White House Gushes

Politico sucks it up uneasily. (But the oil is still gushing)

Nonetheless, West Wing officials are feeling very good about how the BP and McChrystal crises turned out -– and believe that their response may help the president pivot to the offensive. In each case, Obama did little second-guessing and acted decisively, according to participants in presidential meetings.

Well, and they would know. For sure.

But what about that huge skimmer that hasn’t been used yet?

And Bill Clinton has had enough. He says blow up the well.

–crossposted at BackyardConservative

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Day 69: Thad Allen Needs to Go

The federal response to the Gulf crisis has not improved this week as far as I can tell.  Admiral Thad Allen’s Friday briefing makes that abundantly clear.

This man need to be replaced.

At issue is the question of skimmers in the Gulf.  Karen Nelson of the Biloxi Sun Herald reported on the anger and frustration along the Gulf at the lack of skimmers along the Mississippi Gulf coast.  U.S. Representative Gene Taylor was apoplectic and beginning to sound like Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal:

Back on land in Gulfport, Taylor let loose.

“A lot of people are getting paid to say, ‘Look! There’s oil’ and not doing anything about it,” Taylor said. “There shouldn’t be a drop of oil in the Sound. There are enough boats running around.

“Nobody’s in charge,” Taylor said. “Everybody’s in charge, so no one’s in charge.”  “If the president can’t find anyone who can do this job,” he said, “let me do it.”

Admiral Allen was asked about the lack of skimmers by Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald.  His response?

The discussions we are having with the Navy and other folks right now is the availability of skimmers that are on standby because they might be needed for a spill someplace else and how we might go about assessing the availability of those resources. So I would separate out the resources that the Navy had that they’ve already given to us and the discussions we’re having across the entire country where we have equipment that’s out there as a requirement—legal requirement to cover spill response of those areas and how we might free those up, and that’s a work in progress inside the administration right now.

Got that?  We’ve got skimmers on standby but can’t use them because they might be needed somewhere else. Her next question was whether or not the Jones Act has been waived.  Allen’s response:

Oh, there are a lot of foreign vessels operating offshore, Carol. The Jones Act—we have had no request for Jones Act waivers. If the vessels are operating outside state waters, which is three miles and beyond, they don’t require a waiver. All that we require is an Affirmation of Reciprocity, so if there ever was a spill in those countries and we want to send skimming equipment, that we would be allowed to do that, as well, and that hasn’t become an issue yet, either.

Allen should check his mail more often.  One request was made on June 17.  John Cornyn sent a request on June 22.  On June 18, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison filed a bill requesting waiver of the Jones Act.  Florida Senator LeMieux and Rep. Jeff Miller requested a waiver two weeks ago.

Allen’s excuse that foreign vessels are working the spill three miles and more offshore is lame.  A waiver of the Jones Act would get foreign skimmers near the shore where they could protect the fragile coast.

Overall there are just too many cooks in the kitchen.  What is needed is take-charge leadership to make the tough calls and get the job done.  There’s just no excuse for the lack of skimmers in the Gulf.  Every available asset should be utilized.

When does incompetence cross the line and become criminal?

Cross posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport

(More at Memeorandum)

Judge Rules Against Obama’s Offshore Drilling Moratorium

Thus Obama’s “annus horribilis maximus” got just a tad worse while giving an unexpected break in favor of an ailing economy in the Gulf:

A federal judge in New Orleans has blocked a six-month moratorium on new deepwater drilling projects that was imposed in response to the massive Gulf oil spill.  Several companies that ferry people and supplies and provide other services to offshore drilling rigs had asked U.S. District Judge Martin Feldman in New Orleans to overturn the moratorium.

President Barack Obama’s administration has halted the approval of any new permits for deepwater drilling and suspended drilling at 33 exploratory wells in the Gulf.

Feldman says in his ruling that the Interior Department failed to provide adequate reasoning for the moratorium. He says it seems to assume that because one rig failed, all companies and rigs doing deepwater drilling pose an imminent danger.

