The State Ship (S.S.) Obama, which has been taking on water continuously since its launch in January 2009, and was most recently torpedoed by the sub-marine mishaps of a callous British offshore insurgency into the Gulf of Mexico, is now listing several degrees to port (that's LEFT for you landlubbers) and, according to detractors on the right, is now in significant danger of turning turtle (that's capsizing for those uninitiated in nautical terminology). Yep, bottoms up.

With the slowly growing fires of resistance to national health care reform that have been smoldering deep within the bowels of the vessel that are now threatening to explode into a full-blown conflagration, one would think that an experienced commander of the S.S. Obama would be marshaling his forces to deal with both this serious internal threat and the disastrous external threat unleashed upon our shores by B.P. and B.O. (Big Oil.)

But the S.S. Obama and its untested commander, while not exactly known for their ability to skillfully navigate the minefields of international politics, do, by damn, observe and enforce the federal rules of crisis navigation. And that means that regardless of how many tens of thousands of barrels of oil may be pouring into the Gulf of Mexico daily, those damned non-compliant skimmer boats which are working triple shifts to suck up the surface oil before it pollutes our Gulf coast will not, under any circumstances, do so until it has been satisfactorily determined by U.S. Coast Guard inspectors that each and every one of these skimmer vessels meets federal safety requirements for onboard fire extinguishers and the requisite number of life jackets.

After all, it's what's important that counts.

Oil in our waters be damned! We have federal safety requirements to be observed here! Can't you just wait for this kind of bureaucratic idiocy to infect your health care? The S.S. Obama has a fool as its master and its Pearl Harbor is rapidly approaching in November this year rather than on December 7^th. The result however will be the same.

Sail on you ship of state? Not likely; the S.S. Obama is a sinking Ship of Fools.