The view from Hades

When a multinational corporation cuts corners on a deepwater oil rig, blows the son of a bitch to high heaven, kills 11 crewmen and unleashes an oily apocalypse that consumes everything in its filthy path -- fish, turtles, birds, plankton, oysters, shrimp, marshes, jobs, health, cultures, lives -- you can count on Right-Wing America to put on a long face and tell us "Well, those things happen."

When government apprises this apocalypse wrought by the multinational corporation and decides the responsible party needs to pay up -- now -- suddenly the long faces of Right-Wing America contort into scowls, and pundits' voices rise as one unholy chorus from the depths of hell to wail "This shall not stand! Communists! Hugo Chavez tactics! Shakedown! Help! Help! Daddy Warbucks is being repressed!"

And the thing is . . . lots of people buy this stuff. They buy into a societal anti-morality that turns social Darwinism into holy writ.

The devil, he's a real pro.

Blessed are the powerful! Alms for the rich! Kill the poor!

Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Pat Buchanan, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Judge Andrew Napolitano and 1,000,000 others like this.


HAT TIP: Rod Dreher.

3 Chords & the Truth: Listen or else!

You heard me.

Listen to this week's episode of 3 Chords & the Truth -- it's right here -- or Tony Hayward gets it.

I'm serious.

Really, I'll do it! Listen to this week's episode of the Big Show, or the CEO of BP gets it. And then we'll throw what's left of him into the oil slick.

I mean it!

C'mon, people. Listen to the show.

WHY WON'T you listen to the show?

What?

Oh.

I'm not messing with you people anymore. Either listen to 3 Chords & the Truth -- which really is a fine show this week and every week -- or we let Tony Hayward, CEO of British Polluters, go home to London unscathed!

He'll make it back without a scratch on him. Unless you listen to the program right now.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Today's horror feature: Children of the Red Stick

Where I come from, old times there are not forgotten.

But at least -- once in a blue moon -- official Baton Rouge can be persuaded to look away, look away, look away from backwardness.

That's something, I guess.

Of course, after reading the following story in this morning's Advocate, I'm thinking that the city's white-flighty northern suburbs might benefit from the resumption of Radical Reconstruction after a 130-odd year hiatus.

I WONDER whether we could get BP to pay for it?

The Metro Council voted Wednesday to rezone a 52-acre site near Zachary so a residential program for troubled youths can be operated on the site.

The 8-3 vote to rezone the property for Heritage Ranch Christian Children’s Home on Tucker Road came over the objections of Councilman Trae Welch, who represents the area, and dozens of residents who packed the council’s chambers.

They complained the site isn’t suitable and said they fear for their safety because the operators have no experience running a residential program of this type.

(snip)

While the project has support from influential business and community leaders in Baton Rouge, it drew intense opposition from people who live in the area.

“I’ve never received so many e-mails and calls about a zoning case,” councilwoman Alison Cascio said. “I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s been incredible.”

The vote to rezone the property from rural to Planned Unit Development followed nearly three hours of impassioned debate.

YES, all this over plans to build a facility to help troubled, underprivileged kids. And not even the worst of the troubled, underprivileged kids.

Two things you have to realize about my hometown. One, the real problem here is that most of these "underserved" kids are likely to be black, and be from Baton Rouge, and the main selling point for the suburbs in question is they are neither.

Second, the folks up there really, really hate Baton Rouge. It's psychotic, actually -- depending on the "big city" for jobs and services at the same time you want nothing more than to escape it, then fiscally starve it to death.

Central and Zachary are where bond issues that benefit Baton Rouge go to die.

And during Wednesday's council session, you have to wonder whether the only folks holding down the fort in Central and Zachary were Mrs. Ashley Wilkes and Mrs. Frank Kennedy, waiting and knitting with Doc Meade's wife while reading aloud from David Copperfield.

YOU SEE, everybody else went off to a "political meeting."

Opponents, including Bill Waters, who lives across the street from the project, were disappointed.

“We were out lobbied by the big money and the power brokers of Baton Rouge,” Waters said.

Welch had urged the council to reject the rezoning request, noting that everyone in the neighboring area was opposed to it.

He said 350 residents signed a petition opposing the rezoning.

Several opponents noted that the supporters speaking in favor of the rezoning don’t live in the area.

“Every single person lives in Baton Rouge,” Jennifer Patterson said of the supporters. “Not one lives in my community.”

They also talked about the impact young people with behavioral issues could have on the schools, and noted that similar programs operate on much larger sites in more-remote areas.

“We know what their vision is and what they hope Heritage Ranch will be,” Waters said, “but they simply do not have the expertise to do what they say they want to do.”

THIS WAS persuasive for Big Sam, played Wednesday by Ulysses "Bones" Addison, who voted against the facility. Despite the likelihood that some of the kids helped by the facility would come from his impoverished council district.

Of course, Big Sam never asked where opponents thought kids with behavioral problems are now, if not in public schools. Or asked whether some of the public-school kids with behavioral problems just might be their own.

Furthermore, the granddaddy of all "similar programs" isn't in a "more-remote" area at all -- it's an adjacent suburb of Omaha. Maybe you've heard of it; it's called Boys Town.

