'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.

More crap from the No. 2 state

Everything's bigger in Tejas.

First of all, there's the outsized ego of its state university. And don't try to convince University of Tejas fans theirs isn't the only school in Tejas, if not the world -- they won't believe you.

And the "bigger in Tejas" list also includes, no doubt, the feedlots. They'd have to be to hold as much bulls*** as what flows out of the Land of Big Hair and Small Brains every time Jennifer Floyd Engel posts another column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

One of the best rivalries in sports will not be the same; just ask Arkansas what happened to its rivalries after leaving the SWC. Can you imagine the Aggie War Hymn with "goodbye to Louisiana State University"?

Of course, Governor Good Hair wants A&M to stay with Texas.

What he needs to be doing is trying to save the Big XII. I do not say this lightly since this league obviously had fatal flaws, starting with its clearly overmatched commissioner, Dan Beebe, and a lot of schools who did not know their role.

And I am talking to my alma mater, Mizzou. Great job being played by The Big Ten, and enjoy begging for inclusion in the Mountain West. My check is not in the mail, nor will it be until heads roll.

I am also including Nebraska, which idiotically believes going to The Big Ten will turn back the clock to 1990, when 'roided partial qualifiers ruled the college football landscape. How smart are Nebraskans? They actually buy this "more aligned with culture and academic mission" nonsense being spewed Friday.

And who hasn't heard Nebraska referred to as Harvard on the Plains?

In fact, can everybody please dispense with acting like this is about academics, or worrying about being left behind, or anything except for money and super conferences.

Yes, The Big XII is dead, killed by corn shuckers, Tigers and greedy blank-blankers. And while this wake has turned into a roast, look for everybody to be mourning its demise in hindsight.

'ROIDED partial qualifiers? Harvard on the Plains?

Well, there is this story in the Omaha World-Herald. Maybe that's where Ms. Jennifer Floyd Engel learned about NU's reputation:

Few doubt the University of Nebraska-Lincoln can more than hold its own on the football fields of the Big Ten.

A bigger question is how it stacks up in the classroom and the lab. Nebraska's flagship university ranks lower in the U.S. News & World Report rankings and pulls in fewer research dollars than all of its new partners in the nation's most academically prestigious athletic conference.

But regardless of UNL's current standing, almost any university would envy the upward trajectory the school has been on academically over the past decade.

Its U.S. News ranking among comprehensive public universities has jumped from 57th to 43rd, a measure of its rising reputation.

Its federal research haul has more than doubled.

The school is attracting more of the state's brightest students, and more students than ever from out of state.

Were it not for the marked improvements of the past decade, Chancellor Harvey Perlman said he doubts UNL would be the newest member of the Big Ten.

Now that that new affiliation will have UNL running and collaborating with some of the most prestigious public universities in the land, Perlman and other campus leaders say they see no reason UNL can't aspire to loftier heights in the decades ahead.

“It's a new bar for academics and research,” said Ellen Weissinger, UNL's interim vice chancellor for academic affairs. “Joining the Big Ten is going to accelerate our pace.”

UNL's upward trajectory did not go unnoticed when the Big Ten's presidents and chancellors considered granting the school entry to the conference, said Lou Anna K. Simon, president of Michigan State University and head of the Big Ten's board.

While athletics and football were obviously the initial reason UNL was considered, she said, scholarship is taken too seriously in the Big Ten to add a school that was not a serious academic player.

“There was more to this than just a football game,” Simon said Saturday. “I think all of my colleagues felt very comfortable that Nebraska was an extraordinary fit.”

The recent boost in UNL's academic firepower has its roots in a period of serious introspection during the 1990s.

IT'S REALLY a shame that the best a sports columnist for an also-ran metro daily in north Tejas can muster is rank name calling. Then again, Tejas is the World's Biggest Feedlot, and the fumes from all that Chanel No. 2 must have gone to a Mizzou gal's head.

