A stunt? Maybe. Certainly, a little theatre. But sometimes opportunity presents itself, and if you’re a frustrated Republican (or Blue Dog Dem) who Queen Nan has decided has no right to vote, then you find a bit of stiffness in your spine and seize it.
If you were near a radio, or a ‘puter, you probably followed the out-of-usual-routine insurrection, chuckling at GOP audacity [ahem] and Don’tDrillDem whining.
Democratic aides were furious at the GOP stunt, and reporters were kicked out of the Speaker’s Lobby, the space next to the House floor where they normally interview lawmakers.“You’re not covering this, are you?” complaing one senior Democratic aide. Another called the Republicans “morons” for staying on the floor.
But if you missed it last night, today’s front pages at LATimes, NYTimes, WaPo, SFGate, certainly wouldn’t clue you in. Relying on them, you would never know what happened. Indeed, you might not even be aware that Queen Nan and her DDD coterie had left DC for a five week paid vacation.
Remember them and think of Queen Nan sunning herself on the roof of her San Francisco mansion, cooled by the breezes off the bay, nibbling daintily on cracked crab and bemoaning the stresses of dealing with the hoi polloi …
… as you are filling up your tank with $4/gal gas and wondering how to get a good night’s sleep with your air conditioner turned off.
Comment by Spiny Norman on 8/2 @ 12:13 pm #
A possible GOP campaign ad suggested by LGF reader “Mars Needs Neocons”:
Yep.
Comment by sf on 8/2 @ 12:16 pm #
Hardly surprising that the nation’s dinosaur newspapers gave the story zero front-page coverage. After all, their editors clearly recognized the barely-disguised order from the nameless “senior Democratic aide”:
>>“You’re not covering this, are you?†complaing one senior Democratic aide. <<
Comment by Topsecretk9 on 8/2 @ 12:19 pm #
Well if they keep it up they’ll do themselves a lot of favors here - the optics stand to benefit them in a myriad of ways. The Culture of Corruption meme disappears - the GOP might have their share of bad apples but at least they roll up their sleeves forsake vacation to do something for taxpayers - the Democrats prefer to go on a tax-paid vacation, Democrats ALL crooks — is notion that makes it the minds of voters.
Comment by Spiny Norman on 8/2 @ 12:19 pm #
sf,
Marching orders were given and dutifully carried out.
Comment by Spiny Norman on 8/2 @ 12:21 pm #
OT,
Darleen, I just noticed that your other site has been flooded with comment spam.
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 12:29 pm #
Pelosi doesn’t fear the Republicans’ little drill for oil energy bill.
Lady Boobs fears enough Dems will vote with the Repubs and it’ll pass.
Obama is starting to backtrack on the issue. Internal polling will do that to a contender, just ask John McCain.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 12:31 pm #
It would be nice of them to create all those jobs. Much more efficient and productive than just stealing oil company money and sprinkling it on hopeychange like Baracky wants to do.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 12:32 pm #
Newt Gingrich pointed out the other day that because the vote to adjourn was 213-212, that puts every single Dem who voted aye in the position of the marginal vote that caused the adjournment. Therefore every constituent can ask with force of their Rep., “Why were you the one to send the Congress home without getting anything done about high gas prices?”
Let’s hope enough of them do ask.
Comment by Pablo on 8/2 @ 12:38 pm #
Damn. And I just went out and checked my tires. I was gonna save the world! Funny though, they were properly inflated, so apart from the checking, I didn’t really have to do anything, and I was part of the solution. You know how good that felt?
And now you tell me that drilling for domestic oil might be a good idea after all. Damn you for crushing my hope!
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 12:39 pm #
Creating jobs? That makes little sense. You drill for oil to hit oil, not to temporarily employ roughnecks. By your logic Ronald Reagan was responsible for losing all those jobs.
Barack Obama will flip-flop like a good Republican. He’ll burnish a hard-hat while on an offshore platform for the photographers before the can say “Hussien.”
Tis the season.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 12:40 pm #
Fred Barnes claimed last night (and has before) that one of the prime reasons Harry Reid didn’t want any votes on the floor of the Senate was to protect Sen. Obama from having to cast that vote. If he votes for drilling he pisses off the Eco-lobby, et al, if he votes against drilling he’s voting against the wishes of a large majority of the country. Barnes went on to point out that by beginning to move in the direction of compromise with the Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less crowd, Obama is effectively pulling the rug out from under his fellow obstructionist Senators, who will no doubt, not be amused.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 12:42 pm #
stats are broken by the way I think
Comment by Pat R. on 8/2 @ 12:42 pm #
When they get back they’ll no doubt notice that the federal ban expires with the fiscal year, leaving them a mere 3 weeks to figure a way to sneak an extension through — with the election a week or so later.
Good times.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 12:44 pm #
You are a very bad marxist, thor.
Comment by Pablo on 8/2 @ 12:50 pm #
Don’t be silly. Labor is a built in cost in every commodity and the economies of the places that produce things benefit directly from the cost of that labor. If we’re doing it here, we realize the employment benefit of that production. We can also maybe bring some of our boys back home from the Middle East, like those Halliburton Oil fellows.
Then there’s the trade deficit issue.
But Baracky is on my TV right now telling me that we need to invest in workers, so I’ve gotta go.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 12:50 pm #
A serious drilling program (one with a visible future to reassure investors) would in fact create a lot of jobs of all kinds.
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 12:53 pm #
Yes, P-blo, if you’d had asked me I would have told long ago to drill. But you didn’t. Like a good party man oil hasn’t been mentioned until its rise in price turned our currency into pesos. Bushian, so Bushian. Save the banks! Screw the consumers the banks are screwing. Oh shit, now look at oil! Let’s drill for oil! Oh fuck, we have no rigs. Won’t someone out there, China maybe, accept our dollars as payment to build us some jack-up rigs? Looks like we’ll have to lower taxes to stimulate the economy. What war? Shit! Vote to raise the ceiling on budget deficits, that’s it. Shit, look at the dollar! Drill! WTF! Exxon/Mobil is spending all it’s money to buy-back it’s shares in an effort to make its stock price rise so that the CEO and his buddies can cash in on their stock options, accounting gimmicks are good for that! But what about the dollar! The oil! The deficit!
It’s Baracky’s fault! That it! Go Repubs, yes we can!
Comment by Rusty on 8/2 @ 12:54 pm #
#10
Creating jobs? That makes little sense. You drill for oil to hit oil, not to temporarily employ roughnecks.
And where does the oil go once it leaves the ground, thor? Cmon, I know you can do it.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 12:56 pm #
Nothing can possibly Baracky’s fault as he hasn’t been around to do anything to begin with and the little time he has been around has been spent entirely on getting elected to a job he is not capable of performing.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 12:57 pm #
—possibly be— sorry.
Comment by charles austin on 8/2 @ 12:58 pm #
Damnit, she’s trying to save the planet by turning off the lights and microphones and saving electricity. The Speaker’s goal is to reduce Congress’ carbon footprint by about 46%. No prizes for guessing how she’s planning to do that.
Comment by Pablo on 8/2 @ 1:00 pm #
I get the feeling that you don’t like the government much, thor. Frankly, I don’t either. And I like it even less when I look at the best bead I can get on what Baracky wants to do with it.
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/2 @ 1:04 pm #
“Yes, P-blo, if you’d had asked me I would have told long ago to drill. But you didn’t. Like a good party man oil hasn’t been mentioned until its rise in price turned our currency into pesos.”
Thor - You mean like when the republicans asked ten years ago and Clinton said pound sand? That’s the kind of asking you mean right?
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 1:04 pm #
Oh really. I know nothing about the oil business. Tell me what and how many oil-patch jobs this “new” Republican drilling program would create. Maybe you can go back in time when the rig count was much higher and look at the stats. Oh wait, I know nothing about oil. Go back to the days before great American companies like CalTex scrapped/sold their domestic operations and went to totally foreign soil drilling. Yes, back in the good old days when we drilled a lot in our own backyard, back before both Dems and Repubs fucked the oil industry.
Make the Repubs look good and the Dems look bad. Blame it all on Jimmah C! Repub good. Dem bad. That’s how it is. always and forever! Libs are all stupid! Have to be!
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 1:10 pm #
Drilling our own oil sure wouldn’t hurt nothing. It’s a wholesome activity all around. Good honest work. You know… for the people.
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 1:11 pm #
You are correct. And I don’t tote water buckets up a hill for the stupid-cock-sucking Reupblicans when, in fact, they are as guilty if not more than the Dems.
When Bush wanted to address the SS fund deficit in 2005, who pulled the chair out from under his ass? His own party. The Repubs. It’s what you expect from the Dems, but aren’t the Repubs supposed to be the smart ones? Not by my score card they’re not.
Same old address-the-problem-only-when-the-problem-explodes reactionary dicks, that’s what they all are. We, the people, get fucked by both parties.
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/2 @ 1:12 pm #
Thor - Fantastic analysis - It’s always fascinating to see the left attempt to grapple with economics. I’m sure a large number of them probably agree with you that a trade deficit, influenced by increasing amounts of imported oil, had nothing to do with a falling dollar in the foreign exchange markets. I personally think it was Keyser Soze who is responsible, YMMV.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 1:14 pm #
“Make the Repubs look good and the Dems look bad. Blame it all on Jimmah C! Repub good. Dem bad. That’s how it is. always and forever! Libs are all stupid! Have to be!”
I didn’t say Republicans are all good. In fact, hf and I were writing off a number of them just last night. I said nothing at all about Jimmy Carter. I didn’t say libs are all stupid. I didn’t say they have to be stupid. Where do you dream this stuff up? And why inject it into a discussion of where we should go on energy policy as a nation now.
I didn’t say you know nothing about the oil industry. Did I? Why would I do that when I know you are from my home state and went to Tex A&M? That would be silly now wouldn’t it? So why make it up there, thor?
Why were all those rigs scrapped? Why haven’t we been building new deepsea rigs as fast as we can? Hmmm? Maybe because there is a ban on drilling in the most likely places at sea? Could be! Where will we go from here? That is the question on the table.
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 1:18 pm #
Oh, bullshit, thor. When conditions change, I change my opinions. What do you do?
–Yeah, I know. Bash Bush.
So long as oil was cheap, it made rational, “practical” (i.e. cynical) sense to lock our own away and buy from other sources. We didn’t have to put up with the environmental hazards, and when the last well in Saudi Arabia went “sluuuuuuuuuurp” like a Big Gulp in the hands of a teenager we would be sitting pretty, with all those untouched reserves. It would even still make sense, if we had used the time and money to build up manufacturing capability. Buying oil, then returning it to the sellers as manufactured goods with a hefty markup, would be an excellent form of trade.