The 22-page ruling is online though I haven’t had the chance to read through the whole thing yet.  I can tell you that you don’t have to go further than page 3, however, to find the Court calling out the “misrepresentations” in the Executive Summary issued by Secretary Salazar’s office:

In the Executive Summary to the Report,the Secretary recommends “a six-month moratorium on permits for new wells being drilled using floating rigs.” He also recommends “an immediate halt to drilling operations on the 33 permitted wells, not including relief wells currently being drilled by BP, that are currently being drilled using floating rigs in the Gulf of Mexico.” Much to the government’s discomfort and this Court’s uneasiness, the Summary also states that “the recommendations contained in this report have been peer-reviewed by seven experts identified by the National Academy of Engineering.” As the plaintiffs, and the experts themselves, pointedly observe, this statement was misleading. The experts charge it was a “misrepresentation.” It was factually incorrect. Although the experts agreed with the safety recommendations contained in the body of the main Report, five of the National Academy experts and three of the other experts have publicly stated that they “do not agree with the six month blanket moratorium” on floating drilling. They envisioned a more limited kind of moratorium, but a blanket moratorium was added after their final review, they complain, and was never agreed to by them. A factor that might cause some apprehension about the probity of the process that led to the Report.

In other words the fact the executive summary played fast and loose with the facts there was little proof the recommendations of the report had any merit.  Michelle Malkin also notes the Court’s attention to the obvious duplicity in the report and adds:

Takeaway from decision: “After reviewing the Secretary’s Report, the Moratorium Memorandum, and the Notice to Lessees, the Court is unable to divine or fathom a relationship between the findings and the immense scope of the moratorium.

More to come I am sure.  Administration vows to appeal, what a surprise.
H/T: Memeorandum

Cross posted at Ruby Slippers

Keynes Environment and Economic Policy

I have a very liberal friend who when I expressed lament over the oil spill and non clean up going on in the Gulf chided me, “It’s not nearly as much as the volcano spewed in Iceland a few months ago. It also isn’t as toxic.”   

I sat there stunned.   I may be wrong but I don’t remember scores of pictures on the internet of ash covered birds and flora and fauna killed.  Maybe they were there but didn’t go viral.

Here I thought all pollution was so awful that we were to consider foregoing toilet paper, plastic bags, tinfoil, coke cans, cars, heat in the winter, disposable diapers, newspapers, paper plates, fast food and when possible breathing.  “Then why the hell am I recycling?” I demanded.  “It’s not like my not throwing away a paper plate is going to save the Earth!”   But I have to ask, if 100,000 gallons a day is nothing, then what is my decision to use paper plates?  I would assume, even more inconsequential.  She soothed, even my little dwarfed by the lot in the gulf mattered –something which I pointed out meant the lot in the gulf, even dwarfed by the Ocean mattered.    

Then I saw an article trying to explain in context how small the spill was in the context of the Gulf.   According to the piece by Seth Borenstein, http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5h3j4URYrsMh7yj4KTx6vVKjh4w3AD9GFQIS80 ,  the polluting in the Gulf was a mere trifle. 

It doesn’t even fill up the Superbowl in New Orleans.  It was more of the same kind of thinking and to my mind, a desperate spin to exhonerate the Federal government from the wrath of American people by minimizing the size of the spill and thus lowering expectations that the President or his administration should have or should be doing anything about something so insignificant.   Sure the pictures of dead dolphins and turtles are sad but hey, it’s really nothing. Go back to your lives citizens, nothing to worry about.

Paralleling this sort of thinking is the rash of recent articles about how We’re NOT SPENDING ENOUGH.  That Keynes would be upset that the current administration and congress are too cowardly to enact the type of necessary deficit spending required to lift the economy from it’s current state.  

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/2010/06/21/government_must_spend_now_save_later_236264.html

http://www.thenation.com/print/article/36491/goodbye-keynes-hello-hoover

In other words, the spending now is not enough to affect things really and to think otherwise is to be delusional.  These past spending bills that ran us up to 1.3 trillion are mere stop gap measures, like duct tape on a leak.  If we really want to make something happen, we’re going to have to start talking real money.  1.3 trillion dollars in deficit spending, like 126 million gallons in the gulf, is apparently a mere drop in the bucket to these people who subscribe to a Keynes Economic theory about how governments and civilizations maintain their finances.   

