Thursday; Why We Won't See Much Fracking In California; "Time Is On My Side" -- Mr Putin

Active rigs:

	3/20/2014	03/20/2013	03/20/2012	03/20/2011	03/20/2010
Active Rigs	195	184	205	172	102

RBN Energy: new Bakken crude oil pipelines not necessary. The reality of the Keystone XL.

Dickinson Press

Dunn County Commission unanimously dismisses NDSU professor's call for Killdeer battlefield study; landowner accuses the submitted application was fraudulent. Perhaps this is not an extraordinary site, after all.

The Wall Street Journal

Minnesota: court rules it is not illegal to encourage folks to commit suicide. Assisting is still illegal, but encouraging someone to commit suicide is now viewed as legal in Minnesota. I honestly did not know that times were that tough in Minnesota.

The new future for US coal: export.

The Los Angeles Times

Debris from missing jet may have been spotted -- Australian sources.

Great story: A 2010 fire on a B-2 stealth bomber in Guam left it heavily damaged. That sparked a four-year — and largely secretive — mission to repair the costly warplane.

The four-year operation to rebuild the military's rarest — and most expensive at $2.1 billion — aircraft involved hundreds of hard-to-find parts, thousands of labor hours, and 300 Air Force and Northrop workers. Many of them, mechanics such as Byrne, left their families in Palmdale and flew 6,000 miles to Guam to work seven days a week for months at a time to restore the stealth bomber.

They spent so much time working on the island, they started calling their temporary home "Guamdale."

The military is quick to say that the B-2 is unlike any other aircraft in the U.S. arsenal. Built to haul more than 20 tons of bombs, it has a wingspan nearly as long as a Boeing 747 jumbo jet yet flies virtually undetected by radar.

Because of its stealth characteristics, it is the first bomber to be sent into heavily defended enemy territory to clear the way for other fighters and bombers by knocking out antiaircraft batteries and radar installations.

On the first night of the NATO operation in Libya in 2011, for instance, three B-2s flew from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, slipped into enemy territory and promptly wiped out 45 targets at an airfield before returning to the U.S.

On Feb. 26, 2010, a B-2 attempted to take off from Guam for a routine training mission when a fireball flashed from a left engine, sparking an onboard blaze that eviscerated the interior of the airplane.

No one aboard was hurt, but the heat was so intense that it melted and warped parts of the B-2's titanium and aluminum frame. The plane's wiring and hydraulic tubing turned into smoldering ash.

Though the damage was bad, the Air Force determined that the plane could be saved. That was good news. A B-2 was completely lost in 2008 after moisture built up in the plane's high-tech sensors and caused it to crash and burn. The pilots safely ejected.

The military said it couldn't afford to lose another of these aircraft. The repairs required more than 1,000 parts ranging in size from small clips to massive sections that support the structure of the aircraft. The project took nearly four years at a cost of more than $105 million, which included a scheduled overhaul.

Oil-rich city of Carson, LA, bans fracking. The action will affect at least 200 OXY USA locations. I guess Carson, LA, is one of those extraordinary sites.

In Minneapolis, nothing stops bicyclists, not even winter. 

There was a healthy bite to the morning air, with the mid-March temperatures stuck in the high-30s, but the two weather-tested bicyclists were unfazed, as though striking out on a leisurely Fourth of July ride.

Dorian Grilley and road partner Nick Mason pedaled along residential side streets still ice-choked from a long winter's pounding. Grilley, 56, rode an old mountain bike with fenders and metal-studded tires. He eased through less-slippery rivulets of melted ice, his back tire throwing up a rooster tail of water, sand and road salt.

Leading the way on his "fat bike," a cartoonish-looking contraption with 4-inch-wide tires designed to roll over snow, the 34-year-old Mason hotdogged out in front; jumping curbs, surging over mounds of street ice, his bike moving with the rumbling determination of a monster truck.

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The Crimean Fallout -- The Tea Leaves This Morning

Headlines across the net:

• Continued political unrest in the Ukraine; economic implosion; Russia simply takes over
• Iranian nculear program gains new momentum as Putin changes course
• new Putin wind in Assad's Syrian sail 
• Estonia feeling cold breeze from the East; Joe Biden reassures (LOL)

The cost of energy just got more expensive (it's just a matter of time):

• Germany vows crackdown on Putin
• G8 is dead
• The mideast is back in play

Putin's new personal anthem, currently #1 in the Crimean:

Time Is On My Side, The Rolling Stones
A #1 hit during the Cold War, 1964/1965.

And, of course, a close #2 in the Ukraine:

You Don't Have To Say You Love Me, Just Be Close At Hand, Dusty Springfield