The good news about the massive oil spill in the northern Gulf of Mexico is that it will cover up and make us forget about the massive dead zone in the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Oh…and, by the way, you’ll hear the word, “massive,” a lot in the coming days.

But what the hell, right? It’s just the Gulf of Mexico. We’ve been using it as America’s sewer for years now, flushing all kinds of poisons down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico.

Just like Colonel Jackson in Johnny Horton’s song.

So, let’s rewind back to the Republican National Convention of 2008. What’s that, you chant…loudly?

“Drill, baby, drill! Drill, baby, drill! Drill, baby, drill!”

Yea, seemed like a good idea at the time. So, Sarah, how’s that, “drill, baby, drilly-thingy workin’ out fer ya?” Wink-wink.

“Globs of roofing tar” reported washing up on the Chandeleur Islands, according to the Christian Science Monitor. But, heck, that could be left over from Katrina. No, not really.

The infamous Gulf of Mexico Dead Zone, you see, is a 7,000 square mile area, generally just west and south of the…here it is again…massive oil spill. Nothing lives in the dead zone. Nothing can live in the dead zone because pollutants – nutrients, fertilizers, all sorts of chemicals – sucked up all the oxygen years ago.

Flushed down the Mississippi River from our nation’s heartland, the Gulf of Mexico dead zone was created by our nation’s ongoing, greatest (and massive) bowel movement.

But now we have a 2,000 square mile oil slick washing toward the Louisiana marshes and, should the wind shift and regular currents pick it up, the island and beaches of Mississippi, Alabama, the Florida Panhandle and possibly even to the Florida Keys eventually.

Ain’t that just great? Drill, baby, drill! Pump 200,000 gallons of oil each day into the Gulf of Mexico from a broken well head!!

Some experts predict it could take as long as 3 months to cap the leaking well. Let’s see…200,000 gallons a day times 90 days…carry the 1…why that’s close to 18 million gallons of black gold spread across the Gulf of Mexico in three months!

We’ll all be rich!!

Oh yea…and President Obama let it be known this morning he is rethinking his whole notion of allowing more offshore oil drilling. Good call, Mr. President.

Back on dry land, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist reversed himself after reversing himself and finally decided, “offshore drilling…bad.”

He also decided, “Republican Party…bad,” as he official proclaimed his independence making for a man-to-man-to-man three-way for election to the U.S. Senate in November. We’ll see who ends up spooning who.

The people of Florida would like to thank the people of Arizona for taking some of the heat off.

Whew, it is tough trying to live up to the mantle of the screwiest state in the nation and the Sunshine State is certainly grateful to Arizona for answering the call, “hey, li’l help?”

Just in case you’ve been under a rock, the Arizona Legislature passed a new law requiring anyone with brown skin to be stopped by police under suspicion of not being ‘Murkin.

That’s right. Arizona law now requires police to stop anyone they think might be an undocumented resident or visitor to the US of A. And that means all people of darker-than-pink skin. Sales of self-tanners and visits to tanning salons dropped off immediately.

The same Arizona legislature rejected a bill that would have moved the Statue of Liberty to the high desert: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free; the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Emma Lazarus would not have been welcomed in the Arizona Legislature.

You gotta admit, though, protesting the new law by painting swastikas on the capitol in black beans…well, that’s pretty clever.

But not to worry, Florida. You still have a chance. Charlie Crist is gonna run for the U.S. Senate as an independent and it’s gonna be a great campaign season! We’ll have the tea baggers, Marco “Polo” Rubio, Charlie and the steady and solid Kendrick Meek seeking to become the first African-American elected to the Senate from Florida.

One black, one Latin, one white-n-tanned-n-exceedingly-neat. It’s the Mod Squad campaign season in Florida!

Maybe Marco Rubio should avoid Arizona for a while; maybe Charlie, too.

Note for the rest of the nation: Charlie Crist first rose to political prominence in the early 90s as a tough “law and order” candidate and state senator advocating for the return of roadside chain gangs. He was immediately dubbed “Chain Gang Charlie.”

Now, it appears, what he has here is a failure to communicate.

At least in Alabama, they speak English. That’s the summation of another wing nut running for office on the backs of those who aren’t white and rich.

Alabama Republican goobernatorial candidate Tim James proclaims in a TeeVee Box ad, for all the world to hear, “In Alabama, we speak English,” while railing against laws which require driver’s license tests to be offered in a variety of languages.

One could argue, however, about the ability of Alabamians to speak English. But that’s another story.

Finally, thank God the U.S. Senate is finally doing something to help real Americans on Main Street. Stalled in financial reform, mired in immigration and greenhouse gases, a few brave Senators are coming out strong against…Facebook!

Sens. Shummer, Franken, Bennet and Begich will stand firm against any attempts by the giant social network to further invade our privacy!

