Thursday Morning Meanderings -- Mostly For The Archives

Good morning. I assume everyone is already up; I'm on the west coast and already three or four hours behind the rest of you.

Some free associating today; some Bakken, some not.

IPs for wells coming off the confidential list today have been posted. I am really impressed with KOG. They are tearing up the Heart Butte and Truax fields with some great wells. [Disclaimer: this is not an investment site; having said that, I own no KOG shares and don't plan to in the near future. By the way, for investors only, it appears there have been four "entry points" for KOG over the lifetime of the company: 60 cents; $6.00; $8.00; and, $10.00. Today, the shares are selling for about $8.65.]

NDIC still needs to fix their calendar over at their "Daily Activity Report Index." [It's been fixed.]

RBN Energy: second of a series of articles on the Louisiana Offshore Oil Port terminal, the LOOP.

There are three converging stories politically: a) the president has returned to Washington, DC; some saying his vacation was cut short, but who really knows; b) the ObamaCliff; and, c) Tim's debt ceiling. I was pretty sure the President was in control of the "cliff" (as in, winning the polls) and expected him to let us go over the cliff. So, his returning to Washington surprised me.

I think the bigger worry is the debt ceiling. Tim forecasts that we will hit the ceiling New Year's Eve. My hunch is that the debt ceiling story is the one that brought the President back to Washington. It was important politically that he be seen back at work as we go over the cliff (Santelli/CNBC suggested as much) but the debt ceiling is the real story over the next few days. As noted before, when we go over the cliff, the dates are all reset: the new date is December 31, 2013 -- pass a bill by then and "they" can make it retroactive to the first of the year.

The LA Times has a front page story today -- in fact, the lead story -- on Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. There were many story lines, of course, but these two paragraphs caught my eye:

"The president made a strategic miscalculation and overreached," said one GOP aide granted anonymity to discuss party strategy. "He could have worked to reach a fair agreement, but instead he picked a fight, poisoned the well, and now we are likely to have a rather unproductive next four years. The decision he made only hurts himself."

There is little evidence to back up that belief. In a Gallup poll released Wednesday, for example, 54% of Americans responding said they approved of the way Obama had handled the negotiations and 45% said they approved of Democratic leaders in Congress. By contrast, 26% said they approved of Boehner and the Republican congressional leadership.

The Times writer seems to have moved from a news story into an op-ed when she drew that conclusion. The Gallup poll in the second paragraph has nothing to do with the news in the first paragraph. A few days ago I alluded to the tone of the President's reply to the GOP plan and/or to John Boehner's presentation, and this now appears to be the foundation for the news in the first paragraph above.

End of politics for a minute. Except to say, that the media appears to think the election is not over, still trying to score points for one side or the other. I'm not exactly sure what good it does to post polls on "who do you think is to blame for the fiscal cliff?" The voters voted. The election is over. Time for those in control to take control. I just saw a cute little puppy catch a rag that was attached to a wheel on a SUV. Not a pretty sight. Cue up Connie Stevens.

I see the headline: jobs claims drop is huge this past week. But did you notice the little gem at the bottom of the story? The Federal government and many state offices were closed when the data was being calculated. The unemployment numbers for 19 states are nothing but estimates.

President Barack Obama declared Monday a holiday for federal workers and many state offices followed suit and were unable to provide complete data for last week's jobless claims. Data for 19 states was estimated, a Labor Department official said.

Fourteen of those states, including Texas and California, submitted their own estimates, which tend to be fairly accurate because the state officials work with a significant amount of data, the Labor Department official said.

Sure. So, we'll post the numbers (350,000 last week; 365,750 four-week moving average) and see the revised numbers next week. Wanna bet they go up?

"Anon 1" sent in two nice comments, but they deserve stand-alone posts, so will post them later.