Hope is not a plan... or is it?
I had heard about this story, but now I see it is actually true.
Torrential rains that would ease Georgia's historic drought failed to materialize Wednesday, one day after the southern US state's governor prayed up a storm.
Governor Sonny Perdue's prayer gathering stirred up controversy, but on the weather front it was followed by little more than thin drizzles in parts of Georgia.
"We respectfully pray up a storm," Perdue told a crowd that gathered on Tuesday outside the Capitol, which houses the state legislature.
"It is time to appeal to Him who can and will make a difference."
Local media received calls and mail from residents who felt the prayer ceremony violated the principle of separation of church and state, and insisted the governor should focus on better planning rather than hope for divine intervention.
The back story to this is the big drought which is gripping the South. Of course, it isn't like the drought happened overnight. It has been going on for a long time. However, the South, as you may know, is also afflicted with another scourge, republican governance. So rather than have a rational plan to deal with the drought, the state governments (with the exception of Florida) decided to simply let the developers build whatever they wanted, let the factories suck up all the water they could, and not force anyone to so much as conserve a single drop of water. You see, no government, is good government, or so the republican party line goes... So rather than, you know, lead, the governor simply stood by the edge of the reservoir and watched it get sucked dry. Then, when the situation is really dire, he stages a photo-op of him "praying" for rain. That sure plays to the bible-thumper constituency all right. It does not, however, do anything to actually solve the problem. I suppose the other cliché which applies is that Nature bats last. So now that the problem is getting really bad, the actual solutions will be a lot harder. I guess the one solution that would get easier for these political nincompoops is the governor sticking his head in the sand.... there should be a lot more sand now that the whole place is drying up...
