Two Papers In One!

The NY Times offers something for everyone: Op-ed columnist David Brooks explains that fracking and the shale gas revolution will create jobs:

Already shale gas has produced more than half a million new jobs, not only in traditional areas like Texas but also in economically wounded places like western Pennsylvania and, soon, Ohio. If current trends continue, there are hundreds of thousands of new jobs to come.

The new columnist for the Times magazine explains how the energy sector won't provide jobs:

The federal government does something similar when it decides, for instance, to regulate oil drillers and subsidize windmill makers. Such a policy might help the environment but it just moves jobs from one sector to another without adding any. And while both Perry and Mitt Romney propose that further oil and gas drilling in the U.S. will transform the jobs picture, only 30,000 Americans work in oil and gas extraction, and about another 125,000 in support occupations. With more than 25 million Americans unemployed or underemployed, it’s unlikely that any changes in that part of the energy sector would make a real dent.

"Half a million" versus "30,000", with a further 125,000 in support.  Baffling.  This May 2010 BLS job survey may provide more detail than I can handle, since the meaning of many of the subcategories is unclear to me.  However, I see a section for "Construction And Extraction Occupations" which includes Derrick, Rotary Drill and Service Unit Operators, and let's not overlook Roustabouts.  Those four categories alone sum to 123,000; elsewhere I see twenty-eight thousand petroleum engineers and I have no doubt that civil engineers and others are involved with oil and gas production and distribution (not to mention the clerical support all around).

I don't want to use the word "wrong", but I doubt that the 30,000 or 125,000 figures could be substantiated.

IF YOU CAN'T TRUST AN INDUSTRY FLACK... The natural gas and energy people are talking hundreds of thousands or even millions of jobs. 

Comments

[So long as it's anti-American.]

Desperately seeking to keep us foreign energy dependent. Hey, the useful idiots will believe anything.
=========

[Melinda Romanoff]

Just up and until they can grab it for themselves, you know, "for the public good" and all that.

[Cecil Turner]

The real jobs impact is in lower energy costs. The current anti-industry policies are equivalent to a tax on energy (which is hard to quantify, but I'd guess about 5-10 percent), which affects everybody, but especially business. Acccording to one industry guy:

Steven Miller, CEO of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, warns of job losses totaling 1.4 million over the next eight years and a 23% jump in electricity rates in states dependent on coal-fired plants.

I don't have any idea what the total impact is, but I doubt it's less than "millions."

[Clarice]

Perhaps the industry should hire more recently riffed journos. Just saying.

[Melinda Romanoff]

Heh.

[Pops]

For being on both sides of the fence..how about the Oakland Major. She gave Oakland city employees the day of to join the Oakland protests and then had all the police come to work on their days off to mange the subsequent melee'.

Now liberals are running BOTH sides of the riots.

[Ignatz]

--The real jobs impact is in lower energy costs.--

The obvious solution then is to tax the 1% so that the 99% will have their energy bills subsidized not to reduce regulations.
Barack XVI and Michelle Antoinette say we can have our rich and eat them too.

[Ignatz]

--For being on both sides of the fence..how about the Oakland Major.--

There is no there, there.

[Danube of Thought]

CT is spot on. If cheaper energy is available, energy-consuming activities that would otherwise be uneconomical suddenly make economic sense. I don't know how this ripple effect could be measured, but the guy who confines his analysis to the extraction industry itself has blinders on.

[narciso]

"It's a dessert topping and a floor wax'

[MarkO]

"Ummmm. That's good bass."

[narciso]

They get you coming, and going:

http://legalinsurrection.com/2011/11/all-of-the-sudden-politico-wants-to-be-fair-and-balanced/

[narciso]

You know it's not the home town paper, but you would think they would notice this, I kid, I kid:

http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/8605585-418/prosecutors-rezko-should-get-up-to-15-years-in-prison.html

[Porchlight]

Cheaper energy fuels all boats.

[narciso]

This wouldn't be the same Adam Davidson would it;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Davidson_%28journalist%29

[narciso]

Yes it is, among all the folderall he tucks in some disquieting realities, before the brain slug gets him again:

We don’t need to become a nation of app designers. An economic downturn is a great time to learn things — carpentry, say, or aerospace engineering — that others will eventually pay for: high-school dropouts should get their degrees and a year of specialized training; high-school grads who can’t afford a four-year school should get a community-college degree. Life will be tougher for liberal-arts majors if they don’t get training in how to apply a humanities education. Those who can’t find a job where they live should consider moving to places where there are more jobs than applicants — the Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming.

