He is the Center of the Universe

Possibly. But I dont remember it being Kinky Kelly. I was a little drunk though.

I saw a donkey show in Tijuana many years ago but I'm still fuzzy on what I emotionally learned from it.

Sorry, when I click on the link it takes me to the Times-Picayune at Nola.com at which point there are lots of links but none to this survey. Then I went to PPP's website which also doesn't show this poll. Still I would like to see the same poll given to the Democrats in Louisiana. Might be interesting.

You should read the poll (I'm guessing whoever wrote the associated article didnt). Good luck finding it though. The only reference to it is a screen shot of the question. I'm interested to know how many Democrats thought the same thing. It must have been a lot because they made the poll disappear.

A $4.5 billion penalty is hardly a slap on the wrist. BP has set aside about $38 billion to settle up on the disaster in addition to the fines. There has never been an oil well worth that much money in history. It will certainly have an affect on the way they conduct their business in the future. Statistics do not bear out that ubiquitous gun ownership leads to dramatic increases in gun violence, in fact, quite the opposite is true. And while fracking is certainly not the panacea that many in the gas industry would like everyone to believe it is certainly not the Pandora's box that environmental alarmists would have you believe either.

Everyone's a sinner.

Some probably have that much invested in hardware already. This is just a really expensive system. No charge for the software :)

Fishing with dynamite requires real skill. Use too much and there's no water left. Use too little and you go hungry.

You shouldn't need to ask. Of course we can and why wouldn't we?

Not to mention the millions that have crossed the southern border without any visa at all to take jobs from citizens and benefits from the taxpayers.

Government can't be given credit for organizing activity that took place before they existed. Agriculture predates organized government easily. Governments can be credited with added efficiency (BIG caveat - 'some governments') in certain areas. More often than not history has shown government to be a drag on innovation. When government regulates an industry innovation falls (sometimes not a bad thing: slowing the pace, saving the environment, protecting human rights). There are certainly exceptions to this (Roman Empire, Chinese Dynasties) but government as a whole is not over-credited with creating innovation for a reason. The only thing they can rightfully be credited with is the ability to create a larger scope of innovation and to organize civilization. To give credit for the existence of civilization is ridiculous and ignores history. People that ignore this have an agenda and want to revise history to suit there own political philosophy.

If you think government is the reason business exists you are sadly misinformed. Far more likely is government existing for the sake of business. Government doesn't develop any systems. They simply regulate existing systems at the supposed will of the people.

I really appreciate your rational point by point rebuttal. Perhaps you should go to the library and try finding a book called The Road to Serfdom by Hayek. Where I live, Gasland is considered environmentalist propaganda. Just because it won an Emmy (maybe even more so) doesn't make it factual or even right. Certainly no one has ever considered Hollywood biased in any way. Not to say that there aren't people who will ruin the environment given the chance but most of these sources are extremely one sided (Gasland, Huffpo, NY Times). If you read or watch the news they provide it is always fear, fear, fear. Usually very short on truth or fact. Please point me to any information that indicates that fraccing has polluted consumable ground water (not faulty well design, which is where you righteous indignation should be pointed) . The facts just don't back up the accusations and insinuation. I harbor no animosity towards government or corporations, after all they are each just groups of people just like you or me. The only problem I have is the idea that one is more responsible than the other. You can vote in a publicly traded company just as easily as you can vote for your government (at least in this country). The only difference seems to be that the vote you cast in a corporations seems to actually count. Our government has become much less representative of the people that are voting for them (as was seen in the health care battle) and more representative of the corporations that they are supposedly regulating. I find it unreasonable to think that more regulation from the government that is controlled by the people being regulated will solve anything. You cant have it both ways. As for my perception of reality, I live and work in a gas producing state so my reality might be just a little bit different than the guy who watched a movie about it. Twit

I did a little looking around and can't find any instance of anyone pumping antifreeze up from their well. Perhaps you could provide a citation. When I read the panicked articles about hydraulic fracturing and its possible side affects I notice lots rhetoric and very few facts. If you know anything about geology you will recognize that it would be almost impossible for contamination to reach the ground water being consumed by humans from the depths that gas companies are working at. Their have been instances of faulty drilling techniques being employed (bad casing cement seals) that have allowed drilling fluids to leak up the well bore and into surface waters. On the other hand, there has never been a documented case of fraccing causing contamination to consumable ground water to my knowledge. As for methane in the wells, the gas of any individual well is easily 'fingerprinted' with a gas chromatograph. If the gas coming out of a water well has the same makeup as the gas coming out of a nearby gas well then contamination is a given (doesn't happen very often, can only find about 15 cases out of 10s of thousands of gas and oil wells and it is usually pinned on faulty cement around well casing not fraccing). Methane is a naturally occurring substance (from decomposition) and is present to some extent in almost all water wells. Sometimes people aren't even aware of its presence until something makes them think to look (such as a gas company deciding to drill a well near their home).