Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Turnabout is fairplay

George Bush had to wear Katrina despite the fact that a lot of the problems in New Orleans were caused by a corrupt, inept mayor combined with lethargic, apathetic citizens.  At the time I didn’t think it was fair that the president of the United States should be held responsible for an act of nature but responsible he was nevertheless. 

original_plume_1 Today I heard reports that approval ratings for Obama are plummeting.  They were already pretty well in free-fall but now he is arguably being hurt worse by the BP fiasco than Bush was by Katrina.  Two months ago I’d have said that was impossible. 

Its not hard to understand why either if you think about it.  I hope everybody is horrified by the pictures coming in from the gulf.  I’ve sat here watching the oil billow out of the sea bottom on the remote cameras and its a terrible sight.  It just keeps coming and it is hard to imagine how immense the quantities involved are.  The damage will endure long after every one of us is long gone.  Having said that, it is not too hard to make a case for why Obama supporters would be even more likely to be horrified and more importantly why they would need to blame somebody.

I’m not saying every Obama supporter is an anti-business, granola crunching tree hugger but some of them certainly are.  Some of us are more likely to accept that sometimes bad things just happen and that business isn’t by its very nature evil.

And now for something completely different – how about the latest GM recall.  Can anybody think of an invention that the world was less in need of than heated windshield washers?  Leaving aside the fact that washer fluid with antifreeze is readily available everywhere it is needed, what percentage of GM’s production do you suppose is sold into markets that don’t even know what frozen washer fluid looks like?   I hope whichever marketing genius came up with that idiot idea is currently unemployed and pensionless.

1 comment:

Wil said...

While I haven't a dog in this hunt as I hate both Presidents Bush & Obama, I would like to semi-correct one mis-impression you may not have intended. Bush took the hit on Katrina for the significant delays by the Feds responding to the first city-wide disaster in recent times. Obama's legacy will be much greater, I suspect, given the decades-long impact upon the Gulf estuarine environment. What a sad, but delicious irony for the Democrats with all of their granola crunching supporters.

I've never had heated washers, but have far fewer fingers and toes than the number of occasions such an idea would have been of benefit to me. Then again, I lived in the North country and a morning commute often involved the heavy use of the windshield washers to attempt to clear the ice. It was one of those things the early Honda engineers were useless at that I had grown accustomed to while driving SAABs - heater systems that actually work. So, it is a sorry state of affairs that GM allows their lawyers to dictate engineering policy. Surprising enough, the heavy fogs of early morning during winter here in Baton Rouge demand heavy use of a windshield washer system. Not so today, with it's 105 degree heat index, of course.

Keep on keeping on - I enjoy reading your blog.