Capt. Rhett Butler could not be reached for comment.

Life with the 'small people'

The "small people" on Grand Isle, La., have something to say to BP . . . via a short film by Phin Percy who, by the way, is the nephew of Walker Percy, the great writer and maker of a hell of a mint julep.

Your BP-English, English-BP dictionary

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg is right: His company does care about the "small people." And nothing but the "small people."

Trouble is, the folks in charge of BP are the smallest people around.

The rest of us? We're screwed.

Keep your eye on the bankruptcy courts.

What goes around . . . (oil-spill edition)

Folks in Louisiana lately have been doing a lot of bitching and moaning about being treated as second-class citizens in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe.

If that thing had blown up off the coast of Martha's Vineyard or Malibu, the argument goes, the federal government would be moving heaven and earth to protect those locales from the toxic black gook rolling in from the sea.

I agree. Louisianians are second-class citizens, and if BP had committed its BPocalypse off a trendier coastline, s*** would get done. Yesterday.

On the other hand, I cannot tell you how bad it looks when people whining about their second-class citizenry -- and, after all, the Gret Stet is America's ghetto -- cry about how they are not neither "wogs" as they go about acting like wogs, governing like wogs, mangling the King's English like wogs . . . then turn away from the microphone to shovel a heapin' helpin' of down-home Whoop-Ass on people even woggier than themselves.

Well, dat's Louisiana for you.

APPARENTLY, some government officials in a state now obsessed with its lack of civil rights (for lack of a better term) never got the memo from the Big Guy -- and I'm not talking Barack Obama -- about the whole "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" thing.

For example, here's what happens when a non-profit group wants to open a Christian camp for underprivileged kids in the northern suburbs of Baton Rouge, otherwise known as Places White People Like. J.R. Ball, the Baton Rouge Business Report's executive editor, picks up the story from here:

Citizens of East Baton Rouge—thanks to a little thing called “democracy”—are free to call and e-mail their elected representatives to express support or opposition to matters that will come before the Metro Council. This week’s rezoning request is no exception. Numerous constituents have sent e-mails to council members asking that they grant the Heritage Ranch’s rezoning request.

Disturbingly moronic are the responses from our so-called elected leaders. More troublesome, sadly, is that such replies are far too frequent.

[Trae] Welch, in whose district the proposed project would be built, was quick to weigh in with his opposition, writing that while he had no problem with Heritage Ranch, he did have a problem with “where the project is to be placed.” Who says the term NIMBY is reserved solely for neighborhood association members? Apparently, life for residents along Tucker Road would be destroyed if there was a facility that provided guidance and hope while instilling moral values in the underserved youth of Baton Rouge.

It’s a pair of retorts, however, from council member Bones Addison that leaves me crazier than that bird chasing Cocoa Puffs.

On June 9, at 10:28 a.m., Addison responded to e-mailers with this: “This matter is in Mr. Welch’s district. I will be seeking advice regarding this re-zoning [sic] from the member who [sic] district it impacts. I have suggested to others who have sent me the e-mail blast that they contact Mr. Welch because he is elected to represent the citizens of that neighborhood.”

He closes with this: “Be size [sic], I don’t even know where Tucker Road is.”

Addison, four hours later, fires off this e-mail to a group of residents and two fellow council members: “Hey, why don’t everybody stop e-mailing me on it, [sic] its [sic] not in my district. I would great [sic] appreciate that.”

MONDAY NIGHT, as I was writing my post about how Louisiana's real problem is that it's America's 'hood, I resisted the temptation to use the phrase "What goes around, comes around" in reference to the state's historical internal struggles over equality, class and race. I thought it would be gratuitous and mean.

Suddenly, it's not a problem anymore. Louisiana keeps making my point for me . . . even when I hold back from making it.

Why bother trying not to stick a shiv in people hell-bent on committing hara-kiri anyway?

As I said, historical ironies abound.

Straight outta Compton Louisiana

The problem with Louisiana is it's in the 'hood.

Hell, it is the 'hood. Historical ironies abound.

If a whole country of 300 million can have a 'hood, Louisiana fills the bill. It's got poverty problems. It's got crime problems. It's got health problems. It, Lord knows, has education problems.

It even has had not only a Marion Barry -- the former ethically and chemical-dependency challenged mayor of Washington, D.C. -- but several Marion Barrys in its "colorful" political history. Note that when one speaks of "colorful" government, this is not a synonym for "effective" or even "minimally competent."

America's 'hood also suffers from an economy too reliant on just a few things. One of the few things on which Louisiana is overreliant happens to be the petrochemical industry -- this bad neighborhood of poor folks and problem cases is where we stick all the industries we depend upon . . . but don't want in the "nice" part of town.

It's where we put all the offshore oil rigs -- like the Deepwater Horizon -- we rely on for our daily petroleum fix but don't want anywhere near, say, Malibu. Or Martha's Vineyard. Or Miami Beach.

And if something goes BOOM! in the night, it's just blowing up people -- whole cultures, even -- whose main qualification for the honor is being unlike "people like us."

And if the thing that's just gone BOOM! in the night starts to soil Boudreaux's marsh and Thibodeaux's oyster beds, we'll leave the cleanup to the negligent screw-ups who caused the mess in the first place, because . . . who cares? It's the 'hood!

