Negotiators say they have a deal on a $150 billion bill to extend the payroll tax cut, some unemployment insurance benefits and the “doc fix” to the end of the year, a bill that will sacrifice some health care prevention money, several weeks of unemployment eligibility, and at the very end, pension contributions for new federal employees.

When I saw the headline over at Facing South, I had no idea that the nativist batsh*ttery has run off the rails into complete batsh*ttery.

The brains down in Louisiana have decided to throw a tantrum over the fact that the U.S. census attempts to count all people in the country, regardless of immigration status.

On 7 October, Greenpeace filed a lawsuit in Superior Court for the District of Columbia against Dow Chemical, Sasol North America (owned by the South African State Oil Company), two public relations firms – Dezenhall Resources and Ketchum – and four individuals. The suit is the result of the companies’ efforts to stop Greenpeace from exposing the effects of their pollution.

President Obama announced in his weekly address a plan to open part of the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska to oil drilling. Through an executive order, the President would also extend leases in the Gulf of Mexico for oil concerns that were subject to the moratorium on deepwater drilling after the BP oil disaster, as well as speeding up evaluation of resources in the Atlantic, extending other leases in Alaska and building incentives for oil and gas companies to use land they own on existing leases on land and sea.

It was inevitable that oil-producing states would get representation like this. And yet every state is a gas-consumer state. Every state is a taxpayer state. Every state has constituents who give their money to the government so a sliver of it can be handed over to the same billionaires who charge $4 a gallon for gasoline. And these billionaires are the same people who think being denied that corporate welfare is actually un-American.

With the release of the Presidential Oil Spill Commission report this week, we’re seeing some renewed interest in the fallout from the BP oil spill. In particular, the $20 billion escrow fund managed by Kenneth Feinberg has been a main point of contention between the Gulf and BP since last fall, when BP began threatening to withhold compensation to residents if Congress placed greater restrictions on their drilling.

Just when you thought the people of Louisiana couldn’t possibly take another shot to the face, there’s another one coming. It turns out that people who received claim money from BP could see that money taxed at the highest possible rate because the BP oil disaster wasn’t officially declared a disaster.

I got a phone call last night from a seminary classmate. An old college friend of hers had just committed suicide. Sadly, calls like this are far too common — whether related to military service, the economy, disasters like the Exxon Valdez or Katrina or the BP spill, or a hundred other causes.

More than ever, tough times call for us to care for one another.

I am in town for a week to visit with my family here in Louisiana and am curious to see if there was evidence of the BP tragedy in my hometown. What I do find is very interesting and consistent with a place that lives with the tangible possibility of danger and excitement on a seasonal basis. The two seasons that come to mind are hurricane and Mardi Gras.

The Louisiana legislature just passed, and Bobby Jindal just signed, a law permitting people to carry concealed firearms into churches, synogogues, mosques etc. That must mean there’s an epidemic of god-fearing folks being murdered in their pews, or rugs, or something.