Facebook responded by immediately un-friending Sens. Shummer, Franken, Bennet & Begich…but kept their profiles online for advertisers.

“Hello? Spicoli’s Spine Palace, may we help you.”

“Um, yes,…um, this is a little embarrassing but we need to order some backbone, maybe with a side of cojones if you have them.”

“Oh, yes, of course. We keep well stocked in spine and cojones these days. We used to supply quite a bit for Capitol Hill but I guess the recession has lessened the demand.”

“Well…okay, we really need some now. How fast can you send it over?”

“We can fill that order today, sir. To which address?

“Um, yea…um, the Capitol if you don’t mind. The Senate.”

“Ah, yes, I see.”

“And, um, er…don’t tell anybody we called.”

Will we see a “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” moment or will we see the jellyfish return to the nation’s grandest aquarium?

Who the heck knows?

So, let’s see if we have this straight:

The Democrats will force the Republicans to vote against reforming Wall Street if they don’t belly up to the bar and support financial reform.

The lone Senate Republican supporting climate change legislation backed off over the weekend because, he complained, the Democrats want to push immigration reform and that will make him and his fellow Republicans look like racists. (Duh!)

Following, so far?

Good, because the logic is not obvious.

Republican senators (well, Shelby of Alabama) went on the TeeVee Box this morning to say, well, they MIGHT vote to regulate the derivatives trade. Of course, they’ll have to explain to their benefactors why they could suddenly read the hand-writing on the wall and, well, while they like that direct Wall Street-to-Capitol Hill cheese pipeline they really can’t be seen in public with the pillagers.

It’s all so sorted and cynical and, let’s face it, comical if it wasn’t so serious.

As the great philosopher, Jimmy Buffett, once said, “I’d like to be a jellyfish, ‘cause jellyfish don’t pay rent.”

Earth Day really isn’t really about saving the planet so much as saving its inhabitants.

The planet will survive – it may be a dead rock – but it will survive.

It’s the people and animals and plants we have to worry about. And we especially have to worry about the people…’cause it appears half of ‘em are crazy.

Maybe it’s Earth Day. Maybe it’s all this talk about, maybe, soon, perhaps throttlin’ Wall Street down a notch or two.

But we got a bunch of crazy folks runnin’ ‘round, it appears, and they’re bringin’ with ‘em the politics of crazytown.

Take the Arizona Legislature – please.

These yahoos passed a law requiring police to check every brown skinned person to make sure they’re legal in the US of A. No proof of documentation? In the hooskow you go and back to Mexico. Native-born Arizonan? Forgot your driver’s license? In the hooskow you go…and back to Mexico, from which you did not come in the first place.

Needless to say, sane people are urging Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer to veto the bill.

Then there’s the Virginia yahoo who painted up his Ford F-10 pick ‘em up truck with nice art and slogan reading, “Everything I need to know about Islam I learned on 9/ll.”

Nice…and he coupled that with a coded white supremacist license: 14CV88. The tag, we’re told by soothsayers and code breakers, can be interrupted thusly: 14 translates into 14 words: "We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children." The letters, CV, stand for Confederate Veteran, which would be quite a trick. The double 8 signifies the 8 th letter of the alphabet, H, and doubled means: Heil Hitler.

Whatever…it’s just plain crazy.

But don’t it’s only redneck crazies who go after the 1.6 billion Muslims in the world. Nope, it’s mainstream crazies, too.

Poor Franklin Graham, son of long-time TeeVee evangelist and celebrity prayer Billy Graham, found himself kicked out of the Pentagon Prayer Breakfast because he said some crazy things about the world’s most popular faith.

"True Islam cannot be practiced in this country," Graham said in December to CNN. "You can't beat your wife. You cannot murder your children if you think they've committed adultery or something like that, which they do practice in these other countries."

Whew! And while we’re at it, shouldn’t we be askin’ the Pentagon, if they’re prayin’, to be prayin’ that all wars should cease and we beat swords into plowshares? Just askin’.

But Islam is not without its crazies, too. A Muslim website in New York vowed revenge on South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone after they showed the Prophet all dressed up like a stuffed bear…on their cartoon show. Website doods, lighten up.

Then there’s the teabagger leader who the other day asked South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham to come out of the closet and admit his homosexuality. Maybe he wants a date, I dunno. But maybe, someday, we’re gonna stop being crazy and thinkin’ there’s something wrong with being gay – maybe.

Finally, we don’t want to forget about the Republican Party of Florida, which is now being investigated by the FBI and the IRS for allegations it may have used the contributions provided by decent, upstanding Republican contributors to party on, Garth.

Included in the probe are allegations teabag darlin’ and senatorial candidate Marco…Polo…Rubio used a party-owned American Express card and spent $100,000 on good times while speaker of the Florida House of Representatives.

