By Jim Hightower, AlterNet
Posted on May 12, 2010, Printed on May 13, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/146830/

Luckily, as our country tries to cope with another oozing oil disaster, we have political leaders with the insight, expertise and cool heads to analyze the problem precisely and guide us to rational long-term solutions. For example, Gov. Rick Perry of Texas.

Known as the Sage of Paint Creek, Texas, this towering intellect was among the right-wing politicos who were noisily demanding deregulation of all offshore drilling only two years ago, chanting "Drill, baby, drill!"

Now, even though BP's offshore rig, Deepwater Horizon, has created an ecological catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, Perry is still defending the industry's always-messy practice of extracting ever-more crude from the Earth's depths. The culprit in this disaster, explained the guv, is not BP but the Almighty. "From time to time," he informs us, "there's going to be things that occur that are acts of God that cannot be prevented."