It's not like it would have taken much. As folks up here are keen enough to observe, the University of Missouri is close enough to the Ozarks to see your first cousin from there, and she/he is lookin' right purdy.

As much as anything, Engel's outpouring of bile reminds me of what became pretty much a yearly ritual for Missouri football fans after having their asses handed to them by the Huskers. Of course, they often didn't fare any better in the insult department than they did the football department.

I remember when my wife and I drove to Columbia in 1983 for the Nebraska-MU game. Of course, Nebraska won.

And naturally, some drunk-ass Mizzou student was staggering outside the stadium afterward screaming "Nebraska sucks! Nebraska sucks!" at Husker fans (who, by the way, applaud visiting teams in Lincoln, win or lose). Of course, we responded by chanting back "Nebraska wins! Nebraska wins!"

He shut up. Really, some things are just too easy.

LIKE ENGELS succumbing to the temptation to just "phone it in" by ripping off the patented insult-column style of well-known "Colorado malcontent" Woody Paige. She imitates the Denver Post sports columnist OK; I do it better.

But nobody approaches the real deal. And only a Tejas bulls*** artist would think she could.

That kind of baseless arrogance only can mean one thing. When UT starts up The Longhorn Network, Jennifer Floyd Engel probably will be the first hire.

Talk about your match made in Hillbilly Heaven.

Farmer Favog's Almanac

The backyard garden has been in for about three weeks now, and the wheelbarrow greens garden has been in about a week.

Here's how it looks after a week of rain and warm weather.


The mustard greens have sprouted, and they're growing fast. The green onions, we're still waiting on.


The first thing we get every spring, though, is the wild mint all over our yard. When some plants go nuts all over the yard, you just don't mind.

There's little better than tea steeped with a big, big sprig of mint in the bottom of the pot.

Ditto for mint juleps and mojitos -- God's gift to the liver, both.


Even the houseflies agree.

The Marlin Perkins Report

And I'll stay here, on the news set, while Jim goes around back to flush out the man-eating raccoon.

Welcome to the morning news in Michigan.

Sweet Jesus! What have we Nebraskans gotten ourselves into with all this Big Ten stuff?

On the other hand, if Michigan coons made the road trip down to Lincoln, then got loose in the studio for the Husker Baseball TV Show, it would be more excitement than Mike Anderson's squad has generated in the last two seasons.

Oh, mother of Mary!

Tired of Bevo's s***, Huskers move out

If he wouldn't be embarrassed, and I wouldn't be embarrassed, I would give Tom Osborne a bear hug right now.

Harvey Perlman, too.

They have led Nebraska fans out of Egypt land. And the hypocrites of the Big 12 Conference let our people go.

Or something like that. Like they could stop us.

I THINK Tom Shatel puts it right well this morning in the Omaha World Herald:

Goodbye, Manhattan; hello, East Lansing. Goodbye, Boulder; hello, Columbus. Goodbye, Austin; hello, Iowa City.

It was a big day, the biggest day, and nobody was bigger than Harvey Perlman and Tom Osborne.

The chancellor and athletic director/legend-at-large put on a show at the regents meeting. They laid it all out. And while they were at it, they laid out Missouri and Texas. It was powerful. It was clinical. Nebraska, eerily quiet all these weeks, finally spoke up and turned up the volume for all the Big 12 to hear.

Perlman called out Mizzou for being the one to start the expansion circus.

Osborne talked about schools in the Big 12 that were asking NU to stay and all the while selling themselves to not one, not two but three other leagues.

Perlman said the Big 12 presidents wouldn't commit to staying in the league if Colorado and Missouri both left.

And then, in a downright delicious passage, Perlman talked about calling Texas' bluff. And how he asked Texas to commit its TV rights to the Big 12 if it was serious about the league, and how Texas declined.

Brilliant, Harvey. The Steve Pederson years are now forgiven.

Then, finally, the money quote from Osborne: “One team leaving does not break up a conference. Two teams leaving does not break up a conference. Six teams leaving breaks up a conference."