Maybe we don’t need Earth Day to save us. Maybe we need Sane Day.

Forty years since the first Earth Day in 1970. Have we saved the planet, yet?

More importantly, do we still have time to save the planet? Will we still be battling to save the planet on Earth Day 2050? Will it be too late by then?

When Senator Gaylord Nelson, Democrat of Wisconsin, conceived the idea for Earth Day in 1970, he immediately stretched across the aisle and Capitol to enlist the aid of U.S. Rep. Pete McCloskey, Republican of California. Together – and with a team of talented, bright students – they put environmentalism and conservation square on the table of public opinion and action.

Hard to imagine such bi-partisan activism today. When Earth Day begin 40 years ago, only a very few scientists understood the dangers we faced because of pollution warming the globe’s atmosphere. Most of us simply thought pollution was nasty and ugly and harmful to our lungs and drinking water.

While some today continue to deny the inconvenient truth that our planet is warming and the environmental consequences that will follow, many others are working to slow or halt it.

The United States has pledged to cut carbon emissions by 17 percent by 2020.

The Florida Legislature will soon adopt what might be the best way – so far – to actually accomplish that goal.

Improving on a concept originated in California, Florida lawmakers appears on track to adopt a revised and better funded version of the Property Assessed Clean Energy – or PACE – initiative.

PACE will offer job creation through retrofits to existing homes and buildings that will, when completed, reduce energy use, reduce our dependence on foreign oil and reduce our production of greenhouse gases.

In short, Florida will soon have the opportunity – at no additional cost – to implement local, community-wide programs to create jobs, reduce our energy use and do its part to help the United States meet its obligation to the world to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Here’s how it will work:

Local governments - counties, cities perhaps even entire regions – will create Energy Conservation Districts which will then be allowed under new state law to develop a pool of money from which property owners can borrow to make energy improvements on homes and buildings.

The cost of these retrofits – the home improvement loans - will then be repaid as small additional payments on annual property tax bills. The loans will run with the property, be transferred to successive owners and be spread over 20 years.

The bottom line: PACE loans will not cost property owners any additional money and won’t put the local government further into debt.

Savings from reduced energy use will more than offset the cost of the home improvement loan while at the same time increasing the value of the property which, then, accrues to the benefit of the local government in the form of increased tax base.

PACE is modeled on traditional land-secured financing of improvements such as storm water utilities, road and sewer construction projects and other public improvement projects.

One of the differences, however, in the PACE initiative is that participation by property owners is completely volunteers. Property owners will sign up & enter into an agreement with the county before accepting the home improvement loan. They will pay only for improvements on the homes and buildings they own and the improvements must be permanently attached to the home (solar systems, for example, window/door treatments, wind turbines).

Local governments, providing property owners with the upfront costs, makes it all happen.

Maybe on Earth Day 2050, we’ll look back and realized this was the turning point that staved off the tipping point.

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time." -- Winston Churchill.

Seems like a good morning to drag out that vaunted – and often forgotten – Churchill quote.

Here we are looking back 15 years to the horrific bombing of the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City while at the same time the Pew Center releases a poll which suggests 80 percent of American distrust the American government.

At a time when griping against government has grown from a cottage industry to major gated-development industry thanks to its own cable channel (I’m lookin’ at you, Faux News Network), it may be important to remember one little point:

**As Americans we’ve never really liked government. Hello? McFly?

It goes against our grain to like to like government. Born in the individualism of the Enlightenment, the experiment of America is habitually expressed as one in which government is tolerated at best.

So it shouldn’t really be a surprise that Americans distrust government. The only time we really rally around government is when we find ourselves in trouble: after Pearl Harbor, for example, or Sept. 11, 2001 or after a natural of man-made disaster (Wall Street crash, Katrina).

And even in the case of the later, that support for government runs pretty thin pretty quick if the government is less than competent.

War itself is no guarantee of public embrace for government. Thankfully, it was public distrust of government that brought an end to the debacle that was Vietnam…never been sure, however, why the same didn’t happen with the Iraq invasion.

One thing is for sure: brandishing guns in national parks, as will right-wing militia types, is no way to express cynicism, not today - nor any day.

The Associated Press analysis of the Pew Center poll suggests most of those surveyed say Washington – meaning the federal government – is too big and too powerful. They say it interferes too much in state and local matters.

But it also points out those surveyed are split over the view of government as a way to deal with critical national problems or issues.

While half the survey respondents say they want smaller government with fewer services, approximately 40 percent say they want government to provide more services.

Cynical views of government in the U.S. have grown steadily since the 1960s when we saw our most heroic leaders in a generation ruthlessly murdered; when we witnessed our government lying us into a tragic and needless war. It was compounded by a president who wire-tapped his opponents and was forced to resign and by a seemingly never-ending series of scandals involving elected officials, a tide of embarrassment that doesn’t seem to ebb.

