Yeah, OK, that's it. Stop tasking the president with this oil spill crap. He's an [expletive deleted], but oil spills aren't really his direct responsibility, and the root of his whole faction's ideology is the nationalization of every issue, the governmental usurpation of every problem, every dilemma, every decision. We shouldn't be buying into this whole "the president was hired to fix every problem" delusion, even if it does make for a nifty hammer to batter our partisan opponent currently in office.

In cases like this where the solution isn't obvious or subject to brute-force methods, direct governmental intervention, or properly speaking, militarization of the response is counter-productive. Experimentation and new ideas bubble upwards - they don't seep down. I was intrigued by this idea, which they've been working on for twenty years now, and looking for an opportunity to try out, but I don't want the government grabbing a hold of it and running wild with it, either. Because it probably won't work. I am often intrigued by ideas which don't pan out. Most ideas don't. Small-scale failures are invaluable, because they reveal bad ideas in small crucibles without burning the whole damn lab down.

But government has a bad habit of reinforcing failure, because government operates by ego, not profit or logic. Small-scale offends the healthy ego. If you're going to win, win BIG, and of course you'll win - you're the GOVERNMENT!

Government solutions only really work when the problem is subject to suffocation by enormity. I think it's becoming increasingly obvious that the Gulf oil spill isn't really something that can be suffocated by burying it under with Big.