Sunday Morning Comin’ Down…

Special Rummy Edition.

Watching Don Rumsfeld on the teevee this morning, I was reminded uncannily of the horrible 1998 remake of Godzilla.

Of a 100-foot-tall (Or 500. Or 1,000, depending on the needs of the script at that moment) rampaging through the granite canyons of New York, bulking so large that his tail opened up the sides of buildings like a prison shiv in a shower ambush, and its shoulders clipped off the corners of buildings.

And yet, as in a dream – a really, really crappily written dream – the massed firepower of the entire US military never laid a glove on it. Every missile mysteriously scooted between its legs and sidewound over its apartment-block-sized head. It shucked and jived (I prefer "jove") and toe-danced up and down the island on Manhattan and not a thing in the arsenal could touch it.

‘Cause it was cold blooded. Or something.

Same deal with Rummy, more or less.

I tried to watch the whole of his geek show road game this a.m. on the Punkin Haid program – watch him bite the heads off of questions and explain that “up” isn’t really up and “down” depends on how you measure it – but there wasn’t any sport in it.

In fact, it made me physically ill.

But it wasn’t that even Timmuh’s grumpy, Crayola questions (well, not questions so much as his reading quotes of off a sheet of paper and then saying ‘Well..?’) shot past the smirking SecDef; in fact, every one of them landed. It was much worse than that.

Rumsfeld might as well have recited every line from “As Day at the Races” backwards for all the sense he was making, and the monster’s glitter in his eyes let us all in on the joke.

Rummy obviously just doesn’t give a shit.

Didn’t give a rat’s ass about the questions or the answers.

In all of his Groucho Marx funny wordgaming, it is frighteningly clear that Rummy has finally found his perfect niche. He can fuck up and up and up and up and up forever and ever, but since the Little Man in the White House is more terrified of people figuring out what an utter coward and fool he is than anything else, Bush knows he dare not lose face.

Loss of face is the only Cardinal Sin in this Administration, and so no error can ever be admitted. In fact, errors must be celebrated.

Ineptitude must be feted.

Out-and-out blood libels (as Steve Gilliard so accurately phrased it) must be sanctimoniously defended to the hilt.

A deranged thug like Bolton must be confirmed to sensitive, diplomatic post.

Comically bad science must be embraced and touted.

The criminals that lost Iraq must each and every one be fitted out with shiny, new Medals of Freedom in festive ceremonies.

...and like DeNiro playing Capone in “The Untouchables”, Bush and Cheney and Rove forever circle the table, bats in hand, looking for signs of disloyalty.

Any perversion, any criminality, any outright Macbethian homicidal insanity can be marketed and spun away; that kind of whoring and political scut work is, after all, what Hume and Kristol and Brooks were bred for. But disloyalty – or, rather, loyalty to some truth or principle higher than Fealty to Dear Leader – that is the only capital crime.

And no stagnant swamp or dank, long abandoned locker room could possibly present a more hospitable environment than this White House for a fungus like Rummy to grow big and tall.

As he approaches the theoretical upper limit of fuckuppery, those who do not understand or simply don’t believe how the Bush Administration truly works look on in astonishment. How could this be?

But once you understand that a mean, feeble-minded little dry-drunk bully like Bush is – at a molecular level – simply incapable of admitting any error whatsoever, it makes perfect sense. His whole smirking Texas dumbass thing would evaporate like an ice sculpture in a forest fire if he ever had to face up to who and what he is, which is why the West Wing is kept fully stocked with ass-licking sycophants.

Bush never had and never will have the moral fiber or temperament to handle Power, which is why he has always been the perfect tool for stronger men. He is, at the end of the day, a weak fool who cannot summon the guts to even mildly rebuke douchebags like Rummy or Rove because to do so would be to admit that maybe, just maybe, they had done something wrong.

And Rummy knows it.

Like Dobson knows he holds Frist hostage to his craven political ambitions, Rummy knows that he has Bush strapped over a barrel, completely captive to the stupid man’s own dread of appearing incompetent.

So Sunday it was his same old smelly soft shoe, but now, when the stink of blood is so much thicker in the air, now when the Beast flashes his teeth, there is no mistaking it for the goofy smile of some Disney bear.

Now Rummy just jumps up on the desk, drops trou and starts smacking Timmuh in the face with his dick, shrieking, “C’mon Bitch! Whose your Big Russ now!” and doesn’t care in the slightest what anyone thinks because he knows that, based on the metrics used at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the more berserk he behaves, the more job security he has.

Poor Colin Powell: he never figured out how this game is played.

On 9/11, we were bequeathed a certain moral currency and global compassion that was the only good thing to come out of that evil day. And now that it has become crystal clear that the sacrifice of 3,000 Americans has been utterly debased, has really and truly been deliberately and cheaply pawned for mere political capital so that a drunken idiot could piss it away on his handler’s fever dreams...the Rummy act isn’t cutesy anymore.

It isn't clever.

It isn't smart.

It isn't witty.

It isn't arch.

It’s just fucking obscene.