I say yes, you say no, OR People are Strange

This is wonderful, wonderful - thank you, California, world's 8th largest economy, for being progressive and showing that not all of America is a bastion of backward, Dark Ages thinking:

SAN FRANCISCO — California sold out of the first pollution permits issued as part of a landmark offensive against greenhouse gases at an inaugural auction that regulators said Monday went smoothly.

The effort to curtail carbon emissions involved the sale of 23.1 million permits – each allowing for the release of one ton of carbon – for $10.09 apiece, the California Air Resources Board said.

The permit sales last week opened the largest carbon marketplace in the nation and the second-biggest in the world after the European Union. The California air board will hold four such auctions a year.

"By putting a price on carbon, we know we are beginning the process of breaking our dependence on fossil fuels," Mary Nichols, board chairman, said during a conference call with reporters.

The board would not divulge specific figures on how many permits were bought by individual polluters covered under newly instituted caps on carbon emissions. The board does not comment on bidding activity to protect each polluter's strategy regarding use of the carbon market, Nichols said.

That's what makes me proud to be American. More here: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20121119/us-california-greenhouse-gases/?utm_hp_ref=homepage&ir=homepage

I'm really sorry to hear about Sharon/Lowrider. She was such a wonderful poster here - kind, yet feisty, funny, yet blunt and always informative and compassionate. She's one of the good ones and will be missed.

Kam, I'm very happy to hear Emma's doing well. Amazing how much Ms. Boo and Emma look like they could be littermates!

I was yelled at all the way home from the Vet, but all is well. Phew

Athena - though I live in California, I get Oregon news where I live...hard to keep in touch, but I adore Governor Brown.  A real Progressive, though I'm not sure he has anything to do with what you posted, but thanks for posting that.

But but these Hostess CEO's want to liquidate.  They don't want any union concessions, they want the worker's pensions and they want their bonuses before they find the next owner.  They did the dirty work...busting the union and milking the company dry.  This is not capitalism, this is EVIL.

Belinda - you have the best graphics.  Love love the last one you posted about pardoning the turkey. It's just about that bad.

Riley - all tuxedos look alike to the uninitiated.  These two couldn't be more different, starting with 7lbs. The bully is the small one.

Jackie - I think there is some sort of critical mass with cats.  When you get enough of them in one room, they have to get along.

Kam:  So glad that Emma is okay.

I spent most of the day at the hospital with my mother-in-law.  I know I mentioned her during the storm, because her oxygen went out, but I don't think i ever described her.  She is a real American hero.  She was one of the army nurses on Correigidor in the Philippians during WWII and was taken prisoner of war with 74 other nurses after McArthur snuck off the island.  She was a prisoner of war for three years, and was just recently interviewed about her experiences for a documentary. She was having breathing problems and I think she has pneumonia, but I'm hoping that the antibiotics will work and we'll have her with us for a while yet.  She's 98, still of sound mind.  Really  a remarkable lady.

Sorry...couldn't get the piece in I wanted too.  It was some of the other things Romney had in his refrain that came out about the "gifts".  Also stated there were way too many debates and that Obama got to sit around and pick out all the gaffes etc. so the solution was to have way fewer.  Romney must not know you can't fix stupid and clueless.  One debate or 50....makes no difference. 

Your right about the cats Kam....there is a little horsing around from time to time but for the most part, they are fairly good together.  Autumn has ( I could choke the Vet that did it ) all four sets of claws removed.  She can have a little chip on her shoulder now and then but I know she does it as she feels defenseless.  It was really bad when we first got her.....daily hissing at whomever came near......we left her in a big dog crate, and let her come out when she felt up to it.......she still prefers to sleep in the crate, but spends the rest of the time out of it.  She's a snuggler with people. 

Jackie

Laughed myself silly.....so hope this one goes in:

THESE ARE BLEAK TIMES FOR OUR FRIENDS ON THE RIGHT as they face up to the horrid reality that they tried to “Take Back America” and failed in ignominious fashion. The only solace they seem to find since Barack Obama won a second term in (to them) a stunning fashion comes from churning out petitions demanding the right to secede from the Union they so badly wanted to take back.

