Tropical Storm Isaac's moist, warm winds increased speed to 70 miles per hour late today, just 4 mph short of a hurricane -- which is anywhere from 293 to 449 mph short of the hot-air wind-speed records that blowhards will achieve at this year's Republican parr-tee in Tampa.
In all, 2,286 delegates and 2,125 alternate delegates have gathered in one spot -- since quarantined by the Combined National Emergency Weather and Mental Health Centers, and dubbed a dangerous depression -- one not curable by anti-psychotic medications.
Chief meteorologist Wendy Enhowlen says, "It might be tropical right here, but this great depression is more topical, especially with the economic stresses most regular people face today."
She added, "Global climate change provokes more problems than just multiplying the numbers of hurricanes. For one thing, the palmetto bugs here are the size of reindeer."
That doesn't worry Chamberpot of Commerce spokesbot Eileen Dover. "Seeing as how there's virtually no difference between palmettos and cockroaches, all our very special gentlemen callers and their money should feel right at home here in Florida."
Dover said, "Why, we've got a governor who looks like an over-caffeinated Skeletor here, one who came a toad hair short of being snatched for jiggering the largest Medicare fraud in history, with his company setting a marvelous record of fines, penalties, and damages totaling 1-point-7 billion dollars -- and even then, he went on to be elected by voters here in the 'retirement state,' of all places."
Dover continued, "That should make anyone see how great America is. Besides, he's standing up and fighting for the rights of non-Republicans to be freed from those oppressive voter rolls -- what could be fairer than that?"
"Businesses here are roaring and ready to shear their flocking sheep," Dover quipped. "For example, the little wood-and-paper-umbrella-for-drinks industry alone is looking for a $23 million dollar boost from this convention, while sex workers are looking forward to more than a $300 million dollar take, pre-and-post-event -- the gift that keeps on giving, financially and in other ways, even after delegates get home."
"Besides," Dover concluded, "that doesn't even begin to account for all the money that'll change hands for vendors of Obama-as-Hitler tee shirts, the presidential hanging effigies, the beer and drinks vendors, not to mention the people who have those little cocktail weenies."
Some sex workers see this year as a mixed bag, saying while the flood of money from pent-up, repressed Republicans away from home for the first time in four years will help both their front-end and back-end take, they are also quick to add -- male and female alike -- they would be very pleased, in the words of one group, "to encounter customers who might benefit from intensive, one-on-one seminars on that whole subject of rape."
However, even at this late date, there are over-arching concerns for the local population -- fears of propaganda contagion, hypocrisy overload, exposure to overdoses of outright lies.
"Thank goodness the Florida population has long been exposed to such things, as partial innoculation," said Addam Shaime, editor of the Daily Democratic Told You So. "Owing to the saturation of Fox television news in this state, along with Florida politicians, people here have built up good protective calluses on their minds to keep out any new whoppers, such as that Willard Romney is actually a woman, or that running mate Paul Ryan was really raised by lizards, for example. The down side is those calluses keep out the real truth, too."
Shaime said, "The RNC is manufacturing mangled, tangled, and poisoned facts wholesale at its headquarters, vetting them for accuracy in some alternate-universe fantasyland, and airlifting them into Tampa. In many ways, the lunatic fringe has stormed the wheelhouse and is piloting the ship now -- and everyone on board thinks is all quite normal policy. Which it would be, I suppose, for the Titannic."
He concluded, "The current level of disconnect with reality, mixed with gun idolatry and religious double talk, superheated with booze, money, power, and a generous helping of 'Daddy's away from home,' well -- you're just asking for the walls to come tumbling down."
In the end, those 4,411 space-cadet conventioneers will be shooting the moon of one kind or another at raucous parties, while taking drunken, incriminating "moon-walking" pics and videos with their temporarily-special companions and their very-best rental friends, in preparation for the heavy-duty blackmailing and lobbying season that still lay ahead.
As for concerns Republicans do not yet have everything down in black in white, "That's plain nonsense," according to Platform Coordinator Rayce Kard. "We are the party of rich, privileged white people, and Chris Matthews should know he'll never change that."
Kard confided, "Look, the GOP's got no plans, no ideas, no clue how to govern -- but we sure as hell know how to run by yanking on people's emotional chains and fears. The best we've got is to keep all groups at one another's throats long enough to have the rich white guys come out on top, like we've always had in the past."
"It's what you do," Kard said unapologetically, "when you got nothing else to offer. Lean on fear and race. Works everytime!"
Meanwhile, geologists and wastewater engineers are standing by at the request of jittery insurance companies who know how high the water tables run in Florida, and how low the elevation in relation to the sea.
They will be paid to scream an advance warning of "Sinkhole ho! or "Sump Hole away!" at the convention site, the moment any steamy spew of toxic, psy-op'd rhetoric and feverish speech-making threatens to overwhelm drainage and runoff capacity.
"We've been asking people here to bundle up in plastic ponchos and those see-through splash-bibs that everyone gets for Gallagher concerts, so this stuff doesn't soak into clothing, but is able to drain immediately away from them," according to senior hydro-engineer, Rocky Drayne-Bedd, "but the warm weather, muggy conditions, and the cheapskates controlling the air conditioning make that as much fun as wrapping up in a microwave oven set on high."
Manager of City Public Works, Royal Flusher, adds, "We're all set and braced -- if anything, we waay over-planned. See, we've got us seven gen-you-wine finger-wagglin', birther-obsessed speech-makers and microphone hogs at this one. Even that floppy-haired Trump combover-carpetbagger from up north will be down here, so the Shinola should be cuttin' loose around here like a gully-washer pushed through a fire hose."
Flusher said, "There may be a hurricane outside, but we've got the really out-of-control and downright dangerous wind machines flailing away at us, right in here."
