NPR: Truth In Renewable Energy Costs -- The Road To New England -- August 23, 2014; Hopefully $125 Million Makes People Feel Better

The first link was sent to me by Steven. Thank you.

Note the source: New Hampshire Public Radio. One wonders how much influence the liberal college students have in these decisions, that once they leave the state will not be affected by the results.

New Hampshire Public Radio is reporting:

A new biomass plant in Berlin is finally producing electricity for Public Service of New Hampshire under a controversial 20-year contract that a report says will cost PSNH ratepayers $125 million more than if the electricity was purchased on the open market...

That estimate came from the consulting firm of La Capra Associates which did the report for the state's Public Utilities Commission as part of a wide-ranging review of PSNH’s operations.

In a statement PSNH said the La Capra report isn’t a sure thing because its conclusions are “highly dependent on a number of issues that are uncertain and difficult to predict - the future price of gas, the retirement of other power plants, and new infrastructure development, among other things." 

My hunch: the estimates are low-balled; they don't want to be responsible for any public lynchings or Ferguson-like looting by disgruntled citizens.

I'm always impressed how precise the estimates can be. In this case,  $125 million, not "more than $100 million" or "more than $125 million," but precisely $125 million. 

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Chess

Was Putin correct, Obama wrong? Their thoughts, not mine, as being reported by The Washington Post:

What a difference a year makes. Around this time last year, the West was gearing up for military action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was accused of carrying out chemical weapons attacks on his own people. That intervention never came to pass, not least because domestic public opinion in countries such as Britain and the United States was opposed to further entanglements in the Middle East.

It will be interesting to read the history books 30 years from now. My hunch: there will be a totally new ranking of worse presidents ever, and Jimmy Carter will no longer be among the top three.

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Baffled

Even the mainstream press is ... well, baffled.... FoxNews is reporting:

President Obama has few remaining friends—either in his own party or in the media.

That’s the unmistakable conclusion of two pieces this week in the New York Times. Just about everyone, it seems, is down on his single, solitary nature.

I’ve been saying for a year now that the president’s liberal media allies have soured on him. It started with the ObamaCare debacle and continued through his seeming passivity or slow reaction time in the wake of the VA scandal, the Bowe Bergdahl mess, the military collapse in Iraq and so on.

At this point they’re basically Waiting for Hillary.

What is striking now is a growing sense, fairly or unfairly, that Obama is not capable of rising to the occasion, that he just doesn’t like politics, that he’s disengaged, that despite his soaring rhetoric in 2008 he has a passion deficit.

I don't think he's even phoning it in even more. 

By the way, with regard to that "passion deficit" -- listen to that speech after the video-taped beheading, something about justice, and then off to golf.

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In mainstream media, night of August 23, 2014, it is being reported that ISIS is about ready to massacre an Iraqi village (through the UN) and the president issues an executive order directing a federal review of the informal process of "militarizing" America's police.  Could the Feds disarm American law enforcement?