Fiddle On, Motherfuckers, Fiddle On:
If you take a moment and you sniff the air, what you get is the assaultive whiff of desperation coming from the Bush administration and the right wing of this country. The Rude Pundit refuses to make predictions, but there's a palpable sense growing in America that Kerry may actually win this long, lingering nightmare of a campaign. You get it from the shit smell of the dying Bush/Cheney campaign, the faded deodorant and armpit sweat stink from the conservative punditry.

You get it from the sight of Bush flailing about, like a jackrabbit on an electrified metal floor. It's a pathetic thing, as he hops around on the dais at his various events, searching for some spot where's there's comfort, peace, rest. God, you think, throw some water on that motherfucker so he just fries. Here's Bush's bizarro explanation of the failure to consider 760,000 pounds of powerful explosives worthy of securing: "If Senator Kerry had his way, we would still be taking our global test, Saddam Hussein would still be in power, he would control all those weapons and explosives, and could have shared them with our terrorist enemies." Let's see if we can follow the crazed leaps of logic here: because the United States under George W. Bush invaded Iraq, 40 to 60 semi-truckloads of the most dangerous explosives in the world were (more than likely) looted from a site that had previous been sealed and monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency, thus placing the explosives in the hands of (more than likely) terrorist, insurgents, and/or unfriendly countries. However, had a theoretical United States under a theoretical President Kerry not invaded, Saddam mightmaybecouldhave shared the sealed, monitored explosives with terrorists with whom he had no working relationship. At a minimum here, we're talkin' a zero-sum gain, no? But the more likely scenario is this: Bush and the Bushettes fucked up. Big time. And the price for that fuck up is being paid in soldiers' arms, legs, nuts, and guts, blown all over the fuckin' place with car bombs and RPGs. And we're just bidin' our time until the real big time explosions happen. In other words, Bush spends his time talking about what might have been under Kerry instead of what actually happened under his "leadership." Meanwhile, Bush's minions are out there blaming the troops, just like Abu Ghraib, just like so many other things. God, we're all such a bunch of squalid losers when compared to the infallibility of the President and his cabinet. (Strangely, today, Bush made no mention of the missing explosives in his speech in Saginaw.)

The other truly, madly, deeply pathologically cynical thing is Bush's invocation of past Democratic Presidents as a way of trying to lure Democrats to him, like a camouflaged lizard on a branch lures gnats and beetles. With the batshit mad Zell Miller, a man whose eyes can't stop spinning long enough to focus on the objects of his hatred, by his side, Bush said, "The Democratic Party has a great tradition of leading this country with strength and conviction in times of war and crisis. I think of Franklin Roosevelt's commitment to total victory. I think of Harry Truman's clear vision at the beginning of the Cold War. I think of John Kennedy's brave declaration of American ideals. President Kennedy said: 'The rights of man come not from the generosity of the state, but from the hand of God.'" Sure, Bush'd be right if Roosevelt attacked Peru after Pearl Harbor, if Truman had refused to direct talks with the Soviet Union while denegrating the just-established United Nations, and if Kennedy hadn't been attacked by Republicans for his Catholicism or if he hadn't said that if he could not reconcile his conscience with the national interest, "I would resign the office, and I hope any conscientious public servant would do likewise." Bush then invoked Bill Clinton, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and other Democrats who would rather get fucked by Nixon's decayed femur than vote for Bush.

Meanwhile, Fox "News" is spinning like a weasel on speed with its constant attempts to prop up the Bush adminstration on the missing explosives, even though NBC and reality are closing in on Bush. Paul Bremer was on to say, "We don't know;" Brit Hume keeps on screeching, "We don't know and it's CBS's fault;" and Bill O'Reilly doesn't seem to understand that no one wants to talk to the guy who might jack off while shoving a vibrator up his ass.

As Josh Marshall and others have pointed out, the right wing media is already getting prepared for the post-election story of "blame the liberal media," which would be unnecessary if Bush was seen as a shoo-in. Jonah Goldberg questions the "timing" of the New York Times report on the looted explosives, as if the story should be squelched until after the election so that we can't judge Bush based on his mistakes. Rush Limbaugh is huffing and puffing like a whore on nickel night trying to turn this against Kerry and the U.N. and, of course, the Times and CBS. If they lose, they will be flinging their shit at anything that limps left.

Yes, we can smell the sweat of fear, we can see the spinning dance of death, we can hear the frantic fiddling, we can touch the potential future, and we can taste the acrid flames that are licking at their feet. It's all crumbling. Let's just hope it collapses soon enough.