Mark Morford: "The Storm That Ate The GOP"

Another example of why SFGate's Mark Morford is one of my favorite columnists:
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Can you hear that? That low scraping moan, that painful scream, that compressed hissing wail like the sound of an angry alligator caught in a vice?

Why, it's the GOP, and they're screaming, "No, no it can't be, oh my God, please no, this damnable Katrina thing is just an unstoppable PR disaster for us!"

After all (they wail), who woulda thought dissing all those poor black people and letting so many of them die in filth and misery in the Superdome while our pampered CEO president enjoyed yet another vacation would cause such an ugly backlash, such harsh criticism of the glorious, rich-über-alles GOP creed?

Who knew it would lay bare our deeply inbred agenda of social injustice and civil neglect, and our systematic abuse of the country? This storm thing is so not the thing we need right now because, oh my God look, just look! We've been so golden! We've had the run of the candy store! We have been gods among swine!

Can you hear them? Hastert to DeLay to Frist to Santorum to Rove to Cheney to Bush himself, across the board and all down the snickering party line they keen, "It's not fair! We've been planning this regime, this overthrow for 40 years! We've worked so damn hard to drive a wedge into the culture and an ice pick into the heart of the nation, working like demons on meth to mangle this country's economy and sense of pride so as to boost corporate profits and lock down our wealth and empire!"

And now Katrina. And now a furious backlash we never predicted that could very well spell the death of our wanton free-for-all gluttony. Damn you, Mother Nature! Damn you, uppity female!

Just listen. Isn't that Dick Cheney, lying awake at night as the leeches drain his soul, muttering his woes to a well-narcotized Lynne? "Dammit, Lynney, what went wrong? We've got the House locked up and the Senate locked up and we can cram through any law or any referendum or toxic Patriot Act we like with next-to-zero outcry and no discussion on the floor ..."

We're successfully stuffing the lower courts with hundreds of homophobic neoconservative misogynist appointees and now we even own the Supreme Court -- the Supreme Court, pudding-thighs! -- and even the increasingly impotent California governor is more in our back pocket than we imagined. We've had the whole goddamn country under our thumb for five years, squirming like a stuck rat as we make out like robber barons.

What a run we've had! We've threatened major media into numb compliance and we run the FCC the way a pimp runs a cheap hooker and we've got a loudmouth right-wing pundit manning nearly every ideological outpost in every corner of the media globe while millions of stupefied 'Murkins still believe Fox News is a genuine source of integrity and honesty. Look at us go!

And don't forget, to back it all up and shore up the base, we've got so many hate-spitting pseudo-religious bonk jobs broadcasting their bile across roughly 1,600 militant Christian Midwestern talk-radio shows it would make Jesus himself cringe in pain, and even that soulless cretin Pat Robertson is comfy enough to start suggesting we assassinate foreign leaders who dare to dis BushCo.

Look what we've accomplished! We launched two brutal, devastating, unwinnable wars. We've let Osama bin Laden run happy and free for over four years, and counting. We just passed an obscene $12.3 billion energy bill that ensures our heroin-like dependency on foreign oil for the next two decades while misinformed 'Murkin GIs die in Iraq protecting us from $5 gallons of gas. Damn, we're good!

We torture innocent detainees in Iraq and abuse inmates at Guantánamo and chip away at women's rights and demonize homosexuals, and we strip the forests and gut the Clean Air Act and pollute the water and devastate the economy and cut welfare spending (whew!), and still the lemming people think we're gods because we keep them wrapped in fear and a whole pile of carefully orchestrated Rove-ian lies. We are, in short, f--ing geniuses.

But now, this. Now BushCo's spineless Katrina response and our party's obvious contempt for lazy poor people who don't own SUVs and Lockheed-Martin portfolios means Dubya's ratings have plummeted below 40, as many of his precious pet agenda items head for the Dumpster, including the gutting of Social Security and the gutting of Medicare and even more tax cuts for his wealthy cronies. Damn you, Mother Nature!
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