Post Election Post

Alright, SOL has been AWOL, well away on leave actually, but away nonetheless.  I happily missed the whole pre-election madness, but returned in time to vote.  The results were mixed.  Obviously, if you've read any of the posts here before, I was pleased with the way the national election went.  Obama did more than squeak by and dominated the electoral vote.  The Dems added Senate seats and picked up a few House seats.  All of the Republicans who made idiotic comments about rape and female body parts were defeated.

In Alaska, the news wasn't as good.  Redistricting favoring electing Republicans in some areas worked - more republicans were elected to the AK senate. Here on the Peninsula, redistricting wasn't a big factor in the senate race, but the election was over in the primary when Peter Micciche defeated Tom Wagoner.  Of course, most voters here thought that Joe Miller should have won the US Senate seat the last election.

So, the senate coalition of Ds and Rs that held power for the past few sessions is gone and that body is firmly in the grips of Sean Parnell, the oil companies and maybe even the religious right-wing.

It will be interesting to see what Micciche does in Juneau.  Will he be a tool of Conoco-Phillips, the folks that pay him?  Will he support Parnell's no-strings-attached give-away of billions of dollars to the oil companies?  Or will he insist, like the previous coalition, that there should be no breaks without commitments to actually produce.  It will be curious to see what Peter thinks about the future version of HB 9 that would build a very expensive and impractical small-diameter gas line from the slope (and pass the high costs on to consumers)as well as remove any sort of oversight in the planning or construction of it.  Sensibly, the previous senate coalition also opposed that boondoggle.

There's no hope for either Chenault or Olson.  They are both shills for big oil.

There are a couple of curious reads in the electronic world.

The first is a well-written piece by a white, middle-class christian woman and why she voted for Obama.  Read it here.

The next is a fun article in the ADN.  Seems that Canada, our socialist neighbor, is hiring oil field workers.  The country that is pro-union, that has universal health care, that outlawed handguns and has strict gun-control laws, a country that tightly regulates banks and avoided the current recession, that makes the rich pay their fair share of taxes (everyone pays their fair share in fact), where immigrants are welcome, a place where Obama's policies would be aligned with the CONSERVATIVE party, actually has a thriving economy.

So, that about blows all of the right wing hate that I've been seeing on the social media out of the water, doesn't it?