Drilling For Dudgeon

It is Day 60 of the BP oil crisis and President Obama still stands accused of maintaining levels of vexation insufficient to cap the well. Early efforts undertaken with a frowny face and lips pressed tightly together did not appear to stem the flow. Nearly everyone is certain that it will require nothing less than a serious fit of pique to get a handle on this problem, and many complain that Obama is falling short.

As is often the case, the American people have shown themselves ahead of their leaders in demanding action, as evidenced by the speed with which they clicked on the Facebook button "I bet we can find 1,000,000 people who think BP should just quit dicking around and plug the hole." Emotion is running high.

In recognition, Mr. Obama recently made a trip to the State of Dudgeon, on whose shores he was photographed kicking at snark balls, but it is clear that more pissiness is called for. With that in mind, Mr. Obama fired the head of the Minerals Management Service for gross negligence and corruption that began in the previous administration and may have continued into his own while he was busy frowning at the economy and the health care industry. Stated the National Republican Senatorial Committee: "This finger-pointing follows a deliberate pattern by the White House to deny responsibility for anything that takes place on President Obama's watch."

The White House responded with a statement of regret for the recent elevated sunspot activity. Obama himself declared "in case you were wondering who's responsible, I take responsibility. The buck stops with me," provoking Sarah Palin, checking in from Planet Huh, to retort that "the fundamental problem at the core of this crisis is a lack of responsibility. There's a culture of buck-passing at the heart of this administration."

As the oil continues to gush, many call for increased umbrage and question the efficacy of simple exasperation. Speaking to this issue, an interviewer asked Obama whether this wasn't a time to "kick some butt" rather than be calm and collected, a deportment that has so far failed to end the crisis. In response, Mr. Obama said: "I'm going to push back hard on this. Because I think that this is just an idea that got in folks' heads and the media's run with it...A month ago, I was meeting with fishermen down there...and I don't sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar. We talk to these folks because they potentially had the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick. Right? So, you know, this is not theater."

Headlines caught the gist ("OBAMA SAYS ASS") and pundits

immediately accused him of theatrics, suggesting his temperament was unsuitable for the job. Republicans pounded him for failing to step up as a leader. Mr. Obama side-stepped this controversy, prompting complaints about his aloofness, and extended a moratorium on new drilling for six months, which Republicans immediately condemned as being an egregious act of taking charge. Obama responded by calling for renewed efforts to plan for the post-oil age, infuriating Republican counterparts. "We are doing more than anyone to get to the post-oil age," a spokesman said, "by running through all the oil as fast as we possibly can."

Across the pond, Britons have faulted the President for failure to maintain a more diplomatic level of detachment. A Conservative peer, Lord Tebbit, called the American response "a crude, bigoted, xenophobic display of partisan, political, presidential petulance." Meanwhile, the crisis of appropriate comportment has also snared the CEO of BP, who had been roundly castigated for his demeanor after saying: "I'm sorry...there's no one who wants this over more than I do. I'd like my life back." Puzzled by the uproar, he amended his statement to: "This is great. I'm having the time of my life," which also fell short of public expectations, and he remains hunched in his closet, confused.

Mr. Obama took his case for cooperation in a proposed energy bill to Republicans in a closed-door luncheon. He was met by solid opposition on all points, including choice of appetizer, and afterwards, Republican Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas was quoted as saying "he needs to take a Valium before he comes in and talks to Republicans. He's pretty thin-skinned."

Geologists studying the issue have not been able to agree on the size of the President's reservoir of wrath, noting that despite eruptions of temper and efforts to measure the flow of snits, much of it remains below the surface. Republicans warn that they may need to provoke additional releases of rage before they will be able to slam the cap on him completely.

Chicken Head: A Drama In Three Acts

The ants that arrived in April are still here, by the way. After allowing them to feel at home for a few weeks, hoping they'd disinvite themselves, we finally brought out the big guns. First we polished up the counters. Then we cleaned the cabinets. Then we pulled out the drawers and took everything out and cleaned that. The ants kept coming back, so we sprayed them with Windex. They kept coming, so we bought ant traps. That didn't work, so we mashed them with tiny hammers. That didn't work, so we poured little pots of boiling oil on them. That didn't work, so we killed some and put their heads on tiny little pikes all over the kitchen. No matter what we did, they kept coming back and coming back, like The Eagles.

