For the first time since 2005, more Americans view President George W. Bush positively than negatively. A new Gallup poll released Tuesday found that 49 percent of people view the former president favorably and 46 percent unfavorably.
George W. Bush is taking a shower. Suddenly he pauses in his ablutions; even the water pressure seems to slacken, steam ceases to rise. He gazes downward: His male organ has vanished. It appears to have retracted into his body. Neither mirror-reflection nor desperate loofah-scrubbing reveals the missing unit. It is simply gone.
He screams aloud: “You DID do a heckuva job, Brownie! Condi, tell them!” But there is only Laura lying next to him, terrified beneath her mask and wig. The former president is writhing in his bed. He screams in his sleep all the time now.
Karl Rove stands silently by, observing all. He holds a briefing book designed for emergencies; it contains only folded-up American flags. Using his son’s iPad, he plays World of Warcraft on the same server as the Secret Service detail sitting just outside the bedroom. There is no point in trying to protect a man who screams constantly in his sleep. Their guild is so-so. Members of the Wall Street Journal‘s editorial board sometimes join them in campaigns, but the newcomers all wander into traps within minutes.
Elsewhere, Ken Mehlman writes a letter. He is always writing letters. Whenever something big happens, there’s Ken with his pen and ink and personalized stationery. E-mails are not for Ken. Not for crucial communiqués like the ones he crafts now. He is always at his desk. He is North America’s number-one individual purchaser of correspondence ink.
Mehlman’s ink purchases are surpassed only by those conducted for the disfavored mistress of Kim Jong-Il, who lies chained in an underground island prison off Siberia. She still believes her paramour to be alive, virile, invincible, immortal. And she insists that all of her letters, dictated to illiterate fellow prisoners, are in fact still read by the object of her undying affection. She is all of us. We are she. Mehlman continues to scribble. So late it is, so late.
Ed Gillespie, late out the door as usual because he can hardly say goodbye to his children when they’re home for summer, decides to skip his usual frozen-fruit smoothie and just take a banana for the ride into the city. Gillespie loves fresh bananas — in fact he has forgotten how much he loves them, after all the frozen smoothies he’s been consuming lately. It will be the last banana he ever eats.
Lately subsonic tremors have been heard — felt, really — at various Bush-family residences. The estate at Walker’s Point in Kennebunkport. The ranch in Crawford, Texas. Even in the motorhome from which ex-Governor Jeb plans his next spree of gunpoint-enabled fashion makeovers. Something ancient and malign is awakening deep in the Earth. Stalking surface-dwellers of a given heritage. None dare speak of the foreboding which seizes them. Nor of the fate which lies ahead — certain, cold, adamantine. All there is to do is wait. And write memoirs. And go on television.
Colin Powell, somewhere in an airport lounge, laughs like a fiend at YouTube clips of 1970s variety shows. He alone knows what is about to happen. What he doesn’t yet know is that having advance notice won’t protect him, in the end.
Sea mammals gather in the cold grey sea off Maine. They will observe the ensuing cataclysm. This is how it starts. This is how it ends. History’s stayed paw, talons aflame, tenses and waits. Just a few more moments before everyone is in range….
Dana Perino still combines beauty and corruption in a way which staggers even the demons of the Underworld.
Ungulates form groups of dozens, prepare exhibits, don robes. Judge and jury complete the ancient rituals which invest them with proper authority. The court which will decide humanity’s fate is now in session. Witnesses are called, but few take the stand. They have lost the power of speech. Even their songs, offered in lieu of testimony, are strangled, atonal, dark. It’s not looking good for the defendants right now.
Source: TPM
Image credit: Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons
