THEY WERE AGAINST IT BEFORE THEY WERE FOR IT

Well here's another fine mess you've gotten us into W.

As toxic crude oil continues to spew into the gulf and into our previously pristine wetlands there are those who, for political reasons, seek to place the blame for this crime against nature at the feet of the President of The United States.

Of course, as we have previously documented in this space it was the previous administration that relaxed the safety standards for deep water coastal drilling Inspector General's Inquiry Faults Regulators (among those for other industries) as part of an overall mindset that government should lighten up on the regulation of private enterprise. After all, the reasoning went, the government never gets anything right and its regulations always delay and add to the cost of doing business.

So, how is that unregulated private sector thingy working out for you? Not so good huh? I suppose the only thing we can be thankful for in this disaster is that it does not involve a nuclear power plant.

The same people who have been reflexively calling for smaller government and lower taxes (on the part of the wealthy) to fund that government, are today screaming for the government to come in and take responsibility for what is almost surely the worst industrial incident the world has known to date.

The nerve of them! Those same people who today decry government as ineffective are the ones who made it so. They spend years dismantling the government and eviscerating it's oversight functions and then predictably, when business under the not so watchful eye of a Republican led government, cuts corners in the quest for short term profits and it leads to disaster they cry for the help of the federal government.

Well, me thinks thou doest protest too much. You can't spend years railing against government regulation of business and then selectively scream about government ineffectiveness when it suits your political purpose. You can't have it both ways. Either you believe that government has a legitimate roll in protecting it's people and our environment against the excesses of the private sector or you don't but you can't have it both ways.

Government, the Republicans were against it before they were for it.