WE HAVE good reasons for maintaining a 'hood. This is just one.

Of course, we have other reasons for having national 'hoods, just like our local ones. For one thing, it makes it easier to find people to exploit -- from your local streetwalker to your low-paid service- and hospitality workers, who provide services and hospitality somewhat different from that of low-wage hookers on the corner.

For another, the 'hood provides a convenient focus for the attention of "progressives" striving for "solidarity" with someone . . . anyone. And for hipsters, it provides a handy place to seek "authenticity" in all manner of things -- food, music, culture, "expression."

How very quaint to possess the charms of the rustic . . . or the dispossessed.

Charm and "authenticity" are not enough, however, to save you from toxic emissions, failing infrastructure, a poor education or even a big-ass oil spill that eventually will destroy all the Stuff White People Like about you.

If you're the 'hood we call Louisiana, note well the stuff people like about you, which is different from actually liking you. Because they don't.

There is no place on earth with more "authenticity" in music, food, culture and all other manner of expression than New Orleans. The place is chockablock with Stuff White People Like. Was that sufficient for the American people to safeguard all this authentic goodness by preserving robust wetlands and building Category 5 hurricane-protection levees?

Please.

It's the 'hood, for God's sake.

What's hailed as "colorful" culture and politics in south Louisiana, is a clear case of "Edna! Call 911!" if it makes its way to Our Town. That or occasion to urgently convene an anti-corruption task force, depending.

Don't get caught in Uncle Sam's neighborhood after dark. We're going to want to know how you got that nice car you're driving.

OF COURSE, the underprivileged now and again take extreme umbrage at some slight, real or perceived, and they start to "act out." This has to be carefully managed. Usually, you can head things off by putting the ringleaders and "troublemakers" swiftly in their place.

Here's how the mayor and "civic leaders" handled things in 1963 when "the Negroes" started to get out of hand in Omaha:

Billy Nungesser, the president of Plaquemines Parish whose frustrations about the federal government response have been featured prominently on TV in the past few weeks, told ABC News that in the private meeting the president had with local leaders here today, President Obama "chewed me out."

Nungesser, a Republican, told ABC News that President Obama "told me that we need to communicate."

He said that he told President Obama that after his first visit to the region a few weeks ago, "We got the jack-up boats done cause of you. And you spent more time with us than any other president. But since then, it was a bottleneck. Things weren't getting done. All of it was sitting in the marsh."

Nungesser said the president told him, "'Well you know, if you can't get it done through the chain of command' -- and he's made some changes; we've got a guy on the ground now that can make decisions -- he said, 'you pick up the phone and call the White House. And, if you can't get me on the phone, then you can go blast me.'"

DAMN. I seem to have put up the wrong clip. Let's try this one:

And I will make one last point -- and I said this to every leader who is here: If something is not going right down here, then they need to talk to Thad Allen. And if they’re not getting satisfaction from Thad Allen, then they can talk to me. There’s nobody here who can’t get in touch with me directly if there is an idea, a suggestion, or a logjam that needs to be dealt with.

So we’re in this together. And it’s going to be a difficult time, and obviously the folks down here are going to be feeling the brunt of it, but we’re going to make sure that we’re doing everything we can to get this solved as quickly as possible.

S***. Third time's the charm, right?

Last May, the Rev. Mr. Jones and several other young ministers formed the 4CL, or Citizens' Coordinating Committee for Civil Liberties. "They barged into my office," angrily recalls Mayor Dworak, "with a series of outrageous demands. I offered to appoint one of them, the Rev. Rudolph McNair, to my biracial citizens' committee. Apparently, that wasn't enough, because they picketed the very first meeting of the committee. We won't stand for that here in Omaha."

Made up of Omaha's most influential citizens, the Mayor's Bi-racial Committee claims it is carefully laying the groundwork for the correction of Negro complaints. Says Morris E. Jacobs, a prosperous Omaha businessman and one of the leaders of the committee, "We're trying to set up an ideal that can serve as an example for the whole United States. And what happens? They picket! I got wind of it beforehand, and phoned Reverend McNair. I said. 'We didn't know about your grievances. Now that you've made them known, give us a chance to settle things and redeem ourselves with dignity — don't crowd us.'

Look magazine, Dec. 17, 1963

THIS IS the formula for dealing with the 'hood. Sometimes, it backfires and you get a big riot or something, but it's still the "industry best practice" for dealing with "those people."

Let's review: First, those running the show must sound reasonable so that the troublemakers sound like . . . unreasonable troublemakers. Second, it's important to be intimidating. Never, ever should a mayor, governor, civic leader . . . or president . . . show fear.

It's like dealing with the wild kingdom -- some species can sense fear, and that will not go well for the power elite.

Third, it helps to be condescending. This is related to intimidation. Highly effective with low-class people, who may harbor inferiority complexes you can exploit.

Finally, if those in charge want to stay in charge, they must always voice their sincere intention to work on the issues that so aggrieve the restless hordes. They must stress this over and over. Likewise, they must implore the aggrieved to be "reasonable" and "calm," emphasizing that people must "work through the system."