But we haven’t done that. We’ve used the oil to build a pure consumer economy, with manufacturing de facto illegal and carrying hefty fines. The result is that buying oil is all outgo and no income; the sellers have noticed that, and have decided to charge whatever the traffic will bear. Oil is now expensive relative to the rest of our output, and that means that conditions have changed. Environmentalism has always been a function of wealth; rich people can afford to have nicely manicured lawns and all the tools put away, while the poor suffer the weeds. We simply can’t afford the extravagant expense any more.
That doesn’t mean we have to ignore environmental considerations; quite the contrary, in fact. But it does mean that extravagant blanket prohibitions and endless nonsensical petty regulations are now out of our price range, and it’s time to admit it and adjust our policies.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 1:19 pm #
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 1:21 pm #
We shouldn’t loose sight of the fact that the question of energy resources is a question of a good deal more than an oil drilling question (or nat gas drilling, if you want to throw that in) but a question of coal, nuclear plants, gas fired plants, wind turbines (to the extent that they contribute) and powerlines, substations and the like.
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/2 @ 1:24 pm #
“The result is that buying oil is all outgo and no income;”
Plus Ric, democrats seem to have developed a strange preference for increasing dependence on oil imported from unstable or potentially hostile foreign countries. National security concerns, fuck that noise, they’re trying to save the planet.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 1:29 pm #
stats are not broken anymore by the way
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 1:30 pm #
oh. It looks like they never were… I guess sitemeter was just having trouble generating the report page
Comment by Pat R. on 8/2 @ 1:33 pm #
“Tell me what and how many oil-patch jobs this “new†Republican drilling program would create.”
Not all encompassing, but some jobs that will be needed include:
Engineers (structural, design, manufacturing, programming, safety)
Fabricators
Fitters
Machinists
Quality control inspectors
Divers
Those are just pre-production — and only the ones that will get dirty.
I’m sure there are more.
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/2 @ 1:38 pm #
Thor - Obama’s flip flop on drilling doesn’t rule out having a huge, highly skilled and overpaid unionized workforce of tire pressure police. This really could be a twofer, like at Carvel.
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 1:45 pm #
OK, sorry to jump your shark but somebody had to be the symbol for the collective (I said collective, Happyf!, as in communey-collectiveyish, and communes are so communistical, and red! hehe).
Where do we go from here. Yes, there’s a question for the ages. The oil business isn’t a quick business but it’s certainly not as slow as some make it out to be. Before one can do much for improving production, one has to improve the landscape. First, if McCain wins then we, meaning the few here who aren’t known R-wing hacks, start encouraging an uprising within the Dem-faithful that blames Obama’s loss squarely on Pelosi and Reid for costing Obama the election because they blocked an energy bill that would have allowed the use of 2000-acres of land within the 19-million acre ANWAR permafrost wasteland. If Obama wins, we, meaning the few here who aren’t R-wing hacks, lobby the O-man to open up drilling under the guise of a harsh conservation smoke screen. Surely a group called Dems For American Oil Now! could show some close to O our campaign contribution receipts. That’s how I would start.
Good oil is cheap oil. Cheap oil is close to the surface. Cheap oil is not 2-miles below an offshore platform. Cheap oil is in ANWAR. Drill for the cheap stuff. That’s how the Saudis do it. That’s why they’re rich too.
Fine the oil companies for stock-buybacks. Make them fucking pay until blood gushes out their assholes. Make them invest in production. That means the American consumer’s hard-earned money will at least be spent on more domestic production.
Follow Bush’s lead and protect our steel industry. I don’t care if we have to subsidize it. Without domestic steel there are no domestically produced rigs and parts for rigs (which means you weepy little weirdos who claim you want oil-jobs don’t even know where those jobs begin, and no, the dudes with the hardhats who go out and check the lines and meters on existing wells, no, those aren’t the jobs we want). China sells its steel cheap to its manufacturers of rigs, do you really think they’d sell it to us at the same price so we could take their jobs? No. America is the only country that’d do something that stupid.
More later. Gotta go.
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 1:47 pm #
daleyrocks, that is the danger. Obama’s already given a weasely response — it might be OK to drill if other considerations are addressed, and that’s an opportunity for McCainiac “compromise”. They’re already talking higher CAFE ratings and a bunch of other Greenie wish-list items, and enough collegial, aisle-crossing cooperation could give us drilling plus enough expensive bullshit to counteract the benefit. Watch for it.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 1:52 pm #
Hey, you’re really clever. Why don’t you write a paragraph on why two-party animus is at the root of why nothing gets fucking done by either party is said two-party system. Focus on the we-good/they-bad binary has paralyzed the parties in a game of thumb wrestling and thumb twirling all while our country sinks lower and lower into an economic fuckin’ abyss.
Give that a go and I’ll check back to see how you did.
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 1:53 pm #
is = in a
second sentence
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 1:57 pm #
#
Comment by Pat R. on 8/2 @ 1:33 pm #
“Tell me what and how many oil-patch jobs this “new†Republican drilling program would create.â€Â
Not all encompassing, but some jobs that will be needed include:
Engineers (structural, design, manufacturing, programming, safety)
Fabricators
Fitters
Machinists
Quality control inspectors
Divers
Those are just pre-production  and only the ones that will get dirty.
I’m sure there are more.
Oh there’s a lot more. US Oilwell, Dresser, Continental Emsco all had great big factories with too many job titles to count - back when I used to work in those factories, before they were dismantled, before the tons of heavy steel from the furnaces were melted in India for scrap value, before the smaller stuff was shipped to Brazil to be used there in their factories.
Ask and I’ll tell you about the 25-foot sucker rod furnaces. Impressive indeed!
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 2:00 pm #
Well, thor, I had to go outside and check the neighbor’s livestock. Sure enough, the sow’s warming up at the threshold of runway 18… which is to say that, discounting the fellatiO! that appears to drip off your fingertips in every post, you have managed in #37 to come up with something I agree with totally.
The problem is that, as usual, you are indulging in wishful thinking. ANWR has become symbolic. It would be worth it to push for drilling there, but only as something to give up in the eventual compromise. The eastern Gulf is relatively shallow and access is good; the California platforms only need the wells uncapped and worked over; the Colorado oil shale pilot plant is already in place, needing only expansion. I would be perfectly willing to give up ANWR (to throw the Greenies a bone, necessary because there are so many of them) and DelMarVa (to keep drilling out of sight of New Yorkers and DCians) to get the others approved. Horsetrading may be distasteful, but it’s always necessary.
As for #39, the less said the better, except getting everybody marching in the same direction is a recipe for disaster in the long run. There are 360 degrees in the circle, and giving up 359 of them as possible routes of advance is ‘way too expensive.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by Spiny Norman on 8/2 @ 2:02 pm #
Care to address Ric Locke’s post at #29, Mr Smarty Man thor? Or is it over your head?
Comment by Pablo on 8/2 @ 2:10 pm #
Why don’t you write a paragraph about why we should vote for the leftmost Senator we’ve got instead of the guy who actually has transcended party animus and worked across the aisle to actually get things done?
Not that they’re good things, mind you, but they’re bipartisan.
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 2:13 pm #
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 2:00 pm #The eastern Gulf is relatively shallow and access is good; the California platforms only need the wells uncapped and worked over
Wells don’t uncap. They aren’t Pepsi bottles. A capped well is one that has to be totally re-drilled. Most capped wells were capped because the shallow production (the cheap oil) went dry, which means is was pumped out, emptied, the 10-barrel a day rule, and all that. Capping old wells that were under 10-barrels was supposed to stimulate new drilling, or at least that’s what the Republicans said back then. Yes. Brilliant stuff, looking back. They fucked it up so hard it’s not even easy to talk about. Old those old wells would have been cheap to re-work. To uncap, not so much.
Comment by Spiny Norman on 8/2 @ 2:22 pm #
Called it, didn’t you, Ric?
Comment by Gren Gleenwald on 8/2 @ 2:26 pm #
If Baracky pops his cork and thor is not there to catch it on his face, did it really happen?
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/2 @ 2:26 pm #
Thor - I guess if I’m really clever that would make you really ….not clever, right.
Ive got a better idea. Instead of wasting my time writing something you won’t pay attention to anyway, why don’t you expend some effort getting better at what you do….coming up with reasons people should vote for Obama. The only reasons you seem to offer are that he’s not worse than Bush or McCain. I’m not very persuaded by those arguments.
I’ll check back to see how you’re doing, mkay.
Alternatively, learn some economics.
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 2:27 pm #
A consumer economy is built on consumer spending. Consumers only spend when they have money to spend, at least in theory that’s the way it was supposed to work. Show me a good economy where consumers don’t spend. Problem is we don’t regenerate wealth from consumer spending because our consumer goods are not made in America - Free trade, NAFTA, everybody wins, c’mon Repub.s sing-along.
How’s that?
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 1:18 pm
Oh, bullshit, thor. When conditions change, I change my opinions. What do you do?
–Yeah, I know. Bash Bush.
I bash Bush when and where I think he needs to be bashed. His policies were neither entirely correct nor entirely wrong. When one strips personalities and partisanship from policy analysis it’s usually a good thing. Try it.
Oil starts with steel. At least Bush knows that much. Matter of fact, if Bush knows anything he knows the oil business. He’s pretty much money on his thoughts there, except he has too much faith in hands-off industry regulation theory, meaning de-regulation.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 8/2 @ 2:32 pm #
Thor has admitted he doesn’t argue against what people say, but what he believes are their motives. He’s a mendacious troll.
Comment by royf on 8/2 @ 2:36 pm #
Well thor this is a excerpt
STATE OF THE UNION
ADDRESS OF THE PRESIDENT TO THE JOINT SESSION OF CONGRESS
February 27, 2001
(Snip)
As we meet tonight, many citizens are struggling with the high cost of energy. We have a serious energy problem that demands a national energy policy. The West is confronting a major energy shortage that has resulted in high prices and uncertainty. I’ve asked federal agencies to work with California officials to help speed construction of new energy sources, and I have direct Vice President Cheney, Commerce Secretary Evans, Energy Secretary Abraham and other senior members in my administration to develop a national energy policy.
Our energy demand outstrips our supply. We can produce more energy at home while protecting our environment, and we must. We can produce more electricity to meet demand, and we must. We can promote alternative energy sources and conservation, and we must. America must become more energy-independent, and we will.
(snip)
President has consistently pushed for more energy production, of course the WOT started and took priorty and the Dems and Rinos have consistently stymed most proposals. But the fact is Bush warned this country back in 2001 and now here we are.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 2:36 pm #
From what I can figure… “capping a well” can a lot mean any kind of well… this mostly has to do with so people don’t fall in, which is very thoughtful. An oil well that used to make oil is “temporarily abandoned” legally… which means it can be in any sort of state, but when you sell the property that’s what’s on it. A lot of them might could be productive again, some of them are just a mess with rusty messed up stuff down there. Or you can “plug” the well and then you can sell your land where it doesn’t have a temporarily abandoned well. Something like that, but googling capped/uncapped makes me think this isn’t really the language they use. Not really as an indicator of an oil well’s status anyway.
