W. Niederhut

Well said, Denny. I had hoped that Biden would prove an exception to the rule of silence-- as the first Irish Catholic POTUS since JFK-- but no dice. Biden has been too deeply enmeshed in our military-industrial-intelligence complex for too many years. Now it looks like our only insight into the classified records might come from Tucker Carlson's mysterious "source."

This GOP balloon trope reminds me of Karl Rove's "Freedom Fries" and "waffle" tropes from 2003 and 2004. And I can understand why the GOP would prefer to focus on balloons, rather than on policy issues. Can you picture the Koch/GOP focusing, instead, on advertising their Four Free-dumbs? 1) Free-dumb from history 2) Free-dumb from science 3) Free-dumb from democracy 4) Free-dumb from Donk taxes on billionaires and corporations

Opinion | Republicans Are Coming With Knives to Gut FDR's New Deal | Common Dreams February 6, 2023

Dammit. Biden is pulling a Trump on us. If I recall correctly, when President George H.W. Bush ("Mr. George Bush of the CIA") signed the JFK Records Act in 1992, he attached a rider granting the POTUS the authority to withhold records at his own discretion.

Ben, Trump's signature legislative "achievement" as POTUS was his December 2017 Billionaire Tax Cut & Healthcare Demolition Act. It was a Koch brother's dream come true-- massive tax cuts for corporations and billionaires, mandated cuts in Medicaid and Medicare, and a rider abolishing the Obamacare individual mandate. Trump also approved the Keystone export pipeline for los Hermanos Koch. The only reason the Kochs are ditching Trump now is that he has become a liability. As for your notion that the Koch-to-pus is purple-- it's laughable. It's like arguing that Liberace was heterosexual.

Here is more history, for Ben and Mathew Koch, debunking their purple revisionist delusions about the Koch agenda. Recall that the Koch brothers were focused for decades on their "misanthropic libertarian" agenda to roll back the New Deal, abolish Medicare, and obstruct environmental protection and climate change mitigation. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell were two of their main Congressional bell hops. Mike Pence is another Koch bell hop. They also spent big bucks to sabotage Obamacare. The Trump/McConnell/Ryan Billionaire Tax Cuts & Healthcare Demolition Act of December 2017 came straight from the Koch's Heritage Foundation. It was a Koch dream come true, which also mandated major cuts in Medicaid spending. Anyone who thinks that Trump wasn't serving the Koch agenda is living in an alternate MAGA-verse. Koch Money Aims to Sink Build Back Better Bill on Climate, Welfare – Rolling Stone

Historical reality check for Ben and Mathew Koch... Did the Kochs Bring Us President Trump? | HuffPost Latest News December 2, 2016 Excerpt The 2016 election – in which the Koch network pledged nearly $900 million – saw Republicans recapture the White House despite losing the overall vote (which Hillary Clinton now leads by over 2.5 million votes). ‘Trump’s Koch Administration’ Donald Trump wasn’t the Kochs’ choice for president, but he still benefited from their powerful network. While the Kochs held back on funding efforts specifically for Trump, they spent heavily to get out the vote for Republicans in key swing states. This helped secure Trump’s win. Since then, the Trump team has tapped so many Koch operatives for top positions that Politico dubbed it “Trump’s Koch administration.” High profile selections include Vice President-elect Mike Pence, a Koch favorite. Trump’s choice to head the CIA, Mike Pompeo, is, like the Kochs, from Wichita, Kansas, and is so close with the brothers he earned the nickname the “congressman from Koch.” Billionaire Wilbur Ross, Trump’s pick for Commerce Secretary, is a personal friend of David’s. For Education Secretary, Trump has tapped billionaire Betsy DeVos. The DeVos family, which owns Amway, has partnered with the Kochs for years, focusing on their home state of Michigan. “I have decided... to stop taking offense at the suggestion that we are buying influence,” Betsy DeVos said of her family’s massive political contributions. “Now, I simply concede the point.” (Betsy’s hushand, Dick DeVos, spent $35 million on his unsuccessful 2006 run for Michigan governor. Betsy’s brother, Erik Prince, founded the mercenary group Blackwater.) Helping lead Trump’s transition team is Rebekah Mercer, whose family has given more than $25 million to the Koch network. Mercer also funds the racist Breitbart News and is close with the site’s former editor, Steve Bannon, who headed up Trump’s campaign and will now be his chief strategist in the White House. Leading Trump’s EPA transition team is Myron Ebell who, like both Trump and the Kochs, is a climate change denier. Ebell works at the Competitive Enterprise Network, which receives funding from the Koch network. Plenty of other, lesser-known names from the Koch network have also been tapped by Trump, who pledged to “drain the swamp” in Washington. The Trump/Koch Administration

