'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.

Before Louisiana had to deal with irony (2)

The irony is this, from the pages of the Broadcasting Yearbook, is a pluperfect 1958 map of what, decades later, would come to be known as "Cancer Alley."

The further irony is that folks in many of the worst-affected communities in the area aren't worth advertisers' time, not having a pot to piss in and barely a window to piss out.

Even the BBC has heard of "Cancer Alley." And heard of WBRZ? Not so much.

'Are you f***ing happy? Are you f***ing happy?'

The sailor . . . was on the ship's bridge when Deepwater Horizon installation manager Jimmy Harrell, a top employee of rig owner Transocean, was speaking with someone in Houston via satellite phone. Buzbee told Mother Jones that, according to this witness account, Harrell was screaming, "Are you f***ing happy? Are you f***ng happy? The rig's on fire! I told you this was gonna happen."

Whoever was on the other end of the line was apparently trying to calm Harrell down. "I am f***ing calm," he went on, according to Buzbee. "You realize the rig is burning?"

THIS . . . is the latest from Mother Jones' indispensable coverage of the BPocalypse.

There is no part of hell hot enough for the vile, corner-cutting, avaricious sons of bitches responsible for this thing. And for federal "regulators" whose real business was the business of enabling bad behavior by business?

Their route to les feux d'infer ought to involve being keelhauled through every bit of the oil slick left by their former buddies at BP.

Genocide. Always remember this is the bottom line of what has happened here.

If what passes for civilization in these parts, in these times, is to somehow endure, it's really, really important that consequences fit the crime.

When wankers get portfolios

While the shores of America's Gulf coast are slowly being choked to death by a foul tide of British-owned petroleum, some in the new UK government are terribly, terribly concerned that the colonials are being mean to them.

No, really.

British Petroleum -- as a byproduct of greed, corner-cutting and blatant disregard for, well . . . everything -- killed 11 American oil workers, 140 miles and counting of the Louisiana coastline, God-only-knows how much of the Gulf's wildlife and ecosystem, a big chunk of the Dead Pelican State's economy and culture, and then the livelihoods of thousands all along the coast, and now some asshole minister in the British government is terribly, terribly concerned that Americans are saying harsh things about the Limeys?

Really?

YOU CAN'T make this crap up. It's in the Daily Mail:

Vince Cable has hit out at the "extreme and unhelpful" anti-British rhetoric from the U.S. over BP's handling of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

The Business Secretary stopped short of criticising President Barack Obama personally, and declared that Britain should not use "gunboat diplomacy".

Some MPs, however, have said Mr Obama was wrong to blame Britain for the problem.

The comments, which came yesterday as BP announced that a plan to funnel the oil away had partially worked, risked provoking a trans-Atlantic rift.

American politicians and broadcasters have laid the blame for the accident on the Deepwater Horizon rig at the feet of the UK - despite BP being a multinational company.

Mr Obama has continually referred to the company as "British Petroleum" although it changed its name to BP more than a decade ago.

Mr Cable said yesterday: "It's clear that some of the rhetoric in the U.S. is extreme and unhelpful."

He added that the fury being levelled at the company was "a reaction to big oil".

Mr Cable cautioned against the Government resorting to "gunboat diplomacy" by aggressively lobbying the White House on the oil company's behalf.

He said Mr Obama was treating BP no more harshly than he would a U.S. company such as Exxon -- the previous holder of the dubious record for the biggest oil leak in American history.

But other MPs voiced their concern about the hostile tone of the U.S.

Tory MP Andrew Rosindell said: "It is not the British government or the British people who are to blame. It's a multinational company and it is up to them to fix this."

HOW DOES ONE argue with such arrogance and condescension? One doesn't.

One just points out that the f***ing Brits are evah so quick to condemn America and "brutish" Americans over our "insane gun laws" every time an English tourist takes a slug in the gut trying to score some weed in the 'hood, yet we're supposed to be nice about it when British Petroleum rapes whole cultures, peoples and ecosystems in the former colonies.

Holy s***, the "wogs" really do "begin at Calais" . . . and on the North American shoreline, don't they? And the wogs are supposed to . . . what? Say "Thank you, Tony, may we have another dose of death"?

NO, YOU CAN'T argue with the likes of Vince Cable and some of the other swells trolling the halls of Westminster. Or is is trolls swelling the halls of Westminster?

All one can do is remind the right members of Parliament what happened to Britain on Jan. 8, 1815 -- the last time it tried to screw with south Louisiana -- and leave the right members with some friendly final words.