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/2 @ 2:37 pm #
“A consumer economy is built on consumer spending.”
Whomp there it is! The sheer brilliance of liberal economic thinking. I’ll alert Crazy Paul Krugman to get ready to share his byline with Thor.
Comment by ThomasD on 8/2 @ 2:40 pm #
We shouldn’t loose sight of the fact that the question of energy resources is a question of a good deal more than an oil drilling question…
Too true. Look at what the Chinese have planned in terms of future coal and nuclear power plants. They get it, in a modern economy energy is wealth. Efficient use of abundant energy will lead to massive wealth creation. Efficient use of scarce energy, not so much. And heaven forbid you are foolish enough to pay somebody else for a scarce commodity, that way lies economic ruin.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 2:40 pm #
Here is a nice picture of a water well. I think the cap thinger would be basically the same wherever you had a drilled hole you didn’t want Jessica playing around.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/2 @ 2:45 pm #
I’m going to start working on a new children’s book tentatively titled “Nancy, The Botoxed Fascist”.
Eat your heart out, J. K. Rowling.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 2:47 pm #
oh. It seems some people say capping when they mean plugging, which mostly has to do with protecting water tables and preventing buildup of splodey fumes. It’s really very confuzzling. Many Democrats are involved.
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/2 @ 2:49 pm #
N. O’Brain - It could also be Blinky McRictusface and the Most Unpopular Save the Planet Congress Ever.
I think that title would look good on the NY Times best seller list.
Comment by Spiny Norman on 8/2 @ 2:49 pm #
Missed the entire point, as far as I can see. Try again:
But you’d rather blame the GOP for policies that made economic and strategic sense to both Parties 15-20 years ago, but are now close to suicidal. The Dems’ solution? Tax the piss out of the oil companies.
MAKE THEM PAY! POWER TO THE PEOPLE!!!
Too bad the only ones really paying will be the consumers…
Should Barry be elected, there will be no increase in domestic production, let alone refining capacity. We’ll get more taxes and more regulation though, you can be sure of that. The GOP can object and lobby all they want, but Queen Nan will just shut of the lights again.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 2:50 pm #
Basically I think it sort of all resolves to hey there used to be a well here. Maybe you guys wanna look at it and see if maybe y’all left some.
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/2 @ 2:51 pm #
feets - I mean even a few things different when I say plugging, but this is the intertubes.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 2:53 pm #
All I know is Nancy has a blockage for sure.
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/2 @ 2:54 pm #
“All I know is Nancy has a blockage for sure.”
Absolutely. More than one I think.
Comment by Cave Bear on 8/2 @ 3:09 pm #
It’s a pity Hammer Boy had to stop sucking his Obamamessiah’s cock long enough to come spurting around here. As usual, he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about, whether it’s about drilling for oil or much of anything else (well, he was right about ANWR, but that comes under the heading of a stopped clock being right twice a day).
Oh, he knows the memes well enough; bash Bush, bash those wascally Wepublicans, blah….blah…..blah….(yawn).
The oil is out there, and there are plenty of people around ready, willing and able to go get it. Now. Regardless of what the Official Obama Fellator-in-Chief thinks (if you can call what goes on in that hard vacuum between Hammer Boy’s ears thinking). The easy-to-get stuff, not so much. That’s why the continental shelf stuff is so high on the agenda. Nor are we talking about bleeding-edge technology either. Deep ocean drilling has been going on for a while now. And there are still all those easy to get to places that the Commiecrats put off limits back in the ’90s, too.
Oil, natural gas, coal and nuclear is what will get us to energy independence. All this wind/solar/blah/blah is just more envirocommie bullshit, spouted by people who can’t do basic math.
What morons like the Dims and their fellators are going to find out very soon is that there are not nearly as many “greenies” out there as they think they are. Sure, they have a lot of lawyers, and a lot of money, but unless they can rig elections all over the country, many of them are going to find themselves out on the street looking for honest work come November, now that the populace at large is finding out just how badly the Dims have fucked them over.
Comment by Rusty on 8/2 @ 3:12 pm #
#30 I already have thor. Undoubtedly more thuroughly than you have, but you just keep thinkin. Someday you’ll be good at it.
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 8/2 @ 4:34 pm #
“When one strips personalities and partisanship from policy analysis it’s usually a good thing. Try it.”
Actual rofl…The above statement was brought to us by the O! cumgobbling thor. Priceless. The guy who has never said “why” O! is a good candidate for the conservative/classical liberal set is stripping personality from his imagined policy analysis? And I am not a fan of George Bush. As frankly he isn’t very conservative in the areas I need a president to be, other than tax policy.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 4:35 pm #
“…Problem is we don’t regenerate wealth from consumer spending because our consumer goods are not made in America - Free trade, NAFTA, everybody wins,…”
How do you overcome the logic of comparative advantage, thor?
Even though you may pretend we don’t “make it in America” anymore, our nation still produces an awesome amount of stuff as well as value (in GNP). It isn’t enough to pretend the question isn’t there or that you have overcome it. Can you grapple with it in earnest?
Comment by Megaera on 8/2 @ 4:49 pm #
Used specifically as industry terms of art, capping a well is a temporary measure and usually doesn’t involve long-term cessation of production (something to be avoided at all costs since that can result in your losing your lease entire); plugging a well is part of the process called P & A, plugging and abandonment, which is required by regulatory agencies when a lessee has no further use for a particular wellbore. P&A is permanent: all equipment pulled and cement pumped down the casing per regulatory specifications.
Other onshore jobs created by drilling: production pipelining (planning, building, maintenance); surface production facilities for each lease complex (manufacture, installation, maintenance); well maintenance (like Halliburton used to do); civil engineering work — wellsite construction, post-drilling reclamation, road-building, fence construction. A town in, I believe, Montana wants to build a refinery and locals have voted for it enthusiastically; local greens are equally enthusiastic about their prospects for infinite delay. Still, a refinery is a lot of jobs, just iin construction and maintenance alone, without even considering the manufacture of the equipment that goes into one, plus the staff to operate it once it’s built. IF it’s built, that is.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/2 @ 5:05 pm #
NAFTA certainly has boosted trade between the US and Canada. As anecdotal evidence I point to the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit. The back-up of semis going across to either country is very impressive. If Ihave to go to Canada I cross at Port Huron - the Blue Water Bridges aren’t nearly as backed up.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 5:10 pm #
Thank you, Megaera.
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 5:12 pm #
“Capping” is a temporary measure (although the “temporary” may be quite long-term.) The upper works of the production system — piping, valves, etc. — is removed, and a solid cap (!) is placed over the “well casing” (the tubing that lines the outside of the drilled hole near the top).
Over time any oil well creeps closed. When it does, it has to be “worked over”; that is, a low-powered version of the original drill is run down the hole to open it back up again. Often a workover must include “fraccing”, which is dropping an explosive down in the hole to crack the rock around the well so oil can flow to it. To bring a well that has been capped back into production, you remove the cap, install the valves and piping, and work over the hole.
Workovers have to be done regularly anyway. Around here, the relatively shallow natural gas wells have to be worked over every two to three years, sometimes more often depending on what the underground rock is like.
“Plugging” is much more permanent. A pump similar to the one for injecting drill lubricant (”mud”) is used to force a mixture of cement, rock dust and fragments, and dirt into the hole, and very often at least the top few pieces of casing are pulled out (takes one heckuva snatch block, lemme tell you). The relatively plastic upper rock and soil are allowed to go closed; sometimes soil is mixed with water and pumped into the top, above the solid plug. The result is that there isn’t a hole there any more, and if you want an oil well you have to start from scratch to drill it.
Capping is done when you might want to open it up again. As thor correctly notes, low-producing wells are frequently capped and left for a while — in some formations it takes a long time for oil to ooze through the pores in the rock; an oil well might pump out all the oil nearby, then stop producing until the reservoir levels out again. Imagine sucking honey through a straw. The sweet near the straw gets sucked up, leaving a hole, and you suck air until more flows into range. Texas has a regulation that any oil well producing less than ten barrels a day is a “stripper” well, presumably picking up the last bits of available oil down there, and must be either capped, plugged, or operated on an extremely restricted schedule determined by the Railroad Commission, apparently by Ouija board.
The wells offshore in California were capped for an entirely different reason. They were producing, and producing big, at the time — but the politicians and greenies, in the persona of an organization called Get Oil Out (GOO), whipped up enough hysteria to get production stopped. The companies capped the wells, but the platforms are still there and so are the wells, which need to be uncapped, worked over, and put back into production, a much simpler, cheaper, and faster procedure than drilling new wells from scratch.
The other thing thor is semi-right about is the steel industry. To all intents and purposes we don’t have one any more. My father worked for a company called Lone Star Steel, which had as almost its only product high-strength steel pipe for drill stem and casing. The company still exists, but lower-quality (and much cheaper) products from overseas, predominately China, own the market. LSS doesn’t even have a blast furnace (used for converting ore to “pig iron”, the raw material for steel) any more. Its product now is entirely made from scrap.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by Lupus Anglicus on 8/2 @ 5:22 pm #
I’m thinking loxoscelisms had something to do with it.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/2 @ 5:22 pm #
““Problem is we don’t regenerate wealth from consumer spending because our consumer goods are not made in America - Free trade, NAFTA, everybody wins, c’mon Repub.s sing-along.”
- No thor, the problem is if you don’t do well in negotiating trade terms, or the other guy figures out ways to imbalance the trade flow, then its your own fault. The asshat Lefts answer to every moment of contention is to run like hell and play protectionist.
- Do that long enough and every important trading market will be more or less shut off from you. Thats what your isolationist mentality would get you.
- You don’t like some aspects of a trade agreement, then you try to renegotiate, or do a better job in the first place. The other guy is going to try to eat your lunch. In most instances there are areas he needs your cooperation. You have leverage. If you don’t you shouldn’t be negotiating.
- The insipid tendency of the Left to throw up its hands and run for the fox holes at the slightest sign of a problem, which in turn causes a problem ten times worse, is why you should never take a damn thing any of them say seriously.
- The Left as a group are children, worse, over-simplifying children, in an adult world.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 5:26 pm #
Thank you, Ric.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 5:32 pm #
I don;t understand the rationale for the Texas stripper wells regulations. Also, I think one of them abandoned California offshore oil platforms got blown up on 24. It was damn terrorists what did it.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 5:34 pm #
Was there a fellow named Jimmy Ling involved with LonestarSteel Ric? In a takeover maybe? I have a vague memory of my Grandad ranting about him and his Ling-Temco-Vaught company.