Well, I'm shocked, shocked to learn that Ben still hasn't read Nancy MacLean's book, Democracy in Chains, and still doesn't know that the Koch brothers bought the GOP in 2010. Trump was the Koch's 2016 Trojan Horse who approved the Keystone pipeline and cut taxes in 2017. Now he's a GOP liability. And Ben still hasn't figured out that Trump's campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was in frequent contact with Russian GRU agent Konstantin Kilimnik in 2016. (Not to mention the Trump campaign's 2016 meeting with Veselnitskaya.) Ben reminds me of the Dallas Cowboy's kicker who missed four extra points in that recent playoff game.

John, Newsflash. Trump has been in Putin's pocket for years. Trump-Russia Business Ties and Financial Dealings (businessinsider.com)

Newsflash, Lance. All theories about 9/11 are "conspiracy theories," as the Swiss "Gladio" historian, Daniel Ganser, has pointed out. See if you can figure that one out. So much for generalizations about "conspiracy theories." The least plausible "conspiracy theory" about 9/11 is the official Bush/Cheney/Zelikow conspiracy theory. It is refuted by overwhelming evidence of U.S. military, CIA, FBI, Saudi, and Mossad involvement in the 9/11 "New Pearl Harbor" op. As for David Ray Griffin, people interested in the subject should read his scholarly analyses of the 9/11 evidence and judge for themselves, rather than being manipulated by the ubiquitous, false "spin" in the mainstream (and social) media.

Remember when Benjamin Cole and Jeff Carter were raving about Bill Barr's wonderful Durham Report, (before Michael Sussman's acquittal) claiming that Durham's investigation had proven that Russiagate was a hoax? 🤥 That flamer ranked among Ben and Jeff's greatest Education Forum hits, along with their claims that Trump's J6 mob attack on Congress wasn't really a coup attempt. Durham's dud is worse than it looks — and now Trump suddenly doesn't want to talk witch hunts Trump’s attempt to bring disrepute to the Mueller report just backfired spectacularly By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV Columnist PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 4, 2023 6:01AM (EST) It all goes back to Trump's obsessions. The thing that you've got to remember about Trump, bless his black heart, is that his obsessions invariably take him to places he would rather not have gone. In fact, the entire reason John Durham was ever appointed by Attorney General William Barr as a Special Counsel to look into the origins of Robert Mueller's Russia investigation in the first place had to do with Trump's obsessions. He was obsessed that the entire thing, which he famously and repeatedly called the Russia! Russia! Russia! witch hunt, was a plot by the FBI to get him. So, Trump had Barr appoint Durham to investigate the investigators. Put another way, Trump weaponized the Justice Department to pursue his perceived enemies in the FBI, beginning with his nemesis James Comey, the former head who first opened the investigation into the Trump campaign's ties to Russia way back in July of 2016. The Durham investigation, as it became known over the last four years, has been in the news a lot recently. Durham was appointed in May 2019 to investigate the so-called Crossfire Hurricane FBI counterintelligence investigation, as well as the Mueller investigation, which ran from May 2017 to March 2019. A year into Durham's investigation, at a Department of Justice press conference, then-attorney general Barr said what he was trying to do was "get to the bottom of what happened in 2016," which is interesting in and of itself, because the only investigation taking place in 2016 was the FBI's. Durham wasted four years — twice as long as Mueller's probe — and God-only-knows how many taxpayer dollars without convicting anyone of wrongdoing (he lost both cases he brought to court) or establishing the conspiracy Trump and Barr had long said lay behind the Russia investigation. Our first clue is the date in Barr's statement above: 2016. Trump was convinced that the FBI, and in particular James Comey, was out to get him. Trump put Comey through what amounted to a loyalty test soon after he took office, inviting him to dinner, and while Comey was there, under the influence of the splendor of the White House and the power of being in Trump's presence, asking him if he could go easy on Michael Flynn, who had resigned as Trump's national security adviser the previous day when it became known that he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December of 2016. Comey demurred, and Flynn went on to be indicted and convicted of lying to the FBI about the same matter. Trump apparently never forgave Comey, especially after Comey testified before the House Intelligence Committee the following month that the Trump campaign had secretly been under investigation since July 2016. Trump fired him just two months later, on May 9, and was infuriated when he found out that Comey had flown on a government jet back to Washington after his termination. Oh, what a web is woven when you start digging. Durham went after the Mueller investigation and ended up finding out that there actually was good cause for the FBI to investigate the Trump campaign's connections with Russians. Go figure. Trump's attempt to bring disrepute to the Mueller report by getting Barr to appoint a special counsel to investigate the investigators has backfired spectacularly. Two indictments of minor characters, two not-guilty findings by juries, several resignations from the special counsel staff in protest over Durham's methods, and no holes whatsoever blown in the Mueller investigation. https://www.salon.com/2023/02/04/durhams-dud-is-worse-than-it-looks--now-suddenly-doesnt-want-to-talk-witch-hunts/

