Maggie's Farm

Why do Luddite environmentalists oppose natural gas drilling? I think it is because they've managed to create a very comfortable life for themselves and are afraid of any outside disturbance to that serenity, which might require them to adapt to a brand new reality. Afraid of change, they do everything in their power to preserve their own status quo with no regard for the costs of their actions on others. Deep down, the motivation is pure selfishness not altruism.

What were they watching in the Situation Room? Probably Leon Panetta, who was following the progress of the raid from Langley, which appears to have had the only direct feed from the field. It's hard to tell whether the audio feed cut out when the video feed went dead, but it appears that it did, and so the blackout may have been complete.

Why isn't the photo of bin Laden's corpse being released? Maybe Obama figures that hiding his birth certificate worked so well for him that he should do the same for the photo? I like Greg Gutfeld's take on it: if the President is afraid that releasing the photo will inflame Muslims, doesn't that mean he's conflating the large majority of moderate Muslims, who would not react that way, with the tiny minority of radicals who would? And isn't that kind of illogical thinking what we call Islamophobia?

Gutfeld is probably right, but I'm wondering whether the President's decision is because he thinks keeping the photo secret means he won't have to share credit with any one else known to the public, except for the anonymous SEALS and CIA operatives whose identities will probably never be revealed (and yes, I do think he is that calculating). Eventually the photo will have to be released from the National Archives, most likely as part of Obama's Presidential papers. Wherever the photo gets displayed, it will be viewed with great curiosity by many people. What better highlight could there be for any Presidential library?

My wife and I shop at Costco and have their Amex card. We use that card almost exclusively these days, even to pay for cruises and other vacation trips. The rebate we get back at the end of each year just from the costs of our travel is more than enough to offset the small membership fee. It puts us way ahead even if we never shopped in our local Costco. However, it happens that the produce we buy there is of much better quality than what we could buy in any other store except for the very expensive ones we choose to avoid. After years of spending more to buy lower quality food at other stores, we signed up and now we enjoy the savings.