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 8/2 @ 5:36 pm #
It may have been (and probably was) just a temporary stunt and tantrum, but the press threw more of one by not bothering to even cover it. Never happened.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/2 @ 5:45 pm #
I hope this link goes through. It is a bill insert from Consumers Energy, a Michigan utility, showing their sources of electrical generation. Go to the second page of the PDF.
http://www.consumersenergy.com/apps/pdf/July08_ResidentialFINAL.pdf
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/2 @ 5:56 pm #
#71 Rick:
You are correct about the steel industry, though I will note that the iron mines in the western UP are slated for expansion. McLouth Steel is all shutdown, but Great Lakes steel is still running, and going by it on the river at night when they do a pour or whatever is impressive - the building just lights up, and seeing light through a steel buildings’ walls is something you don’t forget.
I will note that in the Consumers PDF I linked wood provides more electricity than oil. Interesting, eh? Of course, the figures are for the state and the region, but still interesting.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 6:00 pm #
I was going to ask about that wood component, Mikey. Supplemental to coal do you think or stand alone firing boilers?
Comment by Swen Swenson on 8/2 @ 6:04 pm #
The good news: There’s a lot more drilling going on than some would suggest, with 1951 drilling rigs working in the US this week according to Baker Hughes.
The bad news: Only 20% of those rigs are drilling for oil. 79% are drilling for natural gas. The US only has about 4% of the world’s proven reserves of oil so, bottom line, we can’t produce enough oil to have a material effect on the price of gasoline at the pump.
The good news: We’ve got a butt-load of natural gas (and I’m writing this from the Piceance Basin, where I’m currently involved in a geophysical exploration project mapping out even more natural gas-containing substrate). It’s been said that the US is the Saudi Arabia of natural gas and that’s pretty much true. Seems that everywhere we look we find more.
What we really need to do is look at alternative motor fuels, starting with LP and compressed natural gas. The technology is there and has been for a long time, and the economics are making them more competitive as motor fuels. And a big plus, it’s cleaner burning than gasoline. Now if we only had a distribution network..
I could be a bit prejudiced considering that natural gas exploration has paid my bills for years. But personally, I want’s me a 300 mpg hybrid Aptera!
Oh, and BTW Thor, nowadays we use fiberglass sucker rod. It’s lighter, so you can pump more oil with the same energy. Most of those old rigs that were melted down or shipped to Russia aren’t capable of the deep and/or directional drilling we do now. They were obsolete as a commie’s politics. And Megaera has the capping v. plugging back thing right.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 6:06 pm #
Here is a good overview of Marginal & Stripper Well Revitalization. Ric got most of it, but there are some nifty stats. This little Federal department at least is concerned about wells not being prematurely abandoned.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 6:07 pm #
Comment by happyfeet on 8/2 @ 6:29 pm #
Actually, Ric… this PDF from the RR Commission says there are 112,991 oil wells in Texas producing under 10 bpd. Bunch more stuff here. That first link was from “Well Distribution Tables-Well Counts by Type and Status.”
Here is a fact:
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 6:30 pm #
Ah, yes, Sdferr. James J. “Jimmie” Ling, the Great Conglomerator. At the end of the Fifties and beginning of the Sixties, there arose a business fad for combining unrelated businesses into single entities. The basic idea was that if, say, your concrete business wasn’t doing too well, profits from brassieres and children’s toys would plug the gap, and vice versa. Ling was the original and chief proponent of the idea. He combined his holding company, an outfit that made white goods (washing machines, fridges, etc.) to be rebranded by the likes of Sears, and Chance Vought Aviation into Ling-Temco-Vought, later just LTV.
Lone Star Steel was founded by a man called E. B. Germany, who had access to (perhaps invented) a technique called “beneficiacion”, which could economically turn the iron-bearing dirt found in northeast Texas into something fit to feed a blast furnace. His idea was to build an integrated mill, from ore to final product, concentrating on high-value products for the oil field, and do it in East Texas, where labor and fuel costs were low (natural gas was given away in those days!) and the plant could make a positive impact on the economy. Doing well by doing good, as it were. After WWII there was money sloshing around for retooling American industry, and Mr. Germany got hold of some of it and built the plant. It did well for over a decade. Mr. Germany was a gentleman of the Old School and an engineer; he enjoyed his money without being ostentatious about it, and refrained (mostly) from micromanagement.
Then came The Wildcat Strike. Texas is a right-to-work State; the United Steelworkers had (still have) a local at Lone Star, but you didn’t (still don’t) have to join the Union to work there. In 1959, during wage negotiations, a group of soreheads in the Union got at loggerheads over some work-rule technicality; most of the Union negotiating committee was being reasonable about it, but a group of the disaffected got together in a beer hall, voices got loud, and the upshot was that the next morning there were pickets at the gate. The Local management and the National were caught flat-footed, but felt obliged to support their members, and the whole thing got real nasty real fast. Dad was Management, and for half a year we lived in the back of the house with no lights showing and kept a shotgun to hand. Another manager, who lived in town, got a visit from the Union goons, who used shotguns to blow away their front door, then kept shooting until they’d broken the glass in the back door (central hall or “dog trot” house). The strike dragged on until somebody took a potshot at a Texas Ranger with a deer rifle, after which it was resolved quickly. The Union and the workers took it in the shorts — no raise, a six-month hiring moratorium, and conversion of the full-coverage medical insurance to Blue Cross/Blue Shield with a deductible. Needless to say, ill-feeling lingered.
Meanwhile the realities of “conglomeration” were creeping in. LTV was sitting on a pile of cash, and had morphed into what we now call “raiding” — buy up a basically sound company in temporary trouble, strip the assets and the pension plan, bank the cash, and sell the rest for scrap. The strike took all the fun out of it for Mr. Germany, and when he decided to retire he just put the company up for sale (he had originally intended to set up an employee buyout, but after ‘59 he had neither the assets nor the will to do it.) LTV bought it, but didn’t go into strip-mode until later; the company rocked along, but there were no more capital improvements — it was being operated strictly as a cash cow.
Then came 1982. Oil prices had gone up a bit during the Carter Administration, and there was a minor boom in the Texas oil patch, which LSS was ideally placed to make money from, and did. LTV siphoned it all off, of course, and when the Saudis decided that American production was something up with which they would not put and dropped the oil price, it left a lot of people in the lurch. (The joke was that if you opened a bank account in Midland with $100, you had a choice of a toaster or an oil rig, except they were out of toasters.) LSSs profits went in the tank, and LTV swung into action — they stripped the pension plan (leaving my mother with nothing but Social Security, instead of Dad’s pension) and started selling off assets, meanwhile looking for a buyer. They closed the ore plant, scrapped the beneficiation furnaces, and sold the machinery (to Brazil, IIRC). Employment at the plant went to under a thousand for a while.
I don’t know who owns LSS now; I have the dim impression that it’s a consortium of local and semi-local businesses. It’s about a tenth of what it was, and no longer produces its own ore or runs a blast furnace, which has been dismantled completely. It still makes high-strength oilfield tubing, and according to a friend in the oil business has begun finding a market again, its products being notably superior in quality to what’s available from overseas. It’ll never again be what it was, of course. LTV Corporation is just a holding company engaged in corporate raiding. If I were able to get away with it, I would be happy to shoot everybody associated with it. At dawn. Against an east-facing wall, so the sons of b*es died with the sun in their eyes. I am not enormously happier with the United Steelworkers.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by peterargus on 8/2 @ 6:50 pm #
Just the sent the following letter to my congress critter:
Dear Congressman Israel:
I noticed you were one of the 213 congress persons who voted to adjourn congress yesterday. This is unfortunate because your vote against would have kept congress in session and working on a solution to our current energy crisis.
As a constituent, you can rest assured I will be thinking of you each time I go to the gas station to fill up my tank with $4 per gallon gas. I will think about how, instead of coming up with reasonable solutions to our crisis, including allowing drilling and exploration and supporting the building of nuclear power plants, you and your Democrat allies skulked out of D.C.
Hope you enjoy your paid vacation.
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 6:50 pm #
On the original subject — Swen Swenson has the right of it, and in connection with that you might be interested in this article in the WSJ.
I genuinely regret that T. Boone Pickens isn’t younger. He’s discovered a marvelous scam — windmills are unreliable and require backup generators, which, since they must be started and stopped frequently, are best fueled with natural gas. There’s a lot of natural gas, and Pickens makes money off a lot of it. What he’s doing is making pious noises about “alternative energy” (and banking the subsidies for it), while positioning himself to make a profit off exploiting the actual energy source. He also has a lot of land that isn’t good for much, and people are welcome to build wind turbines on it if it pleases them, paying a nominal rent. Kewl, in my book.
Happyfeet, lots of stripper wells run constantly, others just sometimes, according to the whim of the Railroad Commission. Ten BPD, plus 500-1000 cubic feet of gas in a lot of cases, is a nice little supplementary income for anybody.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 6:51 pm #
Thanks for that recall Ric. I looked up LSS, it’s now owned by U. S. Steel Tubular Products Inc. making wonder of wonders, pipe.
I looked up LTV too and it is now solely a Steel company having been split up and retooled often in the intervening decades.
Here’s how they put it:
“The LTV Corporation is the third largest steel producer in the United States. As the second largest domestic maker of flat-rolled steel, the company supplies the automotive, appliance, and electrical equipment industries. Other areas in which LTV holds leading positions include carbon electrical steels, electrolytically galvanized steel sheets, ultralow carbon steels, welded steel pipe and tubing products, electrical conduit, and tin mill products. LTV operates two integrated plants in Cleveland and East Chicago, Indiana, for the manufacture of flat-rolled steel, as well as a high-tech minimill in Decatur, Alabama, which is operated under a joint venture–50 percent owned by LTV–with Japan’s Sumitomo Metal Industries, Ltd. and the United Kingdom’s British Steel plc.”
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 6:55 pm #
Lonestar’s website, just for shits and giggles.
http://www.lonestarsteel.com/aboutus/Location.asp
Comment by The Lost Dog on 8/2 @ 7:03 pm #
Not to mention that prices would probably drop close to a dollar just on the news that we were going to utilize our own resources.
But the Democrats are desperate to keep prices high, which will give them more leverage to own our lives. People like thor and the other “just feel it, baby!” idiots are starving our economy on the absolute falsehood of “saving the Earth”. I grew up on a farm and respect the Earth, but it ain’t no piece of crystal stemware.
But that’s what these morons would have you believe.
I have always been pretty cynical about politicians, but Pelosi and Reid are the most despicable people I have ever seen in the Congress. They are so full of shit that it makes me feel like I have sympathetic diarhea whenever I listen to them.
