Coincidence?

by Erick on November 15, 2007

Or prayer?

A front moving through the state brought a sprinkling of rain to parched north Georgia.

The system brought a

{ 34 comments }

ToddH 11.15.07 at 10:03 am

Or, planning a prayer around weather.com.

jsm 11.15.07 at 10:12 am

Hmmm… the service was announced in the AJC on the 8th, and invitations had already been sent out. I didn’t know weather.com was so reliable.

Doug Deal 11.15.07 at 10:29 am

You joke, but this is actually in scripture.

Sonny 4:14

And the Angel of the Lord sayith unto Sonny, surfith thine Browser to the site weather.com. And yay, Sonny hast navigated, and the Angel in the formeth of the Hypertext Protocol spoketh unto Sonny, “Weather for Dalton, GA - High 74, Low 55 with 90% chance of particpation”.

jsm 11.15.07 at 10:37 am

Yea, only “scripture” could prophesy rain two weeks out.

ToddH 11.15.07 at 10:45 am

The 8th wasn’t two weeks ago. You can see major weather systems moving in days ahead of time and this system streches from south Georgia to New England. Weather.com, for my area around Waycross, had predicted showers for today and a 30% chance of precipitation.

ToddH 11.15.07 at 10:55 am

My bad. I see that you stated that invitations had been sent out prior to the 8th.

Adrian Doyle 11.15.07 at 11:02 am

Meteorologists, especially ones as talented as those employed by the state or of one of it’s schools (UGA), have the ability to forsee weather patterns quite a bit of time in advanced.

Even weather.com has a 10-day forecast (more than ample time to plan the service) and it’s likely state and UGA meteorologists had even better data.

What’s even sadder is going to be the pending press conference where Sonny takes credit for convincing God to make it rain.

Doug Deal 11.15.07 at 11:02 am

jsm, you are certainly in a humorless mood today.

Mike-El 11.15.07 at 11:06 am

If it takes a little nudge from Sonny for the Lord to check “Some rain for Georgia” off his God-Do List, so be it.

Maurice Atkinson 11.15.07 at 11:18 am

I’m just grateful we have a governor that isn’t so full of himself that he doesn’t ask of the Almighty.

It amazes me that we nitpick every move and question the man’s motives on virtually everything. Its undeniable that the public wants their leaders to be people of faith, but when the leader acts on his belief system the demagogues are certainly there to trash him.

Perhaps we should inquire of the Almighty of our tax policy before the next legislative nightmare commences.

griftdrift 11.15.07 at 11:22 am

The Almighty will have to wait until after the weekend to get to taxes. He has all those football player and team requests to get to on Saturday and Sunday.

Maurice Atkinson 11.15.07 at 11:31 am

I’m thinking the Colts and Notre Dame need to begin asking. Don’t know what happened to ND this year, but the Colts? Two weeks in a row, they’ve got to turn their game on.

jsm 11.15.07 at 11:38 am

“jsm, you are certainly in a humorless mood today.”

It’s not intentional. I’m learning that I come across a little harsh and dry in type most of the time.

The most interesting thing about this argument, to me, is that I and many other Christians have been asking God for rain for months. God is certainly no respecter of persons, and I can’t imagine He heard Sonny’s prayer on a single day any louder than mine. Nevertheless, atheists, agnostics, etc., can’t miss any good opportunity to poo-poo a public recognition of God and His oversight of this planet. I banter back in sarcasm, but I guess I’m just too dry.

Rick Day 11.15.07 at 11:54 am

SONNY: OH GREAT WHITE GOD OF THE BIBLE AND CHRISTIANS EVERYWHERE, END THIS DROUGHT YOU HAVE UNWISELY CHOSEN TO LAY UPON US.

GOD: “ZZZzzz… huh? what tha….?”

SONNY: AS YOUR FAITHFUL CHRISTIAN GOVERNOR, I DEMAND YOU GIVE US RAIN!

GOD: ‘..hey Peter. c’mere. Listen to this cracker!”

SAINT PETER: “WTF? Is he questioning your Divine Wisdom again?”

JESUS: “whats up, dad?”

GOD: “Its Sonny again…”

JESUS: “oh good lord…is he questioning your weather wisdom again?”

JERRY FALWELL OUTSIDE GATES: “Can I enter the Kingdom of Heaven yet?”

HOLY TRINITY (in unison): HELL NO!

JERRY FALWELL: “When?”

PETER: “LOL. Either when hell freezes over or God answers politicians prayers when he sees in their heart what their true motivations are.”

JERRY: “Oh…you mean never…”

JESUS: “AMEN, JERRY, AMEN!”

GOD:” Just for a tease, I’ll send them a quick half-inch. I detest cracker whining!”

PETER: “YOU RAWK!”

JESUS: “DAD FTW!”

GOD: “LOL”.

Yes Sonny, your god is laughing at you.

rugby_fan 11.15.07 at 12:27 pm

Notre Dame’s poor play is a result of the Pope backing Boston College.

I’ve often been unimpressed with Benedict XVI but this is one instance where I fully support him.

Doug Deal 11.15.07 at 12:30 pm

jsm,

I think it is bad form to pray for things that have an effect on others. I.e. praying for victory in a football game means that you are actually asking god to harm another for your benefit. Asking for rain might seem harmless, but perhaps this is god’s way of giving Georgian a chance to form better water policy.