Boom. They should engrave those words on a plaque, or on the side of Memorial Stadium. Maybe put them on the final Big 12 football trophy.

AND THAT, boys and girls, is how a lot of us have become something we never really considered until now -- Big Ten fans. Happy Big Ten fans.

Goodbye Big 12. And good riddance.

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.

Natural selection 1, snake owner 0

Draping a 9-foot python around your neck? What could go wrong?

Strangulation, for one thing. No doubt, this poor Papillion, Neb., fool's last words were "Hey, y'all! Watch this!"

PRAISE GOD the snake-squeezed corpse here didn't belong to the little neighbor girl Cory Byrne let play with his python . . . and put around her neck, as recounted by the Omaha World-Herald:

He placed it on the trampoline outside. He let the children play with it.

“My daughter actually had it around her neck,” said David Driggers, 44, the neighbor. “There were about five or six kids over here that day.”

Things went terribly wrong Wednesday when Byrne, 34, tried to show off the python to a friend.

He was critically injured when the snake, estimated by authorities to be 9 feet long, wrapped around his neck and began strangling him.

Byrne died later at Midlands Community Hospital.

A friend tried to pull the reptile loose. Police arrived, finding Byrne unconscious and without a pulse. They managed to pry the python off Byrne.

“It took all they could do to get it back in the cage,” said Lt. Chris Whitted of the Papillion Police Department.

UNFORTUNATELY, congratulations are not in order for Mr. Byrne as a possible Darwin Award winner, being that you win one by "naturally selecting" yourself out of the gene pool.

On the other hand, we can all look at it this way: He may have accidentally sacrificed his life so the neighborhood kids might keep theirs.

That's not nothing.

God help me, I know it sounds cruel -- and maybe it is -- but it's true. Somebody usually ends up paying for that level of stupidity and irresponsibility, and thank God it wasn't an innocent child.

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.

He who laughs last. . . .

. . . laughs loudest.

Bo Pelini, to put it in Facebook speak, likes this.

HERE'S an Omaha World-Herald classic from December:

Bo Pelini had played it cool walking off the field, telling Texas coaches to go win a national title.

But he heard about a conflict at the threshold of the tunnel. Seemed a Texas fan and somebody from NU had exchanged words.

Bo marched toward the scene. Who was it? Bo wanted to engage the Texas fan.

Told nothing happened, he went back toward the locker room, where he saw Marc Boehm, NU assistant athletic director.

“Marc, I want to see (Big 12 head of officiating) Walt Anderson in there right (expletive) now!” Pelini shouted.

“BCS!” Pelini said as he entered the locker room. “That's why they make that call!”

Nebraska lost another heartbreaker to Texas Saturday. You saw it. Felt it. What you didn't feel were the post-game aftershocks reverberating through the concrete tunnels of Cowboys Stadium.

It hit hardest the Pelinis, who nearly orchestrated a monumental upset.

The reason why they didn't, according to Bo's and Carl's immediate reactions, was the officials' decision to add one second to the game clock after Colt McCoy's last throw out of bounds.

Originally, the clock expired, sending a flood of Nebraska players onto the field. But a review changed that call, led to Texas' game-winning kick and sent the Pelinis into madness.

According to Dan Beebe, Big 12 commissioner, officials did the right thing.

According to Walt Anderson, officials did the right thing. Where was the clock when the ball hit something out of bounds?

“There was a second left,” Anderson said.

But nothing or nobody could convince Bo Pelini.

“I want an explanation!” Pelini yelled outside his locker room.

Standing in that tunnel quietly watching him: Harvey Perlman, Paul Meyers, Eric Crouch.

“Get Coach Osborne down here!” Pelini said. “Can you go get Coach Osborne?”

Minutes later, Athletic Director Tom Osborne walked slowly toward the locker room in black trench coat. He entered the double doors to meet Pelini.

From outside the doors, one word could be heard loudest: “Cheaters!”

Then Osborne strode back to the field, where Texas was wrapping up its trophy presentation. En route to midfield, Osborne said to a World-Herald reporter: “Where is Dan Beebe?''