Politicians have never been the most honest people, but the Democrats make me want to puke, and have taken political bullshit to a never seen before level.
Since when do politicians say: “Eat this and die, because I azm saving the planet”?
Seriously. I have never been this pissed off in my life about any politician. Pelosi and Reid are un-fucking-believably arrogant!
Reid has a good chance of losing the election, but Pelosi is sitting in a district of left wing maniacs, and has little chance of losing.
One congressional district out of 435 is preventing the rest of us from being able to afford to live a decent life. If we could drill for our own oil, the economy would be smoking..
Thanks, you, you brainless, stupid, airhead asshats!
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 7:07 pm #
Dude, I don’t get the impression thor is at all in the “save the earth” camp. None of it. That he’s got some kinda thing for Obama, yeah, I get that. But I don’t see the Eco-crazy when thor’s talking.
Comment by Swen Swenson on 8/2 @ 7:13 pm #
Ric Locke has it pretty much right, except for the bit about using explosives to frac wells. Nowadays they use chemicals injected under extremely high hydraulic pressure. How they do it is a deep, dark secret and about all I know about it is that they make a hell of a racket when they’re going at it and it looks like most of the population of most nearby small towns is out there jumping up and down and waiving their arms. Quite an operation.
They did used to use explosives though and even tried a nuclear device twice (slow learners?). I’m living about 1.5 miles north of the Project Rio Blanco epicenter as we speak, although I’ve noticed no ill effect. My oatmeal hasn’t spoken to me since I moved out here though..
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 7:15 pm #
“…the natural gas that was extracted was determined to be too radioactive to be sold commercially…”
That’s just hilariously funny for some reason.
Comment by The Lost Dog on 8/2 @ 7:18 pm #
#24 thor -
Your ignorance is astonishing for some who seems to be pretty intelligent.
Price of oil. When Mongoloid Jimmah was president, prices went up so high that wells that hadn’t been worth drilling became more than profitable.
When Reagan came in and restored oil to the real markets, the prices plunged, and it was no longer worth drilling in most areas of the US., If you have ever been to Houston, you would know that there are many thousands of derricks stored around the area.
But I know reality and facts are not your forte.
The real markets are what make us free, and the more you fuck with them, the less free you are. And people like you refuse to even look at history and see what happened when some slimy piece of shit (i.e. - Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, ad nauseum) decided that capitalism sucked.
What are we looking at, just between these guys? 100,000,000 dead?
Hey! No problem in the pursuit of equal misery for all, huh?
Wake up, little boy. It’s time to use your own brain, and get your lips off of O!’s “package”….
Comment by Swen Swenson on 8/2 @ 7:19 pm #
Ah! There seems to be an echo in here. Take it away, Ric!
Part of the idea behind the rules on stripper wells is that the operator is compensated for operating a marginal well by reducing his per barrel royalty payments and severance taxes. The rules are meant to insure that stripper wells aren’t capped, if at all possible.
Comment by Swen Swenson on 8/2 @ 7:26 pm #
Ah! I see Happyfeet had the stripper well thingy figured out at #82.
Sorry guys, my internet connection employs tin cans and string so I’m more than a few comments behind.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/2 @ 7:26 pm #
Sdferr - I don’t know if they are stand alone or fall under bio-mass. Some major cities have garbage incenerators (as does Detroit, and the plant - GDRRA - does supply steam for major buildings), and I know Detroit has an incenerator to deal with trees that have been cut down or trimmed. I suspect that those sources have boilers and turbines to make use of the fuel that has to be disposed of anyway.
I could delve deeper into those figures, I do know people who could break down what plants are fueled by what and producing electricity that Consumers uses, or Detroit Edison.
Of course, most oil goes into fuel for other purposes, but oil is used to get the other fuel to the electric plants - tugs and ships and locomotives use diesel or bunker oil to move the coal, and the mines use electricity to extract the coal. It is a very interconnected web where oil may not be used to directly produce electricity, but oil is needed to fuel the support necessary. All of those line-maintenance trucks don’t run on unicorn farts.
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 7:33 pm #
Yeah, you’re right to point out the difference in capping and plugging. Good job Ric.
You see, boys, I’m that type of Republican that pounded the trans-Republicavestites who were bagging on McCain (he doesn’t clutch a Bible hard enough!) and I’m that type of Dim-Libby Marxist who thinks Barack Obama isn’t the worst thing that can happen. I’m the real Extremist!
You want to talk oil? No, no you don’t. Who in here knows anything about the oil business? Yeah, one person, two, maybe? When you smell rotten eggs near a gas well what do you do? That’s what I thought. Most you big thinkers would ask “who farted?” The oil business is just a bunch of yahoos from Texas, Louisiana and Oklahoma. Dirty people and losers! (I might not entirely argu that) But those oil-dregs arent’t big thinkers who can lecture about trade treaties, blubbering Sean Hannity talking point memos, they can’t write boooky wookies, not like Spies, Spears and Rump Pirates!
Protectionism, duuuuuuh. Yeah, Spies, Horse Pies and Pirates, he knows all. He’s been to them overseas factories, seen them Dickensian palaces that ‘tooopid protectionists don’t understand! Fweee Twade, Fuck Yeah!
Yes, I know they use fiberglass sucker rods nowadays. Back in the metal rod days I was one dirty white trash losers who worked - in High school! I worked! started at age 16! - in the big factories that made things out of metal. My Dad was a loser too, nothing but a greasy oil patch engineer. And I know our old-school metal parts are still made and used in places like Russia, where you can always find a dickish ex-pat from California sipping a Stella in a ex-pat-filled bar who’ll tell you how the Russians don’t know shit about the oil business or technology, hell, “they’ve badly fucked-up their own oil fields!” It never occurred to magazine-reading know-it-alls that Russians have some of the world’s best technology when they use their old rusty parts to drill through ice and permafrost. No, no, Americans are the only smart people in the world, so the magazine articles and readers of mag-articles tell us, between Stella-flavored burps.
Yes, I’m 20+ years removed from working in the white trash factories with stupid class A machinist who wore dumb-looking Dickies overalls. And the coupling-grinder, the shot blast and rod-straightening machines weren’t that hard to run, to be honest, but it paid well at the time, back when the world used to buy American parts because they were really good quality. Don’t know a thing about oil. Too stupid to do math. A retard who thinks Obama not such a bad guy.
I denounce myself! Who the hell am I? Flunky former factory rat! Whose high school friends worked on offhsore platforms - one month on and one month off! Old grease monkeys are ‘toooopid and in need of a good lecturing!
Comment by Sdferr on 8/2 @ 7:34 pm #
Thanks Mikey. The 2.7% CE vs. 0.5%regional is, well, a big-small difference and just odd given the similarities of terrain, so to speak.
Comment by Megaera on 8/2 @ 7:35 pm #
Swen–frac jobs have become one of the more arcane areas of development tech. They pumpp in sand (actually tiny glass beads) and water, mixed with proprietary chemical (almost alchemical) stews lovingly compiled by backroom boffins … must say, the explosive approach, nuclear or otherwise, has a certain directness I find appealing. Sort of like those early very heavy oil recovery projects that involved trying to start underground burns to generate heat and gas to help mobilize the hydrocarbons in the rock matrix and move them toward the well bore.
Comment by Rusty on 8/2 @ 7:37 pm #
#97
Didn’t learn much, did ya?
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/2 @ 7:41 pm #
#85 Ric Locke:
I remember conglomerates mostly through MAD Magazine jokes about them back in the 1970’s.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/2 @ 7:46 pm #
#89 Lost Dog:
Your comment reminded me of an exchange with a coworker last week.
“What are you up to, Mike?”
“5′10″.”
“They’re piling it that high?”
“Yep. I’ve got the diploma to prove it.”
Older attorney: “Okay, I’m leaving now; you two are much too fast.”
I thought it was a nice, friendly exchange.
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 7:46 pm #
I know all that and a lot more. I was named after my great uncle who was one in the first group of engineers who designed and built the original refineries in Houston, ya dope. You think I’ve never been to Houston, ya dope? Think the oil business wasn’t talked about every night at my dinner table, dope? You think all the oil wells in my family’s trust were drilled yesterday, dope? Think I didn’t listen to what the oil price was doing and who was causing this and that all my life, ya dope?
Better get yourself a bag of Absorb-All to soak up your oily BS, ya dope.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/2 @ 7:52 pm #
What kind of torque do you get swinging your dick around like that, thor? Have you thought of hooking it to a generator and then just reading the comments here?
Karl’s gone and look! You’re still your usual debonair self!
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 7:54 pm #
No, thor isn’t a Greenie. He reminds me a lot of a Moonie I once knew — nice chap overall, with some very sensible opinions (i.e., he agreed with me a lot :-) until you got him off on the subject of the Rev. Sun, who was a True Prophet and entitled to some perks.
Swen, I didn’t really know they didn’t frac with explosives any more. As you say, the people who do it keep their techniques really close to the vest. –what I remember is from a long time ago; the explosives came in cans six inches in diameter, with screw threads top and bottom so they could be assembled into a string. Further deponent sayeth not (I’m not sure the statue of limitations has run out). Seismographers used a similar but smaller package.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 7:57 pm #
What a Lost Dog dope. “Fwee energy mawkets are the weal mawkets that keep us fwee!” Neener nah-nah! Poopey on O!
What a bunch of two-bit suckers the business colleges graduated, except for A&M, of course, ha! A bunch of corporate worshipping morons who never worked a hard day with their hands. You’re more O that O! himself.
Why don’t you talk about Jimmy Carter mandated electric geberation plants be built to burn coal, dope, because that’s a funny topic, seeing how all those plants now have to be converted to natural gas. The taxpayers funding those little tri-county municipal co-ops are fucked, but not really, since you and I will eventually be picking up the tab for that.
Comment by McGehee on 8/2 @ 8:01 pm #
Municipal co-ops are funded by ratepayers, thordope.