[Rick Ballard]

"I don't want to use the word "wrong", but I doubt that the 30,000 or 125,000 figures could be substantiated."

The BLS says current employment on the extraction side is running at about 184 thousand in October 2011, up from 150 thousand in October 2007.

[narciso]

Yergin's the Quest addresses this in part, each collapse in the barrel price in the late 80s, and the 90s, and around 2008, notice a pattern has led to the consolidation of the industry, hence the reason for the mergers in the previous cycles, that led to the virtual
consolidation of Standard Oil, even more then
the Achincarry Agreement of '27. However, it left it ill equipped to handle the new demand
that arose for a multiplicity of factors after 2003.

[Benjamin Franklin]

The ?Right needs a new Mantra. 'Drill Baby....' is not as whiskered
as, say, "Lower Taxes', but it's their answer to every crisis, Global or local.

When oil was first refined, gasoline was a waste by-product in the quest for kerosene. There is more than one reason to call them
'fossil fuels'. They are past their usefulness, like spoked wagon-wheels.

Call when you want to enter the 21st century...

[Benjamin Franklin]

Andy Rooney---RIP

[narciso]

It's really like looking in a fun house, Yergin points out that in 1999, Putin published an article in the St. Petersburg
Mining Institute, that was not unlike what
Perry and Romney are proposing, and that un dergirded the future rise of the Russian economy, for the next decade, how do you say'
Drill baby Drill' in Russian

[Ignatz]

--They are past their usefulness, like spoked wagon-wheels.--

What do you think provided most of the electricity for you to broadcast that silliness or the plastic your computer is cased in and largely made of?
Spain entered the 21st century on your terms and now has 20% unemployment, is even more broke than we are and can't begin to afford the boneheaded green energy subsidies which gave it its 20% unemployment.
They've been into your future and it doesn't work. (And now, neither do they)

[Rocco]

Aw geez, a fourth Cain accuser surfaces.

http://fromthebarrelofagun.blogspot.com/2011/11/wouldnt-blame-him-if-he-did.html

[Danube of Thought]

About twenty years ago I decided that a few minutes with Andy Rooney was a few too many. Ever since then the 60 Minutes program would end after the final segment before he came on.

[Jane]

This is my favorite line of Janet's link:

Three years into the Obama presidency, how is it that we know more about Herman Cain?

[Danube of Thought]

They are past their usefulness

Of course they are. Who has any use for the internal combustion engine? We could do away with all of them tomorrow and no one would notice. Who has any use for home heating oil? Who needs jet airplanes--we could travel by sailboat or horse-drawn carriage and meet all our needs.

[Jack is Back!]

How neat is this?

We are at NAS Jacksonville for the air show and Blue Angels. Had to drive down Mustin Drive to get to our parking.

100 years of Naval Aviation.

[Comanche Voter]

The new columnist for the New York Times magazine has a regular day gig working for NPR. I rest my case that the twit hasn't produced anything useful in his life--and doesn't know doodly squat about the real world.

Expanded production from shale gas and the Bakken formation will produce jobs not only for the people working in production and extraction--but for people building and operating pipelines, running rail cars to haul the oil out, trucking stuff into the fields etc. Since cheap natural gas makes it economical to build gas fired electric generating plants there are jobs there for builders and operators of said plants.

Cheap energy is like a virtuous circle--it makes things grow. The NPR nitwits don't, can't, and never will get that.

[narciso]

He does sort of concede that at end, Comanche,
then he goes back to the cave.

[Dave (in MA)]

In my case it was 60 minutes too many.

[Danube of Thought]

Pretty neat, JiB. Have a good day.

[JM Hanes]

Cecil:

"The real jobs impact is in lower energy costs."

I was surprised that even TM seems to have missed that point -- which is pretty much the point.

[matt]

I enjoyed Rooney most of the time. Rest in Peace.

The real value in the oil patch is not simply gas or oil, but what is made from those feedstocks. Plastics, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, building materials, even food additives.

SABIC, the Saudi feedstock processing company, has become a major force in the global materials markets, as have been Shell, Chevron, Exxon, and all of the other oil majors. The world needs much more than fuel from hydrocarbons.

The tendency to think in one dimension by these idiots is one of the reasons we are where we are today.

[Clarice]

Maybe we could talk NPR into promising to run its operations, including transmission, only on green energy and be done with two sore spots at the same time:NPR and the preposterously overblown claims about gree energy.

