Dr. Doom speaks
Bob Morris @ 23:26 Category: Credit crisis;
November 5, 2008
Fuel-sipping engine
Bob Morris @ 21:12 Category: Energy conservation;
A research project in the UK has developed a gasoline engine that it claims can reduce fuel consumption by 15 percent without losing power.
It does so by releasing air and fuel into the cylinders in a new way. Developed by Lotus and two universities, they plan to put the engine into production. Not only does this save fuel, it also, of course, cuts back on emissions.
Bad omen: Cisco sales drop off cliff
Bob Morris @ 21:04 Category: Unfiled Tags: recession;
Cisco’s new outlook calls for a revenue decline of 5%-10% next quarter. The Street was looking for +6%. October was apparently awful. Worldwide.
It is increasingly clear that the global economy fell off a cliff at the end of September, around the time that the global credit markets ceased functioning.
Cisco sells to huge corporations across the globe. If they aren’t buying routers, etc. from Cisco, then their business is slowing too. Not a good sign.
Third party voting in California abysmal
Bob Morris @ 14:05 Category: Unfiled;
If any state would be expected to have a big third party vote, it would be California, as it has several third parties and the outcome for the presidential vote was never in doubt.
But the opposite happened. Third party voting was nearly non-existent. The AIP, Green, and Libertarian parties got substantially fewer votes than their number of registered voters. Peace & Freedom did get more, but only because Nader ran on their ticket, not because he is a member.
California third party registrations, Oct. 15 2008 (pdf)
AIP 370,405, 2.14%
Green 118,416, 0.68%
Libertarian 83,574, 0.48%
Peace & Freedom 56,350, 0.33%
California presidential votes 2008
Barack Obama 6,286,024, 61.1%
John McCain 3,828,147, 37.2%
Alan Keyes (AIP) 30,433, 0.2%
Cynthia McKinney (GP) 28,337, 0.2%
Bob Barr (Lib) 50,896, 0.5%
Ralph Nader (P&F) 80,695, 0.8%
Sure, it’s hard to run against the two major parties and to get the message out. But remember Ross Perot in 1992? He got 18% of the vote. Sure, he could self-finance and that helped hugely. But he also had a message that resonated with many. That’s what third parties needed in 2008 and didn’t have.
One optimistic note for third parties:
Cindy Sheehan got a quite respectable 17% against Speaker of the House Pelosi.
Nancy Pelosi 126,073, 71.6%
Cindy Sheehan 29,951, 17.0%
Dana Walsh 16,149, 9.2%
Philip Z. Berg 4,024, 2.2%
Multiple lawsuits to be filed challenging Prop 8
Bob Morris @ 11:12 Category: Unfiled Tags: proposition 8;
Among them will be lawsuits by the San Francisco City Attorney and Gloria Allred on behalf of a married lesbian couple.
New day
Bob Morris @ 10:22 Category: Unfiled;
But what Obama did not do is campaign like Blair did in 1997. The Democrats did not triangulate around Republican voters, minimising the differences between Obama and McCain. The groundswell included inspiring expectations and turning out the vote, and extending the Democrat vote among blacks, Hispanics, the working poor and unemployed; and the same time as convincing the establishment and the better off that Obama was a safer pair of hands for defending the American economy. It is going to be hard to put that back in the bottle.
In many ways, I think the U.S. Civil War (finally) ended last night. There will still be skirmishes by the diehards, but for the most part, it’s over. The stomach-turning Rovian tactics of slime and character assassination no longer worked, they just bounced off Obama.
Something fundamental shifted last night in American politics. The genie is indeed out of the bottle. How we control it is up to us.
The neocon agenda is dead and gone
Bob Morris @ 05:45 Category: Unfiled;
The neocons, paleocons, and the rest of them will no longer have ideologues in high places of power who support their agenda. Thinks about what that means. Soon enough, the news shows will stop having William Kristol and Bay Buchanan on the air because, really, who will care. Instead they will forgotten spokespersons for some little wacko right wing faction that is no longer a player rather than be given national attention because an extremist in the White House is a fellow traveler.
Fox news will quickly morph into something else. Rupert Murdock may be on the right but he also likes to make money, and Fox ratings are about to nosedive.
Science will again be respected and honored in D.C. rather than being perverted or ignored to support bizarre quasi-religious views.
All of that stuff and much more will be gone soon. This was a momentous election in ways we are just beginning to understand.
And now for something completely different
Bob Morris @ 00:15 Category: Unfiled Tags: Obama;
As much as I wanted this to happen, I refused to believe it actually could happen until the moment Barack Obama reached 270 electoral votes. I find myself wondering what else can happen, now that the impossible has become possible. For the first time in my adult life I live in a blue state. The 21st century has begun and the old rules no longer apply.
Lefties can come out of their bunkers now. It really is a new day as well as a once in a generation opportunity for organizing.
