Pray for deliverance
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")
Regular Hullabaloo readers may remember the the story of Kemp, the Texas town that allowed its water mains to fall into disrepair, and now prays to God every summer for rainy deliverance.
It's a story that will be repeated nationwide if Rick Perry has his way. Timothy Egan has more in the New York Times today:
A few months ago, with Texas aflame from more than 8,000 wildfires brought on by extreme drought, a man who hopes to the next president took pen in hand and went to work:
“Now, therefore, I, Rick Perry, Governor of Texas, under the authority vested in me by the Constitution and Statutes of the State of Texas, do hereby proclaim the three-day period from Friday, April 22, 2011, to Sunday, April 24, 2011, as Days of Prayer for Rain in the State of Texas..."
In the four months since Perry’s request for divine intervention, his state has taken a dramatic turn for the worse. Nearly all of Texas is now in “extreme or exceptional” drought, as classified by federal meteorologists, the worst in Texas history...
But Perry’s tendency to use prayer as public policy demonstrates, in the midst of a truly painful, wide-ranging and potentially catastrophic crisis in the nation’s second most-populous state, how he would govern if he became president.
“I think it’s time for us to just hand it over to God, and say, ‘God: You’re going to have to fix this,’” he said in a speech in May, explaining how some of the nation’s most serious problems could be solved...
Perry is from Paint Creek, an unincorporated hamlet in the infinity of the northwest Texas plains. I’ve been there. In wet years, it’s pretty, the birds clacking on Lake Stamford, the cotton high. This year, it’s another sad moonscape in the Lone Star State.
Over the last 15 years, taxpayers have shelled out $232 million in farm subsidies to Haskell County, which includes Paint Creek — a handout to more than 2,500 recipients, better than one out every three residents. God may not always be reliable, but in Perry’s home county, the federal government certainly is.
After an ugly debate filled with uninspiring candidates last night, Perry is the man the Republican base has been waiting for. A dumber, more aggressive and more authentic George Dubya Bush than the faux Martha's Vineyard transplant to Crawford. A man who will balloon the nation's debt on boondoggles to his buddies even faster than Dubya and "Deficits Don't Matter" Cheney, while begging Jesus to solve all the nation's real problems.
As disappointing as the Obama Administration has been on many fronts, the are no words for the disaster that would befall the country if this man became President. Even the secular among us would pray for deliverance, but none would come: for President Perry would make the Tea Party rain fall on both the just and the unjust alike.