Which reminds me of BP and its oil gusher.

First they fluttered their hands and hoped it would heal itself. Then they poured golf balls and plastic into the hole. Then they tried to smother it with mud. Then they cut the pipe off and scrubbed it up so it flowed more abundantly. Then they dropped a house on it, an idea that still had traction from the Wicked Witch of the East incident. Then they tried mopping up oil on the shoreline with live pelicans. Then they announced that plugging the leak might take a while. August, maybe. Or something like August. Like, maybe, never. By early June, they had finally succeeded in stemming the flow of hope.

Which reminds me of the New Carissa.

The New Carissa was a ship that foundered off the southern coast of Oregon in 1999. There had been a storm coming up, and she had anchored off shore, if by "anchored" we mean bobbing a fifty-foot weight in a 100-foot sea. Folks were concerned. They tried to re-float her and get her going under her own power, but the local tug couldn't make it over the bar. A more substantial tug was held up in Astoria for four days, while the New Carissa continued to dig in closer to shore. Then she busted up and commenced to leak oil. Folks were concerned.

So they set her on fire. Using 36 shaped charges, 2280 liters of napalm, and 180 kg of plastic explosives, they succeeded in burning one tank for 33 hours, but the other remained unscathed. And then she busted in two. Folks were concerned.

Nearly a month later, they were able to tow just the bow section out to sea with the hope of sinking it into oblivion, but the tow line snapped, and half of the New Carissa poinked onto shore again 80 miles north in Waldport. Within a week it was re-towed out to sea and sunk in nearly two miles of water, where, whatever it is doing, we can't hear it (la la la la la). No one was taking any chances. They used a destroyer and a submarine equipped with 400 lbs of high explosives, 69 rounds of gunfire, and a torpedo to simultaneously sink the bow and serve as a stern warning (har) to the grounded section back in Coos Bay, which nevertheless continues to leak. Thousands of sea and shore birds were fatally oiled, including hundreds of murres, which I should not take personally, but I do.

Which reminds me of Lady and the chicken head.

Lady was my uncle's dog, a sweet girl, and I loved playing with her when we vacationed at the farm in North Dakota. She and I were following my uncle around one day when, without warning, he snatched up a chicken and lopped its head off. My four-year-old city heart was shocked and inconsolable, and Lady tried to cheer me up with the chicken head, missing the mark by quite a lot. So Uncle Cliff buried the head, but the next day Lady bounded up to me with the soiled head, which was then buried deeper. Every new day, Lady showed up with an increasingly grisly gift. By the end of the week, I was seeing that dog as just another bad-news bitch with a mouthful of garbage.

Which reminds me of Sarah Palin. Who recently blamed the BP oil fiasco on environmentalists.

Which I should not take personally, but I do.

We're Toast

May 1, 2010. 2.2 billion of the world's top climate scientists today concluded their convention by signing a statement that global warming is a largely man-made phenomenon and a dire threat to the viability of the planet, and urged immediate action on the part of the nations of the world to combat it.

May 10, 2010. President Barack Obama held a press conference announcing a major new initiative to reduce atmospheric carbon. He outlined goals and targets and directed the houses of Congress to work together to achieve them.

May 11, 2010. House minority leader John Boehner (Republican-Ohio) held a press conference backed by an American flag, a Don't Tread On Me flag, three disgruntled archaeologists and an oil executive with a backyard weather station. He stated his opposition to all efforts to reduce carbon in the atmosphere and put forth a new plan calling for increased investment in air-conditioning for the next twenty years to tide us over until the oil runs out.

June 18, 2010. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was revealed to have written, in a private email to a friend, that Rep. Boehner "is a total doodoo-head."

June 19, 2010. Rep. John Boehner, speaking to commentator Sean Hannity (Republican-Fox), retorted that Rahm Emanuel was a doodoo-head. "No, YOU," he explained.