Still, there are embers in the ashes of even the worst defeats. The Nut Job right still rules the radio air waves. Fox News has four more years to convince unbalanced individuals that Obama is a Muslim or maybe a Cylon. And the U. S. House of Representatives is still firmly in their all-taxes-are-poison political grip. Michele Bachmann, the queen of the Nut Jobs, returns for another term, ready to deny that gay people actually exist. Steven King is back, too, prepared to go to his grave denying that President Obama has ever had a valid U. S. birth certificate. In fact, when last heard from on the topic, King was insisting that Obama’s parents might have faked the birth announcements that appeared in two Hawaiian newspapers, which announcements poor Steven King was forced to admit during a town hall meeting that he had personally seen in the Library of Congress records, by sending a telegram from Kenya.

What we’re saying, all boiled down, is there’s a whole lot of denyin’ goin’ on!

Marco Rubio doesn’t exactly deny that he once supported Mitt Romney long ago; but he has been busy this week denying that he agrees with Romney’s post-election statements, which sound suspiciously like Romney’s pre-election statements when you think about it. No, says Rubio. The GOP doesn’t hate people on food stamps. No. The GOP doesn’t think Latinos and women and young voters are stupid and only voted for Obama because he promised lavish “gifts.” No, no, no. Rubio denies that Republicans believe any of this. Indeed, based on answers to questions in an interview he did this week, Rubio seemed to be warming up for a possible Nut Job-backed run at the White House in 2016. Talking to a reporter from GQ magazine, Rubio stood by his party’s basic position of denial on gay rights. That is: gay people should vote with us next time around, even if they don’t exist, and even if the loudest voices on the right insist God sends hurricanes to punish America for giving gay people who don’t really exist something akin to equal rights.

The reporter, apparently realizing that our friends on the right are know at times to deny…well, let’s just say basic science…asked Rubio if he might care to comment on the age of the earth. Rubio answered carefully, knowing that on the Nut Job right the deniers are always ready to explode into anger:

I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.

Meanwhile, three GOP experts in climate change denial now stand in line, one of the trio almost certain to become the next head of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology! (Ironically, this committee oversees NASA, the National Weather Service and the National Science Foundation among other entities.) Representative James Sensebrenner from Wisconsin is mildest in his denunciation of scientists, who he believes are twisting the facts to make climate change sound worse than it is. Lamar Smith of Texas sees it in a more sinister light and sniffs out willful bias in reporting on global warming at ABC, CBS and NBC.

Not Fox, of course. Oh no, oh no.

Dana Rohrabacher, goes all-in on the paranoia when he insists there’s an an even bigger conspiracy afoot. As Christine Gorman reported for Scientific American, in a speech on the floor of Congress this past December Rohrabacher warned about an “insidious coalition” of research scientists and politicians:

[A] coalition that has conducted an unrelenting crusade to convince the American people that their health and their safety and–yes–their very survival on this planet is at risk due to manmade global warming. The purpose of this greatest-of-all propaganda campaigns is to enlist public support for, if not just the acquiescence to, a dramatic mandated change in our society and a mandated change to our way of life. This campaign has such momentum and power that it is now a tangible threat to our freedom and to our prosperity as a people.

AT THIS POINT, IT’S GETTING HARD to keep track of all the Nut Job right’s denials and a brief recap is probably in order. As it stands, our friends on the right don’t believe in:

Thermometers–as in National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association records that show September 2012 temperatures marked the 331st month in succession during which global temperatures were above the 20th century average.

Photographs–as in NASA satellite cameras that showed the Arctic ice sheet had been reduced by fifty percent this summer compared to historic coverage limits.

The speed of light–which would seem to prove, according to scientists (but not necessarily anyone like Marco Rubio who might want to run for president with support from the Nut Job right) that the universe is a little older than a few thousand years.

Fossils–sure those ancient sea creatures and dinosaur bones embedded in limestone appear to be tens of millions of years old; but who are you gonna’ believe? Scientists, who insist on considering evidence, or Steven King and a book written thousands of years ago to guide the Jews, at a time when no one had heard of light-years or dinosaurs or Bunsen burners.

Sperm–as we all now known, sperm don’t work in cases of rape.

Lamestream media–everyone except Megyn Kelly at Fox News and Glenn Beck, in whatever bunker he’s currently hiding, hates the right-wing with implacable resolve.

Percentages–as in percentages in any opinion poll that might have shown that President Obama might actually win a second term in office. Which of course, the Nut Job right absolutely knew was mathematically and politically and morally impossible.

Liberal pollsters– people like Nathan Silver and their lamestream math, with their liberal bias, insisting that President Obama would win all the battleground states except North Carolina, win the popular vote, and pile up more than 300 electoral votes. Which all the real news people at Fox said was impossible, and Rush Limbaugh said it, too. And who are you gonna’ believe, real patriots with tea-bag hats or these fossil-loving commie freaks?

