WSJ gets #PeakOil, #Bakken totally wrong

Peak Oil denialism and minimalization is perhaps not quite as politically predictable as climate change denialism, but, it's probably not that far away. And, when you can combine that with a faint hint of neoconservativism, all the better!

So, it's no surprise that Wall Street Journal/Cato nutbar opiner Stephen Moore says, with the help of a willing mouthpiece that North Dakota's Bakken oil shale formation means the Peace Garden State is the new Saudi Arabia and that OPEC's days are numbered.

And, when your nutbar is willing to do serious fluffing, all the better!

How much oil does Bakken have? The official estimate of the U.S. Geological Survey a few years ago was between four and five billion barrels. (Harold Hamm, the Oklahoma-based founder and CEO of Continental Resources) disagrees: "No way. We estimate that the entire field, fully developed, in Bakken is 24 billion barrels."

Uhh, Hamm's beer doesn't have that much cheap canned crap. The estimates are held in common by  others, not just USGS, as this site notes. Wikipedia has more; per its links, the highest claim I've seen is 18 billion barrels, and that's with a highly controversial claim of 50 percent oil recoverability. To get to Hamm's 24 billion barrels, unless he's also moving the goalposts on estimated reserves, you'd have to have 67 percent recoverability. And, at what per-barrel price are harder-to-reach portions of the reserves here worth recovering?

Oh, and this does NOT make Saudi Arabia irrelevant. Even with whatever fluffing it's doing, KSA claims more than 250 billion barrels of reserves. And, as of last year, OPEC overall had more than 80 percent of world reserves. Beyond that, Hamm tells a flat lie; OPEC production as a share of world production is increasing. So, reality? Per other quotes in the story, this is just the WSJ and Moore finding an excuse to bash alternative energy. Moore goes on to downplay other issues with shale oil drilling and more, unsurprisingly.

Why does the Wall Street Journal hate America?

On its opinion page, I caught the Journal in an outright lie.

That said, chill, Dems; the lie, when corrected, redounds most poorly on the Slickster, not either Bush or St. Ronald of Reagan.

A lame-o op-ed, a Faux-ditorial if we will, since the WSJ is part of Rupertville, totally ignores what everybody with economic knowledge knows: the income gap in the U.S. is the worst since at least the Depression, if not the last 100 years.

Instead, it uses the editorial as an excuse to bash Obama.

As far as income inequality measured by the Gini index? The WSJ tells an outright lie with the claim that it hasn't changed much. Wikipedia shows otherwise.

We have about as bad of income disparity as Mexico! And, the gap is ... closing. If current trends continue, we will be more income-disparate than Mexico in 20 years or so.

That said, both parties are to blame. While the problem got moderately worse under Reagan, it really got worse under neolib, China-loving Bill Clinton, more than under Reagan or either Bush.

Wiki has more on American income inequality here and here.

Peggy Noonan is a major leaguer

A .333 batting average is major-league level, including for Peggy Noonan, who calls Deepwater Horizon President Obama's third political crisis.

Wrong; it's his first. (You might wish it was his third, but, even in the Bizzaro world of the WSJ op-ed section, wishing don't make it so.)

Health care reform was a political win for Obama, of course, contrary to you, Nooners. That said, Obama almost made it become a crisis, including the Scott Brown win in Massachusetts. (If Coakley won, we might STILL be in a House-Senate conference room or something, no closer to health care reform of any sort, so Brown's win might have even been a blessing in disguise for The One.)

Illegal immigration? Not a crisis yet, at least. It may be a boon, if it locks in Hispanics in New Mexico, Colorado and Nevada. Given that those last two states will likely each pick up an electoral vote, that's a bit better, even.

So, big fail, Nooners.

That said, depending on how a climate bill, and other regulatory issues, play out, Obama may transform Deepwater Horizon out of crisis for him.

Or he may not.

How Murdoch is ruining the Wall Street Journal

Despite initial pledges it wouldn't happen, Rupert Murdoch, through hand-picked editorial minions, is clearly politicizing news coverage at the Journal. And, I have no doubt this is not the end.

The Wall Street Journal’s BIG lies on healthcare

The lies in an opinion piece start with the claim 9 of 10 people under 65 are insured already.

The claim that states with “guaranteed issue” of insurance are struggling? Well, deductibility of corporate-offered insurance is a federal, not state tax issue, so already, the WSJ is comparing apples and oranges. As for costs, well, New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts have high overall costs of living, so what do you expect?

Fake bipartisanship of Charles Grassley

Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal goes deep in the tank for Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley in a partisan attempt to establish his “bipartisanship” on healthcare issues.