Total bunk, Jeff. Bush and Cheney's Iraq WMD believers are similar to Trump's MAGA dupes who keep insisting that Russiagate was a hoax-- and I say that as a guy who suspected Bush's Iraq WMD sales pitch was a hoax in March of 2003, when he first invaded Iraq. I believed Hans Blix at the time. If you still claim that Russiagate was a hoax, step up to the plate and answer my Russiagate questions (above.)

There's nothing "eccentric" about Professor David Ray Griffin's excellent, scholarly analyses of 9/11. I would recommend Griffin's books on 9/11 to anyone interested in understanding the truth about 9/11, along with the scientific analyses of the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. https://www.ae911truth.org/evidence/evidence-overview All of the serious, accurate research and analysis of the 9/11 op has been aggressively censored and misrepresented in the U.S. mainstream media for the past 21 years. It's Orwellian. War is peace. Slavery is freedom. Muslims did it, etc., etc. BTW, where is the humanistic concern around here about the dishonest scapegoating of Muslims? How many Muslims have the U.S. and NATO killed since 9/11? The official Bush/Cheney/Zelikow Al Qaeda "conspiracy theory" about 9/11 is bunk, as is the NIST's computer "simulation" of the WTC demolitions. The truth is that the World Trade Center skyscrapers (WTC1, WTC2, and WTC7) were demolished by pre-planted explosives on 9/11. The serial explosions that demolished the Twin Towers are clearly visible (and audible) on film, and there was zero resistance to abrupt, symmetrical, free fall collapse. As for Laurent Guyenot, I have only read two of his books; JFK to 9/11--50 Years of Deep State, and his monograph about Yahweh and Judaic history. Both were scholarly and well-written. Nothing "kooky" about them. Personally, I am skeptical of Guyenot's theories about Israeli involvement in the JFK assassination. I have never endorsed Guyenot's Israeli/JFKA theory here or anywhere. Angleton is the only reason I wonder about it. In posting Guyenot's recent review of JFK--Destiny Betrayed, I was more interested in his comments about LBJ's putative role in the JFK assassination.