[Danube of Thought]

"The second area of agreement is the most important: an economy is truly healthy only when its people know how to make and do things that others will pay them a decent amount for."

Except that doesn't apply where those 23 million government workers are concherned. The "others" in their case are politicians, who pay them with taxpaers' money. Neither the quality of their work nor the willingness of the taxpapers to pay for that work is subject to any market discipline.

[Benjamin Franklin]

Ig; This is for you....

http://wikiality.wikia.com/George_Carlin

"The planet will be here for a long, long, LONG time after we're gone, and it will heal itself, it will cleanse itself, 'cause that's what it does. It's a self-correcting system. The air and the water will recover, the earth will be renewed, and if it's true that plastic is not degradable, well, the planet will simply incorporate plastic into a new pardigm: the earth plus plastic. The earth doesn't share our prejudice towards plastic. Plastic came out of the earth. The earth probably sees plastic as just another one of its children. Could be the only reason the earth allowed us to be spawned from it in the first place. It wanted plastic for itself. Didn't know how to make it. Needed us. Could be the answer to our age-old egocentric philosophical question, "Why are we here?" Plastic...asshole."

[boris]

"Plastic...asshole"

I know you are but what am I?

[narciso]

The Onion has lost some of his humor, but everyone in a while:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/remains-of-ancient-race-of-job-creators-found-in-r,26490/

[narciso]

Carlin, in the end, was a misanthrope, a wiser man made it clearer earlier:

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2008/04/07/1995_charlton_heston_calls_in_to_read_from_crichton_s_jurassic_park4

[Rick Ballard]

Professor Dana Ward is providing illustrations of why no one in their right mind should ever hire a well indoctrinated Pitzer College mendicant. The energy required for remediation (where possible) is just too expensive.

Pitzer College - producing human door stops since day one.

[Cecil Turner]

I was surprised that even TM seems to have missed that point -- which is pretty much the point.

I suspect he was led astray by the Times' focus on direct impact (and chortling over their incoherent self-contradictory analysis that somehow managed to praise Obama from two irreconcilable positions).

Who needs jet airplanes--we could travel by sailboat or horse-drawn carriage and meet all our needs.

Wow, I almost missed that little gem. I realize it's an article of faith on the left that renewable energy is the ticket--and the only problem is efficient batteries to store the result--but the real problem is of course energy density, which your reductio encapsulates nicely.

This sort of delusional outlook is beyond ridiculous, and unfortunately extremely common. I suspect most Democrats think they can replace fossil fuels in the near future with windmills and solar panels (and similar contraptions) . . . something any competent engineer could tell them is not physically possible, let alone economically feasible. (And David Brooks appears to've bought into the enviro-hype uncritically.)

[Benjamin Franklin]

" If we're gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us."

Chuck Heston-------

"It;s a Madhouse...a maaaadhouse !!!

[Porchlight]

You would think they would get that just as high energy prices hurt everyone, low energy prices help everyone.

Actually I think they do get it. They just don't care, because their religious beliefs (environment) trump all.

[narciso]

It is a sense of arrogance, Cecil, equivalent to the Ptolemaic notion that the Sun revolves around the Earth, besides we know they aren't serious, Gore, Turner, Maurice Strong
don't 'practice what they preach' W, the AGW
'denier' for a time was the closest to any major figure to abide by this view.

[Benjamin Franklin]

"something any competent engineer could tell them is not physically possible, let alone economically feasible."

I am dubious about the opinions of those persons whose mindset is clearly retrograde and locked in an elliptic orbit.

http://www.thegatesnotes.com/Topics/Energy/We-Need-A-Battery-Miracle

[MayBee]

Down with plastic! Up with solar panels!

[narciso]

Every other part of the part of the Democratic coalitions, ie Blue Collar Workers, are blocked by at least one other faction, the Canadian Menace in the Keystone Pipeline, as seen by the environmentalists, the nickel mine in Alaska, to use two recent examples,

Meanwhile we have the example of Putin, or the PLA oligarchs who will not let
sentimentality, get in the way of the nation's economic growth,

[Rick Ballard]

"Up with solar panels!"

MayBee,

I believe that's "Up with solar panels made only with 100% fair trade natural hemp!".

[Benjamin Franklin]

How about a marriage of your carbon obsession and new tech?

http://clearedgepower.com/

But no freakin' fracking !!!

[Barbara-Lurking]

DOT wrote:
"Who needs jet airplanes--we could travel by sailboat or horse-drawn carriage and meet all our needs."