Actual voters–in 2010 the Nut Job right scored a huge victory in the mid-term elections; but actual American voters vanished two years later and idiots and members of the “entitlement class” showed up like herds of sheeple and voted for Obama.

American women–who sometimes lived under the same roofs as American men who tended to go for Romney; but somehow these females went for Obama by a sizable margin, perhaps in part because they fell for lamestream reports about the powers of sperm.

Colleges–Americans with advanced degrees voted in favor of Mr. Obama by a sizable margin. This has something to do with the fact that college students are all brain-washed by professors, and maybe the fact that the educated people prefer actual facts and tangible evidence with their political discussions. Like fossils or birth certificates or the speed-of-light.

Finally, our friends on the seem ready to deny the unique place in history of the United States of America, which is, despite various imperfections, still a land of surpassing freedoms. They say they love freedom more than liberals do. They say they believe in the Founding Fathers more than liberals do. They say they believe in the Bill of Rights more, too. They used to say, if you criticized this country, that you ought to move to Russia or some other communist country.

NOW, THEY LOSE ONE ELECTION and they’re ready to bail out to furl the red, white and blue.

They’re ready to give up on the country they say they love. They reveal themselves as great babies. But if you point that out, they’ll deny that, too.

Alexandria - wow.  98 and such an interesting life.  While watching the Dustbowl last night I wondered how a documentarian would go about finding these people to interview.  I suppose that is much easier given the web, but now wonderful her experiences will be recorded.  98...how does one do that?

Thanks all for your support today.  It turned out so much better than it could have and I'm so relieved.  Blue, as I went to pick up my cat, a large dog was exiting. I think this dog spent some time in the tank with Emma.  The owner was telling me it was having trachea problems when he sleeps.  He was a large Fox Terrier. I only saw 2 dogs today...both Fox Terriers. I couldn't help but think of Virgil and the coincidence of it all.

Jackie, I LOL'd at the notion that Obama's parents were somehow psychic to fake Hawaiian birth announcements so that he could someday run for President. But here's the kicker - it WOULDN'T MATTER if he WAS born outside the US; his Mom was a citizen, and therefore, so is he - RIGHT, John McCain (born in Panama)?

Some of the Republicans are too funny for words.  Heard tonight West is stubbornly refusing to concede.  Now, this after a second vote count came and he got less this time around, yet he is asking S. Brown to do "something" as Governor.....really.  Whoa, Whoa, Whoa.....Brown is up for re-election in two years....none of this should be touched with a ten-ft. pole. So many of these people seem sorely lacking in brain cells.  I really can't get why they seem so bound and determined to continue behavior that tends to make them look more inept and unqualified to say nothing of making their party look all the worse. 

Mr. West, do yourself a favor and concede......you lost, you really did.  And by the way, don't get too concerned about the 78 to 81 communists in Congress.  Psst !!!  They are a figment of your over-active imagination.....on the same order of your idea that you won.    

Jackie

Now why in the world would so many scientists ban together and spend thousands of hours, millions of dollars, and a decade or more to convince people of something that doesn't exist? What's to be gained?



Conversely, there's tons to be gained in the short-term (or at least not lost) by denying climate change. Not to mention the near-phobic horror of change that exists on the right.



Who to believe? Evidence supporting something that benefits no one, or fear and unsupported conspiracy theories that offer respite from change? That's a tough one.

One has to be careful with such studies. It doesn't mean that all liberals are smarter than all conservatives, nor does it mean that all conservatives are racist and that librerals are not.



I know y'all KNOW that, but I had to put a disclaimer out there.

I'm glad to hear that Jackie. Did any tea party candidate win this election? Must have been one or more, but in all the major races it seems they lost. I so hope the Republican Party gets a clue and marginalizes the extreme fringe it now embraces, or maybe just fears.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/conservative-republicans-fight-back-after-romney-loss/2012/11/19/4d04a050-3270-11e2-bfd5-e202b6d7b501_story.html



They don't seem to have received (or understood) the message, Yorkie! They believe the problem is that their candidates -- McCain/Palin in 2008 and Robme/Ruin in 2012 -- were TOO MODERATE. Okey dokey, then! Keep on keepin' on, sez I! :-D

Yep, I saw a recommendation for Palin/West in 2016! ROFL, Democrats dream ticket!!