SemiConscious Dot Org

Let the record show that Snark officially passed away on August 29th, 2005, the day Hurricane Katrina made landfall.

For most of the past year, the main response of this blog’s contributors to the latest example of Bush administration stupidity, ineptitude, or corruption has been to shower it with mock sympathy in an attempt to be funny. Since Katrina’s aftermath and the horrific death toll resulting directly from administration bungling, however, I no longer have the energy to poke fun at these scumbuckets. How can you mock an administration that is already a mockery of all human hope? It’s redundant. They are officially snark-proof. My attitude mirrors that of longtime Bush nemesis Molly Ivins:

Many a time in the past six years I have bit my tongue so I wouldn’t annoy people with the always obnoxious observation, “I told you so.” But, dammit it all to hell, I did tell you, and I’ve been telling you since 1994, and I am so sick of this man and everything he represents—all the sleazy, smug, self-righteous graft and corruption and “Christian” moralizing and cynicism and tax cuts for all his smug, rich buddies.

Next time I tell you someone from Texas should not be president of the United States, please pay attention.

These people are stupid and greedy and evil and the truth is not in them. They are destroying this country and all it stands for, and they are doing it for no other reason than to make a buck. They need to go.

The case for Bush’s impeachment is strong and getting stronger by the day, but I’m not foolish enough to think that impeachment proceedings will ever happen with Republicans in control of both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court as well. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to return control of Congress to the Democrats in next year’s midyear elections.

Granted, the current leadership of the Dems seems to be mostly composed of lame, useless twits whose main response to each new administration affront for the past five years has been to say “thank you sir, may I have another,” and wave their flags while they spread their cheeks a little wider. However, I can only assume that newer, younger freshmen Dems elected in ‘06 will have a much more appropriately antagonistic attitude toward this doomed and stupid junta. If nothing else, partisan gridlock will grind the “President’s” agenda to a screeching halt.

It’s pretty sad when the best we can hope for is for our government to be able to get nothing done. However, at this point, even nothing is better than the something Bush and his cronies want to do, which amounts to nothing less than deliberately dismantling and pissing on everything that made America great in the first place.

Such is the grim reality of life in the Post-Snark Era.

UPDATE 1: BadTux points the way to the best essay I’ve ever read on the guiding philosophy of Republicans and the people who vote for them. It’s vicious, profane, insulting, and 100% guaranteed to offend and alienate those mythical “swing voters” and “centrist Republicans” we’ve heard so much about but never seen. And you know what? I don’t care. I’m sick of pretending to understand these assholes and the sick, twisted impulses that motivate them. If you can even attempt to defend George Bush or his party after this disaster, you are an asshole, and you are not an American. Period. I don’t want to know you or have anything to do with you.

UPDATE 2: The post-Katrina reconstruction effort has been put in the capable hands of….. Karl Rove. Yes, that’s right. Apparently, running dirty smear campaigns qualifies you to coordinate a multi-billion dollar rebuilding effort. And guess who’s getting no-bid reconstruction contracts? You bet, our old friends Halliburton and Bechtel, who’ve done such a bangup job in Iraq. And last week, Bush signed an executive order suspending a law that required federal contractors involved in the rebuilding to pay their workers the prevailing wage for the area.

And finally, Senate Republicans killed an effort yesterday to establish an independent bipartisan commission to investigate failures in Katrina relief efforts at all levels of government. But not to worry, DubYa will lead the investigation personally. Because, you know, that’s the quickest way to get to the truth: investigate yourself.

These people truly have no souls.