Who needs high-speed rail? We could set up a series of giant slingshots for express trips. Or perhaps a system of trebuchets might work in some situations.

[peter]

It's funny, but lately the only parts of the New York Times I enjoy reading are the weather page and the corrections.

[narciso]

It's curious how with Holdren at the helm, we seem to deferring to dystopian 70s scifi, Logan's Run's carousel by way of death panels,
the misplaced Malthusianism of Soylent Green,
that Kristof and others are adopting, the hopeful expansionist, for lack of a better term, vision of 2001, seems almost proscribed.

[Porchlight]

Who needs jet airplanes--we could travel by sailboat or horse-drawn carriage and meet all our needs.

Who needs food grown with the help of tractors and combines, and transported via refrigerated trucks? We'll just shop at farmers' markets.

[Benjamin Franklin]

Try to think in more than one dimension..........TM should set an example.

[narciso]

This is more of that word, they were talking about earlier, civility;

http://theothermccain.com/2011/11/05/f-michelle-fields-interview-with-reporter-harassed-at-occupy-dc-protest/

[Benjamin Franklin]

Well, a Daily Caller reporter....Is she really a reporter?

I can imagine an 'reporter' from Think Progress would be received with open arms at a Tea Party rally. What comes around, goes around for 'objective' reporting.

[daddy]

test

[daddy]

OT,

Just in from a great Walking Tour of Paris in beautiful weather. From the brochure:

"Sat 5 2.30pm The French Revolution (Right Bank) The Palais Royal, where new ideas were debated, the site of the radical Jacobin club and the ill-fated Tuileries palace. Hear of Marie Antoinette, Robespierre, Equality Philip, and Charlotte Corday, and end at place de la Concorde where the guillotine stood. Meet at metro Palais Royal, at the main art nouveau exit, place du Palais Royal, beside the rue de Rivoli."

A gaggle of 15 tourists trailing a wonderful Brit Tour Guide. Basically walked up the long road where the condemned were hauled in open carts back in the 1790's on their way to execution by guillotine in the Place De La Revolution. (Today's Place de la Concorde.)

Would periodically stop at interesting locations along the way and he would point out and explain fascinating bits of Revolutionary history (ie the shop where the gal bought the knife that she stabbed Marat with, and where Napoleon set up his cannons and unloaded on the Monarchist troops in the early Revolution years. Fascinating.

Odd but fun stuff would occasionally pop up along the walk so when a head of Joan of Arc appeared on a building he explained that that was to denote where she was wounded in 1429 by a crossbow bolt by English troops occupying Paris.

And Sue and Porch would have enjoyed seeing The Embassy of Texas; the building in the Place de la Vendome where the Independent Republic of Texas had their French Embassy between 1836-1845. Very cool.

Anyhow, a very fun day. Wish you all could have been there.

[glasater]

OT-
In catching up with the threads I did not see this little gem rear its head:

Steve Kroft Catches Nancy Pelosi With Her Hand In The Cookie Jar

Imagine -- Steve Kroft of 60 Minutes!

[jimmyk]

It's funny, but lately the only parts of the New York Times I enjoy reading are the weather page and the corrections.

Me too. Plus the Sunday crossword puzzle.

[narciso]

Here's the sign for it,

http://www.parisdeuxieme.com/2007/06/paris-embassy-of-texas.html

[Danube of Thought]

"Who needs high-speed rail?"

Depends on the cost--entirely.

[Benjamin Franklin]

Friends of Israel, include some of their own...

http://972mag.com/the-fight-is-on-to-stop-bibi-and-barak-from-bombing-iran/26623/

I think Nahum Barnea’s column today in Yediot Aharonot may be remembered for having been the turning point. He’s calling out Binyamin Netanyahu and Ehud Barak for cooking up an attack, maybe before this winter, maybe afterward, even though the security establishment, foreign governments and relatively level-headed members of this government are completely against it. Barnea, the best-connected, most influential journalist in Israel, almost certainly is writing with the encouragement of at least some of these top officials. The column, which dominated Yediot’s front page and is titled “Atomic pressure,” seems clearly intended to foil Netanyahu and Barak’s plans by exposing them to the light. It begins:

[narciso]

Here are more views of the Embassy, in the LUN

[daddy]

Thanks Narciso. I couldn't get any pics to load.

Pretty cool about that Esposita Natural Gas strike in the Cook Inlet. If that's true I can't tell you how upbeat I am about it. Lets keep our fingers crossed.

[Danube of Thought]

"Try to think in more than one dimension..."

