New GOP Bumperstickers, Fracking Is The Next Ponzi Scheme

Geoffrey Stone
Matthew Continetti

"Sarah Palin has canceled the rest of her bus trip around America. She had to quit before she got to Mount Rushmore and somebody asked her to name the Presidents.” – Jay Leno

"Earlier tonight President Obama gave his speech about Afghanistan. He's starting a new phase in the military campaign called operation reelection." – Jay Leno

“New Republican Presidential candidate Jon Huntsman is fluent in Chinese. In a short period of time the Republicans have come quite a long way. The last Republican president wasn't even fluent in English." – David Letterman

"Most Americans know Jon Huntsman as 'the candidate most Americans don't know.' Gov. Huntsman's announcement puts him somewhere between Ron Paul and Count Chocula as the favorite to win the GOP nomination." –Jimmy Kimmel

Well, that's what they get for not paying Union wages: first, Newt Gingrich's staff quits, and now Herman Cain's man in New Hampshire also has quit, saying that it was lonely being the only representative of the Godfather in the state. If you are an opponent of Mr Cain, feel free to use the slogan I made up over the weekend:

Cain's Not Able...

I spent the weekend watching a marathon on the science channels, so I was distracted from US politics. But I did come up with a few snarky slogans, only one which is favorable towards a candidate. For some reason I like John Huntsman, who is from Idaho, went to Cina as ambassador for Mr Obaba, and now has set up his campaign in Orlando, Florida. A little disconcerting, is the fact that John keeps having his name spelled as both John and Jon in the press, is one a more liberal interpretation than the other?

Join the Huntsman

Kinda nice? I thought of it after making a hard-on joke about John Boehner and the pronounciation of his last name. Poor Boehner, just your average, midwestern alcoholic. Soon the stories of his boorish behavior will make their way from being whispered in Washington, to being published on TMZ:

Joint Boehner

And if we wanted to name the incoming group of freshman tea party Congressmen, we might call them Newtcomers, or if you are in the porn industry, Newtcummers... Michele Bachmann could be considered an honorable one, as much as she's trying to suck up to the tea party folks, whomever they are. She is making speeches in Iowa right now, with the message being, "I'm not really a big flake..." Michele is trying so hard to appear normal to midwestern voters that she is going into:

Bachmann's Religious Overdrive

In the spirit of Anthony Weiner, the closest I could come up with Mit Romney, was that Mitt just lets you know who will be the catcher and who will be the pitcher in this relationship... And poor Sarah Palin, I don't know what compels her now to fail on the national stage, to constantly embarrass herself in front of such a large audience. She needs to stay scripted, like in Sarah Palin's Alaska, which we may never see again. In light of her quitting her tour of America, where she was supposed to give speeches in front of famous landmarks, she turned tail and went home to Alaska after messing up the Boston speech. Unfortunately, she is dragging along her whole family, who probably will be scarred for life. Another trivia fact, I hadn't realized that having lunch with Donald Trump counted as much as Paul Revere's midnight ride in patriotic brownie points:

Sarah Palin: Go Big, Then Go Home...

Who knows, maybe Sarah will go next to Texas, and help governor Rick Perry fight the gossip going around that he's actually GAY...

Ex- Homeland Security head honcho Tom Ridge was on the Colbert Report, pushing his new book. He was responsible for the color-coded threat level, as if you could predict the terrorist threat level like a smog alert. He is another example of the idiots that George Bush hired to run his government... Anyway, his new gig is being a lobbyist for the shale natural gas industry. You might have seen commercials on TV, touting the abundance and accessibility of natural gas trapped in shale deposits, and how it could solve all of our energy problems in the future. If you had some money to invest, you might be tempted to invest in some of these surefire companies like Chesapeake Energy, who have been fracking natural gas for the last ten years...

Welcome to the next ponzi scheme, where a fool and their life savings are soon parted. It turns out that most wells that actually turn up natural gas go bust after a year or two, leaving the company that drilled the well in debt. Less than 10% of proposed wells turn up any natural gas at all, because the gas companies don't have to test drill to determine if there's any gas in the area, they get to make guesses and computer models based on those guesses, and then present those "facts" to investors. Even when fracking used to be used only on water wells to improve the amount and flow of well water, the process of fracking never guaranteed to work. Only after the process was all done could you tell if it had produced any more water. And now they are using this to obtain natural gas...

New rules at the Dept of Energy, made by the director appointed by George W Bush eleven days before he left office, let's the gas industry get away with this pack of lies. They use over a million gallons of water per well, mixed with other toxic chemicals, to form a drill like a water pik to get at the gas in the shale beds. It creates fractures in the shale bed, which, hopefully, then allows the gas to be collected and siphoned off. It's pure hit or miss, because they are guessing that the gas is there, and they are also gambling that they won't contaminate any underground water table in the process. Less than 20% of the wells drilled have found natural gas so far, and less than 10% of those are still pumping after two years. The natural gas from the wells that do produce hasn't affected the pricing of natural gas at all, if anything, it has gone up to recoup the cost of drilling...

So fracking for natural gas will be one of the next scandals you will be reading about, the NY Times has done a couple of articles based on emails they obtained from industry leaders and government employees. Hopefully, we will have investigated more about this myth and mirage of an industry. In industry speak: " One senior Energy Information Administration official describes an “irrational exuberance” around shale gas. An internal Energy Information Administration document says companies have exaggerated “the appearance of shale gas well profitability,” are highlighting the performance of only their best wells and may be using overly optimistic models for projecting the wells’ productivity over the next several decades."

“The potential for natural gas is enormous,” - President Obama

“It is quite likely that many of these companies will go bankrupt,” - a senior adviser to the Energy Information Administration

“Am I just totally crazy, or does it seem like everyone and their mothers are endorsing shale gas without getting a really good understanding of the economics at the business level?” - an energy analyst