June 20, 2010. Sarah Palin, posting on her Facebook page, demanded that Emanuel be fired and then waterboarded for "insulting the crappo-cranially challenged community."

June 22, 2010. Katie Couric, in an interview with Sarah Palin, asked for a clarification. "So are you saying it is offensive to call a Republican a doodoo-head, but not offensive to call a Democrat a doodoo-head?" Ms. Palin, chuckling, explained that Democrats actually are doodoo-heads, which makes it funny. "But--" Couric began, at which point Palin struck a pose and said "Talk to the hand," immediately regretting it.

August 3, 2010. House Democrats easily passed a bill requiring carbon levels to be reduced to pre-1918 levels by 2015.

December 22, 2010. The bipartisan Senate Committee On Global Warming Posturing, after months of negotiation behind closed doors, produced a draft suggesting that new vehicles be required to come equipped with cloth grocery bags and a pre-programmed set of GPS directions to the nearest recycling center. Progress on the bill was halted when Senator Ben Nelson (Democrat-Nebraska) withheld his approval until the Senate agreed to include funding for the Ben Nelson Recreational Center For The Crappo-Cranially Challenged outside Wahoo.

January 4, 2011. Progress on Obama's Cool Beans Initiative was stalled today when Senator Robert Casey (Democrat-Pennsylvania) proposed an amendment specifically prohibiting any federal funding of weatherization projects at abortion clinics.

January 5, 2011. Senator Diana DeGette (Democrat-Colorado), rising to speak on the subject of the Casey Amendment, exploded on the floor of the Senate, shutting down all activity until the seats could be wiped down.

January 23, 2011. Senator Joe Lieberman (Nincompoop-Connecticut) refused to vote for the draft bill in its current form. "Weh, weh, weh," he reasoned in an interview on CBS Sunday Morning. "Bluh, bluh," he later clarified.

February 12, 2011. Without enough votes to counter an expected Republican snitfest, the Senate tabled a vote on the proposed climate legislation and moved to reconcile bills with the House version. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Democrat-California) noted areas of overlap that could lead to a compromise, suggesting that, for instance, in place of "increase vehicle fuel efficiency standards to 98 mpg," they might require that new vehicles, starting in 2025, be painted an attractive shade of green. Clutching talking-points memos, House Republicans fanned out across the nation, thundering identically that this would be a blow to Americans' freedom.

February 15, 2011. Tea Party activists stormed town halls across the Midwest shaking Matchbox cars in rainbow colors. Speaking from a personal flotation device north of the Bering Strait where

he had gone for a week of fishing, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (Republican-Virginia) called for a do-over. "Realistically, the only thing we can do now is start from scratch," he intoned, smoothly reeling in a trophy marlin.

Sarah Palin Thinks A Think

I'm thrilled to report that, for once, I am in complete agreement with something Sarah Palin has to say. The statement in question is located on her Facebook page. Scroll down past "What Children's Book Are You?" (Dr. Seuss: Oh, The Thinks You Can Think!) and the status report "...requests help with the Move Stolen Furniture job in Mafia Wars." And there it is:

"The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama's 'death panel' so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their 'level of productivity in society,' whether they are worthy of health care."

Right on, sister mama! That doesn't happen in the America I know and love, either. But let's not stop there. Contrary to what you may have heard, or may yet hear:

The America I know and love is not one in which elderly Pomeranians are sent away to be recycled into insulation batting for poor households.

The America I know and love does not levy taxes on houses of worship until they agree to open up a needle-exchange program in the basement.

The America I know and love does not submit overweight toddlers to be diced into nuggets and sent to aid groups in Somalia.

The America I know and love does not require that debutantes that are not immediately snapped up be taken directly from Cotillion and funneled into arranged marriages with large, unattractive members of the same sex.

The America I know and love does not force its citizens to drive their babysitters to the abortion clinic in tiny, underpowered cars.

The America I know and love does not confiscate its citizens' leaf blowers and insist that they eat their yard debris with a side of sprouts and a dollop of Newman's Own.

The America I know and love does not require that its public servants pass any tests of general education, civics or integrity.