That's the kind of vacuous, meaningless bilge that thrives on college campuses and nowhere else.

[narciso]

Well since you are our Steinbeck, I was willing to oblige

[Benjamin Franklin]

'Vacuous"...in part, was my point. You are not exactly an Alpha in the multi-dimensional high-speed rail of Thought.

"The real jobs impact is in lower energy costs."

I was surprised that even TM seems to have missed that point -- which is pretty much the point."

[narciso]

Some of this pics, are clearer than others

[donald]

Ya know, all I can say is if you live in Georgia and Florida, and ya got actual you know construction type skills, I can probably use you. But ya gotta have skill and self responsibility.

That's unfortunately a shallow pool.

Serious inquiry by the way.

[Extraneus]

Cheap energy is like a virtuous circle--it makes things grow. The NPR nitwits don't, can't, and never will get that.

They do get it. No one could be dumb enough not to. They're just against it.

They're against economic growth, on principle. The environmental angle is just a convenient excuse.

[Jane]

Daddy,

The best chocolatier in the universe is located next to the Maurice Hotel, on the Rue de Rivoli.

Elliott took us there for lunch (and spoke fluent french)and I had actually been there before with my niece. If you are a fan of chocolate, I highly recommend it, si'l vous plait.

[Ignatz]

--Ig; This is for you....--

Thanks Ben. I appreciate that you agree the earth is self correcting and all the environmental hysteria is just that.
I'm glad we have found some of that common ground you're always looking for.
Next up, Ben learns to love the value and job creating, not just facilitating, power of declining marginal tax rates.

[JM Hanes]

narciso:

Rezko's footnote status must please the Prez, but that sentencing story must be one of the weirdest denouements in prosecutorial history.

Federal prosecutors say Tony Rezko deserves to spend up to 15 years in prison for his crimes in two separate cases and that he damaged his own credibility by lying to the court.

Prosecutors for the first time publicly addressed why they never called the convicted political fund-raiser to the witness stand after he began cooperating in 2008. They say in more than 19 meetings with them, he did not fully tell the truth about his own wrongdoing until he was confronted by agents with new information. Prosecutors said juries would never have accepted his word.

“Rezko’s cooperation was heavily tainted by the timing of when he decided to cooperate, by his repeated lies to judges, and by his pervasive and sustained lies made to the government over the first several months of his purported cooperation with the government,” prosecutors wrote.

They kept him on ice for over five years because he wasn't cooperating? And what, precisely, was the "timing" of this non-cooperative cooperation (in contrast to the "superior" volubility of Stuart Levine)? Did they want other targets and/or Blago to think he was cooperating? Or were they just hoping he'd spill a bean or two even after they went to trial (trials!) with Blago?

What's really striking in all of this is the prosecutor's power to suspend a convict's sentencing for as long as he can persuade a judge it might be useful (and, it seems, to determine whether he will sit in jail or remain free on bail for the duration?). Did holding out hope that his interrogators might be willing to ask for a sentence which included "time served" play into the pressure they applied to their inferior snitch?

Oddly enough, Blago's Oct. 6th sentencing has been "stricken until further order by the court" too. Goodbye Rezko! Blago is expected to get around 10 years, but when he could technically max out at 300, prosecutors seem to have the biggest sticks and carrots to offer once a defendant is convicted. Does this bizarre sort of ex post facto plea sentence bargaining and delaying seem like something of a due process wowser to anyone else?

Fitz never did explain the urgency of the original Blago indictment, and I remain convinced that there was something hinky in the mix of the Chicago Trib, the Tribune Co. and the stadium deal (at the very least) which affected the timing -- beyond what came out about Blago's Wrigley Field "negotiations." Is it simply coincidental that Blagojevich & his Chief of Staff were arrested the day after the Tribune Co. filed for bankruptcy?

If John Kass ever wants to write a book about Patrick Fitzgerald's Chicago career, I'd pitch in to help with the advance, if only to watch the spectacle of a U.S. Attorney fighting for prior restraint -- again.

[Benjamin Franklin]

"if only to watch the spectacle of a U.S. Attorney fighting for prior restraint -- again."

JMH;

Are there genuine heros, other than the un-sung and anonymous,
any longer?

[narciso]

Lance is a little dodgy, but the fact that the SDNY let Ali Mohammed slip through their
fingers in 1993-1994, made Fitz's star reputation a litle tarnished. I just find
that once again they pick the wrong target,
in this case, forgoing a much bigger fish, for reasons pointed out in the other thread.

