Bill Maher threw potential GOP presidential candidate and current Governor of Texas Rick Perry under the bus and ran over him a few times during his New Rules segment on Real Time With Bill Maher this week.

MAHER: And finally New Rule, if you think the Republican presidential candidates can't possibly get any lamer, then you haven't met the new Republican flavor of the month, Rick Perry. If you're not familiar with Rick, he took over as governor of Texas from George W. Bush, who's now referred to as “the smart one.” Rick carries a gun even when he's jogging. He wears cowboy boots with a suit, and the boots say, “come and take it”, which sounds kind of gay to me.

And he threw such a tantrum when Obama won, he actually talked about Texas seceding from the union, because that's what America needs; a President of the United States who's not really sold on the whole “United States” concept.

Now, last week, Rick Perry announced that he rented out a 70,000 seat football stadium in Houston, for something called the response, which sounds like a home pregnancy test, but actually is to quote the governor “a Christian prayer service to provide spiritual solutions to the many challenges we face as a nation.”

Or as stadium employees are calling it, batshit day. I guess the idea is to get together in a big group and pray all at once. That way the signal is stronger and god doesn't lose you when he's going through a canyon.

But here on planet reality, may I point out that there is no such thing as spiritual solutions to national problems. If that's where we are as a country, if our official government policy is “yee haw... Jesus take the wheel!” then we're dead already.

On his JesusPalooza web site, Perry writes, there is hope for America. It lies in heaven and we will find it on our knees. He also says some beyond our power to solve. What?!

I thought we were the can do people. And if Perry thinks only god can solve our problems, why is he even in government? Why doesn't he just stay at home and light a bunch of candles like Sissy Spacek's mom in Carrie?

Here's an opposing view. Not only are our problems NOT beyond our power to solve, they're actually fairly easy to solve. You have a giant budget deficit, like Perry has in Texas, raise taxes.

Federal tax revenues haven't been this low since 1950 and THAT, plus two wars and a recession are the reason we have a huge deficit. It's not because god is angry over the gay kissing on Glee.

It doesn't require prayer to solve it, it requires a calculator.

Politicians like to say, “We need new ideas.” Bullshit. “New ideas” is just a secular version of spiritual solutions, someone who's going to magically fix everything. What new idea is going to solve our health care crisis, a magic pill that makes obese children crap out gold bricks?

We don't need new ideas. We need the balls to implement the ideas we already know work, cut corporate welfare, slash the defense budget, tax the rich, support the strong unions that created a middle class in the first place, build infrastructure and take the profit out of health care.

By the way, Rick Perry isn't just talking when he says he has spiritual solutions. Back in April when faced with a devastating drought, Rick did what any solutions oriented, 21st century civil servant would do.

He proclaimed a day of prayer for rain, because we're ancient Mayans now.

Here's what Texas looked like back in April with the drought in red. And here's the Eden it is here today. If the words of Sister Mary Ignatius, god answers all your prayers and sometimes the answer is no.