Beebe was standing at the 40-yard line talking to Assistant Commissioner Ed Stewart, a former Nebraska All-America linebacker.

As Osborne reached Beebe, the commissioner extended his hand. But Osborne didn't shake it. Osborne pointed at Beebe and said, “Would you go see Bo? Right now?''

By then, Nebraska Chancellor Harvey Perlman had come on to the field. Perlman and Osborne walked with Beebe off the field and down a stadium tunnel.

The three exchanged no words on the walk. Down the tunnel, Osborne walked three steps in front of Beebe and Perlman walked to Beebe's right.

OF COURSE, you don't make a high-stakes decision like blowing up the Big 12 Conference just because you see Texas getting every benefit of the doubt because the conference's slot in the BCS championship was at stake.

(I'm not saying the call that saved Texas' hide was wrong, but I am questioning whether, if the Huskers had been in Texas' position in that game -- with the Longhorns' shot at the national title still at stake -- whether Big 12 officials don't let the clock run out and call it a night.)

But the fragrant aroma of a dish called revenge being served cold, much as a bowl of gazpacho, sure is a wonderful thing to greet you as you step into the Big Ten café.

What time is it, boys and girls?

That's right!

It's just like Starbucks, only better. And much, much cheaper.

I say, Kingfish! Dis heah be o-fensibe!

Randy Newman said it best in 1974, some 13 years after this ad for a "Negro" station in New York City ran in Broadcasting:

Now your northern nigger's a Negro
You see he's got his dignity
Down here we're too ignorant to realize
That the North has set the nigger free

Yes he's free to be put in a cage
In Harlem in New York City
And he's free to be put in a cage on the South-Side of Chicago
And the West-Side
And he's free to be put in a cage in Hough in Cleveland
And he's free to be put in a cage in East St. Louis
And he's free to be put in a cage in Fillmore in San Francisco
And he's free to be put in a cage in Roxbury in Boston
They're gatherin' 'em up from miles around
Keepin' the niggers down

YOU JUST have to love the use of stereotypical dialect -- "lib" -- for the purpose of selling a "Negro" radio station to Madison Avenue. Would that were the only demeaning stereotype:

"Whether you sell a LIBation or appeal to the LIBido only WLIB can do the effective job."

Because "Negroes" are all about drinking and screwing, don't you know? Hell, add 'bling" and capping somebody's ass, and you've just described your average hip-hop station in 2010.

Isn't it AMAZING how much more enlightened we've become since March 27, 1961?

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.

Coffee time

Cher, I was gettin' tired tired, and I damn near fall asleep, yeah! So I made me a pot of coffee.

The Mid-Continent formula

For Todd Storz, it all began in 1949 at a little 500-watt daytimer in Omaha, Neb.

He and his brewing-baron dad bought KOWH radio from the Omaha World-Herald, which apparently had run the struggling station as something of an afterthought to printing the day's news on dead trees.


TWO YEARS later, in December 1951, KOWH was the biggest thing in the Big O.

In 1955, Storz' second purchase, WHB in Kansas City, was well on the way to similar success. As was WTIX in New Orleans, the third station in the Mid-Continent Broadcasting Co., chain.

THESE ADS for the Storz chain, found in the 1955 Broadcasting Yearbook and the April 13, 1953 edition of Broadcasting, attribute the stations' speedy rise to "the Mid-Continent formula." Roughly speaking, that formula grew from a skeleton of "spaced repetition" of hit records, hourly newscasts and non-stop fun promotions.

What the trade ads called "the Mid-Continent formula" soon enough swept the radio world and saved a dying industry, one nearly obliterated by the rapid rise of television.

What we came to know it as was much simpler -- Top 40.

Todd Storz died in 1964, of an apparent stroke at just 39. But his radio kingdom survived him and went on for years after.

And his creation lives on in the rock 'n' roll hearts of we who are forever young.

Just like Todd.

'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.