Cool Clear H Two Oh

Last week, it was announced that Jordan and Israel had signed an agreement to produce desalinated water from the Dead Sea.

This is significant on several fronts.

First, it proves the Israelis are more interested in peace and less interested in occupying holy Arab land. By the way what Arab land isn't holy?

Because let's face it, if Israel wanted to they could gobble up the territory between the Jordan River and Al Qurayyat in a heartbeat. In fact if the Jordanian soldiers are anything like their Iraqi counterparts, the Israelis could do it without firing off a shot. They could just collect the white flags and stained underwear and call it a day.

Secondly, it proves that when rational people put down their guns and shouts of Allah Akbar, practical solutions can be had.

Imagine if this spirit of cooperation were to sweep into the adjoining territories. All that illiteracy. All that stone age patriarchy. All that unimaginable poverty that lives in the shadow of trillion dollar oil reserves, could be addressed.

Most importantly it begs the question, why not here?

Recently my wife and I found ourselves on the PCH heading north towards Santa Barbara. Along the way we counted three McDonalds, nine Union 76 Stations, and 3, 278 Starbucks.

But not one desalination plant.

With the exception of my ass-nugget neighbor who feels the need to wash his monster trucks every other day of the month, the entire state has been suffering from a severe drought. Despite the recent microbursts of rain, we are still way below our normal water levels.

And yet, right off to our left is the world's largest collection of unusable H-Two-Oh.

I can forgive the misguided planners who built the Metro trains without putting stops in at the Airport or Dodger Stadium, but is unforgivable that we do NOT have desalination plants running up and down the coastline of California.

I don't know, maybe I'm being naive on the matter. The technology could be awfully expensive and make it all undoable. But then again, the Israelis seem to have figured it out.

Maybe that can be the topic of Netanyahu's next speech before Congress.