Quite correct. And Biblical scholars like Harvard's Helmut Koester have dated the Pauline Epistles to 45-64 A.D., and the Synoptic Gospels to 70 A.D. at the latest. They were based on the testimony of witnesses. Also, St. Luke (a physician from Antioch) was a friend and companion of St. Paul, whose original history of the Church, the Acts of the Apostles, was based, in part, on his direct observation of events terminating in Paul's execution in Rome in 64 A.D. But few Protestants and Roman Catholics know the true history of the Church in the first millennium of Christendom-- at the five ancient Patriarchates of Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Rome and Constantinople. The Bishop of Rome was always merely the "Patriarch of the West," and "primus inter pares"-- first among equals-- prior to 1054 A.D. and the establishment of the monarchical Papacy in Western Europe. After 1054 A.D., the Papacy systematically misrepresented the history of the Church to create the false impression that the Church originated in Rome, and the Bishop of Rome had always served as a monarchical Pope of the entire Church. In reality, the Great Ecumenical Councils of the Church were convoked in the Orthodox East by the Roman Emperors at Constantinople. (Rome was sacked by the Arian Ostrogoths in the early 5th century.) Nor was the original Church wasn't anti-Semitic. In fact, it was established by the Jews. It originated in the Jewish communities in Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Anatolia, and the Levant, and the ancient Orthodox Christian liturgies and praxis were derived directly from Judaism. As for 9/11, the perennial third rail in modern American discourse... Since Lance Payette has raised the subject of Guyenot's writings about Israel and 9/11, let me ask a few questions. (To date, Lance has never answered a single question that I have ever posted here, but I'll try again.) How much does Lance know about Larry Silverstein-- Bibi Netanyahu's close friend-- who was awarded the lease to the WTC Twin Towers by the Port Authority in July of 2001? Silverstein was in charge of WTC security during the weeks prior to 9/11. Yet, he was never interviewed by Phillip Zelikow's 9/11 Commission. Silverstein's insurance payout for the 9/11 WTC demolitions was $4.5 billion. Cui bono? Silverstein conveniently skipped his morning breakfast meeting in the WTC on 9/11 then later, "told them to pull" his WTC7 before the skyscraper collapsed in an expert, free fall demolition. Who was Silverstein referring to as, "them?" Certainly, not the NYFD. How much has Lance read about the "Five Dancing Israeli" Mossad agents who were arrested near Giant's Stadium in Rutherford, New Jersey on 9/11, after witnesses saw them filming and celebrating the demolitions of the WTC Twin Towers in Liberty State Park? (Their employer at Urban Moving Systems in Weehawken, New Jersey, Dominick Suter, is a known Mossad agent who fled to Israel after his "Five Dancing Israeli" employees were arrested on 9/11.) The "Five" were arrested and detained by the FBI for 70 days before being quietly released to Israel. Their celebratory 9/11 photos were eventually released by the FBI, after an FOIA lawsuit.) The five young men later announced on Israeli television that they were in Liberty State Park on the morning of 9/11 to "document the event." But how did the Five Dancers know in advance that there was going to be an event on 9/11? And why were they celebrating? At the very least, the facts in the case indicate that the Mossad had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks on the WTC. Also, to Lance's knowledge, have the Israelis ever been known to dress up like Arabs while blowing up buildings? (Hint: Menachem Begin. Irgun. King David Hotel. Lavon Affair.) Finally, Lance, does the Babylonian Talmud say anything about the permissibility of Israelites killing the beastly goyim to advance the interests of Israel? How "kooky" does Guyenot's analysis sound to people familiar with these subjects?

Columbia Journalism Review’s Big Fail: It Published 24,000 Words on Russiagate and Missed the Point The magazine’s attempted takedown of the media’s coverage bolsters Trump’s phony narrative. Columbia Journalism Review’s Big Fail: It Published 24,000 Words on Russiagate and Missed the Point – Mother Jones

Lance, Again, you are misrepresenting Guyenot's historical scholarship, without having read it. In fact, the Talmud is central to Orthodox Jewish theology and praxis. Nothing "fringe" or elitist about it. The concept of Israel as a separate, holy nation goes back to the post-Exodus cult of Yahweh. One of the foremost Talmudic scholars of the 20th century was Professor Jacob Neusner, who taught at Brown University's Hillel Center when I was an undergrad at Brown in the 70s.

Sandy, I noticed this morning that Ben and Mathew completely ducked the series of questions I posted for them about Trump's Russiagate scandal, while repeating the false Trumplicon trope that Russiagate was based on the Steele Dossier. So much for meaningful dialogue. In reality, the Russiagate scandal began in earnest after Michael Flynn lied to the FBI about his December 2016 phone calls to Kisylak-- which prompted Trump to fire James Comey and Andrew McCabe in an effort to obstruct the FBI investigation of Michael Flynn.