First, he hasn’t been bipartisan on national healthcare from the start. By ruling out any single-payer plan’s acceptability from the get-go, he said he was going to be partisan about certain issues.

As for his Twittering skills, Strassel leaves out the hiliarious “hammer” Tweet. (Which, given his blanket opposition to single-payer, could be a self-hoisting petard anyway, as to who sees everything as a hammer.)

If Grassley really wants to be “bipartisan,” he can discuss the details of a government-payer system and details of how to structure funding. But, for those of us to the left of Obama, let alone Grassley, a single-payer option IS a cost reducer.

And, with the AMA on board for the House bill, the “bipartisanship goalposts” have now been moved, anyway.

Could Murdoch hack US lawmaker info too?

Rupert Murdoch’s British newspapers have paid more than £1 million in fines for a variety of illegal hacking operations into the private data of British public officials, including cell phone accounts, tax records, bank statements and more.

And, considering that a former Conservative Party PR chief, who moved to Murdoch’s British news empire, was behind much of this, you have to think twice before saying it couldn’t happen here.

Picture if the often thrown-off WSJ op-ed page did something similar.

WSJ: FOR supply-side economics except when it’s against it

Michael Boskin claims President Barack Obama is lying about his pledge not to raise taxes on anybody making less than $250,000, because every dollar of additional debt today means a dollar of additional taxes tomorrow.

Well, the definition of “stimulus” is, stimulating the economy so people and companies make more and therefore eat back into that debt without tax increases.

Sure, there’s no guarantee a government-fueled stimulus will work the way its proponents claim.

But, given that we never heard any Boskin outcry about Reaganomics, he’s in a pretty weak place to be firing deficit spitballs.

Murdoch lie about ‘hands off WSJ’ exposed

Marcus W. Brauchli is resigning as managing editor of the Wall Street Journal.

Why?

Reportedly, frustration over some of the changes Murdoch has made since acquiring the Journal, plus losing some control since the takeover.

And, (shock me), because Murdoch wants a quick payback on his purchase by lopping heads:

Journal newsroom employees say that Mr. Murdoch and the publisher he installed, Robert J. Thomson, have made it clear that they think the paper has too many editors, and have instructed Mr. Brauchli to thin the ranks, potentially making room in the headcount for more reporters. Two people briefed on Mr. Brauchli’s thinking said that had become a major point of contention.

Supposedly, he also doesn’t like Thompson looking over his shoulder as a “supereditor.” Well, since Thomson came from the Murdoch-decimated Times (of London), that’s probably not unexpected either.

WSJ says recession is here and could be bad

And, many of the economists surveyed by the Wall Street Journal expect this one to be worse that those in 1990-91 or 2001.

“The evidence is now beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Scott Anderson of Wells Fargo & Co., who was among the 71 percent of 51 respondents to say that the economy is now in a recession.

Some details from the survey:

Twenty economists now expect payrolls to shrink outright. And the average forecast for the unemployment rate was raised to 5.5 percent by December from 4.8 percent in the previous survey.

Twenty-nine of 55 respondents said they expect the economy to contract in the current quarter and 25 expect it to do so in the second.

The economists also expressed growing concerns that a 2008 recession could be worse than both the 2001 and 1990-91 downturns. They put the odds of a deeper downturn at an average 48 percent, up from 39 percent in the previous survey.

I don’t see how anybody not inside the Bush Administration can deny that we’re in a recession if the nation’s financial newspaper of record says so.

Speaking of that, the one silver lining is that Ben Bernanke, The Worst Fed Head Since Greenspan™, may be out on his ass if a Democrat is in the White House next year:

The economists gave the Fed chairman just a 59 percent chance of being reappointed in 2010. “If a Democrat is elected he won’t be reappointed, and (presumptive Republican presidential nominee John) McCain may opt for another, too,” said David Resler of Nomura Securities. “The problems occurred on his watch,” added Ram Bhagavatula of Combinatorics Capital.

A small blessing, but yes, a blessing.

How to misrepresent European politics, 101

The WSJ editorial page, in discussing the possibility of Mike Huckabee remaking the GOP into an American version of a Christian Democrat party, blames European Christian Democrats for everything this side of the plague and crack cocaine.

Among the predictable canards is blaming Christian Democrats for a “high” unemployment rate, without even explaining that Europe calculates unemployment far differently than we do, and that, it doesn’t lock up a bumch of drug-related criminals; that, combined with the drug-war infrastructure here, has a definite effect on U.S. unemployment numbers, too.

In short, if we compared apples to apples, the unemployment rate difference would be cut in half.

The WSJ also fails to mention 4-5 weeks of paid vacation, national health care and other things that we just don’t enjoy here.

As usual, they’re not reading their own news pages, of course.