Not Actually All That Much

4% premium for apartments near light rail isn't actually all that much.

When I was househunting in the urban hellhole, I was struck by how little the subject of public transit ever came up (agents, ads, etc.). It isn't a concern for everyone, but it is for some. Eventually I decided that real estate agents have highly car-dependent jobs so it wasn't really on their radar.

(ht reader j)

I'll Have The Coated Crab Soup Please

Very, very modest.

BARATARIA BAY, La. -- The sand dunes and islands of Barataria Bay, a huge expanse of water and marsh on Louisiana's coast, have become the latest casualty of the environmental disaster spewing from BP's offshore well. And fishermen are bitter.

Oil-caked birds, stranded sea turtles, globs of gooey brown crude on beaches, coated crabs and mats of tar have been found throughout the inlets and mangroves that dot the bay. The oil has coated the water with a rainbow sheen and is threatening the complex web of wetlands, marshes and bayous that make up this ecological and historic treasure.

...

"The whole place is full of oil," said fishing guide Dave Marino. "This is some of the best fishing in the whole region, and the oil's coming in just wave after wave. It's hard to stomach, it really is.

Keeping The White Man Down

Aside from Pat Buchanan who, while having despicable views, at least understands the racial-ethnic tribalism he pushes. Most of the rest would deny that they ever favor the white guy, while assuming that any black person in power is inevitably guided by racial preferences.

Could Do More

Fed interest rate should be lower, but it can't be lower than zero...

Nightmare Well

I hope some day Obama stops listening to The Men In Nice Suits so often and starts listening to the hippies a bit more frequently.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Six days before the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, a BP drilling engineer called the rig a ''nightmare well'' that had caused the company problems in the past.

The first link covers the decision making process behind the awesome plan to expand offshore drilling. Nobody could have predicted and all that.

What Took Them So Long

I've long been puzzled by the persistence of pay-for-Wifi in places like Starbucks and especially at would-be competitors where free wifi could provide them with a bit of an advantage. Maybe they knew what they were doing, or maybe it just hurts to give away anything for free.

Very, Very Modest

And besides, all the dolphins can just swim away.

Street Term

Maybe even a little bit ghetto.

One of largest pet peeves is when DC pundits hit the fainting couch over a "bad" word, especially one like ass which doesn't even really qualify. People in DC swear. I've heard members Congress who just met me swear. Reporters have to hear this stuff all the time.

Ongoing

BP's people aren't exactly playing the role of pessimists about this crisis, and even they say that at best maybe kinda sorta they can capture significantly more oil by the middle of next month.

Unemployable

As Brad says, long term unemployment is a problem not just because of the immediate pain, but also because of the fact that over time these people find that their skills become more and more mismatched with the needs of employers even if the economy turns around.

Pensioners

As people are discussing in the comments, the poor impoverished BP invested British pensioner story has also taken hold.


BP's 10 largest investors.

Dividends Are Not Guaranteed

The degree to which the media buys into this narrative of shareholders' god given rights to annual dividends is weird.

And Speaking Of Hundreds of Billions

To put things in a bit of context, the internet tells me we've spent roughly $250 billion on the war in Afghanistan. The CIA tells me annual GDP is about $25 billion there.

DoD Infowar

I started to look into this a bit this morning, but kudos to Ambinder for pointing out that the ZOMG THERE'S LITHIUM UNDER THESE HILLS scoop isn't new, just a DoD press operation.

So how many more hundreds of billions should we spend to safeguard a trillion worth of minerals?

The Worst Person In The World

Rep. Bob Etheridge (D-Asshole)

I Love Newspaper Commenters

Favorite so far over at Ezra's place:

Thank God we have oil companies who supply the fuel that drives our free-market system which has produced the greatest most dynamic standard of living known to mankind.

Not Very Hopeful

You don't even have to look outside our own country to understand that the benefits of resource extraction go to the few, not the many, and corrupt government and environmental degradation are fringe benefits.

It doesn't have to be that way, but somehow it always is.

Morning Thread

And It Dropped

Was waiting for the reason for our excellent adventure to endure indefinitely to appear.

WASHINGTON — The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Wolverines!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I hate to be the bearer of bad tidings, but I have grim news: "Red Dawn" isn't coming Nov. 24, as the conservative blogs have all promised. In fact, no one knows when the movie will ever be released. Although it sounds like yet another liberal Hollywood conspiracy, the movie (which was filmed in Detroit last year) is suffering from a far bigger problem: It was made by MGM, and MGM has run out of money. The troubled studio managed to make several movies recently, one that was already released ("Hot Tub Time Machine"), one that is being released next year by Sony ("The Zookeeper") and one, "Red Dawn," that is in the can but may stay there for quite a while, at least until someone buys MGM or provides the kind of big investment needed to market and distribute new films.

According to an MGM insider, the bloggers have a few other things wrong beside that release date. The film didn't cost $75 million. It was made for $42 million, thanks to a load of tax breaks from being filmed in Michigan. It doesn't have any music by Toby Keith, because no one has recorded any music for its soundtrack yet. (Keith's name was simply used as a reference in the script.) And Tom Cruise's son, Connor, isn't the star, simply one of an ensemble of young actors paying the roles handled by Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen and C. Thomas Howell in the original.