Perhaps if the drought is too short, no plans will be made for more reservoirs, and the next time would be disastrous.

The governor, as a servant of the state of Georgia should be spending his time working to come up with man made solutions to our problems. We didn’t elect him high priest to find spiritual solutions. Also, isn’t god supposed to “help those that help themselves”?

Sonny has done zero except beg to his masters in Washington and file suit in court for temporary solutions. Where are the more important long term solutions for water in Georgia?

Doug Deal 11.15.07 at 12:31 pm

rugby,

I just think ND’s problems amount to the fact that on any given Saturday the millions of people praying for them are outnumbered by the billions praying against them.

grabbingsand 11.15.07 at 12:40 pm

While the rain persisted for a couple of hours, at least at my house, it looks like Lake Lanier got only a pittance from it.

Lanier got 0.11 inches of rain yesterday (while the lake fell about 3 more inches) and has seen a total of 0.92 inches today. Sadly, despite the rain, the lake is down 0.05 feet for the day

heroV 11.15.07 at 2:22 pm

if we pray for more reservoirs will that work?

jsm 11.15.07 at 2:30 pm

Doug,

I agree with the bulk of your statement, especially dealing with long-term man-made solutions to water supply issues. I also believe it is painfully clear that the Governor, along with the vast majority of people in the Southeast, are learning a lesson in the value of fresh water storage the hard way. Since no governor has yet made this a ‘major’ issue, I don’t think Sonny ever dreamed until now that it would be something he had to tackle.

Add to the drought the effects of the Wildlife Protection Act (which apparently overruled the original congressional mandate for the purpose of Lake Lanier) and the downstream infrastructure that has been designed for flows higher than natural drought period river flows, and this situation has been aggravated to its severe condition.

While I don’t give Sonny a pass, I do think he has found himself in the middle of a crisis with multiple levels of bureaucratic idiocy. He has his hands full with the short term solutions at this point, and I bet he’ll be out of office before any serious long term solutions are developed.

I believe his prayer meeting was a sincere effort to get the population to focus on a possible solution–divine intervention. We all know we still have water supply problems to fix, but in the mean time, we need all the help we can get from any source available. Those who don’t believe in God or don’t believe He gets involved in these things are chiding Sonny, and that’s okay. I don’t see a problem with the public prayer. I believe God helps those who CAN’T help themselves. We’re helpless at the moment without some rain.

On a side note, I found this US Drought Monitor site pretty interesting:
http://www.drought.unl.edu/dm/monitor.html
I guess the TVA had a plan for drought situations.

Bill Simon 11.15.07 at 2:40 pm

Ken Cook was predicting a chance of rain this week, in mid-week, LAST week.

So, regardless of when invitations were sent out, the fact is the rain was predicted before the prayer meeting.

Jace Walden 11.15.07 at 2:56 pm

JSM,

Is it government’s job to rally the population to focus on divine intervention as the solution to our problems?

GodHatesTrash 11.15.07 at 3:45 pm

God hates trash, but He likes them to bathe every once in awhile.

Doug Deal 11.15.07 at 4:18 pm

While doing a whole bunch of reading in recent days on water and power, I came across an interesting article from a professor at standford on water supply.

He basically thinks what I do on most topics on sustainability, and is an interesting read.

http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/water.html

jsm 11.15.07 at 4:23 pm

“Is it government

drjay 11.15.07 at 5:30 pm

is this going to interfere w/ praying for the dawgs to stay focused and beat kentucky saturday

Donkey Kong 11.16.07 at 9:44 am

Drjay,

That’s where our prayer comes in. And fasting.

Romegaguy 11.16.07 at 9:47 am

Somebody should do an open record’s request and find the email from the Gov’s staff and the National Guard or UGA’s weather folks…

Doug Deal 11.16.07 at 10:42 am

Georgia actually has a remote chance of making it to the BCS championship game, since Oregon lost last night.

And, since Oklahoma/Missouri / Kansas all play each other, either regular season or a bowl, two of those will at least have a loss, that

Jace Walden 11.16.07 at 11:25 am

Doug,

Why are you ripping me off, man?

http://jacewalden.blogspot.com/2007/11/georgias-path-to-bcs-national.html

Listen Here 11.16.07 at 11:30 am

actually, a group of muslims gathered in athens, ga and asked allah to bless them with rain.

Doug Deal 11.16.07 at 11:49 am

Jace,

I already had it figured for Ohio State after last week, and only had to modify it for Georgia who is 2 spots below.

I give Georgia a 5% chance, and OSU a 20% chance if they individually win out.

Assuming a win at Michigan, OSU is already at #4 due to 2/3 top 6 teams from the Big 12 having to lose by season’s end and Oregon’s loss. Then it requires WV and LSU to lose, while GA is practically at #6, also needs OSU and Az St to lose, but they can beat LSU themselves if Tennessee loses to KY.

For me, the enjoyment of College Football comes not from the individual games but from the crushed hopes of Georgia/Michigan/Notre Dame/USC/(any team in Florida) fans.

Jace Walden 11.16.07 at 2:34 pm

Speaking of crushed hopes, how’s Chan Gailey working out?

Romegaguy 11.18.07 at 6:08 pm

Is Appalachian State playing in a bowl game this year?

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