Maybe the spill is small and the deficit is nothing to those who live in the theoretical world where all of these high ideas work as long as one adopts every tenet of the theories and pays no attention to actual details which emerge.  But in the real world, how many dollars a person, a state, a government, spends, matter; just as surely as how much a person, a family, a city, a state, a business conserve and recycle matters.    

The money we’ve spent mattered because it must one day be paid.  The oil in the water kills crabs and shrimp and fish and plants and pelicans and people’s livelihoods and summer places and the businesses that thrive on people going to summer places and, and, and, and.  It must one day be removed.   

The 1.3 trillion in a single 18 months is an untenable pace of spending.  The 126 million gallons pouring into the gulf shows no signs of slowing or stopping either.   No amount of theory or perspective or spin will change the unalterable facts that while these dual disasters can be dwarfed by looking at a bigger picture of the whole world or galaxy or the whole history of time, they’re still very real and causing very real pain now, and for the foreseeable future.   Does anyone other than those who embrace the theoretical world of policy over the actual world of procedure not see that both are clear and persent dangers? 

How do we make the ivory tower people in power and in charge see what their pet theories will not prove?

Is Bobby Jindal the New Rudy?

Remember Rudy on 9/12, 9/13, 9/14….? The exhaustion, the anger, the empathy, the resolve?

In the aftermath, Giuliani found a language that spoke to all the emotions coursing through the national psyche. It was a blend of outrage and anguish, determination and reassurance.

Even in the face of continued federal muddling, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is gaining character points with Americans nationwide. The disaster itself is horrible enough, but to aid insult to injury, he is fighting to protect LA from the hapless federal government as well.

See Obi’s Sister for the rest…

The One One Ups Capone

Well, we’re not seeing machine gun battles on the streets of Chicago but the rule of law is under assault by this president, and it’s getting more broad and menacing.

You might say we’re being engulfed. (Well, it just came to me) Never let a crisis go to waste.

The Bolshie Chicago Mob in the White House: Shakedown

The Bully’s Pulpit

Via Pundit and Pundette. Giuliani: If This Was Bush, He Would Have Been Impeached…

The Law of Obama

More. The Instapundit quotes Carville. Chicago gets a mention. And Tolkien.

Democrats Plan to Pass Energy Bill in Lame-Duck Session

Via Jay Cost who writes in a piece titled, “The Pulpit of a Bully,” comes this startling bit of information uncovered in a report at Politico:

EXCLUSIVE: Phil Schiliro, the White House congressional liaison, has told the Senate to aim to take up an energy bill the week of July 12, after the July 4 break (and after the scheduled final passage of Wall Street reform). Kagan confirmation will follow, ahead of the summer break, scheduled to begin Aug. 9. The plan is to conference the new Senate bill with the already-passed House bill IN A LAME-DUCK SESSION AFTER THE ELECTION, so House members don’t have to take another tough vote ahead of midterms.

A White House aide has the official word: “President Obama reiterated his call for comprehensive energy and climate legislation to break our dependence on oil and fossil fuels. In the coming weeks he will be reaching out to Senators on both sides of the aisle to chart a path forward. A number of proposals have been put forward from Members on both sides of the aisle. We’re open to good ideas from all sources, and will be working with Senators on a comprehensive proposal. The tragedy in the Gulf underscores the need to move quickly, and the President is committed to finding the votes for comprehensive energy legislation this year.”

FACTS OF LIFE: How many crises of historic proportions are going to require unprecedented government action? Stimulus, Wall Street, health care, troops, energy: These are all big issues, but at what point will people think the president is just trying to spook people into massive government action?

Cost notes the 51st Congress was known as the Billion Dollar Congress, after the Republican-run legislature “raided the Treasury in an effort to pay off all its supporters.” Cost suggests the 111th deserves the moniker the Trillion Dollar Congress.  After passing an enormously unpopular health care bill despite the protestations of the American people, the Trillion Dollar Congress intends on pulling the same shenanigans by passing a huge energy package in the lame-duck session before the 112th Congress is convened . Wither the will of the people who would have rendered their verdict on this Congress during the November midterm elections.  We all know how they value the will of the American people.

President “Never Waste a Crisis” Obama set the stage for this in his widely-panned speech from the Oval Office Tuesday night.  Though the speech is replete with references to the urgent need to transition from fossil fuel, this section seems excerpted from his many health care speeches with only the subject changed to energy:

Now, there are costs associated with this transition.  And some believe we can’t afford those costs right now.  I say we can’t afford not to change how we produce and use energy – because the long-term costs to our economy, our national security, and our environment are far greater.

