Fresh Blood on the Tracks of Hopelessness

There hasn't been a soul in Washington that has called Dubya a braindead rodent yet, at least not in a public setting, but from the quiet corner tables at Cafe Milano - an orgy of aristocrats and insiders with gold American Express cards and diamond-encrusted jewelry, socialites with backless tops and hard-to-detect foreign accents - they whisper much uglier things these days: dope, liar, fiend, village idiot, hopeless hack, ignorant, criminal, white trash, latent homosexual and dumber than Gerald Ford during his worst spill on the golf course.

No one will compare him to Ronald Reagan or Barry Goldwater anymore, or SpongeBob SquarePants, for that matter - and if another presidential election were to be held tomorrow, Dubya would find himself on the next flatbed out of DC and back to Crawford for afternoon highballs with the rest of his degenerate cabal.

Most Americans are still ambivalent about our Child Preznut. A recent CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll showed him with a 49% job approval rating - a wretched crazy train leading toward a slow-burning political death if you are a student of history - but even his closest advisors are getting worried less than a month after he declared that he had a mandate and intended to expend the political capital granted by his re-election, which since that time has amounted to little more than four weeks in the village stocks getting pelted by rotten fruit and rocks. "He's in for the fight of his political life," said one of his most trusted confidants. "We aren't sure he can withstand another media screw-up about cabinet appointees or relief efforts or the Iraqi conflict. Holy mother of freaking God! We put our dicks on the line to get him back in the White House. It scares the shit out of us to think that all of it could go up in thin air because he hasn't got the good sense to use the vetting process or get the facts before speaking freely in front of the cameras."

"Utter bullshit!" I shot back. "Dubya's never checked the facts, even with his own trust fund. The rest of the world is just catching up with his gameplan."

All of which is true. Everything he has touched since giving his acceptance speech has been a complete disaster - and he owns every one of these failures, in accelerated continuity, from letting Colin Powell walk away to appearing cheap in the face of the worst human disaster since Pompei ... Only God must have the compelling answers at this point: Condi Rice is totally unqualified for the job based on her 9/11 testimony, and Bernie Kerik played the role of perverted policeman so well that he could play the dark and cringe-inducing Harvey Keitel role in The Bad Lieutenant without missing a beat. "Vampires are lucky, they can feed on others. We gotta eat away at ourselves. We gotta eat our legs to get the energy to walk. We gotta come, so we can go. We gotta suck ourselves off. We gotta eat away at ourselves til there's nothing left but appetite. We give, and give and give crazy. Cause a gift that makes sense ain't worth it. Jesus said seventy times seven. No one will ever understand why, why you did it. They'll just forget about you tomorrow, but you gotta do it." After the nasty investigative stories of Mob connections began to take hold, he will be lucky to ever get any closer than a sniffing distance to a legitimate police force; the tabloids will beat him down like a creeping lizard every time he appears near a badge. The Weekly World News will publish undercover photos of him and a naked Judith Regan in his Ground Zero lovepit, right next to the exposé on Osama's secret cache of Midget Suicide Bombers, which the terrorist network is planning to stash in the overhead compartments of commercial airliners.

Data from recent reliable reports indicate Al-Qaeda has been planning "Operation Explosive Elf" for months, but recently stepped up the effort after Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge resigned. "We noticed an increased amount of 'chatter' just after Ridge announced his departure from the department," says our source. "Perhaps they felt we were more vulnerable without the man who makes the call on yellow, orange and red threat levels."

So freaking what? It is terribly hard to feel any sense of forgiveness for the arrogant and terminally heinous demagogues who appear to be so firmly entrenched in Dubya's inner sanctum, offering us petulant freaks like Fat Bernie and the wayward Condi who never met a carpet that didn't fit her knees or backside. Or even Alberto. Yes-siree, little old Alberto Gonzales, the next Attorney General of the United States, who has a growing problem with background checks. He will have little or no legal clout after the dust settles. "No mas" will be recorded on his voice mail. And the Justice Department and the FCC and the FTC and the SEC will piss in his morning coffee because he's got the look of a drunken nerd.

Dubya has already retreated back to the Crawford bunker more and more knowing he's been treated much the same way. He has butchered these last few weeks so badly that once-loyal senators and generals share bizarre "faggot" jokes about his hand gestures and lip expressions over lunch. Even his mother has begun calling him a "pathetic chimp," and his wife is considering a change back to her maiden name to escape the constant ridicule. Close family connections are openly worrying that the twins have become even more enamored with the adult entertainment industry, in concert with their new affinity for charitable causes and creative sexual positions in the back of limousines without tinted windows.

"Ha, ha, hee-haw. Even Robert Kennedy had his sexual indiscretions," says the grotesque Patrick Buchanan. "Perhaps Jenna could be the new Homeland Security chief."

Perhaps. Just never looked at it that way. At least she could get past the background check. And she has no felonies that would creep up from the depths - none that we know of. So what the hell? She could always lie about her age and qualifications. The geared-up simpletons in the White House will believe almost anything, but they expect us to believe even more.

But not this guy, Sparky. The only time I ever believed anything out of Dubya's mouth was when he said it would be better if he didn't have to explain anything to anyone - which he had once said to The Washington Post - and that was enough proof for me. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, the old saying goes - and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron. The wingnuts and fundies will declare, "At least he's our moron." And even then, his own friends are choosing up sides and taking names.

It is among the most harrowing tales to fallout from the 2004 campaign: The same idiots who supported an enfant terrible through a crazy summer of bankrupt political discourse by deceiving and outright lying about a veteran's noble service in an unpopular war are now becoming afraid of each other ... way back in the good old days down in the Texas Governor's mansion they were an extremely tight and efficient team, and they always knew where the enemy lived.

But now the rules have changed. The enemy hides in the dark and many of them were once friends.