DROWNED GOVERNMENT

Well, everything is going right along just fine, so our President tells us, and New Orleans is washed away. Gone. . . .

A lot of the washing away, the drownings, the murders and rapes and hundreds of thousands of people losing their homes, their jobs, and everything they ever had in this world, happened while Bush was vacationing or was off on another fund raiser.

Now, that the news cameras are rolling day after day, now that some of the water has finally receded enough so he can comfortably stand on dry land without sinking up to his gills, or getting too much mud (or shit) on his trouser cuffs, now he has finally got himself down there, insinuating himself into the picture, as he goes from one black person to another giving each one a big fatherly hug.

He looks a little out of place. He doesn’t make a very good Franklin Roosevelt or even a passable imitation of Huey Long. Didn’t Bush cut off the funding that was going to repair and reinforce the levees that broke in this storm and caused all these people he’s now hugging to his bosom to be homeless? I read somewhere the amount of money he cut would pay for about seven and a half minutes of his war in Iraq.

In light of all this excess water, and the tardiness of our government in responding to this catastrophe, I can’t help but recall something Bush’s bosom buddy, Grover Norquist, said awhile back. Let me see—what was it? Oh, yes, it comes to me, now: he said he wanted to shrink government down to the size where you could "drown it in the bathtub.”

Now, Norquist is in charge of some group calls itself the "Leave Me Alone Coalition." This bunch consists of a certain type, what Norquist calls the “ideal citizen”--a homeschooling, gun-toting sort of guy “who doesn’t need the goddamn government for anything.” Well, I guess this is what you get when you vote for no government--literally, a drowned city.

Mr. Norquist might be happy about this, I don’t know. But it doesn’t look like it’s doing Mr. Bush much good lately. It’s sort of funny. But it looks like he’s finally getting his ass kicked. And who’s doing the ass-kicking? Anybody from Congress? No. Certainly no one from the Democratic side of the aisle.

The Democrats are done. Stick a fork in ‘em. New Orleans is gone and the Democratic Party has blown away, carried off in the breeze like so much thistledust. What remains are people like Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, and all the other members of the Club known as the Democratic Leadership Council. Go ahead, get a good look at these specimens. THESE ARE REPUBLICANS, my friends. Make no mistake. There's not enough cartilage between them to make one good spine. Not only are they for the war and the corporations, they’re for even more misadventures in the Middle East.

As for the rest of them, the rank and file Democrats, where are they on Bush’s Supreme Court nominee, John Roberts? Nowhere. Where are they on torture at Abu Ghraib? Where are they on the Downing Street Memos? Cindy Sheehan was at Camp Casey for over two weeks. Joan Baez showed up. Martin Sheen Showed up. The National media showed up. People came from all over the country and the world. But where were the Congressional Democrats that should have been standing beside her? Nowhere.

So, who’s kicking Bush’s ass, now?

It’s the mothers. The mothers of this country. Beginning with Cindy Sheehan. Followed by more and more mothers of fallen soldiers. They are coming from everywhere, from small towns and big towns, from all walks of life. They are trailing him, dogging his steps, like the ghosts of Christmases Past. From the camps in Crawford to Washington, D.C.

Something tells me they’re not going to quit. All the right-wing smear campaigns don’t seem to be working against the mothers of sons and daughters who have served their country well, sacrificing their lives for a pack of lies. The petty insults and smears seem to have no effect on them. On the other hand, they show in bold relief the pure meanness of the right that spews out such venom.

Now, there's yet one more to add to the list of mothers that are hounding the President. Mother Nature, her own self--Hurricane Katrina. It seems that Cindy and Katrina have caught the cross-eyed President unawares. I’m sure it was the last thing he expected. People who think they can run the world probably believe that nothing is as powerful as they are, with all their corporations and armies and vast weapons to back them up. In their hubris, not only are they apt to shirk off a fierce tropical storm; they may even underestimate the ferocity of a mother’s love.

Good luck, George. I don't think these moms will blow away quite as easily as Congressional Democrats. Let's face it--they're made of better stuff.