Read the rest if you have trouble remembering the formulaic speeches Obama used to set the stage before Congress pulled every single trick imaginable to pass the health care law.   All the pieces are in place just as they were for health care: a House-passed legislation that won’t be deemed dead until a new Congress convenes in January 2011, a Congress led by the likes of Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and a band of merry thieves in Congress intent on imposing a New World Order whether the American people like it or not.  Damn the law – let the peasants shout Viva il Duce.

Doug Ross suggests we commit this bit of advice from Jim Geraghty to memory:

Every Republican challenger ought to be demanding that their Democrat incumbent opponent pledge in writing that they will not pass an energy bill in a lame-duck session if they are defeated.

Cost warns such bullying will haunt Obama in the 2012 presidential election.  That is all well and good, but heaven knows the extent of the damage he will have inflicted until he finally usurps Jimmy Carter’s place in the annals of failed One-Term Presidents.

Cross posted at Ruby Slippers

Not Resting, Again

Thank goodness Obama has his boot on the neck of BP and isn’t resting until this crisis is solved and people are back to work in south Louisiana.

Last night he was not resting at the Kennedy Center, taking in a performance of “Thurgood.”

The New York Times says of the play,

At the end of the play Marshall recites from a Langston Hughes poem opening with the following line: “Oh, let America be America again.”

Amen to that.

Meanwhile, NOLA reports:

Coast Guard Rear Adm. James Watson has written a letter to BP, giving the company 48 hours to come up with additional “leak containment capacity” to deal with the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.

At least somebody is on the job. 

Cross posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport

Presidents Who Really Could KSA

Joaquin over at How Is That Obama Vote Working Out For You???, points out that a dude who can’t even pitch a baseball faces a credibility gap when it comes to threatening to perform an activity usually reserved for tough guys.

Joaquin has posted a list of presidents who possessed some real authority in that department. Readers might want to add their own favorites to the list.

Now, if you want to talk about Presidents that can kick ass!

George Washington–clearly
Andrew Jackson–he killed a guy in a duel. So yeah!
William Henry Harrison–yep
Zachary Taylor–for sure
Honest Abe–absolutely…if pushed
US Grant–just ask Robert E. Lee
TR–oh yeah!!
Harry Truman–bantam weight
Ike–yes sir!
JFK–maybe in his prime
LBJ–reluctantly, but yeah!
Gerald Ford–a Wolverine
Ronald Reagan–the Gipper
W–sober
Obama–*snort*

Cross-posted at Bread upon the Waters.

A few from J-Ru

Some great stuff from Jennifer Rubin today. I don’t know how she does it. A sampling:

Is Obama Trying to Force BP Into Bankruptcy?

As for the bullying of business, this is simply the natural extension of the administration’s abject lawlessness — stomping on the rights of car-company bond holders, snatching bonuses away from AIG executives, pushing for mortgage cram-downs — which views contracts and statutes as mere annoyances. This is what comes from electing people with no private-sector experience and no understanding that the rule of law is central to our economic prosperity.

Giving Hamas a Helping Hand

Obama’s efforts in ways big and bigger are destructive to our own credibility, to the security of our allies, to our efforts to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, and to the American people, who have had far too much of their hard-earned money confiscated for idiotic purposes under this administration. But few match this one.

Lindsey Graham Discovers Cap-and-Trade is a Bad Idea

Lindsey Graham has had an encounter with reality — whether it is political or scientific is uncertain. But for whatever reason, he is starting to make sense:

How close is the Senate to a bipartisan climate deal? Here’s the Democrats’ best hope for compromise — Lindsey Graham, at a press conference today: “The science about global warming has changed. … I think the science is in question. … I think they’ve oversold the stuff.”

You don’t say.

Read the rest.

Things I Would Ask and Tell the President

Now that there’s an empty chair at the press conferences when they’re held, I humbly throw my hat into the ring with the following questions and commentary:

1) Mr. President, if you’ve been aware and in charge and involved since day one, why haven’t you spoken directly with Tony Hayward, the CEO of BP about the leak?  It’s now day 50.  Do you think maybe, you know, you could call him up?  Isn’t he the major posterior you need to kick? 