Lance, Another one of your clever, rhetorical tricks, eh? Your special skill seems to be the ability to mislead people by misrepresenting reality in ways that sound superficially plausible to the uninformed. In this instance, you are misrepresenting Guyenot's writings about the history of Judaism on the basis of a loony reviewer named Henry Makow who writes about anti-Semitic Illuminati conspiracy theories, etc. Obviously, you haven't read or understood Guyenot's book, From Yahweh to Zion. It begins with an historical analysis of the monotheistic, tribal cult of Yahweh--contrasting it with the polytheistic religions of the ancient Near East, in Egypt and the Hellenic world. Have you studied the Talmud? Guyenot's thesis is that, since the Exodus and establishment of the Yahweh cult, Israel has always viewed its tribe as a separate people, chosen by God. A corollary is the belief that the non-Hebrew goyim are unclean. Christ, Himself, believed as much, as we can observe in the canonical Gospels. In fact, the Babylonian Talmud teaches that the goyim have the spiritual status of beasts. These basic concepts-- originating in the post-Exodus cult of Yahweh-- are central to "Zionism," and to some of the intractable conflicts between Orthodox Israeli hardliners and the Palestinian Muslims (and Orthodox Christians.)

Well I'm shocked, shocked to hear our Warren Commission Report salesman, Lance Payette, dismiss the work of French historian Laurent Guyenot with a simplistic "anti-Semitic" trope. Is any critique of Zionism necessarily anti-Semitic? Guyenot critiques Judaism and Christianity in atheistic, anthropological terms. He views Zionism as a form of tribalism. I don't happen to agree with many of Guyenot's theological views, but I was impressed by his book, From JFK to 9/11-- 50 Years of Deep State. He, certainly, understands the scientific data.

From Jim Risen at The Intercept: Senate Report Strongly Implies Russian Hacking Story Was a Public Service - But Whistleblower Reality Winner Remains in Jail Press Freedom Defense Fund May 11, 2018 Press coverage of Russian intelligence attempts to hack into U.S. voting systems during the 2016 election played an important role in alerting state elections officials to the threat because government warnings were inadequate, according to a bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee report released this week. The most detailed such news story, based on a classified National Security Agency document, appeared in The Intercept last June. A former NSA contractor, Reality Winner, has been charged under the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking a top-secret document describing the Russian attempt to penetrate voting software. The Intercept received the document featured in its June 5, 2017 Russian hacking story anonymously. (This reporter is the director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund, a division of The Intercept’s nonprofit parent company, First Look Media Works, which has contributed funds to Winner’s defense.) In implicitly conceding the impact of The Intercept’s story, as well as other coverage, the new Senate report detailing the committee’s investigation of Russian election meddling makes the case that the leak helped state officials around the nation begin to address the threat of Russian hacking into American voting systems. It is a remarkable and paradoxical assertion from a government that has used the full force of the law to pursue Winner for allegedly sharing the document with a news organization. The committee’s conclusions offer strong support for the argument that disclosing the document was in the public interest. The Senate report states that Russian attempts to target U.S. voting infrastructure began “at least as early as 2014” and continued through the 2016 election. The Intercept story and others published earlier may have provided a wake-up call to state and federal officials about their vulnerability to the Russian cyber campaign. The Senate report says that “many state election officials reported hearing for the first time about the Russian attempts to scan and penetrate state systems from the press or from the public Committee hearing on June 21, 2017.” The Intercept story ran less than three weeks before that hearing. The report notes that the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued alerts that were “limited in substance and distribution” in the summer and fall of 2016. “States understood there was a cyber threat but did not appreciate the scope, seriousness or implication of the particular threat they were facing,” according to the report. “The Committee found that DHS’s initial response was inadequate to counter the threat,” the report says. The DHS’s notifications in the summer of 2016, coupled with a public statement by the DHS and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in October 2016, “were not sufficient warning.” Although the DHS provided warning to IT staff in the fall of 2016, notifications to state election officials were delayed by nearly a year. It wasn’t until September 2017 – “and only under significant pressure from this Committee and others”— that the DHS told chief election officials in targeted states about “the scanning activity and other attacks and the actor behind them,” according to the report. Prodded by the Senate committee and greater public awareness of the threat, the DHS is now working more effectively with state election officials, the report says. A so-called Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center has been established to share information with state and local election officials. The DHS has also hosted a classified briefing for state chief election officials and is working to provide security clearances for those officials. Among the recommendations of the Senate committee’s report is a call for the intelligence community to improve information-sharing on threats and to “put a high priority on attributing cyberattacks both quickly and accurately.” It adds that the DHS “must create clear channels of communication between the federal government and appropriate officials at the state and local levels.” It also sees a role for the media in disseminating information about such threats. “Election experts, security officials, cybersecurity experts, and the media should develop a common set of precise and well-defined election security terms to improve communication,” the report notes. Although other news outlets reported on threats of Russian intrusion into the U.S. elections system, The Intercept’s June 2017 story was distinctive in that it relied on government information not authorized for public release. The New York Times referred to The Intercept’s reporting in its own coverage of the Senate report, noting that a “National Security Agency analysis leaked last June concluded that Russian military intelligence launched a cyberattack on at least one maker of electronic voting equipment during the 2016 campaign, and sent so-called spear-phishing emails days before the general election to 122 local government officials, apparently customers of the manufacturer. The emails concealed a computer script that, when clicked on, ‘very likely’ downloaded a program from an external server that gave the intruders prolonged access to election computers or allowed them to search for valuable data.” The government appears to recognize that The Intercept’s story played a critical role in warning American elections officials about the threat, yet the Senate report comes at a time when the Trump administration has continued to take a draconian approach in its prosecution of Reality Winner. Prosecutors have successfully pushed to have her denied bail and have sought to argue that she caused significant damage to national security. While senior government officials like former CIA Director David Petraeus have been given what amount to slaps on the wrist in leak cases, Winner remains incarcerated even as the Senate is effectively lauding the leak for which she is charged.