See, "Call center, BP."

In all this, sincerity is the key. If governmental and civic leaders can fake that, they've got it made.

Of course, the needed resources never seem to materialize. It's the 'hood, after all, and Americans don't do 'hood. Nothing ever seems to be done; nothing ever seems to change, and we like it that way.

Because it's the 'hood. Republican or Democrat, the consistent policy is "out of sight, out of mind." The 'hood is not like us. For the most part, we're quite content to let it -- and everyone in it -- die.

Though we'd just as soon not see or hear about it. See, "Gag rules, clean-up worker" and "Restrictions, press."

WHEN IT COMES right down to it, this is the moment I have been writing about for almost four years now. Every time I've written about Louisiana and its political and cultural challenges, this is what I was getting at.

I didn't know how it would happen, but I knew Louisiana's existential crisis would come -- in many ways, had come -- and that when it did . . . the 'hood wasn't any place you'd want to be. But there Louisiana is.

In the 'hood. With all the bad things, few of the good things, and with "les Americains" probably figuring they're better off with Louisiana dead. If you want to survive, Boudreaux, go chain yourself to an oil pipeline now. We'll take care of those, probably.

In effect, what I've been trying to argue -- poorly -- is that if Louisiana were a TV show, it would be Sanford and Son, and it probably would earn a nice write up in Better Homes & Ghettos. Now, America thought ol' Fred G. Sanford was funny and all -- "colorful" and "authentic," no doubt -- but there's no way we'd want the real-life version of the irascible junk man in our neighborhood.

What I also have been arguing for these past few years -- poorly -- is that Louisiana's survival hinged on its somehow transforming itself into a higher class of (ahem) "ethnic" program, say The Cosby Show. The Huxtables, they had it goin' on.

America loved Cliff and Clair Huxtable -- the doctor and the lawyer. America loved their bright and adorable kids. America welcomed the Huxtables into their homes every week, and they would have welcomed them into their neighborhood, too.

There's plenty percentage in being like the Huxtables. America would do anything for Cliff and Clair, and even if they didn't, the Huxtables could shift for themselves just fine in the modern world.

Unlike Louisiana. Alas.

Is all this right? No. Are all men created equal? In the eyes of God, at least.

But aren't we all Americans? Equal under the law? E pluribus unum, and all that?

In theory, yes. But theory is just another word for marketing, and marketing always takes liberties with the unvarnished truth.

The unvarnished truth is that this is a fallen world we inhabit, a true vail of tears. In such a place -- in such a country as even this -- it's a hell of a thing to have "always depended on the kindness of strangers."

Blanche DuBois. Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire."

Set in New Orleans.

Go figure.

'Blah blah blah': the transcript of suffering

Don't listen to what BP or the government say. Watch what they do.

This is what BP does.

3 Chords & the Truth: Troubled waters

We may reside nowhere near them anymore, but we have our touchstones.

The things that make us who we are. The things that remind us who, and what, we are.

And sometimes we lose them. Sometimes -- for the love of money or whatever the hell else -- somebody destroys them.

Places . . . things . . . cultures are destroyed just because we humans can do it. That's what we do. We tear up stuff.

And people.

I'VE BLOGGED plenty about the latest calamity befalling my home state, Louisiana. It's tearing me up, and I'm half a continent away. Want to know what it's like to suspect you mail hail from the lost continent of Atlantis? Buy me a few beers, and I'll try to tell you.

That's what this edition of 3 Chords & the Truth is all about. I don't belabor the point this week -- that would make for entertaining radio, right? -- but that's what the show is mostly about.

I'm hopeful the music will speak for itself.

SO . . . that's the rundown on the latest episode of the Big Show. I'm betting that making a point, and venting via music, still can be entertaining. You be the judge.

Of course, to judge you have to listen.

It's 3 Chords & the Truth, y'all. Be there. Aloha.

Screw 'em. It's just Louisiana, right?

It really, really sucks to be a Louisianian now.

Then again, when is it ever easy to be a second-class citizen anywhere?

But the particular reason that's the case now is twofold -- BP and the United States government. The former doesn't care about anything but profitability, and the other cares about a lot of things -- keeping up a politically correct appearance being first and foremost -- but a bunch of red-state bumpkins aren't among them.

Washington politicians, both Democrat and Republican, must get some sort of sick Big Man on Campus adrenaline rush from continually watching their Louisiana counterparts on their knees. It's been an ongoing thing since Katrina, and it's happening again, as documented by The Associated Press:

They contend that drilling is safe overall and that the moratorium is a knee-jerk reaction, akin to grounding every airplane in America because of a single crash. They worry, too, that the moratorium comes at a time when another major Louisiana industry — fishing — has been brought to a standstill by the mess in the Gulf.

"For God's sake, don't finish us off with a moratorium," Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell said this week.

The oil-and-gas industry is the backbone of the Louisiana economy, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue for the government and accounting for nearly one-third of the nation's domestic crude production.

It took a heavy blow when the government imposed a six-month offshore drilling moratorium in the wake of the spill that has sent upwards of 50 million gallons of oil into the Gulf in the biggest environmental disaster in U.S. history. The government imposed the ban while it reviews the safety of deepwater drilling in light of the BP disaster.

