Friday Morning Ramblings -- Absolutely Nothing To Do With The Bakken -- Much Political -- Read At Own Risk

I've already posted a couple of energy-related stories earlier this Friday morning, including a great one from RBN Energy. If you don't want to read "political stuff" and came here looking for energy-related stories and the Bakken in particular, skip this post and continue to scroll down. 

1. A few days ago I posted a note about two different ways of accounting in the oil patch: full-cost accounting and successful-efforts accounting. It turns out that federal government agencies can also choose from a menu of accounting choices: generally accepted accounting rules (GAAR); Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates; White House (WH) estimates; best efforts guess (BEG) accounting; Dr Seuss Cat-and-Mouse (SCAM) accounting; and, PITS (Pie-In-The-Sky) accounting.

2. The beginning of the end? The president is not talking much about climate change, global warming, or whatever faux environmentalists are calling it now. Incidentally, having just read Richard Fortey's Horseshoe Crabs and Velvet Worms, it appears the earth's greatest extinctions came during the beginning of and during the Ice Ages. "Snowball Earth" in the Proterozoic comes to mind. That's just my interpretation of his Table of Geologic Periods on page xv in the book. Richard Fortey is a "warmer."

3. Say it isn't so: Dem Senators pay female staffers less than male staffers.  Another inconvenient truth. (Did Al copyright that phrase? I know he invented the internet.)

4. And you thought crime was bad in Detroit with the lights on! Wait until they turn off the lights.

5. On Kudlow last night, a clip of the president was shown advocating for tax breaks for wind and solar energy. The president said the tax breaks were needed to save these companies to save jobs. Sort of like killing the Keystone XL to kill jobs, I guess. Picking winners and losers from the Oval Office.

6. Now that Arizona has accepted Hawaii's proof that the president was born there, let me be the first to suggest this be the president's re-election campaign anthem (lyrics would have to be tweaked, but that would not be difficult):



Born in the USA, Bruce Springsteen
7. I don't know how many folks have been following this story but if enacted by the Obama administration would shut down every swimming pool in every motel/hotel across the country -- and that would just be the start. Don't even get me started.

8. For those who have been following the Elizabeth Warren story in Massachusetts, the Boston Globe has connected the dots.

9. From Drudge: surfers who land on the Drudge Report page were most likely to have a bachelor's degree; more than double the percentage of all active college grad Internet users (36 percent vs 17 percent).

10. This issue should resonate with North Dakotans following the UND "Fighting Sioux" tussle with the NCAA. Oregon recently banned public schools from using Native American imagery in team names and mascots. Tribes on two Oregon "Indian" reservations have protested. I don't blame them. Minnesotans take pride in their Vikings. I guess Oregonians can't take pride in their Native Americans in the same fashion. If I were a school administrator in Oregon I would have Starbucks license their name (for a nice fee) to the school athletic team, or come up with some LGBT logo. And that's why I'm not a school administrator.

11. This is a most interesting article for me personally. It brings back a lot of memories. Perhaps this should be a stand-alone post, but I would get a lot of complaints, so I will just add the link to this ever-lengthening list. From the WSJ (again), there is a half-page story on Afghan's Air Force grounded due to maintenance problems. 

When I was assigned to an F-15 squadron stationed in Bitburg, Germany, many years ago, the squadron would fly to Morocco every two years to participate in an exercise called "African Eagle," in which US F-15 pilots trained Moroccan pilots in the use of their US-built fighters (F-5's if I remember correctly).  Generally speaking, maintenance was the number one problem, and often training was postponed because one or more (usually more) of the Moroccan fighters were grounded due to maintenance.

The United States Air Force is anal about maintenance. Every morning, wing commanders are briefed on the status of every plane (by exception, of course). If a plane is grounded because of a missing part en route and it has not yet arrived (anywhere in the world overnight) the wing commander, a colonel or a general officer, is on the horn with his supply officer asking why FedEx has not yet arrived in "onlygodknowswhere." Some of these sites are bare base operations and not yet loaded into any known atlas of the world's airstrips. And, by golly, FedEx shows up. If not FedEx, DHL.

 (Maintenance is so good, the USAF can locate the status of a missing screw anywhere in the world. On the other hand, air evacuation of seriously ill/injured military personnel was not nearly as good. We could literally "lose" a patient in the air evac system for days. One of my favorite medical general officers suggested a bar code wrist band on each patient. His idea was eventually adopted, but that's another story.)

The Moroccans -- and I say this with no judgement of their religion, it is simply fact -- the Moroccans did not rely on FedEx or DHL. They relied on Allah.  Seriously. They called it "inshallah." If God was willing, the part would show up. One does not insult Allah by calling up "Radar"in logistics and asking where the part is or was. If God was willing, the part would show up. Often Allah was apparently unwilling for weeks on end to get the part to Sidi Slimane Air Base. The first day I arrived in support of "African Eagle 1984 (?)" I learned my first word in Arabic, inshallah. It took me by surprise (tactfully said) but by the end of the week I was used to the whims of Allah. And, surprisingly, in the big scheme of life, things worked out very well.