Really?

Really? Analysts are reading this blog? That's a scary thought.

About two or three months ago, I started a new tag, "The Road to New England" which tracks the shortage of propane (and energy in a broader sense) in New England after this last winter, when the northeast came close to running out of natural gas.

Over at Drudge Report, this teaser/link: "Power grid at limit: road to electrical blackouts ...."

Sounds suspiciously like "Road to New England." LOL.

Here's the story reported at Daily Caller:

Last winter, bitterly cold weather placed massive stress on the US electrical system ― and the system almost broke. On January 7 in the midst of the polar vortex, PJM Interconnection, the Regional Transmission Organization serving the heart of America from New Jersey to Illinois, experienced a new all-time peak winter load of almost 142,000 megawatts.

Eight of the top ten of PJM’s all-time winter peaks occurred in January 2014. Heroic efforts by grid operators saved large parts of the nation’s heartland from blackouts during record-cold temperature days.

Nicholas Akins, CEO of American Electric Power, stated in Congressional testimony, “This country did not just dodge a bullet ― we dodged a cannon ball.”

Environmental policies established by Congress and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are moving us toward electrical grid failure. The capacity reserve margin for hot or cold weather events is shrinking in many regions. According to Philip Moeller, Commissioner of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, “the experience of this past winter indicates that the power grid is now already at the limit.”

EPA policies, such as the Mercury and Air Toxics rule and the Section 316 Cooling Water Rule, are forcing the closure of many coal-fired plants, which provided 39 percent of U.S. electricity last year. American Electric Power, a provider of about ten percent of the electricity to eastern states, will close almost one quarter of the firm’s coal-fired generating plants in the next fourteen months. Eighty-nine percent of the power scheduled for closure was needed to meet electricity demand in January. Not all of this capacity has replacement plans.

And, of course, much more at the linked article, but you get the idea. 

Which leads me to this, and the reason why I posted the above.

Did you all see this poll: 2/3rds of Americans favor the Keystone XL? In other words, if you are an activist environmentalist living in Nebraska, your spouse and your 3-y/o child both favor the Keystone XL. When you go to out to dinner tonight, your spouse and your waiter/waitress will be in favor of the Keystone XL; you will be the lone crackpot. If you are against the Keystone XL, your two elderly parents, barely getting by on social security and paying $4.50/gallon of gasoline will be in favor of the Keystone; you will be the lone holdout.

But that's not the story. The story is not that 2 out of 3 Americans favor the Keystone XL.

This is the story: I found it incredible that polltakers could find enough Americans who had even heard of the Keystone XL to warrant a poll, and then, to have "valid" results. For me that speaks volumes. I have trouble believing that many Americans actually heard of the Keystone. But apparently they have. And when they pay exorbitant gasoline prices this summer driving season, right or wrong, you know they will know who to blame. Some Nobel-Peace-Prize-President who is sending American troops to Poland. To Poland? I thought we won WWII. I thought we won the Cold War. And now the Nobel-Peace-Prize-President is sending troops to Poland, and the Dutch and the Brits are scrambling jets to scare off Russian spy planes.

Lewis Carroll could not have done better writing this narrative.

My hunch is that this will be the theme song for incumbents this summer when they see the poll numbers if a) they voted for ObamaCare; and, b) they are on record dissing the Keystone.

Summertime Sadness, Lana del Rey