In addition, there's a pattern of protecting
certain witnesses, as long as they finger the right target for their purposes.

[hit and run]

test

Posted by: daddy | November 05, 2011 at 01:51 PM

Dangit. I didn't study.

Is it multiple choice or....

Posted by: daddy | November 05, 2011 at 01:52 PM

Oh,got it. Essay.

[RichatUF]

Porchlight-

We'll just shop at farmers' markets.

Or we can turn our own backyards into farms and grow our own food. And we could have backyard steel furnaces and bearfoot doctors. Think of the vistas that would open.

[Benjamin Franklin]

Found one...

Sal Dimiceli---CNN top ten hero from Wisconsin

http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/28/cnnheroes.dimiceli/index.html

[RichatUF]

in part, was my point.

What?

[Uncle BigBad]

Austin has a French Legation, which is now a museum.

Can you imagine the Cowboy Ambassador to France and the tales he could tell when he returned to Texas?

[narciso]

How do you blow up a picture again, like at 2:21?

[Cecil Turner]

That's the kind of vacuous, meaningless bilge that thrives on college campuses and nowhere else.

And even there, not in the math, science, or engineering departments. (Where, unsurprisingly, the value of a degree disproportionately outweighs the cost.)

[daddy]

Merci Beaucoup Melinda and Jane for the chocolate and restaurant tips.

Unfortunately am just off to New Delhi this minute. Namaste'.

Pretty cool in the Hotel last night. Some big French sponsored Tennis Tourney is ongoing and many of the Players and their retinues are staying at this hotel. The guys are all very healthy and young and athletic looking and their girlfriends are all knockouts. If you guys were here we would all have great eye candy to look at:)

[JM Hanes]

narciso:

Texas Embassy:

At Flickr

[narciso]

you know that doesn't work without pics, daddy.

[hit and run]

narciso:
How do you blow up a picture again, like at 2:21?

If you need help blowing things up,mayhaps a Guy Fawkesophile could help?

[daddy]

Your wish is my command Sir!

Pssst Hit---It's an eye test:)

[mockmook]

They're against economic growth, on principle. The environmental angle is just a convenient excuse.

Posted by: Extraneus | November 05, 2011 at 02:35 PM

But, they are certain The State will innovate and create all the iPads and other luxuries they love (just like the USSR did).

[narciso]

Much obliged, daddy.

[Ralph L]

bearfoot doctors
I believe the bearskin goes over the head, with the upper jaw in front, for the full effect.

[narciso]

What strikes me about the Jobs bio, is as he &many of and his mentors, came they came from left wing political backgrounds or atleast bohemian lifestyles, they were not foolish enough to indulge in this fantasy economics,

[Jane]

OT: When I had power but no internet earlier in the week I started watching the first season of 24 on DVD - which I never saw on TV. I'm now thru hour 12 and boy it is really spectacular.

[Rick Ballard]

"(which is hard to quantify, but I'd guess about 5-10 percent)"

Cecil,

5-10% is very low. The impact on energy costs of watermelon dolts running Blue Hells is pretty easy to quantify. The super smart and ever so sophisticated watermelons of Connecticut are paying close to 100% more than those red necked rubes down in Mississippi. Compare the cost of the uber environmentally conscious Californians with the dweeby Nevadans and Oregonians next door as well. It's obvious that more dams need to be blown up in Oregon to keep things fair but what can be done to cripple Nevadans so that they limp as badly as Californians?

[Porchlight]

Think of the vistas that would open.

It would be like a hundred flowers blooming.

[Porchlight]

JMH, I've walked by that building many times. Never been in. Next time I'm in London I'm going to see what it's all about.

[narciso]

It's right around Trafalgar Square, I'm given to understand:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/32754778@N00/3419294232/

[RichatUF]

lol Ralph. Knew it as soon as I hit post.

[Sara (Pal2Pal)]

Boxer Joe Frazier in hospice, dying of liver cancer. 67 years old.

[Clarice]

JMH< A local guy keeps writing to me about Fitz and the Blago case but frankly I am unable to unravel what went on except for the fact that once the wiretap picked up the WH, there was a leak about it and Fitz did nada.

I understand there's talk that Rezko wants or will get--I forget which--a sentence of time served (about 55 mos IIRC).

His time in prison was no cakewalk . He seems to have been in solitary confinement for most of that time.

Asking me to make a credibility resolution between Blago/Rezko and Fitz puts me at a serious disadvantage. I think they re all three liars.