Louisiana lawmakers have railed against the moratorium, saying it could put more than 100,000 people out of work, shutter businesses and destroy livelihoods. A bill asking the administration to shorten the moratorium passed the Legislature unanimously.

But persuading the administration to take such action could prove to be extraordinarily difficult at a time when globs of oil are fouling marshes and beaches, images of oil-soaked birds are a fixture in the news and no apparent end to the spill is in sight.

Interior Secretary Ken Salazar has acknowledged the potential damage to energy companies and their employees and promised a Louisiana senator the administration would demand that BP compensate businesses for their losses.

AND RIGHT HERE, I have the title -- Well, I don't have it on me; it must be in the pocket of my other pants, but trust me on this -- to the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, the real deal, and I'm willing to let it go at a most attractive price. If you believe me on this, you probably buy Ken Salazar's fragrant load about BP compensating businesses for the losses brought on by the Obama Administration's shuttering of what's left of the Louisiana economy during a time of extreme crisis.

Obama and Salazar remind me of the convert's zeal of a reformed drunk. Only most reformed drunks are a lot more sincere in their zeal than these clowns.

Why, wasn't it just yesterday that the Interior secretary -- in the name of "reform" -- was still running his own brand of "service industry" for Big Oil? It's all right there in the latest Rolling Stone, a story by Tim Dickinson so thoroughly infuriating and despair-inducing that I can't bring myself to properly blog upon it.

BUT HERE'S just a taste, enough to show you exactly how disingenuous and cynical is the "hope and change" crowd in Rome . . . er, Washington:

The tale of the Deepwater Horizon disaster is, at its core, the tale of two blowout preventers: one mechanical, one regulatory. The regulatory blowout preventer failed long before BP ever started to drill – precisely because Salazar kept in place the crooked environmental guidelines the Bush administration implemented to favor the oil industry.

MMS has fully understood the worst-case scenarios for deep-sea oil blowouts for more than a decade. In May 2000, an environmental assessment for deepwater drilling in the Gulf presciently warned that "spill responses may be complicated by the potential for very large magnitude spills (because of the high production rates associated with deepwater wells)." The report noted that the oil industry "has estimated worst-case spill volumes ranging from 5,000 to 116,000 barrels a day for 120 days," and it even anticipated the underwater plumes of oil that are currently haunting the Gulf: "Oil released subsea (e.g., subsea blowout or pipeline leak) in these deepwater environments could remain submerged for some period of time and travel away from the spill site." The report ominously concluded, "There are few practical spill-response options for dealing with submerged oil."

That same month, an MMS research document developed with deepwater drillers – including the company then known as BP Amoco – warned that such a spill could spell the end for offshore operations. The industry could "ill afford a deepwater blowout," the document cautions, adding that "no single company has the solution" to such a catastrophe. "The real test will come if a deepwater blowout occurs."

Enter the Bush administration. Rather than heeding such warnings, MMS simply assumed that a big spill couldn't happen. "There was a complete failure to even contemplate the possibility of a disaster like the one in the Gulf," says Holly Doremus, an environmental-law expert at the University of California. "In their thinking, a big spill would be something like 5,000 barrels, and the oil wouldn't even reach the shoreline." In fact, Bush's five-year plan for offshore drilling described a "large oil spill" as no more than 1,500 barrels. In April 2007, an environmental assessment covering the area where BP would drill concluded that blowouts were "low probability and low risk," even though a test funded by MMS had found that blowout preventers failed 28 percent of the time. And an environmental assessment for BP's lease block concluded that offshore spills "are not expected to damage significantly any wetlands along the Gulf Coast."

In reality, MMS had little way to assess the risk to wildlife, since a new policy instituted under Bush scrapped environmental analysis and fast-tracked permits. Declaring that oil companies themselves were "in the best position to determine the environmental effects" of drilling, the new rules pre-qualified deep-sea drillers to receive a "categorical exclusion" – an exemption from environmental review that was originally intended to prevent minor projects, like outhouses on hiking trails, from being tied up in red tape. "There's no analytical component to a cat-ex," says a former MMS scientist. "You have technicians, not scientists, that are simply checking boxes to make sure all the T's are crossed. They just cut and paste from previous approvals."

Nowhere was the absurdity of the policy more evident than in the application that BP submitted for its Deepwater Horizon well only two months after Obama took office. BP claims that a spill is "unlikely" and states that it anticipates "no adverse impacts" to endangered wildlife or fisheries. Should a spill occur, it says, "no significant adverse impacts are expected" for the region's beaches, wetlands and coastal nesting birds. The company, noting that such elements are "not required" as part of the application, contains no scenario for a potential blowout, and no site-specific plan to respond to a spill. Instead, it cites an Oil Spill Response Plan that it had prepared for the entire Gulf region. Among the sensitive species BP anticipates protecting in the semitropical Gulf? "Walruses" and other cold-water mammals, including sea otters and sea lions. The mistake appears to be the result of a sloppy cut-and-paste job from BP's drilling plans for the Arctic. Even worse: Among the "primary equipment providers" for "rapid deployment of spill response resources," BP inexplicably provides the Web address of a Japanese home-shopping network. Such glaring errors expose the 582-page response "plan" as nothing more than a paperwork exercise. "It was clear that nobody read it," says Ruch, who represents government scientists.

