Slick talk

Clean up after the Exxon Valdez, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

We may be getting to the point where nothing BP can do can stop the oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico.

I'm sure I'm not the first to brood -- it's probably something the residents of Louisiana have been thinking for weeks, as they waited for the orange sludge to come ashore.

Have you ever seen an oil-covered brown pelican (that's the Louisiana state bird)?

We can see those helpless creatures dying before our eyes.

But what of the marine mammals we can't see? What of the longterm effects of this catastrophe?

The disaster in the Gulf is a giant red flag both to those who don't believe in big government (yet expect to be rescued) and to those who do believe in it. After being given waiver after waiver, no wonder that BP, with its record of leaving death and ruined lives in its wake, didn't have the right technology to stop such a deep gusher.

That's not to excuse them -- or the American government.

And it's not to absolve us, either -- for accepting that we can have whatever we want, when we want to have it -- and still get to complain.

A democracy is only as strong as the people who are part of it.

And we are going to be tested -- possibly as never before.