2) BP said at first the rig wasn’t leaking but that if it did, it wouldn’t be bad. Now either they lied to you in which case you should be majorly ticked and get your foot ready, or you knew they were lying in which case we should be ticked at both of you or you were both ignorant, in which case, again, we should be ticked at all of you.   Which is it and how can you prove it?

3) The Crude hasn’t’ stopped but you’re president, you won so the buck stops with you. This took place in Federal waters. It’s your problem, not Bush’s, not the Republicans, it’s yours. Roll up your sleeves for more than a 15 minute photo-op and get your hands dirty. We see you walking on a cleaned up beach making jokes and jetting back for a barbeque with the stars.  In writing, the mantra is show don’t tell.  You tell us you care. You show us, you’re all about the party.  Guess which one is more compelling?

4) Need some ideas on how to fix this?  Stop calling college professors for counsel.  Call all the CEOS of every oil company together and have them brainstorm about how to fix it, have them clean it up as a public service, let them keep what they capture.  Offer incentives of public praise from the oval office for those companies who out of civic self interest, help fix things in the Gulf.  College professors have theory, you need practical application.  Why aren’t you picking up the phone to call people who would actually know how to do this and be able to do something?   

5) Why are we annoyed and irritated with you?  You sign into law countless bills you haven’t read spending hundreds of billions of dollars and rewriting 1/6th of the economy but suddenly require extensive engineering and environmental reports to determine whether or not to procure the booms requested by the States to protect their marshlands? Here are Republican conservative states asking for government intervention and you have a chance to validate everything you’ve ever believed about the Federal role in the world and you go…golfing….and on vacation….and to parties….and to fund-raisers.  The only thing you haven’t done is read “The Pet Goat.” to some kids somewhere.   What’s on the party agenda for this weekend?

6) Maybe if you called Tony Hayward, you could use some of that political muscle and have him pay for the booms for Louisiana that Governor Jindal asked for back at the beginning of May before all those ugly pictures of dead dolphins and turtles and pelicans started showing up on the Internet.  I bet he’d even finance the shipping.  Do you need his phone number?  Do you need a phone?

7) Yesterday, to show you were serious, you swore on national television.  Why do you think showing leadership means talking like Joe “Big F’ing Deal” Biden?

Thank you Mr. President.

No Worries; Obama is “Not Resting”

Via Mark Knoller, the Congressional picnic is underway on the White House lawn.  The salmon is cooking, Pelosi is schmoozing and Obama and Michelle hold court.

All is well.

Not resting.

Cross posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport

Photos: Oil-covered wildlife

Click here for a photo essay on the Gulf oil disaster. The first 7 or 8 pictures are heartbreaking.

Uh Oh: Carville, Matthews And Now Mo Kick “President Spock” To The Curb

Ed Morrissey of Hot Air wonders aloud, “How did Dowd’s column ever make it past a New York Times editor? Fascinating.

In Maureen Dowd’s op-ed piece appearing in the NYT, spokesbot Dowd compares Fearless Reader to Mr. Spock citing his behavior as illogical.

She writes, “Too often it feels as though Barry is watching from a balcony, reluctant to enter the fray until the clamor of the crowd forces him to come down. The pattern is perverse. The man whose presidency is rooted in his ability to inspire withholds that inspiration when it is most needed.”

Dowd continues, “For five weeks, it looked as though Obama considered the gushing that became the worst oil spill in U.S. history a distraction, like a fire alarm going off in the middle of a law seminar he was teaching. He’ll deal with it, but he’s annoyed because it’s not on his syllabus.”

What one sees is a man stalked by an unreasonable fantasy supported by a rag-tag collection of apparatchiks with a greed for power—a man that does not stand with his feet planted in the American soil.

Read more at No Sheeples Here.

Fearless Reader’s Dead Zone

Toby Hamden, writing for The Telegraph, notes that “When any political leader feels they have to declare that they are ‘fully engaged’ in an issue, it is clear that they are in trouble. Talking about it undermines the very point you are trying to make—not to mention that pesky Oil Spill Cam showing that, forty days into the Deepwater Horizon disaster, not a whole lot had been achieved.”