Comment by Rusty on 8/2 @ 8:03 pm #
#103
We aren’t talking about what your father and grandfather did. I worked for five years in the 70s for UOP as a nondegreed consultant on machining and heat treating.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/2 @ 8:05 pm #
If I got it right, a great-great-great grandfather was an engineer on the Welland Canal (see: Martindale Pond). I don’t see myself as an expert on civil engineering for that.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/2 @ 8:06 pm #
- You know thor, its always amazed me in my career, working in a very wide range of industries, alongside of every manner of human being, that someone such as yourself, and I’ve known others in my time, can live the real life of dragging-your-ass-out-of-a-warm-bed-at-oh-dark-thirty-
slop-down-something-that-passes-for-a-breakfast-off-in
-a-piece-of-shit-that-would-be-condemned-just-for-the-trash
from-dashboard-to-back-seat-doing-god-knows-what-boring
-job-this-week-but-it-pays-the-bills-most-of-the-time-
unless-the-flavor-of-the-month-decides-to-go-on-a-one-
woman-spending-spree-because-shes-borde-and-you-work-too
-many-hours-and-you’re-no-fucking-fun-anymore-but-theres-
always-a-good-cold-one-on-friday-nights-and-maybe-a-game-
on-sunday-so-lifes-not-so-fucking-bad-those-times-when-your
-backs-not-killing-you-and-the-kids-aren’t-sick-for-a-change
-and-you-might-have-enough-out-of-this-paycheck-to-take-the-
-old-lady-out-for-a-nice-evening-and-still-cover-the-house-
payment life….and still in spite of all that, believe it when some South Chicago bag boy, who’s main claim to fame is delivering the cooch to the right address so he doesn’t get his knees whacked, tells you theres a “free lunch”.
- Thats some kind of special stupid son. And profoundly sad.
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 8:13 pm #
Marxist Commies! Lefties! Armand Hammer was a Commie dumbass! What’d he know about oil! Marxists/Dimbulb.Liverals can’t do math! Drilling for oil is a Right-Wing Business! DopeyDems.Never.Oil.Math.FuckYeah!
That’s what you people devolve conversations to.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/2 @ 8:19 pm #
“That’s what you people devolve conversations to.”
- Yeh, well maybe, but just the same thor, you gotta have some kind of tin ear for life to get past 10 or 20, or in my case 52 years of working for a living, and still believe in fairytales.
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 8:31 pm #
Well, yeah, thor, we do tend to trend that way, especially when goaded by somebody who approaches it from the deification of The Horny-Handed Sons of Toil, from whom all blessings flow. Glance back up at my discussion of the wildcat strike. Much of my attitude toward Teh Workers derives from that, and from the blind advocacy of one of my classmates, who could and did manage to justify tossing Molotov cocktails at “scabs” as a Christian duty. Teh Workers are human beings, just as prone to layabout scamming as anybody else in the System. I suppose it helped that Dad’s best friend kept Capital on his bookshelf.
An industrial economy — which is what we live in — requires three components: labor, management, and capital. Without all three it falls apart, and the Government, the übermanagement, has to figure out ways to keep them in balance. Mostly it fails, and the (slim) justification for your attitude is that as a rule Capital and Management have money, and therefore the ear of the politicians. What puzzles me is people who imagine that greater Government involvement will help. If the Government’s role in the economy increases, it means that wealth — management and capital — have more, not less, input, because they’re the ones with the resources to influence the politicians and bureaucrats.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/2 @ 8:36 pm #
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 8:13 pm #
Damn, man, lay off the 151.
You sound stupider than usual.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/2 @ 8:39 pm #
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 8:31 pm #
Ford’s Iron Law of Government Intervention:
“Every time any government interferes with a market, it fucks it up.”
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/2 @ 8:45 pm #
- Fords corollary to the Iron Law of Government Intervention:
“The dependability and size of your paycheck is inversely proportional to the involvement of government in your business.”
Comment by Thor's Amygdala on 8/2 @ 8:48 pm #
Leave me alone guys. Can’t you see, I’m emoting! It’s what I do. Dopey cock heads!
Comment by Spiny Norman on 8/2 @ 8:57 pm #
He is starting to rant like a drunk in some small-town dive, isn’t he?
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/2 @ 9:13 pm #
#115, #116 — both special cases of Ric’s Second Rule: markets happen anyway.
When Government (or, really, anybody; guilds, etc.) attempts to modify, control, or suppress a market, what happens is that a new market is created, which trades in the attention and favor of the politicians and bureaucrats. That market is neither liquid nor transparent; its currency is a shadowy matter of influence and favor, and what it trades is intangible and ill-defined, so it isn’t surprising that it doesn’t “clear”, that is, it doesn’t work efficiently. Meanwhile the original market continues to function — as it has to, because it wouldn’t have existed in the first place if the society didn’t need the good or service it trades — burdened by the increased cost of complying with or evading the control. Shall we be surprised that the result is not as expected by those who propose to “improve” things?
Hell, I might even agree — in fact I do agree — that market forces often impact people unfairly, and that some system for ameliorating that is desirable, even necessary. Problem is, it mostly can’t be done. King Canute had it easy; the tide wasn’t intelligent and actively trying to soak his shoes with salt-water. It belongs in the same category as exceeding the speed of light or perpetual motion; if it can be done at all, it is in peculiar and highly artificial conditions that cannot accommodate, for instance, the workers and management of General Motors. Attempts to evade that restriction inevitably come a cropper, usually with side effects worse than the original problem, because markets happen anyway.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by Bookworm on 8/2 @ 9:25 pm #
We’re on the same wavelength. I gave my post on the subject yesterday more or less the same name, and had the same thought: http://www.bookwormroom.com/2008/08/01/if-a-tree-falls-in-a-forest-and-no-one-is-there-does-it-make-a-sound/
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/2 @ 9:42 pm #
- When I was young and people told me things that made me feel good, I’d smile and feel good.
- Now that I’m older when people tell me things that make me feel good, I smile and feel good, drink with one hand, and keep the other on my hip pocket.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/2 @ 9:47 pm #
- My guess thor - Baracky isn’t going to respect you in the morning.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 8/2 @ 10:02 pm #
Wow, thor, I must’ve really left a mark, since you’re still screeching like a little girl a week later.
Snicker.
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/2 @ 10:19 pm #
Kewl - I don’t think there’s been a speck of content in any of Thor’s comments since he came back to the thread. Stupified and stupidified is what he must be. He’s so fucking unique he worked a 16, hey me too. He’s got grandfather stories. Who gives a shit. What a whiny bitch.
Comment by thor on 8/2 @ 11:20 pm #
When one finds the knowledge level of partisan pontificaters to be amusingly low, it’s only because they’re whiny bitches and O-blowers!
Sad thing is that those who know the least display such fealty to generalized clichés of free markets and free trade. I mention market regulation and the assumption is that I need a lecture on why markets exist! And always will, damnit!
Ric, I too change my opinion when the environment changes, and if Barack Obama wins it’ll be because the majority of Americans have come to the same conclusion I have, namely, that the currently elected Republicans are, as a group, total dumbasses. That even dumber dumbasses, Pelosi and Reid, will garner more power, is the natural happening in a two-party system wherein one party has failed. “Duuuuuuuuuuh, you yust yashed Yush.” Yes, I did, mostly because he should have kept his party in line with his agenda - at least a few things positive might have gotten done - but instead he lost control of it. All the rudderless Repubs. can do now is cling to the hopes of a “whitey” tape. Hate mongering is their new patriotism, the new more American way!
Comment by guinsPen on 8/3 @ 5:00 am #
The new Brock-Broglio trade!
And we got stuck with Ernie, again.
Comment by Rusty on 8/3 @ 5:56 am #
#111
No. That’s what you devolve these threads into.
If you want to turn the Obamaman into FDR that’s your business. But don’t come around and try to blow that smoke up my ass and call folks racist because they disagree with you.
Comment by Pablo on 8/3 @ 6:03 am #
That’s all he’s got, Rusty. That’s all you can expect.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 6:25 am #
“All the rudderless Repubs. can do now is cling to the hopes of a “whitey†tape. Hate mongering is their new patriotism, the new more American way!”
Um, dude, racism is coming from the Democrats.
As always.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 6:26 am #
Unless “racism” has replaced “swiftboating” as the reactionary leftist code word for telling the truth about a Democrat candidate.
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 6:26 am #
I call people when racist when they engage in racist activity, Rusty. One without the other I do not do. How about you.
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 6:27 am #
Snicker… snicker… snicker…
So, remind me, what qualifies you to bandy about telling people their useless to society? Is it because you’ve elevated your socio-poli-econ lingua from watching Fox and Friends?
You know what I think, Spies, Hair Pies and Nut Flakes? I think the average dope on the left and the average dope on the right have allowed themselves to become such intellectual voids that they can’t do anything but terrific destruction to everything they touch. And all while snickering-stupidity and dopish-sloganeering became a fashion rage politically, things socio-poli-econ grew more complicated, inverse to the political fashion. That’s why PW’s gaggle Corky-s feels just like a warm hot tub to ya. Here you’re in good always agreeable company. Here you can fart in the hot tub and it’s all snickers and giggles and more farts. Weee. Pwotectshunizm bwad while Fwee Twade is goodie-goodie gun drops.
Brazil, China and Russia practice pwotwectshunism but we pretend they don’t and throw our markets wide open to ‘em.
The stock market (God’s gift to freedom and a crystal ball view into the future!) says those countries economies are rockin’ while ours suckels and teeters on the brink, sell-off after sell-off. But we got big Fwee Twade! Cookies and giggles! Twade is Fwee! More Kool-Aide anyone! Look chocolate elephants! All our banks are edging closer to failure, hey, maybe we need to re-think some of those trade agreements, regulate-never!, but let’s snicker at Obama this year and, I don’t know, maybe someday we’ll think about new dreamy fwee twade agweements.
Brilliant.Must.Write.Book.
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/3 @ 6:42 am #
Thor - Your paragraphs suck. I understand now why you wanted me to write instead. You got nothing.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 8/3 @ 6:44 am #
That’s nice, thor.
Really.
Snicker.
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 7:08 am #
What about the Obama HopeShaft, Spie Pie? Don’t forget to remind me that I need to suck it.
Don’t lose your edgey-edge edge-thing, ya brave Promethean scribe writer-type of dude.
Comment by Spies, Brigands, and Pirates on 8/3 @ 7:15 am #
That’s nice, thor.
I should also remind you to mention your alleged boxing prowess and your experiences with underage Russian prostitutes. That way you could cover everything you bring to the rhetorical table in one post, which would be a helpful convenience for those who want to skip it.
Let me guess: your book proposal got rejected, yes?
Comment by Rusty on 8/3 @ 7:38 am #
#131
Thor. I have never once mentioned Obama’s race in anything I’ve written about him. You, on the other hand, have interjected race into the conversation every chance you get. Why don’t you try and debate the issues instead. Your hero Barak Obama is a typical machine pol from the city of machine pols. Just take a stroll through Lawndale. Racist. See I can do it too.
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 8:08 am #
That alleged prowess! Yes, and za suka blahts I use to beat up with my prowess, yes, that’d be a good book query. Break Her Nose Before She Breaks Your Heart: For Dummies - the Prix Goncourt will be mine, pow!
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 8:15 am #
I’m hated for the respect I show for the black man who runs for President.
Must not do that here.
Comment by Pablo on 8/3 @ 8:23 am #
Calling everyone a racist is not showing respect for anyone, thor. And veering into datadave rhetorical territory doesn’t help either. I like the victimhood ploy, though.