Piss off.

Wankers.

Before Louisiana had to deal with irony . . .

Or Cancer Alley. Or clean-air regulations.

This ad for WJBO radio in Baton Rouge was found in a 1952 edition of the Broadcasting Yearbook. It wasn't a more innocent time, necessarily, but certainly more insanely optimistic and naive.

Down on the bayou, Boudreaux is f***ed

Hey, y'all! Watch this!

If you were wondering how a British oil giant figures it will get away with this whole "I am become death, destroyer of worlds" thang without its executives having to stockpile Soap on a Rope, read on.

It's nothing shocking, or even unusual by Washington standards, but the following information from CNN Money is well worth going over now and again so it's not too crazy-making to bear when, at long last, Boudreaux gets hung out to dry next to his empty shrimp nets:

The lobbying firms working for BP are among Washington's most influential, including one headed by Ken Duberstein, a chief of staff for President Ronald Reagan, and another led by Tony Podesta, whose brother was President Bill Clinton's chief of staff.

"They are among the biggest of the big. Consistently, year in and year out, they spend millions in federal lobbying efforts," said Dave Levinthal, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics. "How that will change post-oil spill remains to be seen, but it would be hard to believe their numbers would do anything but go up."

During the 2008 election cycle, BP spent $531,000, through its corporate political committee and in contributions to candidates. So far this cycle, it has spent $113,000, with most of the money going to Republicans.

WASHINGTON, you see, is where ugly people go to be high-dollar hookers. (I wonder whether Sarah Palin was sharp enough to know she committed a double entendre when she famously said "Drill, baby! Drill!"?)

God bless America, land of opportunity! Unless, of course, you're Boudreaux and you used to fish the southeast Louisiana coastal waters.

In that case, podna, you're just f***ed.


P.S.: Oh, and there's this, too.

Keeping up with the times

Louisiana's state flag hasn't much changed since its official adoption in 1912. And it probably hadn't changed drastically in the century before it got legal validation.

Times change, though, and so do the symbols that represent who we are as a people. And given recent developments, perhaps it's time for the first overhaul of the Pelican State's banner since I don't know when.

The above one, I think, should do the trick.

Then again, if the United States can't do its damn job of protecting its citizens from being raped by foreign oil companies -- from having their culture, economy and environment destroyed -- then maybe this second flag would be more appropriate.

British Plantation

If you'd really like to know what's going on with the BPocalypse in Louisiana, it's helpful to tap into the experiences of people like Richard Shephard.

Shephard is an aerial photographer who has been teaming up with other grassroots types to document exactly what the hell is going on with the oil spill and cleanup. Or, rather, lack of cleanup.

IN A PHOTO GALLERY from last weekend, Shephard documents the breadth and depth of the public-relations farce BP is trying to perpetuate on the American public. As much as anything, this hearkens back to the South's sad past of slavery, racism and brutality, with the scene described below perhaps giving rise to yet another more-appropriate name for the United Kingdom-based oil spiller -- British Plantation:

So here I am on Grand Isle, surveying this fiasco. I carry no press credentials, emblems or logos, nor pretend to be other than some white dude taking pictures.

Apart from a few brave souls, these BP hired clean-up workers are under strict instructions not to speak to the press (which I am not). Within seconds of shooting as many images as possible, I am intercepted by white, paramilitary-cop-wanna-bees, who snap and growl to the workers to, quote, "shut the f*** up and say nothing".

Personally, I say nothing at all and continue shooting, filming their fake-bullshit badges, Rent-A-Cop black t-shirts and quasi-Special-Forces logos. The badges, I note, say nothing official, no county name, no badge number, not even a reference to BP. They appear to be just internet-purchase costumery.

They turn their heads, these wanna-bees, mumbling into Walmart walkie-talkies and eventually storming off in embarrassment. They have no authority what-so-ever. This is a total BP sham. Several times I am told to leave the beach as ‘it is under military control', yet no military is present. When I politely press them about this ridiculous contradiction, they fumble for an answer.

When I do leave the beach, the local (and very real) cops just smile and wave. They know who I am and what I'm doing.

The lack of Port-a-potties for this huge work force is nauseatingly apparent. Next to the main parking lot is a private campground, where the huge work force has been forced to relieve themselves. To quote a local, "It smells like a goddamn hog pen."

READ the whole thing. See all Shephard's photos.

Go here and here, too.

Meet BP's new CEO

Or the federal government's new "oil-spill czar."