"This response plan is not worth the paper it is written on," said Rick Steiner, a retired professor of marine science at the University of Alaska who helped lead the scientific response to the Valdez disaster. "Incredibly, this voluminous document never once discusses how to stop a deepwater blowout."

Scientists like Steiner had urgently tried to alert Obama to the depth of the rot at MMS. "I talked to the transition team," Steiner says. "I told them that MMS was a disaster and needed to be seriously reformed." A top-to-bottom restructuring of MMS didn't require anything more than Ken Salazar's will: The agency only exists by order of the Interior secretary. "He had full authority to change anything he wanted," says Rep. Issa, a longtime critic of MMS. "He didn't use it." Even though Salazar knew that the environmental risks of offshore drilling had been covered up under Bush, he failed to order new assessments. "They could have said, 'We cannot conclude there won't be significant impacts from drilling until we redo those reviews,'" says Brendan Cummings, senior counsel for the Center for Biological Diversity. "But the oil industry would have cried foul. And what we've seen with Salazar is that when the oil industry squeaks, he retreats."

Under Salazar, MMS continued to issue categorical exclusions to companies like BP, even when they lacked the necessary permits to protect endangered species. A preliminary review of the BP disaster conducted by scientists with the independent Deepwater Horizon Study Group concludes that MMS failed to enforce a host of environmental laws, including the Clean Water Act. "MMS and Interior are equally responsible for the failures here," says the former agency scientist. "They weren't willing to take the regulatory steps that could have prevented this incident."

Had MMS been following the law, it would never have granted BP a categorical exclusion – which are applicable only to activities that have "no significant effect on the human environment." At a recent hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse grilled Salazar about Interior's own handbook on categorical exclusions, which bars their issuance for offshore projects in "relatively untested deep water" or "utilizing new or unusual technology" – standards that Whitehouse called "plainly pertinent" for BP's rig. "It's hard for me to see that that's a determination that could have been made in good faith," Whitehouse said, noting that the monstrously complex task of drilling for oil a mile beneath the surface of the ocean appeared to have been given less oversight than is required of average Americans rewiring their homes. "Who was watching?"

Not the Interior secretary. Salazar did not even ensure that MMS had a written manual – required under Interior's own rules – for complying with environmental laws. According to an investigation in March by the Government Accountability Office, MMS managers relied instead on informal "institutional knowledge" – passed down from the Bush administration. The sole written guidance appeared on a website that only provided, according to the report, "one paragraph about assessing environmental impacts of oil and gas activities, not detailed instructions that could lead an analyst through the process of drafting an environmental assessment or environmental impact statement."

"People are being really circumspect, not pointing the finger at Salazar and Obama," says Rep. Raul Grijalva, who oversees the Interior Department as chair of the House subcommittee on public lands. "But the troublesome point is, the administration knew that it had this rot in the middle of the process on offshore drilling – yet it empowered an already discredited, disgraced agency to essentially be in charge."

AND NOW the Obama crowd, whose "change" agenda didn't exactly extend to one of the agencies needing it most, has found Environmental Jesus and is willing to put 100,000 more Louisianians out of work than already are (thanks to the BPocalypse) just to prove its newfound piety.

Because it's not like people in south Louisiana are actual people with actual human rights or anything. They're just "those people." People being a relative term, of course.

Here's how much the British oil giant thought of human life, again courtesy of Rolling Stone:

BP has also cut corners at the expense of its own workers. In 2005, 15 workers were killed and 170 injured after a tower filled with gasoline exploded at a BP refinery in Texas. Investigators found that the company had flouted its own safety procedures and illegally shut off a warning system before the blast. An internal cost-benefit analysis conducted by BP – explicitly based on the children's tale The Three Little Pigs – revealed that the oil giant had considered making buildings at the refinery blast-resistant to protect its workers (the pigs) from an explosion (the wolf). BP knew lives were on the line: "If the wolf blows down the house, the piggy is gobbled." But the company determined it would be cheaper to simply pay off the families of dead pigs.

SOUNDS SIMILAR to the calculus the Obama Administration employs when it comes to a whole American state.

It's cheaper to let Louisianians go hungry as they languish in their soiled little state, where Barack Obama didn't get many votes to start with. And when you factor in the government's ballooning deficit and Americans' short memories, the math is pretty simple.


Let the funny-talking rustics die. And, for God's sake, don't let those damned journalists take any more pictures of Flipper lying dead and oil-covered on the beach.

People might start to care.

Poor, poor pitiful Brits (sniff)

Pity the poor British. Apparently, we're being mean to them.

It's even said that Barack Obama hates them.

And there's this one other little thing. They're invested up to their formerly stiff upper lips in BP stock, which is getting pretty close to becoming worthless.

To paraphrase the illustrious Eric "Otter" Stratton, "Hey, you f***ed up, you trusted 'em." That mournful sound you now hear is the world's smallest violin playing "My Heart Spills Crude for You."