One thing is for sure: no matter the wishes of some, government isn’t going away nor do we really want it to. Government is how we organize ourselves on a massive scale.

People who think – even just a little bit – know this and know that despite all faults we can do our best work as community with the help of government.

Maybe government would do well to lead, not simply react like so many Americans. Maybe government should focus on education and schools so Americans can better participate in our own government and do so with some degree of history, foresight and context.

Dunno…just sayin’.

“Come on, shake your body baby,
do the conga
I know you can't control yourself any longer
Feel the rhythm of the music getting stronger
Don't you fight it till you've tried it
Do the conga beat …”

So, while the teabaggers were snortin’ and complain’, yesterday; cashing their Social Security checks to travel to Washington and complain about socialism, the President of the United States was seeing beyond the stars and shakin’ his booty with the cool kids in Miami at Gloria and Emilio’s place.

The juxtaposition pretty much says it all.

"I've been a little amused over the last couple of days where people have been having these rallies about taxes," the president said, noting the numerous tax cuts pushed by his administration. "You would think they'd be saying thank you."

Yea, well…don’t look for it to happen ‘cause gratitude is not a big effen deal among the bagger crowd.

In fact, anger is the predominate emotion among teabaggers according to a poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS. (Yep, those socialist-communist-Kenyanian-Rastafarian-Zorastrian-Baptist news organizations.)

So, while the President was expressing his vision for future space exploration while at the same time signing a long-overdue executive order granting gay couples family rights in hospitals, the teabaggers were just angry.

According the Times/CBS poll, 18 percent of Americans identify with the anger of the baggers, even if only 4 percent have ever actually attended a rally or given money to the bagger anger exposition.

Most of them are old, white, married; richer and better educated than the general public and really, REALLY hate “big government” but love their Social Security and Medicare. (That “educated” part kinda gets lost in the tautology of anger.)

Most said the taxes they paid this year are fair. Most sent their kids to public schools and most say they don’t think Sarah Palin is qualified to be president. (Okay, so education helps a little.)

Most of ‘em still love George Bush and don’t see any connection at all between his administration and the economic downfall. Most of ‘em just don’t like Obama. Hmmm…wonder why?

“I just feel he’s getting away from what America is,” said a retired medical transcriber to the New York Times. “He’s a socialist. And to tell you the truth, I think he’s a Muslim and trying to head us in that direction, I don’t care what he says. He’s been in office over a year and can’t find a church to go to. That doesn’t say much for him.”

To quote the immortal philosopher Steven Wright, “Going to church no more makes you a Christian than standing in a garage makes you a car.”

Come on, shake your body, baby…do the conga.

Boy, howdy!

These guys are a laugh a minute! Better ‘n a barrel of monkeys, these Republicans.

Just as President Obama is holding a summit - the largest gathering of world leaders since the 1940s - on the dangers of loose nukes, the loose knuckleheads over GOP HQ put out a new ad for the TeeVee Box and the Innertubes.

You gotta see this on the YouTubes:

“Many think April 15 th is tax day,” said the serious announcer. “Wrong.”

“For President Obama, every day is tax day.”

“Your money isn’t safe. He knows where you keep it.”

Seriously, they put this out, expect people to believe it.

“Obama’s new health care bill contains $570 billion in new taxes.”

“Wheelchairs: taxed. Sneezing: taxed. Breathing: taxed.”

Okay, so here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna take it to the streets! Grab your wheelchairs; we’re headed downtown to protest by breathing and sneezing on people!!

“And if you don’t buy healthcare, the tax man will come for you.”

“You can’t run. There is no place to hide!”

“Over next few years IRS agents will begin to multiply.”

Well, at least we haven’t taxed multiplication…not yet, anyway. But we’re not finished!

“The government wants your money and President Obama knows where to get it.”

I’m tellin’ ya, this couldn’t be funnier if it was on Saturday Night Live…or the new Palin Network .

And this comes as a Democrat wins the first congressional race of 2010 in Florida District 19, running against a teabagger who tried to make the race a poll on health care reforms. Not so much in Boca Raton.

Meanwhile, over in Rome the Pope has finally figured out how to deal with the worldwide and continuing spread of priests diddlin’ the alter boys. Blame it on the queers! Yea, that’s the ticket!!

Cardinal Tarcisco Bertone, the Vatican’s No. 2 dude, the assistant Pope (and only God knows what else) explained it all in Chile on Monday.

“There is a relation between homosexuality and pedophilia,” said the Holy Second See. “That is true. That is the problem.”

Holy wankin’ it under the robes, Batman!! Problem solved!!

Gee, and the rest of the world – including most learned shrinks – thought it all had to do with years and years of sexual repression caused by the insanity of celibacy.