Soon-to-be-former American League umpire Jim Joyce is still mulling his future career plans after screwing the Detroit Tigers' Armando Galarraga out of a perfect game after 8 2/3 innings.

HIS CHOICE apparently has come down to the two jobs that perfectly match his skill set -- he can be the new Barney Fife of BP, where he can continue the royal screwing of the people of Louisiana and the Gulf coast . . . or he can become the new Gomer Pyle of the federal response, where he can perpetuate the royal screwing of the people of Louisiana and the Gulf coast.

Decisions, decisions. . . .

Domination through negligence

Here's the blueprint for world domination:

Blow up an oil well, starting a massive oil spill. Let the oil go and go, then spray gunk on it that makes things worse and makes cleanup workers sick.

Destroy the environment; destroy people's livelihoods. Make them completely dependent on the jobs you create to clean up the mess you made.

Abuse your new employees, deny them safety equipment, cover up when they fall ill, threaten them and their jobs if they speak out.

BUY OFF the government and -- voila! -- you're King of the World! Cable News Network explains all this on their website:

The restraining order requests that BP stop using dispersants without providing "appropriate personal protective equipment" to workers.

Corexit, a dispersant, is being sprayed into the Gulf to break down the oil. The safety data information sheet from the manufacturer states that people should "avoid breathing in vapor" from Corexit, and that masks should be work when Corexit is present in certain concentrations in the air.

BP has not supplied workers with masks when they work near the oil and dispersants.

"We're been carrying out very extensive air quality since early on in this exercise, to make sure that we have working safe conditions, and thus far not found situations where there are air quality concerns that would require face masks," MacEwen said.

He added that workers who want to wear masks are "free to do so" as long as they receive instructions from their supervisors on how to use them.

According to Guidry from the shrimpers' association, BP told workers they were not allowed to wear masks.

"Some of our men asked, and they were told they'd be fired if they wore masks," he said.

Tony Hayward, the chief executive officer of BP, offered another explanation for the fishermen's illness: spoiled food.

"Food poisoning is clearly a big issue," Hayward said Sunday. "It's something we've got to be very mindful of. It's one of the big issues of keeping the Army operating. You know, the Army marches on their stomachs."

An expert on foodborne illness cast doubt on Hayward's theory.

"Headaches, shortness of breath, nosebleeds -- there's nothing there that suggests foodborne illness," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a professor at the University of Minnesota School of Public Health. "I don't know what these people have, but it sounds more like a respiratory illness."

WHAT DOES it matter, Cap? It's not like their lives have any value -- they're serfs!

Thought experiment: If a government can't fulfill its basic role, protecting the welfare of citizens, what then is it good for? And what legitimacy can it possibly have?

Dear Britain, I think you have a problem

Big protest against BP today in New Orleans. Among the sights there was this, as captured by The Times-Picayune.

Mr. Cameron, I think your UK-headquartered oil company may have presented you with a bit of a sticky wicket, public-relationswise.

Trust me, as BP continues to make the Gulf into a massive dead zone and wipe out entire cultures, you will find this display of outrage is only the "tip of the spear," so to speak.

Don't screw with a wounded Tiger

'Tigers, go in once more, go in my sons, I'll be great gloriously God damned if the sons of bitches can ever whip the Tigers!'

Dear Mr. President:

Allow me to add to what Garland Robinette just told you.

If the United States of America persists in seeing Louisiana as a state with first-class natural resources and second-class citizens -- this while a multinational oil company and the neglect of "les Americains" destroy its environment, culture and economy -- it might be useful for you to research how the LSU Tigers came to get that athletic nickname.

IN OTHER WORDS, don't push an entire people further into the kind of outrage people get when they know they're dead men walking, and they know who did it to them. Because if die they are going to do, they damn well will take their murderers along for the ride.

And trust me, a Louisiana native, on this. If that Rubicon is crossed, "les Americains" will discover quickly that Taliban fighters and Iraqi insurgents are rank amateurs.

The Vietnam War happened for a reason. As did the Bolshevik Revolution and any number of other internecine conflagrations that left a legacy of death and destruction in their wake. The results may have been all wrong -- and all tragic -- but the fuse was lit for damned good reasons.

Don't go there.

AMERICANS are Americans. Period. The minute we believe that to be no longer true, it is the United States that will be a dead country walking.

The actions of the U.S. government from this moment onward will determine whether or not the last casualty of the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe will be the legitimacy of the American political system itself.

Oh my God! BP killed Louisiana!

You bastards!

