Wednesday, November 07, 2012

Election open thread

Thoughts?  I guess I'll make this climate-related or otherwise, up to you.

30 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thoughts?

As a ferriner looking from the outside in at a whole mess of unresolved issues, I'm thinking "what happens now...?"


Bernard J. Hyphen-Anonymous XVII, Esq.

Brian said...

What happens now is kind of up to the Rs, I think.

I bet Obama will offer a compromise on the fiscal cliff, but hopefully it isn't too bad.

The big issue here IMHO is the Senate - not so much now, but this was the year that the Ds were very vulnerable. 2014 will also be a little tough, but then the Rs will be very vulnerable in 2016.

Anonymous said...

"We want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened by debt, that isn't weakened up by inequality, that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet. (Cheers, applause.)"

My thinking is that that clause could be read as implying an 'adaptation-only' strategy

Hasis

PS. So glad it was him though, so glad!

cRR Kampen said...

Congratulations, USofA (and world).

Martin Vermeer said...

"Ich bin ein Amerikaner"

J Bowers said...

Openly gay senator, some states vote for gay marriage, EV landslide, PV win, Citizens Utd v FEC failed, youth were mobilised, call a waaaambulance for Rove and Trump, and those who implicitly or explicitly approve rape seeking gainful employment. Tea Party fail.

J Bowers said...

Obama May Levy Carbon Tax to Cut the U.S. Deficit, HSBC Says

Anonymous said...

J Bowers said...

"Obama May Levy Carbon Tax to Cut the U.S. Deficit, HSBC Says".

What caught my attention was:


"A carbon tax starting at $20 a ton of carbon dioxide equivalent and rising at about 6 percent a year could raise $154 billion by 2021, Nick Robins, an analyst at the bank in London, said today in an e-mailed research note, citing Congressional Research Service estimates.

If Obama really was thinking about this, and if he could get it past the ideological dinosaurs in the Republican Party, then he would be doing something appreciably positive, and extremely significant.

Sadly, I suspect that pigs will swarm first.


Bernard J. Hyphen-Anonymous XVII, Esq.

EliRabett said...

Someone here is a jelly donut? And you thought bunnies were odd. - Ms Rabett

John said...

Total, explosive disaster averted.

Chronic, grinding disaster intact.

Next installment: "the Grand Bargain."

John Puma

Brian said...

Carbon tax would be great, but it's not getting past the filibuster. My big disappointment is the refusal by the Senate to change its filibuster rules.

Anonymous said...

Obama just got re-elected and some folks are already making excuses for him on the climate issue.

Now, that's what I call pr-"O"-active.

~@:>

badger badger badger said...

I recall an "Amerikaner" being a black-and-white cookie, because it's black and white. Kapiert?

Unenthusiastic about Obama, but delighted that the troglodyte caucus got a drubbing even where Mitt won. Feels like progress.

Jeffrey Davis said...

What happens now? The Republicans become more obstructionist than ever and hope to blame it all** on Obama come 2014.

**The 2nd Great Depression

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

The most remarkable things about this election are how much things promise to change in the future (a "majority minority country", gay marriage, failure of big money to yield big results, a black president re-elected despite having had a mediocre first term...) and how little changed is our present (Congress still gridlocked with obstructionists calling the shots, politics controlled by big money, a President perceived as "Un-American by nearly half the country, despite his centrist bona fides and speeding merrily toward the fiscal cliff).

Ultimately, the question is what if any lesson the Republicans draw from this. However, they are not known for having learning curves with steep slopes.

EliRabett said...

Yeah the Berliners are jelly donuts:) Eli is confus(ing)

John Mashey said...

Sayeth the Viscount: Win or lose, Obama was not and is not the president

I wish I could recall where I've seen a logo that resembles his. :-)

Hank Roberts said...

Hey Eli, every year or so I wish out loud for some kind of smart thing that would float high in the stratosphere and emit infrared directionally, outward -- like a smarter greenhouse gas -- since we know natural lasers occur.

People keep making smaller lasers; here's a new round:
http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2012/11/researchers-create-laser-the-size-of-a-virus-particle.html

I've not yet seen one smart enough to know up from down to limit when it operates. But how hard can that be?

Power them with something like the HAARP array, he sez, handwaving frantically ....

Isn't it time we had a smarter atmosphere?

(No, it won't help with ocean pH change, dagnabbit)

badger badger badger said...

No, but at long last HAARP would used for weather control. That would be *cool*.

J Bowers said...

Oil lobby and Koch-backed groups spent $270m on anti-Obama ads (in the last few weeks alone). Down the toilet, flushed, gone. Someone pass this on to Karl Rove, if he can be found.

a_ray_in_dilbert_space said...

J Bowers,

No, not flushed. Merely passed from the pocket of one bloated, anti-democratic plutocrat to another. Now don't get me wrong, whoever has the money now can't possibly be as bad as the Koch suckers, but they are still privileged, white and Republican.

J Bowers said...

a-ray, Donald Trump disagrees ;)

David B. Benson said...

My comment was eaten. Must have been an Amerikaner.

Anonymous said...


"I wish I could recall where I've seen a logo that resembles his."

..and I wish I could recall where I've seen a brain that resembles Monckton's.

~@:>

Anonymous said...

Hank, if we're already committed to immediate carbon neutrality, Solar L1 occultation and an eventual drawdown of atmospheric carbon dioxide, adjusting the pH of the ocean shouldn't be all that difficult in comparison. Relatively speaking. I posit we already are committed to technological deep space and terrestrial solutions to this accelerating global problem.

Sounds like a plan to me. If you think you know of a better way to pay back an eventual twenty trillion dollar public national debt and solve these problems I'd like to hear about it real soon.

Anonymous said...

Fox pundits among the most fictionalized:
http://tinyurl.combjqbsom

(file under "duh")

arch stanton

EliRabett said...

Ymmm - Eli fills in for the cookie monster at night to supplement the orange stuff.

Anonymous said...

...and fictionalizing.

and ymmm indeed, please pass the amerikaners.

arch

John Mashey said...

For 15 minutes of entertainment, people may watch Monckton on TV in Canada, last March, ahead of giving the Nerenberg Lecture for the Applied Math dept at U of Western Ontario (i.e., Christopher Essex of Essex&McKitrick (2002), Taken by Storm).

And just so it's one place, do peruse Win or lose, Obama was not and is not the President, especially the first few paragraphs of his "affidavit," preceding his birtherism discourse.

chek said...

Thanks for the links John.

Actually, one of your links displays uncanny similarites to the structure of my upcoming book, "LORD MONCKTON IS A LIZARD, AND I CAN PROVE IT!" (the all caps are important for the target audience) and is the long awaited follow up to CHRISTOPHER MONCKTON - CRUSTACEAN INVASION?

Naturally, one doesn't like to mock ther afflicted, but sometimes one just has to bite the bullet and point out to his cretinous supporters what a joke the third viscount is.