O!
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 8:30 am #
I called out KK for shading his commentary so hard with racist overtures that he, in essence, was setting himself up to be diminished as a dithering racist, for which I eventually agreed he was acting like.
One can’t accurately say I called them a “racist” when I didn’t.
You have to be careful what you say to or about black people so that your intentions are not misunderstood or diminished, is that new news? I got the memo.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 8:31 am #
“Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 8:15 am #
I’m hated for the respect I show for the black man who runs for President.
Must not do that here.”
Like I said, racism is the Democratic tradittion, not the Republican one.
The Republican party was established to abolish slavery, not abet it like the Democrats.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 8:32 am #
Ok, then thor, riddle me this.
It’s a question I’ve posed numerous times across many fora on the internet, and have never gotten a good answer:
Why do the Democrats treat blacks like political lawn jockeys?
Comment by happyfeet on 8/3 @ 8:35 am #
I just don’t want him organizing my community Chicago-style is all. And what a narrow background this man has. Never not lived in a city, he’s socially stunted. He doesn’t understand the illusions cities are built on, he just knows he wants to make us all share them. Baracky, his campaign is all about the seductions of submissiveness I think. Submissiveness to a really tired communitarian vision. It’s not an American vision.
Comment by B Moe on 8/3 @ 8:36 am #
I called out KK for shading his commentary so hard with racist overtures..
While never giving examples,
for which I eventually agreed he was acting like.
eventually agreed with who? How many of you are in there?
One can’t accurately say I called them a “racist†when I didn’t.
you didn’t accuse him of being a racist, you just accused him of acting like one. I see why you like Obama so much,
You have to be careful what you say to or about black people so that your intentions are not misunderstood or diminished, is that new news? I got the memo.
Uh, fuck you. I say what I want, if you or anyone else misunderstands it is your problem.
Comment by Pablo on 8/3 @ 8:41 am #
Bullshit. You fixated on him for criticizing your guy and you smeared him relentlessly for kicks. You’re full of shit, and you’re an asshole, buddy. That’s why you’re catching heat.
But I still like the part where you’re a victim because of your deep respect. That’s a real knee slapper.
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 8:42 am #
I understand the slogans from both parties. We’re the party of Lincoln. We’re the party of civil rights. I get the newsletters. No really, my email box is full of ‘em. Two, three a day they come in. Michelle Obama writes little stories and emails ‘em out. McCain’s wife, not so much, but his campaign manager is a hella emailer.
All I’d say about Lincoln is neither party owns his name. He wrote his own speeches and wasn’t too well-liked by many Repubs, all that stuff, yes.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 8:49 am #
“Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 8:42 am #
I understand the slogans from both parties.”
Democrats spout slogans. (Just look at Baraky)
Republicans walk the walk.
“We’re the party of Lincoln.”
Why, yes, we are.
“We’re the party of civil rights.”
Why, yes, we are.
“All I’d say about Lincoln is neither party owns his name.”
Um, yep, you are truly an ahistorical asshole, aren’t you, thor?
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 8:50 am #
Originally I kicked KK in the nuts for unfairly bagging on McCain, lest you forget.
No candidate is perfect, and there’s no excuse for relentlessly libeling either of ‘em. Clintonian smear mongering never sits well with me no matter who employs the tactic.
Karl is free to do what he wants.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 8:52 am #
Slavery was a specifically an institution of the Democratic Party.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 8:52 am #
Eugene “Bull” O’Connor (the poster boy of American racism) was a Democrat.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/3 @ 8:52 am #
Baracky has for real tried to become a popcultural superfly. This is because he has no experience, no record. Pointing that out is not racist. Going to an Africa-centric church that embraces Marxism is what’s racist. Arguing for a holistic view of reparations is what’s racist. Baracky wrote two Oprah Books-Of-The-Month about his tormented racial soul. He has issues, this one, but you take note of this, it’s a distraction. And racist. But, whatever. He peaked too soon, so he’ll soon have his own distraction framing the meaning of his defeat. That will be very interesting I think.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 8:53 am #
The poll tax was a Democratic party institution.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 8:53 am #
Jim Crow laws were instituted by Democrats
Comment by B Moe on 8/3 @ 8:53 am #
Clintonian smear mongering never sits well with me no matter who employs the tactic.
So self-loathing is what drives your hatred? Seriously my irony meter just went through the roof, dude.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/3 @ 8:53 am #
I miss Karl.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 8:54 am #
It was Democrats like Lester Maddox, Orval Faubus and George Wallace — governors of Georgia, Arkansas and Alabama — “who blocked the schoolhouse doors.”
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 8:55 am #
The Democrats also filibustered 83 days against the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Albert Gore Sr and former Robert Byrd were two of the Democrats who opposed the bill.
Ex-Klansman Sen. Byrd filibustered for more than 14 hours and 13 minutes straight.
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 8:55 am #
It’s not a very big tent, just Nishi, me, cynn, Lisa. Hey, but you guys look like you’re enjoying yourselves. Me, it’s torture, all these hot chicks are crazy I tell ya.
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 8:56 am #
I miss him too.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 8:57 am #
“It wasn’t the GOP that opposed the Emancipation Proclamation. Nor was it the GOP that opposed the Thirteenth Amendment prohibiting slavery, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteeing equal protection, or the Fifteenth Amendment guaranteeing voting rights. (In fact, Republicans voted for the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act in greater percentages than did Democrats.)
Moreover, it wasn’t the Republican party that opposed Teddy Roosevelt’s anti-lynching legislation or that filibustered or otherwise opposed more than a dozen other anti-lynching provisions during the 20th century.
Republicans didn’t institutionalize Jim Crow, implement school segregation, or establish poll taxes and literacy tests to keep non-whites from voting. Bull Connor, George Wallace, Lester Maddox, and Orval Faubus weren’t Republicans.
It wasn’t a Republican who ordered the internment of Japanese-American citizens (or Italians or Germans) during World War II. Nor were Republicans behind the Chinese exclusion acts or licensing requirements that discriminated against non-white businesses and tradesmen.”
-Peter Kirsanow
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 8:58 am #
So, who are the party of racists?
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 9:00 am #
There were probably plenty of racists and non-racists in both parties back then.
Comment by B Moe on 8/3 @ 9:02 am #
It’s not a very big tent, just Nishi, me, cynn, Lisa.
You agreed with nishi, cynn and Lisa that Karl is a ractist? I imagine they are going to be quite surprised to hear that, since I have never seen any of them state any such opinion.
Congratulations on graduating from obnoxious dick to outright liar.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/3 @ 9:07 am #
thor is telling the truth. His argument is for real an accurate foreshadowing of political debate in a Baracky administration I think. It’s not just cause Baracky has a funny name, did I mention he’s black?
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 9:10 am #
Oh, well then, I misunderstood the question. We don’t even pom-pom that O! all that much, but we don’t bag on him like everyone else. That’s the tent-folk I described.
I’m the sole race-bating troll who called out KK as racist in intention. Yes, I did. Yes, I am. And yes, I would again if he posted 3000-words a day claiming Obama is a Black crypto-Marxist underground weatherman-type. Absurdity on that level is motivated by something sinister, just my opinion.
Comment by Pablo on 8/3 @ 9:13 am #
And you have yet to demonstrate that Karl has ever done such here. On the contrary, you’ve relentlessly libeled him with full awareness that you’re doing it.
But hey, you’ve chased a voice sometimes critical of your Messiah off the stage with your Super Bile Shooter. Congratulate yourself. Revel in it.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/3 @ 9:13 am #
There will be many thors when Baracky is pezzydent, when for real vested interests need to cultivate for real advantage and favor. And it will be so easy.
Comment by Pablo on 8/3 @ 9:17 am #
Yes, ‘feets. And many of those thors will be very disappointed when they realize that they’re no longer needed.
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 9:17 am #
I’m now a metaphor?
Thanks happ.
Comment by B Moe on 8/3 @ 9:18 am #
Absurdity on that level is motivated by something sinister, just my opinion.
I will defer to your expertise on these topics.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 9:20 am #
“Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 9:00 am #
There were probably plenty of racists and non-racists in both parties back then.”
But it was Democratic policy.
Big difference.
Asshole.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/3 @ 9:20 am #
Well. Ok. Put the onus on Karl then. If Karl bailed rather than deal with your line of criticism, which will only gain legitimacy when Baracky reigns, imagine how many Karls there will be to come? Many, many Karls there will be.
Comment by happyfeet on 8/3 @ 9:22 am #
I think this is what Jeff knew. But that’s just a theory.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 9:24 am #
Terrorists murder innocent victims on purpose, to implement a policy to terrorize.
American soldiers kill innocent people by accident, in the pusuit of freeing and defending said innocents.
Shorter thor: “Well, there are terrorists on both sides”
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 9:24 am #
O’Brain, I’m not a defender or promoter of either party.
Comment by JD on 8/3 @ 9:25 am #
Kirsanow is great.
I miss Karl too. thor, not so much. Vixk and Baracky are prolly waiting for their daily thor-hummer. Don’t keep them waiting.
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 9:26 am #
“Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 9:24 am #
O’Brain, I’m not a defender or promoter of either party.”
Then what’s that Obama stuff dripping down your chin?
Comment by N. O'Brain on 8/3 @ 9:30 am #
Is favoring a candidate becase of his skin color racist?
Is there such a thing as Obamolotry?
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 9:32 am #
You don’t think I miss my KK? Maybe he’ll start a music page and I can blast him while listening to the Ramones.
I have to look up when Vick gets out. Poor guy, I’d love to be his agent. Foot speed like Vick’s, nope, can’t coach that.
The Tiger Woods of foot speed wastes away in jail. It breaks my heart.
Comment by Carin on 8/3 @ 9:33 am #
FTR, I miss Karl too. Anyone know where we can find him?
Thor was COMPLETELY and totally off target regarding Karl. If Karl was a racist, than so am I.
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 9:35 am #
I am too, if you are too.
Sadly, I don’t think K left simply because I called him a racist so many weeks ago.
Reality check time.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/3 @ 9:41 am #
Karl commented at Patterico the other day, I think, in the post P putup mocking JG’s withdrawal from blogging. His named linked to a site he posts on.
Comment by Carin on 8/3 @ 9:42 am #
The conditions under which he left are immaterial. Karl made valuable contributions to this blog, and when he wrote anti-O! stuff, you snipped at his motivations for writing the piece instead of arguing the issues.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/3 @ 9:42 am #
Here you go. http://tinyurl.com/63ubpf
Comment by happyfeet on 8/3 @ 9:43 am #
This one? I hadn’t seen. Mocking might be overstated.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/3 @ 9:46 am #
You’re right hf, mocking too strong a charge. Teasing then, I guess. Or whatever.