When the president-in-training visited Grande Isle, LA on May 28, 2010 he looked like a “law student suddenly fascinated by a science project.”  Hamden’s description made me giggle uncontrollably.

Another delightful descriptive, which incidentally makes me love Toby Hamden now, was:  “Obama engaged in the obligatory populist bashing of Big Oil and, of course, demonstrated the Obama Administration’s version of Tourette’s Syndrome, blaming the previous administration for the situation when, by my reckoning, it’s a full 16 months since Bush left office.”

Hamden rightly points out that Friday’s visit was Obama’s second to Louisiana in the thirty-nine days since disaster struck.  In the same period, Bush visited the post-Katrina region seven times.

USS Neverdock implores us to take a quick look at Obama’s record, something the left wing media steadfastly refused to do during the campaign, shows he is unfit to be president. Add these home field disasters to Obama’s miserable handling of the economy and foreign affairs, and the writing is on the wall—America is headed for disaster.

Little Miss Attila contends that parallels between the Gulf oil spill and the RMS Titanic continue.

How long will it be before this man-child orders the Oil Spill Cam shut down?  The mesmerizing images from the sea bed are infuriating the American public and give unadulterated evidence that this is not Obama’s Katrina—it is his Dead Zone.

Read more at No Sheeples Here.

OilBama is Outraged!

Fearless leader is unhappy.  With the news that the BP “top kill” procedure has failed, Obama is now “enraged.”  On top of that, the AP reports, this comes after “Obama interrupted a long holiday weekend at his home in Chicago to visit the Louisiana coast on Friday and show its angry residents that he is in command of the situation.”

In command?  Not so much, I think.

You may have seen pictures of Obama’s visit to the coast Friday.  There’s one where he is stooping down in his slacks and dress shirt inspecting a tiny tar ball on the beach.  Apparently the hundreds of BP workers bused in to clean up the beach before his visit left a few tar balls for just such a photo op.  The residents on the coast would have loved for those workers to stay and keep on cleaning their beaches, but as soon as Obama left, they were out of there.

“The level of cleanup and cooperation we’ve gotten from BP in the past is in no way consistent to the effort shown on the island today,” [Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris] Roberts said by telephone. “As soon as the president left, they were immediately put back on the buses and sent home.”

I don’t think for one moment that Obama gives a damn about the coast or the people in south Louisiana who are losing their livelihood because of this spill. Such a narcissist can not be concerned about others to the level he would have us believe he is.

The responsibility belongs to BP.  To be fair, I don’t think we can hold the government responsible for what happened anymore than we could hold George W. Bush responsible for Hurricane Katrina.  But it is imperative on Obama’s administration to provide everything necessary for the protection of the Louisiana marshlands and coastline.

Appearances count for something.  Obama batting off to Chicago for the weekend, his second vacation since this spill occurred, sends a message opposite of the one intended by his handlers with the staged photo of him inspecting a tar ball.  One says, “I don’t care!  Solve it yourself!  I’m outta here!”  and the other says, “I care.  Look at this foul tar ball on American shores.  I’m enraged.”

Governor Bobby Jindal was on ABC This Week and HE is outraged.  Politco quotes him as saying:

Now, we have said for weeks now we’d much rather fight this oil on a sandy barrier island than fight it inside our wetlands. We’ve got miles and miles of these islands… [and w]e proposed a plan, 24 segments, to rebuild or refortify these islands.

“After weeks — and if they had approved this when we first asked, we could have built 10 miles. Ten miles… Yesterday, the Army Corps of Engineers approved six segments out of 24, over 40 miles out of 100. But here’s where our concern was. The federal government only ordered BP to pay for to do one of those six segments. That’s two miles out of 100. Our message to the president today was, make BP pay for this. The federal government shouldn’t be making excuses for BP. This is their spill, their oil. They’re the responsible party. Make them responsible.

Jindal rightly laments the lack of urgency on the part of the federal government to provide what he’s asked for.

Needless to say, this story will continue to play out through the weeks and will only get worse.  The politics aside, people are losing their way of life and their way of making a living.  The wetlands are dying.  No amount of federal dollars can replace what will be lost there.

Obama can keep his outrage.

(Cross-posted at And So it Goes in Shreveport)