The America I know and love is not engaged in research into the grafting of wings onto monkeys, although it may have secretly delivered monkeys to wing-graft studies in Jordan or Syria. Political figures in the America I know and love do not associate closely with flying butt-monkeys. Monkeys cannot fly and fling poo at the same time.

The America I know and love is a serious place with serious business to accomplish, and its public figures do not waste time leaping out of doors at the American public and yelling "boogity boogity boogity."

Oh wait a minute, scratch that last one.

In Thickness And In Stealth

People are pretty het up about Obama's plan to reform health care in this country, and no wonder. The current system is confusing, discriminatory, ineffective, heinously expensive, and ours, dammit. If we'd wanted great guaranteed health care at a great price, we'd be French.

This is America! Why would we give a government bureaucrat, maxed out at a GS-19 pay scale, the power to deny care when it could be denied by an insurance company and generate some really mind-blowing profits?

The health care industry in this country has a kabillion of our hard-earned dollars, so naturally we're very protective of it. And entities with a kabillion dollars do not customarily sit on their hands and whimper when they're threatened, no sir. A kabillion dollars can buy you a whole fleet of politicians, news organizations, and pudgy radio entertainers. A kabillion dollars enables you to manufacture pure crap out of thin ether, sprinkle it on the masses and make them swear it's maple sugar. Who eats this crap? Why, you'd have to be dumber than sheep.

So thousands of folks, enraged and woolly, have flocked to town hall meetings, carrying signs and carrying on. You've probably read about some of them.

"STATES RIGHTS NO NATIONAL MEDICAL DATABASE" (Protesters countering with signs reading "FEDERALISM NO BAKE CHEESECAKE" were reported to be from the Irrelevancy Faction of the local chapter of Cognitive Dissidents.)

"FREEDOM IS NOT FREE" (Or even reasonable, something it has in common with the health care industry.)

"ONE NATION UNDER GOD, NOT UNDER SOCIALIZED HEALTH CARE" (Right on. Socialism threatens to deliver a basic level of health care to all, but God was always a giveth-and-taketh-away kind of Guy.)

And, of course, famously, there is the fellow who bellowed "Keep your government hands off my Medicare!" He was later seen petitioning the sun to quit blocking all the light. Is it really in the interests of the species to provide this gentleman with health care? Liberals believe that they must, although they wistfully suggest that, at the least, he might be constrained from operating machinery. Forklifts, voting machines.

Many important public figures have gotten into the act. Representative Roy Blunt, Republican from Missouri, declared that, at age 59, he would be denied a hip replacement if he were in Canada or the United Kingdom. This assertion is demonstrably untruthy, and to his credit, when this was pointed out, he apologized and retracted his statement. "I misspoke myself," he admitted solemnly. "I meant to say that in Canada or the United Kingdom I would be required to demonstrate my worthiness to the government bureaucrats by hopping on my good leg for six or seven months while wearing a chicken suit." Apology accepted.

Then Sarah Palin, in a bid to wrap up the 2012 nomination of the Loonycakes Party, brought up the terrifying prospect of Obama's Death Panels, groups of government bureaucrats which will convene for the purpose of deciding whether your grandma will be allowed to live. And there may indeed be much to fear from socialized medicine. Certainly our socialized public school system has let us down, in terms of delivering a thoughtful and educated citizenry.

That said, we must here salute Mrs. LuVerne Thompson's talented class of seventh-grade boys, who were responsible for the widespread dissemination of the photos of Obama with horns, a tail, and a Hitler mustache. (Some suspect Photoshop, but according to Mrs. Thompson, "it's all real, honey. Those horns and tail were created using stem cells ripped from one of our Lord's precious potential snowflake babies, which He in his good time will dig out of the freezer just as soon as He rounds up another four-hundred-thousand wombs.") The rest, however, is almost certainly bogus. Even Obama's detractors admit he's way too cool for the Hitler mustache. But they still defend the basic allusion. After all, the health industry draws a comparison between health care reform and the worst of Nazi Germany for a very good reason. And that reason is that the Spanish Inquisition no longer packs the same punch.

Liberals are appalled at the analogy. But just wait until word gets out about Obama's secret plan to supplement the Food Stamps program with parcels of grandmother meat.