THIS SAD, SAD tale of woe and ruin from across the waters comes to us from MSNBC:

“Obama’s boot on the throat of British pensioners” read the front-page headline in Thursday's Daily Telegraph, which added that the president's "attacks on BP were blamed for wiping billions off the company’s value."

“U.K. alarm over attack on BP” was the Financial Times' take on the crisis, which it suggested could damage transatlantic relations. The newspaper accused President Barack Obama of employing "increasingly aggressive rhetoric" against BP.

Shares in BP hit their lowest level in 13 years on Thursday. According to the Telegraph, BP executives are so worried that Obama’s comments could continue to drive down BP's share price that the firm has asked Prime Minister David Cameron to intervene. Cameron is due to speak with Obama this weekend.

Obama and U.S. officials have repeatedly referred to BP as “British Petroleum” -- despite the fact that the company officially changed its name in 2000. Some have interpreted this as an attack on the country's reputation.

Last Friday, Obama declared “what I don’t want to hear is, when they’re spending that kind of money on their shareholders and … TV advertising, that they’re nickel-and-diming fishermen or small businesses here in the Gulf.”

Some are concerned about the battering the U.K.'s image is taking in the U.S.

"I do think there's something slightly worrying about the anti-British rhetoric that seems to be permeating from America,” Boris Johnson, London's New York-born mayor, told the BBC on Thursday. “I do think that it starts to become a matter of national concern if a great British company is being continually beaten up on the international airwaves.

"I would like to see a bit of cool heads and a bit of calm reflection about how to deal with this problem rather than endlessly buck passing and name calling."

At London’s King’s Cross train station, Thelma Aengenheister echoed the mayor’s sentiments.

“It’s easier for Obama to kick a British company than an American one; there will be fewer repercussions,” said the 80-year-old, who was on her way to Brussels. “It’s like kicking someone when they’re down. But I do feel for the people of Louisiana, it must be dreadful for them.”

OH, YES. It is "dreadful" for the people of Louisiana. Then again, they're used to people -- and companies . . . and countries (particularly their own) -- being dreadful to them.

I don't live there now, but I was born and raised there, and my family has been In Louisiana since long before "les Americains" were. So I don't think the people of the Gret Stet would mind too much if I said a few words to these "dreadfully" put-upon Brits on their behalf:

Kiss.

Our.

British Petroleum-slimed.

Ass.

Thanks, I needed that

Some off-color language, but funny as hell.

Oil spill, hell! The Aussies might be offended!

There's a gushing wound in the Gulf, pumping out tens of thousands of barrels a day of this country's toxic lifeblood -- oil.

Right now, Louisiana is choking to death on the stuff. Soon enough, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida will be, too. Later, it will be Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. And maybe more states up the Eastern Seaboard.

That poisonous vein has been gushing out of control for 50-odd days. The oil field is hardly in any danger of exsanguination anytime soon, though south Louisiana, in particular, is in imminent danger of becoming an uninhabitable toxic wasteland -- a giant dead zone -- with countless thousands breathing in benzene fumes as they watch their jobs, their ecosystem and their culture sink beneath the soiled sea, the muck-filled marshes and befouled bayous.

BUT THAT'S not important now, according to the Kearney (Neb.) Hub. What's important is that President Obama might be pissing off Indonesia and Australia by canceling on them a second time to tend to an American BPocalypse:

To their credit, the foreign leaders have graciously accepted Obama’s excuses. They are legitimate. Many Americans opposed much of his health care reforms, but they accepted his judgment regarding the visits to Indonesia and Australia. If Obama believed health reforms would sink without his guiding hand, then it is understandable why he stayed home to finish what he started.

We’re less supportive about Obama excusing himself from the Indonesia-Australia visit for a second time. For all practical purposes, there’s not much Obama can do now about the oil spill other than to act interested.

He’s recently played that role well, having visited the Gulf Coast three times to express that he cares about people’s hardships and to prove that his boot remains on BP’s neck.

Appearances are important for Obama’s approval rating at home. Being present is the best way to demonstrate his resolve to end the Gulf crisis.

However, there’s a pressing need to follow through on his commitments to our Southern Hemisphere allies. Indonesia and Australia are valued trading partners and important to U.S. interests in many other ways.

Obama could fulfill his obligation to those nations while his deputies at home tend to the Gulf crisis.

YES, PEOPLE out in the boonies of Nebraska really can be that clueless. Some of them, like the editors of the Kearney Hub, even get paid for it.

Let me explain this to the booboisie out in Kearney so that even their newspaper editors might be able to understand.

I'm going to start asking some questions now. Try not to panic.

Now what would be the equivalent if BP ran amok in rural Nebraska?

How about this: What if, say, an oil company decided to bury a massive oil pipeline deep beneath the rolling farmland of Nebraska? Not only that, let's say the oilmen, to cut costs, didn't install equipment that could be relied upon to shut off the oil flow once it had started.

And let's also say the oil company decided to use thinner pipe -- to save costs -- and run the pipeline at pressures much higher than the industry norm.

NOW, IMAGINE that -- despite all the sweet nothings and promises of right-of-way fees whispered into the ears of the Hub editors' fellow members of the booboisie -- one day it all went to shit. The pipeline blew. It blew deep underground, nobody could stop it, and not a body knew what to do.

