Tuesday Morning Links

Wells coming off confidential list today will be updated on a stand-alone post below as soon as they become available -- most are now posted.

GE, CLNE, and liquefied natural gas at Reuters:

General Electric Co reached a deal to sell equipment to Clean Energy Fuels Corp, which is building out a series of liquefied natural gas fueling stations for U.S. truckers.

GE -- the largest U.S. conglomerate -- sees liquefied natural gas equipment as becoming a $1 billion market over the next five years, said Mike Hosford, general manager of unconventional resources for GE Oil & Gas.

Clean Energy, which counts T. Boone Pickens as its largest investor, agreed to buy two GE-made MicroLNG plants to provide liquefied natural gas for a network of 70 natural gas fueling stations it is opening at truck stops along U.S. interstate highways this year, the company said in a statement released on Tuesday.

These are the micro-LNG systems that GE sold to CLNE. (Thank you to Don.)

Economic development, Dickinson: Idaho-based Quality Electric Distribution opened in Dickinson this past May and is now getting ready for its first North Dakota winter.  Link at Dickinson Press.

At WSJ, US redraws world oil map.  Front page. Top story.

Page A3 (we've talked about this page before): demise of the dairy industry in California; the photo shows starved cattle; where it PETA?

RBN Energy: Another pipeline reversal, the Ho-Ho, and how it will affect the Bakken.

At the WSJ, headline/teaser at front page, section D, story at D6: NASCAR's leaky fuel tank. Huge photos note that JJ is 20 points behind, K+9 is favored to win the championship.

"Number 2" man at Microsoft is out. Steven Sinofsky leaving MSFT raises questions about success of Windows 8, one of the first operating systems in the modern era of computing that requires training.

And then this (how did I miss this story that's been going on for the past year), again from the WSJ: hostess shuts three plants and may simply liquidate. Fed up with labor groups. There go the deep-fried Twinkies. [Update, November 15, 2012: CEO gives striking union an ultimatum -- return to work by COB today or the company will liquidate. One would think health-conscious Michelle Obama and Mayor Bloomberg would be thrilled.]

Sex, Lies and Gmail.

Earth to GOP: get a grip. Conservatives should demand IQ tests of Republican candidates.

And though I have my anxieties about the president's next term, I also have a hunch the GOP dodged a bullet with Mr. Romney's loss.

It dodged a bullet because a Romney victory would have obscured deeper trends in American politics the GOP must take into account. A Romney administration would also have been politically cautious and ideologically defensive in a way that rarely serves the party well.

Finally, the GOP dodged ownership of the second great recession, which will inevitably hit when the Federal Reserve can no longer float the economy in pools of free money. When that happens, Barack Obama won't have George W. Bush to kick around.

My sentiments exactly, about Romney and dodging a bullet. More importantly, it appears that Romney has become the new Bush (folks who used to blame Bush for everything "bad," now point to Romney as the face of the new GOP. In fact, Romney will fade away faster than sand along a rising ocean level.

Book review, novelistic intelligence -- Sweet Tooth, Ian McEwan. I generally don't read spy novels, but I love the review, and particularly the first couple of paragraphs:

There are enough precedents to suggest a synergy between espionage and fiction writing. W. Somerset Maugham worked for British intelligence during World War I. Graham Greene did the same during World War II, serving under the traitor Kim Philby. John le Carré was a career officer of MI6, Great Britain's foreign intelligence service, and his novels show that the writer and the agent possess not only an aptitude for lying but the endurance to sit alone at a desk for imponderably long stretches.

Ian McEwan has never been a spy (or, if he has, that fact remains classified), but of today's novelists he may be the most uniquely suited to the profession. He has a scientific, technical mind drawn to structural ploys and complicated scene engineering. The hot-air balloon accident that begins "Enduring Love" (1997) reads like a simulation of a physics problem. "Amsterdam" (1998) rigs things so that two characters simultaneously poison each other. Even his dazzling 2001 novel "Atonement," which joins the pleasures of a drawing-room miniature with an expansive war drama, concludes with a brazen stroke of narrative legerdemain. Mr. McEwan likes manipulating readers as much as plots.

In light of the Petraeus affair, everyone should read the 3-volume biography of Graham Greene. Fascinating.