Small Town News

Oil spill in the Gulf not a case of Eisenhower Corn

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It was the summer after my graduation from high school and I was riding with my girlfriend's father to their summer home in southern Virginia. It had been very dry that summer and the cornfields were in pretty bad shape. There were signs in the fields that read, "Eisenhower Corn."

I have to explain that Eisenhower was the president.

It seemed to me at the time that this was unfair. Even though I had worked for Adlai Stevenson I didn't blame Ike for the dying corn. I thought it very unfair that the farmer would blame the president.

And I don't blame Obama for the oil that threatens the Louisiana coast.

I can't help but notice that President Obama gets the blame for every misfortune much the way that gay marriage got the blame for Katrina. I don't see how Obama could be blamed for the BP oil spill but many people seem to.

Our old friend Halliburton was apparently involved in the drilling of the offending well, something about cement. The deep well blew up not many days after the cement was poured. This is the same Halliburton that scammed the government by charging for meals that weren't fed to the troops in Iraq.

BP, formerly British Petroleum, apparently drilled the well without proper safeguards; in particular without a good plan B. Actually, as far as I call tell, without any plan B at all. And plan A seems to have been less than perfect.

I suppose that using the same chaos theory that tells us that a butterfly flapping its wings in South America can cause a typhoon in the Pacific Ocean, Obama could have caused the BP oil rig to blow up but I don't think that is the case.

A person may fault Obama's solutions to the financial disaster, the loss of jobs, the flood in Nashville and other natural and manmade calamities but I don't think that he was the cause.

There seems to be a human need to find fault and put the blame on one or more people when the sky falls.

In the play, "Julius Caesar, " Cassius says, "The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves."

Thus Spake the Old Fogy, thinking that stuff happens regardless of the care taken to avoid it.



Copyright 2010 The Malakoff News, Malakoff, Texas. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from SmallTownPapers, Inc.

© 2011 The Malakoff News Malakoff, Texas. All Rights Reserved. This content, including derivations, may not be stored or distributed in any manner, disseminated, published, broadcast, rewritten or reproduced without express, written consent from DAS.

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