Michael, Have you read historian Alison Weir's book, Against Our Better Judgment? It presents the historical context of JFK's efforts to work with Nasser to mediate a balanced resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli crisis. Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel: Weir, Alison: 0884862811789: Amazon.com: Books

Ben, This quote is a good example of what is wrong with your ballyhooed CJR reference articles. Instead of focusing on the actual evidence in the Mueller Report, the authors focus on the media circus surrounding Mueller's bumbling comments to Congress, after Barr had shut down Mueller's investigation and lied about the Report. Also, notice that the author is joking with Dean Baquet about Mueller's bumbling Congressional testimony, while neglecting to cover the infamous story about Dean Baquet putting the kibosh on any 2016 pre-election NYT articles about Trump's involvement with Russia-- including decades of Trump Organization business deals with the Russian mafia and Putin's oligarchs. Baquet was a key player in sabotaging Hillary Clinton's 2016 candidacy. You, obviously, still need to learn the facts about Russiagate. Here are some questions for you to contemplate. Why did Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his December 2016 phone calls with Kisylak? Why did Trump fire James Comey and Andrew McCabe? Why did Trump repeatedly try to obstruct Mueller's investigation, and float pardons to Manafort, Gates, Flynn, Stone, and other 2016 campaign associates, during the Mueller investigation? Why did Trump's associates repeatedly lie about their 2016 Russian contacts? Why did Trump refuse to answer Mueller's questions-- repeatedly claiming that he "couldn't recall" any details? Why did Trump lie about his 2016 Moscow Trump Tower negotiations and plans? Why did Trump announce in Helsinki that Putin had not interfered in the 2016 U.S. election (before Reality Winner leaked an NSA document proving that Trump and Putin were lying?) Why did Bill Barr refuse to release the unredacted Mueller Report, and misrepresent Mueller's findings? Why did Brett Kavanaugh block the release of grand jury testimony from the Mueller investigation?

Matt, Ben's CJR articles (above) don't demonstrate that, "Russiagate was a hoax," at all. But people need to study the facts to understand that. So, you are quite correct to re-focus Ben on the actual facts about Russiagate. I took the time to post a detailed summary of the Russiagate facts for Ben and Mathew this week. They had no response to the summary. What was it Paul Simon wrote -- "Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest?"

Just cancelled our second flight this week (for tomorrow) out of Love Field. Too icy to drive anywhere in north Texas. Incidentally, our utility bills up in Colorado also surged this winter. I think the culprit is the price of natural gas.