That pipeline blew and blew and blew, pumping millions and millions and millions more barrels of petroleum deep into the Ogallala Aquifer, eventually poisoning it for decades, if not forever.

In a matter of weeks, vast swaths of Nebraska were rendered too damned arid to grow much of anything other than winter wheat, or maybe some sugar beets and potatoes -- not on 15 inches of rain a year. In some places, crops outright failed. In others, yields plummeted without irrigation.

Meantime, streams fed by the aquifer were fouled, killing everything in them. And then the birds and other wildlife started to die, having drunk the fetid water or eaten what was in it.

Drinking water supplies suddenly were poisonous. Livestock began to die en masse, either of thirst or poisoning. And the government, faced with a logistical nightmare, was failing badly at trucking in sufficient drinking water for humans.

Seemingly overnight, 31 percent of the state's total employment had been to some degree threatened, if not eliminated. Not that any of that would matter if you lived somewhere with no drinkable water.

IF SOME future BP, through utter negligence and recklessness, were to do that to Nebraska, what would it mean for the state's future viability? What would it mean for its citizens' lives? Their livelihoods?

What would it mean to Nebraskans' lifestyle and culture? If much of the groundwater was no good and the land uninhabitable because of that, and if hundreds of thousands no longer could farm -- ever -- how would that affect how Nebraskans see themselves? What, then, would be their identity . . . even the city slickers in Lincoln and Omaha?

If you can't get a job, if you lose your identity, if you can't live on your land anymore, if all you know and love is destroyed because of somebody's greed and criminal negligence . . . do you think that might be a kind of genocide?

If all hell were breaking loose all around you, and the news kept going from catastrophic to unthinkable, would you then be so damned upset that President Obama canceled on the Indonesians and Aussies yet again? Wouldn't you want the president of the United States right here, in country, dealing with the crisis that just blew up your world?

Wouldn't you?

I'm waiting.

WHAT IF that were to happen here? Uh-oh.

According to a story in the Omaha World-Herald, some much lesser, yet awful still, version of Nebraska's petro-nightmare scenario isn't exactly unthinkable:

The ever-widening oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico has state lawmakers rethinking whether Nebraska is doing enough to protect the fragile Sand Hills and groundwater-rich Ogallala Aquifer from a planned crude-oil pipeline.

The proposed Keystone XL Pipeline would pump 700,000 barrels of oil a day from the tar sand mines of western Canada.

It would cross 254 miles of Nebraska, including about 112 miles of the Sand Hills, intersecting with a pipeline near Kansas.

Proponents say the pipeline would provide an environmentally safe, politically stable and reliable source of crude oil and avoid risks exposed by the deep-sea drilling blowout in the Gulf.

Opponents worry that the Sand Hills region could host its own oil spill that could contaminate a precious deposit of groundwater.

Duane Hovorka, executive director of the Nebraska Wildlife Federation, said a small pipeline leak in the sparsely populated Sand Hills might go undetected for days and do major damage.

“There's a limit to how closely you can monitor that stuff,” Hovorka said. “You can pump a lot of oil into the aquifer before someone discovers it.”

Of key concern is TransCanada's application for a federal waiver to pump the pipeline oil at a higher pressure, using thinner pipe. The pipe could pump more oil and use less steel.

Cesar de Leon, former head of the nation's pipeline safety agency, said there's no question that using thinner pipe at higher pressure “lessens” the safety margin, although he said increased monitoring and maintenance could offset that risk.

Still, de Leon, now a private consultant based in Boerne, Texas, said using the higher pumping pressure “pushes the technological envelope,” which he likened to BP drilling deeper and deeper into the Gulf.

“It's running beyond what's been the norm,” he said of the pipeline project. “I think they'll be successful in getting it, but I certainly think you'd be safer running at a lower pressure.”

TransCanada, the Canadian company building the pipeline, has been safely using thinner pipe made of stronger steel for years in Canada, a spokesman said.

Jeff Rauh said the company plans several extra safeguards, including X-ray checks on every weld, more confirmation of steel integrity and coatings, and burying the pipeline 4 feet deep instead of the required 30 inches.

Historically, pipeline leaks are rare, small and localized, he said. The historic average is less than three barrels, or 126 gallons, he said. Leaks would be especially slow moving through the sands and groundwater of the Sand Hills, Rauh said.

Aerial surveillance of the pipeline would be done every two weeks. The pipe is designed to withstand puncturing by excavation equipment.

“This is a welded pipeline. It is designed for zero leakage,” he said. “However, if a leak occurs, we are absolutely ready to respond.”

A recent draft environmental impact statement on the project acknowledges that oil spills occur and that some could go undetected for “days or weeks.”

The draft statement also concludes Keystone XL would have “limited adverse environmental impacts” if the pipeline adheres to safety rules and laws.

SO, PERHAPS the time of geopolitically minded editors of a teeny weenie newspaper in the middle of nowhere might be better spent making sure TransCanada does pipelines a hell of a lot more safely than BP does deepwater oil wells.

It would be a terrible thing for them to have a certain editorial thrown back in their faces if everything went to shit one day and some future president took off for parts unknown, figuring the White House aides could handle it because, after all, it's only Nebraska.