captain cracker, failing earnestly

As I type this, on vacation, my keyboard is making two noises. One being the usual mechanical click built into the molded petroleum device. The other is the heavy thump of my fingers furiously smacking into the plastic keys.

It is impossible to know where to begin, in describing a great American tragedy, and it is impossible to remain calm when considering the repercussions.

Katerina. There was no saving the oil rigs, the natural gas wells, the gulf pipelines. The refineries are wrecked. They’re off the hook. While the short term distillate crisis, the missing gasoline, will punt Americans into considerations of conservation, an ominous undertow has entered geopolitics.

Peak oil is almost certainly here. By the time the missing oil production in the gulf is back online (years, if ever) – Saudi will be in decline. Maybe that is why FEMA is trolling peak oil sites. Oh, and if Saudi pumps 500,000 extra barrels of sickly, sour, lumpy, crude, will it make a sound? What is the sound of one hand clapping, grasshopper? Read on.

On to the unmitigated tragedy of New Orleans. Some might say it is lucky only 100 odd people are “confirmed dead”, by state.

Are the casualty numbers not then confusing? Perhaps FEMA has the categories mixed up on the spreadsheets – let us check the animals and property loss column.

Scientists who traffic in supposedly confusing concepts like Hydrology tell us that 250,000 humans were likely unable to leave New Orleans and regions south. Never mind Mississippi, where thousands of square miles lie flattened. Clearly, America is missing a lot of poor, black people. Alligators and flies have since found many of them, chemical waste notwithstanding.

But who listens to scientists? Not George Bush, and not Mike Brown “Brownie”, the caddy Bush put in charge of FEMA. Previously, Bush praised the Clinton FEMA director James Witt in the 2000 debates with Gore -- but at this point, we all know that Bush prizes loyalty over competence. Competence was shown the door.

Brownie spent a long, leisurely time on Thursday fielding questions during a press conference -- sucking his own dick, talking about setting up humane cages for the negroes in the coming weeks, smoking a bowl – doing anything except leading an emergency effort to drop water, milk and food for the thousands at the convention center miles away. Doing anything except rescuing babies. Babies dying from dehydration -- tongues lolling from their mouths. Friday night – the babies were still there. Fox News had a feed.


Chertoff blamed people who make 10 grand a year for not evacuating in cars they didn’t own with gasoline they couldn’t afford.

All those useless eaters – too stupid to save themselves. This is what a die-off looks like. Jay Hanson has a better bead on our future (as a verb) than any ten overfed optimists.

Helicopters were available, are available. Choppers which had the ability to drop thousands of pounds of sand on the sundered levee. Clearly, FEMA had no supplies to drop. Cronycrats in dockers, dockers around their ankles, competence in Arabian Horses and not disaster, blamed “Urban Warfare” and lawlessness. Their white asses flashed in the sun as these lies were uttered.

Yes -- there was gunfire in New Orleans. And yeah, there were panicked drug addicts, looking for something to take the edge off.

So what? Forgive me for not buying into the bullshit hysteria. I saw the video, from actual reporters on the ground. You would have been more likely to see Sasquatch than urban warfare. Unless of course you chose to include the military and the police, guns at ready, carefully eyeing the elderly, poor, and infirm, menacing from their wheelchairs, glowing with feral hunger and helplessness.

A pizza deliveryman in Los Angeles is in more danger of injury than someone driving a truck stocked with water in New Orleans.

Who are these sawed off runts, covering their asses? What government rodent, sporting a diploma mill doctorate, is putting out orders to stand down relief and aid? Why are phone lines being cut? Why was available aid stopped at checkpoints? Do we live in 1950’s communist Russia?

Bouphonia reasonably assumes that the purpose of incompetent federal agencies is quite clear under the Bush Administration: To prove that government doesn’t work, while simultaneously robbing the taxpayers blind.

Consider the lesson learned.

Take heed, USA. You are a damaged node.

More Tuesday.

Asked about President Bush's comment Thursday to ABC News that, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees," Chertoff defended his boss.

"I think that did catch people by surprise," the secretary said. "I don't think anybody has seen that kind of massive breach -- in fact, multiple, massive breaches."

Scientists, federal officials and others had predicted for decades the potential for a Katrina-like disaster, with levees breaking and water swamping New Orleans, most of which sits below sea level.