesn't practice overt censorship, the U.K. is farther down this road. The U.S. favors more suble censorship and propaganda using a small number of corporate controlled media companies who do most of the shaping of public opinion. The U.S. prefers just listening to and recording what everyong is watching, reading, listening to and saying so they can spot the troublemakers.

The U.S. is actively planing for the near future when there will more terrorist attacks (i.e. 9/11), natural disasters(i.e. Katrina), protest movements (i.e. Occupy) and resource shortage shocks and when they occur they will ratchet up the police state a few more notches.

If you want an eye opener on the next generation global police state the U.S. has become grab a copy of Jeremy Scahill's Dirty Wars. U.S. special forces and intelligence are now roaming the globe engaging in largely unsupervised executions, renditions, torture and spying. This started under Bush/Cheney and Obama has actually dramatically accellerated and extended it. Some of their attacks have been very successful like killing Bin Laden, many of them are deeply flawed, killing large numbers of innocents, including women and children, and spawning new generations who hate America. The important part being they have almost no oversige from Congress or the judiciary, and often inadequate oversight from the White House and Pentagon who are running this global police apparatus.

But the cost of such a distribution system might exceed the 10 percent loss in the current system. Especially when you consider the need for exotic materials.

And 10 percent is the average today, but that could be reduced by piping gas closer to the high electric consumption areas rather than pushing electrons down the current lines. The gas pipe line would have less loss, might be cheaper, even adding in the cost of a new gas plant. It would reduce grid dependency while leaving the grid in place.

http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/003223.html

Since you brought up Sarah Palin (I'd have been happy to let sleeping dogs lie), how important are your Constitutional rights to you?

Would you really have preferred a Vice President that doesn't even understand the First Amendment?

"If they convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations, then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media."

And apparently it wasn't just a one-time thing--she continues to believe that private citizens can somehow deny other private citizens the right to freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22511.html

It's not Americans' fault that power makes you stupid. I mean, how would these mouth-breathing jingoists live with themselves if they didn't maintain a profoundly unjust, parochial worldview?

This technology works great! It's all due to the "tiny revolution" of miniaturization.

If you don't know that Colin Powell lied to the American people, you're just not paying attention.

To the bribery escapades of the The Decider.

Cheers.

"First off, you assume I like bush and am a republican. In fact, neither is the case. I swallowed nothing hook line and sensor because my views are based on my own observations."

Apologies. But if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and so obviously passionately believes you're either with the ducks or against them... it's an easy mistake to make.

"The fact that the opposition party has chosen to play politics with a war violates the historical situation which dictated that domestic politics ended at the waters edge."

Well, I think it's more that a president of questionable legitimacy secured an unhealthy stranglehold over all three branches of government, then used this lack of opposition to take the country on a war of invasion against someone who posed no threat to the country, for since-provably trumped-up charges.

The whole "domestic politics ends at the water's edge" is generally when you're faced with... oh, I dunno... a serious and clear threat to your country, sovereignty, way of life... pretty much any threat at all, really. You know - how when you're actually under any serious threat at all you band together to fight off the attacker, then settle the differences between you later.

Politely and impotently questioning the legitimacy of a war which basically consists of wading in and beating up the military equivalent of a bunch of toddlers doesn't really constitute "clear and present danger", at least in my book.

Or do you really also buy that line about Saddam helping t3h T3Rr0Ri5ts!1!1!11!?

"I grew tired long ago of the brainless bush bashers parroting the bs from leftists in the mainstream media."

What, is this the same mainstream media that's the laughing-stock of the world for it's obsequious fawning bend-over-backwards-for-the-Whitehouse complete lack of journalistic independence?

That mainstream media?

"Bush has severe problems though probably not as much widespread as carter or clinton or bush 1 for that matter but very bad never the less."

Not as bad as Carter, Clinton or Bush I. Right.

"What happened to the yellow cake sadam had?"

What yellowcake?

But seriously... sure, they found some old remains of yellowcake Saddam had previously possessed, just like they found other evidence of Chemo-Biological-Nuclear weapon production, and briefly began to trumpet that as proof the war was justified.

Unfortunately analysis quickly demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was old remains, from around the time of Gulf War I, when Saddam was known to be pursuing WMDs... and that there was no evidence at all that Saddam had been pursuing CBN WMDs after this date.

"I don't know why I've never seen that fretting reporter all worried about the people stealing those barrel in any repeats or best of programming."

Probably because it was a non-story. Those deposits were already known about, and had been since Gulf War I. No conspiracy, just insufficient research on your part.

Think about it - if Saddam really had WMDs, or was even researching them, do you really think the media would have been able to suppress the Bush Administration from crowing about them? It would at least part-validate the entire Iraq war.

The media would have to have a stranglehold over the country more powerful than the Republicans had to suppress all mention of that. And in the previous direct confrontations between the two, it was generally the media having stories spiked, journalists indicted and pressure applied... not the Whitehouse.

"That doesn't mean it came from Niger but we do know that sadam was attempting for a second time to develop a bomb - Pollard is