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/3 @ 9:47 am #
Bullshit.
Karl is a technician. He commented extensively on the technical aspects of campaigning — polling, organization, logistics; the entire focus of his posts was on procedure. Sometimes he included his take on how a particular soundbite would “play in Peoria”, but it was always in terms of impact — is this a plus? a minus? How many Americans agree with that? What do the polls say about it.
And every f*ing time any of that came out the slightest bit negative toward Obama or his campaign, there’s thor, blowing a gale about –ism of some kind, not to mention barratry, piracy, and skulduggery in the spaceways. Let Karl mention that the Obama campaign didn’t seem to have enough “ground-game” operatives in, say, Ohio, and immediately we get 1,000 words from thor, roughly a fifth of them profanity, denouncing RAAAAAAAAAAAAAACISM! For me, anyway, it’s damned irritating, not to mention a rather spectacular demonstration of the peculiar institution called “missing the point”.
We don’t hate you for the respect you show the black candidate, thor. We hold you in contempt for the fawning, slathering, exaggerated deference you show a city-machine bagman with delusions of
grandeuradequacy.Regards,
Ric
Comment by Christopher Taylor on 8/3 @ 9:47 am #
I liked Karl’s input and posts here a lot, I thought he gave excellent analysis. Thor, on the other hand adds nothing but comment length by being offensive, stupid, and provocative (i.e. classic trolling). If Karl left it was because he felt unwelcome but Thor was not bothered by any moderators, and I can’t see a problem with Karl’s decision in this regard. A blog should cultivate and encourage, protect, and respect its good commenters and writers.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/3 @ 9:48 am #
“I’m hated for the respect I show for the black man who runs for President.”
- Not really thor. You’re not important enough to be hated. And FWIW, the only time I ever think of Baracky as “Black” is when you or other Democrat is yammering about racism, or Obama himself whines about it on the podium.
- I find that most interesting and telling. Racism is old school thor. When the Dimbulbs finally realize its dead and they’re the only ones pushing it, in spite of the Lefts best efforts to hang on and keep it going, your party will dissolve.
- Jackson and Sharpton are kind of long in the tooth to start all over again.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/3 @ 9:51 am #
Just a reminder of the “to ti en ennai” that fires Obama backers up so:
“Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your division. That you come out of your isolation. That you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual; uninvolved, uninformed.”
Comment by happyfeet on 8/3 @ 9:53 am #
You will join a union and also a corps. Better clean out your wallet so you have room for all your new id cards.
Comment by Big Bang Hunter (pumping you up) on 8/3 @ 9:56 am #
- Remember Komrads, anyone who resists will be re-educated or shot. Resistance is futile. You’ll all be much happier in the collective where we do all your thinking so you don’t have to.” - (Brought to you by Laika, the space dog, beaming truthiness to tinhats all over the world since 1957.)
Comment by Carin on 8/3 @ 10:00 am #
There’s an article in “Time” (please, I KNOW) about how Michigan is in play this election year. They focus on Oakland Country (which is a stones throw from me) because it’s gone Dem the last few yearsr. A HORRIBLE economic situation with only Dems to blame and the whole Kwame kerfuflle mean bad news for Obama. Anyway, they said he’s been to Oakland country (something like) 7 times already.
Comment by B Moe on 8/3 @ 10:07 am #
Foot speed like Vick’s, nope, can’t coach that.
Skull density like Vick’s is even harder to coach.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/3 @ 10:09 am #
Look on the bright side BMoe, skull density could cut down on the concussion frequency QB’s tend to suffer.
Comment by SGT Ted on 8/3 @ 10:10 am #
No, thor your dissed here because you’re a blowhard asshole who trots out populist crapola and leftwing stereotypes of “wingers” like any other DU jackass.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/3 @ 11:19 am #
thor is as charming and persuasive as when Karl was here, except now he’s concentrating on the commenters instead of one guy who posted some good analysis of polls, organization, and such. I bet thor is just the guy you would like to join at a pub for a couple of drinks - if his blog-muscles are anything like his beer-muscles it would be a darned interesting night. Interesting up to the fight, and the bouncers, and the cops.
Then it would get tedious. Sort of like how tedious thor is here.
Comment by Spiny Norman on 8/3 @ 12:03 pm #
Couldn’t be said better.
Thor, go battle your strawmen somewhere else.
Comment by daleyrocks on 8/3 @ 12:44 pm #
C’mon. I’m groovin’ on Thor’s standard leftard screeds about corporations. They’re evul. They shouldn’t pay dividends. They shouldn’t buy back stock. They pay their management too much. They should do stuff for the peeple not their stockholders, what’s wrong with them. TAX THE SHIT OUT THEM, REGULATE THE PISS OUT OF THEM, DON’T LET THEM BREATHE.
Unions on the other hand, you don’t want to look too closely at them. Unions are a benevolent institution to protect American workers against evul corporations. Don’t ask about where their political contributions come from or go to. Don’t ask how much their management makes, they deserve it. Union pension and retirement funds? Why do you want to know about those?
Comment by Thor's Amygdala on 8/3 @ 12:48 pm #
“I’m hated for the respect I show for the black man who runs for President.â€Â
LOL…keep on telling yourself that, thor. First, I doubt anyone hates you. You give yourself far too much credit. Quite simply, you’re a dick. See, you’re the one that mentions, ad nauseum, that he’s black. Ric, as usual, put it quite perfectly when he said this, he’s “a city-machine bagman with delusions of grandeur adequacy.” Thor, you’re a victim, so you like Obama. That’s cool for you. That’s pathetic for everyone else to see. Be a victim somewhere else or for once in your PW existence, extoll the actual virues of Obama you claim he possesses. Its hard to be embarrassed for someone on the internet, but you did it. You’re kind of embarrasing.
Comment by SarahW on 8/3 @ 12:54 pm #
No one’s asked me, but I think Karl had earned the right to police comments on his own posts, especially when JG was taking off do take care of other things.
I wonder why Thor considers it absurd to contemplate a candidate true background and associations. At least I did, till I started scrolling past his vulgar uselessness in hurry. If I think of him at all it’s to wonder what his illness is.
Comment by SarahW on 8/3 @ 12:56 pm #
in A hurry. Yes, I type too quickly to get off the subject ASAP.
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/3 @ 1:00 pm #
If I think of him at all it’s to wonder what his illness is.
I bet its hard to pronounce.
Comment by TmjUtah on 8/3 @ 5:58 pm #
Anybody catch O! on MTP this morning?
I was on vacation in Wendover, out on the state line between Utah and Nevada. Popped on the TV for about thirty seconds and there was the O!.
Quite the experience. *click* What? Who? Oh. Oh yeah. Oh. What’s he saying?
You see the body language first coming in cold like that. He was vamping; content free speech, with uh a canned uh uh talking point about uh “energy responsibility” or something. But it uh uh was noise.
I muted the audio. And presto, it became just another infomercial, except the scroll didn’t contain any “special offers”. The face, the gestures, the expressions.
I have to wonder how many media pros have already gone through the same experience while editing their reporter’s stories?
Ick.
Comment by guinsPen on 8/3 @ 7:01 pm #
The new Brock-Broglio trade!
And we got stuck with Ernie, again.
Upon further review, it’s more like the new Thomas Jones-Cedric Benson decision.
And we got stuck with Buster, again!
Comment by cynn on 8/3 @ 8:01 pm #
Agreed. Karl, get your pasty white butt back here and bring the thought-provoking posts! You are a true craftsman, albeit biased, but stand by your principles and soldier onward; I respect you and a few of your points have raised some questions in my mind.
Although, I wonder if a comment like “a city-machine bagman with delusions of grandeur adequacy.” isn’t actionable. Really, people.
Comment by McGehee on 8/3 @ 8:35 pm #
Cynn, truth is a defense.
Comment by Dread Cthulhu on 8/3 @ 8:38 pm #
cynn: “Although, I wonder if a comment like “a city-machine bagman with delusions of grandeur adequacy.†isn’t actionable. Really, people.”
If anything, he understates the case. Obama has no core principles, has been caught more that once saying what he thinks his audience wants to hear (bitter clingers) and is willing to abandon any position or individual if said abandonment will get him elected. Sweetheart deals on real estate with Rezko, a long association with a racist church, domestic terrorists, Palestinian fundraisers and Iraqi bagmen… plenty of fodder for the press to play with, if only they would pay attention.
Comment by Sdferr on 8/3 @ 8:41 pm #
It’s hard to pay attention to information when one is so busy burying it.
Comment by Dread Cthulhu on 8/3 @ 8:54 pm #
Sdferr: “It’s hard to pay attention to information when one is so busy burying it.”
Call me an optimist, but I suspect they’re still taking notes — there is always time for “the Howard Dean” effect to come into play… And, come to think of it, it would only be fair — the press made him and the press should have the privilege of breaking him as well.
Comment by TmjUtah on 8/3 @ 9:51 pm #
Dread Cthulhu -
“And, come to think of it, it would only be fair  the press made him and the press should have the privilege of breaking him as well.”
Inside that statement resides the clearest, most urgent motive to goad our punditry/media class to utterly destroy a man since the confirmation hearings of Robert Bork.
The rules of “Of Mice and Men” come into play - starkly.
They made him. That is to say they created his public image from their fantasies of what a transcendant leader would be. If the burn rate progresses at the pace it is at now, he will be their problem long before November.
Talk about investing in defeat; they are going to make Pelosi and Murtha look positively Churchillian before they toss the junior senator under his own bus.
Comment by cynn on 8/3 @ 10:13 pm #
Mghee: I don’t understand the truth is a defense remark. Sounds cyclical to me.
Comment by cynn on 8/3 @ 10:36 pm #
Sorry about the kooky question.
Comment by thor on 8/3 @ 11:27 pm #
Oh look, I’ve been shit upon from high above.
Karl didn’t like what he wrote. A small taste of bias against him and he unwound. Many a hack is like that - “allow me to question but don’t dare question me!”
Comment by Mikey NTH on 8/4 @ 6:04 am #
Cynn: In American law, truth is an absolute defense against a charge of defamation. If someone files suit saying that they have been defamed, and the defendant proves that what he said is true, then the defamation charge fails.
Comment by Ric Locke on 8/4 @ 6:20 am #
Also, under U.S. law it is impossible to actionably defame a politician.
If it were, W would own the NYT and the City of San Francisco, in fee simple.
Regards,
Ric
Comment by McGehee on 8/4 @ 8:53 am #
What Mikey said.
And the word I think you wanted was “cryptic.”
Comment by SarahW on 8/4 @ 9:17 am #
Cynn, I’m surprised at your lack of familiarity with speech law in the states. You ought to bone up.