Unreal

I desperately want change.

I want to have hope.

I give my word that I will vote for Barack Obama if he can deliver the change that I'm hoping for.

Can he make it stop raining? Can he bring the historic, 500-year flood in Cedar Rapids and the rest of the flooding in the upper Midwest region to an end?

Can this Dem messiah perform that miracle?

(I've heard he can walk on water.)

If Obama can stop the storms and the flooding, I'll be a believer.

From the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

A new round of tornadoes and flash floods lashed out at a water-ravaged southern Wisconsin on Thursday, washing out roads, prompting evacuations and rescues, and knocking out power to thousands.

The National Weather Service in Sullivan received unconfirmed reports of tornadoes from seven counties, and the new flooding prompted evacuations in Iowa and Jefferson counties, among others.

Rescue operations were conducted in Winnebago County, Grant County and Sauk County, where in Baraboo the Original Wisconsin Ducks and the Dells Army Ducks land-and-watercraft were used to rescue residents and business owners trapped in the floodwaters.

“This is pretty much unprecedented, to get day after day with 3 to 6 inches of rain in the Wisconsin River Valley,” said Bill Borghoff, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Sullivan.

Said David Carlson, spokesman for Wisconsin Emergency Management, “It’s kind of like the state is springing leaks everywhere.”

I can't stand it anymore.

It has to stop.

Conditions are so bad in the state that I expect Governor Jim Doyle will be very busy, holding a fundraiser to benefit his own 2010 campaign. I expect him to hit the golf course, if he can find one that's not a lake.

Will Doyle have the decency to call on his big money donors to support a fund for flood relief to benefit the many people who've lost their homes or suffered tremendous damage?

Very unlikely.

What's happening really seems unreal.

Cedar Rapids Linn County Sheriff Don Zeller sums up the situation in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, as well as the flooding in the rest of the Midwest:

"We're just kind of at God's mercy right now, so hopefully people that never prayed before this, it might be a good time to start. We're going to need a lot of prayers and people are going to need a lot of patience and understanding."