Southeast Drought a Bush Plot To Entrench Republicans?

Here it is the latter part of October and we're still wearing shorts here in Washinton.

What up with that?

Is it global warming? We can't say--it's almost impossible to link anomalies in our daily weather to longer term climate trends. After all, the weather is weird, somewhere, every year.

Nonetheless, in Washington--and much of the East Coast--we're looking at by far the warmest October on record. At present, October's temperatures here are running almost 10 degrees warmer than average (!) The record is around 6 degrees above average, and if temperatures were to revert to average for the rest of the month (as appears more or less likely), we'd easily smash the old record (set in 1984).

And who's to say that endless summer is no fun?

Unfortunately, our warm trend has been coupled with a very dry trend. Now, us golfers normally like warm and dry, but it does have to rain every now and then to keep the course in good shape. (Mondays would be good).

In fact, the drought is getting to crisis proportions in much of the Southeast. Could it be God's punishment for all those red states that so thoroughly supported Bush for President? [If we were any good at all with graphics, we'd superimpose the latest national drought monitor map on the electoral maps for 2000 and 2004--we think you'd see red for drought and red for Bush in just about the same places.]

Or maybe this is all part of a Bush/Rove plot: a secret NSA sponsored weather program to create a drought so severe that all the poor people in Atlanta and other Southern cities have to move out--i.e., a lot of African-Americans--thereby enhancing Republican majorities in those states, right before redistricting. Hey, it worked in New Orleans! Yep, that's what we think it is.

Even if it's not, here's one thing you can count on if big cities like Atlanta and Raleigh really do go dry: they won't get any help from ol' Bushie. Yes, he'll buzz by in Air Force one, maybe even turn the spigot on a water truck while the TV cameras are rolling, but don't expect any kind of meaningful help out of Washington. After all, the Republicans in those cities will find a way to help themselves.