1 and there's a bug with the pullquote.  I'm leaving it up that way until Pixy sees it.

2 I think this is my favorite thing about the internet… even more so than porn… is that we can actually publicly express ourselves with the possibility of receiving a wide audience. Sure anyone can do it and there are plenty of whack-a-doos out there, but the stronger your message, the more reception you get. I'm glad you're back in the saddle here Doug. The more folks we have speaking their mind, the better chance we all have of genuinely representational government. (Even if that light is all but invisible today.)

3 While I've got to say that I'm pretty disgusted with the administration on many levels and for many reasons, I can't say that I'd call inaction on the government's part with respect to Deepwater Horizon to be particularly negligent. Hypocritical, certainly, when coming from the same people who so maligned Bush for the government's Katrina response, and interfering with private efforts is downright evil, but shouldn't this rightly be a mostly private matter?

4 Lazlo, I know exactly where you're coming from, but the simple fact is that BP hasn't been able--and never had the resources--to clean this up on their own.  The entire Gulf basin, and apparently working around the E coast of Florida, is getting oiled...and that kicks things into the level of "jobs government actually should do."  In my book, anyway.

BP *will* be forced out of business before this is through--and long before any significant cleanup happens.  Then what?  The scapegoat is gone, leaving only economic and environmental devastation.  I doubt they had an open policy with Lloyds of London to cover this sort of thing.  (Hint:  the next rig to set up shop--it will be Chinese-flagged--in "Cuban waters" in that area won't carry any either, and will be spectacularly unconcerned if any accidents occur.)

The negligence, BTW, comes from refusing to back down from various union-driven protectionist Federal rules, like foreign-flagged cleanup vessels operating in US waters (not allowed!), or returning "insufficiently pure" water to the Gulf (two 9s ain't enough, better to let it stay totally contaminated).  Leadership would have been to mobilize all-hands-on-deck activity from anything that could float and skim something out of the water--especially after the first several cap attempts failed.  Instead...we get more empty rhetoric.

Oh, and the Governor of LA gets told "no, you can't take action to protect your inland waterways either."   Kinda like Arizona--don't you dare DO anything while we do nothing ourselves.