The Associated Press explains how the oil company's latest attempt to stop the BPocalypse joined the long list of epic BP fails:

The company determined the "top kill" had failed after it spent three days pumping heavy drilling mud into the crippled well 5,000 feet underwater. It's the latest in a series of failures to stop the crude that's fouling marshland and beaches, as estimates of how much oil is leaking grow more dire.

The spill is the worst in U.S. history — exceeding even the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster — and has dumped between 18 million and 40 million gallons into the Gulf, according to government estimates.

"This scares everybody, the fact that we can't make this well stop flowing, the fact that we haven't succeeded so far," BP PLC Chief Operating Officer Doug Suttles said Saturday. "Many of the things we're trying have been done on the surface before, but have never been tried at 5,000 feet."

(snip)

Word that the top-kill had failed hit hard in fishing communities along Louisiana's coast.

"Everybody's starting to realize this summer's lost. And our whole lifestyle might be lost," said Michael Ballay, the 59-year-old manager of the Cypress Cove Marina in Venice, La., near where oil first made landfall in large quantities almost two weeks ago.

Johnny Nunez, owner of Fishing Magician Charters in Shell Beach, La., said the spill is hurting his business during what's normally the best time of year — and there's no end in sight.

"If fishing's bad for five years, I'll be 60 years old. I'll be done for," he said after watching BP's televised announcement.

The top official in coastal Plaquemines Parish said news of the top kill failure brought tears to his eyes.

"They are going to destroy south Louisiana. We are dying a slow death here," said Billy Nungesser, the parish president. "We don't have time to wait while they try solutions. Hurricane season starts on Tuesday."

OK, I KNOW the cofferdam, the siphon, the top kill and the junk shot all failed to make a dent in the geyser of doom's flow rate. But have BP engineers tried the "jerk shot"?

You know, the procedure where you put a cork in the mouth of BP CEO Tony Hayward, shoot him under pressure into the damaged wellhead, then let him expand from his own hot air until the oil flow is stopped.

The "jerk shot" may or may not work but, in this case, stopping the oil flow would just be lagniappe, right?

A shrimper explains it all oil

"We need the jobs. We need the oil, but what's the trade-off? We in south Louisiana and that -- we're the trade-off. They're trading us off for domestic oil for the rest of the country."

Michael Roberts, shrimper

Now that you've watched the Time video, read this -- Roberts' essay on TakePart.com. It is heartrending.

HERE'S a snippet:

As we headed farther south, we saw at least a dozen boats, which from a distance appeared to be shrimping. But shrimping was not what they were doing at all; instead they were towing oil booms in a desperate attempt to corral oil that was pouring into our fishing grounds. We stopped to talk to one of the fishermen towing a boom, a young fisherman from Lafitte. What he told me floored me.

“What we are seeing in the lake, the oil, is but a drop in the bucket of what is to come,” he said. He had just come out of the Gulf of Mexico and said, “It was unbelievable, and the oil runs for miles and miles and is headed for shore and into our fishing grounds."

I thought what I had already seen in the lake was bad enough for a lifetime. We talked a little while longer, gave the fisherman some protective respirators, and were soon on our way. As we left the small fleet of boats working feverishly, trying to corral the oil, I became overwhelmed with what I had seen.

I am not really emotional and consider myself a pretty tough guy. You have to be to survive as a fisherman. But as I left that scene, tears flowed down my face and I cried. Something I have not done in a long time, but would do several more times this day. I tried not to let my grandson, Scottie, see me crying. I didn’t think he would understand that I was crying for his stolen future. None of this will be the same, for decades to come. The damage is going to be immense and I do not think our lives here in south Louisiana will ever be the same. He is too young to understand. He has an intense love for our way of life here. He wants to be a fisherman and a fishing guide when he gets older. That’s all he’s ever wanted. It is what he is, it is in his soul, and it is his culture. How can I tell him that this may never come to pass now, now that everything he loves in the outdoors may soon be destroyed by this massive oil spill?

How do we tell a generation of young people in south Louisiana who live and breathe this bayou life, that the life they love so much could soon be gone? How do we tell them? All this raced through my mind and I wept.

BP's f***ing proper f***ing dog-and-pony show

Well, I think I now know more about f***king proper f***ing booming than BP does -- not to mention the media, which pretty much has fired all the f***ing proper f***ing journalists who f***ing know s*** about anything at all.

That's the point of this, er, earthily put video dramatizing a Daily Kos essay from a couple of weeks ago by someone with 30 years of oilfield experience who does know, to use the proper industry terminology, "f***ing proper f***ing booming."

So here you go. Watch and get even more outraged.