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TOM GILROY THROWS DOWN:

Nothing could be more damaging for the bridge club of armchair politicians known as the Democratic Leadership than the recent spate of sound bytes like ‘Bush’s worst week in Office,’ ‘A White House Demoralized,’ and ‘Bushies on the Brink of Collapse’.

You can already feel Schumer, Dean, Hillary, and their media addicted minions being taken over by that familiar self-satisfied stupor, validating their inaction and cowardice, even repositioning it as though it was part of a grand plan, an agenda, even an ideology.

It’s like a bunch of fat people on a couch learning about the obesity epidemic from 60 Minutes and concluding they must be skinny.

The problem with these snappy doomsday pronouncements—collective wishes really—is that they bear no relationship to reality. You really have to wonder what kind of bloated house-bound moron could think slumping polls and plummeting approval ratings would worry a gang of fanatics who stole two elections in a row, invaded a country they knew couldn’t defend itself, and gave a male hustler White House security clearance.

As long as Democrats and their well-fed punditocracy measure Bush, et al with a yardstick of morality, popularity or ethics, they will never recapture the majority, and here’s why; Bush, et al aren’t driven by morality, popularity, or ethics. They’re driven by money.

You can almost deduce what Rove will tell them to do next by simply asking yourself what would be best for the rich. But ask yourself what would any normal person do when their egregious gluttony, mendacity and utter scorn for the common man was exposed and you’ll find the Bushies actions baffling. You’ll wait for their humble confession until you’re blue in the face—uninsured at an underfunded emergency room. Judge them by their drive to get at even more of our public resources and money, and suddenly you’ll recognize they’re still a well oiled machine.

So they don’t ‘Reel With Frustration’ or ‘Rethink Their Message’ or ‘Try to Recapture the Public Mood,’ that’s just delusional journalists waxing poetic over how a decent person would behave. But these people aren’t decent, they’re crooks, and crooks don’t give a shit about you seeing them for what they really are. They don’t care what you see as long as they’re getting you’re money.

But ‘On the Brink of Collapse?’ ‘A Crack in the Empire?’ Running Scared?’ ‘Drowning in an Ethical Quagmire?’ ‘Crisis of Leadership?’ ‘Humbled by the Damage to Their Legacy’?

Yeah ,sure.

They’re so humbled they just last week passed landmark changes gutting Florida’s Medicaid and Medicare programs, to be used as a model for other red states so their Republican governors can appear fiscally responsible. So you crippled grandmother better not exceed her spending cap next year, or she’s shit out of luck; her dog food rations will have to go up to 3 meals a week just to pay for her meds. Boy, thank God the GOP’s been humbled by the ethical quagmire.

They’re so humiliated by their treasonous lies and media intimidation in the lead-up to the illegal war, they just nominated a raving puritan lunatic to the Supreme Court, a brown-shirted lemming so in thrall of corporate power and totalitarian government control he makes Maggie Thatcher look like a feminazi. Running scared!

Dick Cheney’s act of contrition for the public discovering he’d sacrifice a CIA agent ‘s head on a silver platter so an illegal war could funnel money to Halliburton was to replace his indicted chief of staff with David Addington, a stealth gorgon who’s hatred of democracy reaches back to Iran/contra and co-authoring Gonzales’s Torture Memo.
Dick’s so horribly ashamed he’s even bucking the entire Congress to force a torture loophole into a bill that would otherwise compel America to abide by The Geneva Conventions. You remember The Geneva Conventions, those rules of ethics drafted by all of humanity in response to the Nazis gassing 6 million Jews? Clearly, our VP is so demoralized he must be triple popping Prozac just face his morning coffee.

W is so decimated by the embarrassment of his (and his mother’s) classism, racism and venal cronyism in the wake of Katrina, he could barely muster the courage to eliminate minimum wages and environmental protections in the great domestic funneling of cash to Halliburton , otherwise known as the rebuilding of New Orleans. Just look at the chickenshit run! We got ‘im now!

Talk about cowering at the feet of liberals. That’s why they’re offering up the olive branch of the Guest Worker Program, that nice euphemism for a lot of poor people without constitutional rights, occupational protections, health insurance, the ability to establish or practice their culture, send their kids to school, or have a permanent home—all for below poverty wages. Which is of course another way of saying slavery. Boy, they’re in the final throes!

And the face man for torture and CIA-trained death squads from Honduras to Nicaragua, John Negroponte, is still running Iraq, probably using an Ottoman vase as a chamber pot while tallying up our weekly Geneva Convention violations on a centuries-old Koran with a Sharpie.

Boy, are they reeling in humiliation. I’m surprised they can muster the dignity to get out of bed in the morning, they ‘re so debilitated and demoralized.

Here’s a little secret; they never reel because they are never demoralized. They don’t measure success and failure they way you and I do, by analyzing public benefit or desire, or even legality, or ethics. They measure success by how much more money they feast on from the public trough. And by that measure, they hogs are literally drowning in shit.

So while you fold your arms in the triumphant reassurance that Scooter’s indictment and the GOP’s plummeting ratings reveal the world to be what you’ve always had faith it was, think again. The pendulum you always talk about is not swinging back. The Truth has not come out. What has happened is what you’ve known all along has merely been reiterated. There is no new information, and so there will be no new consequences. And while you smirk and feel validated they’ll go right along gobbling up more and more, laughing at you between belches.

Because they don’t care about your moral indignation, your ethical judgment, or what the public thinks. They don’t care what’s popular, legal, or good for the country. They want your money.

So while the Democrats brunch and strategize about who to run in 2008 (choosing from the 3 frontrunners, all of whom want to INCREASE troop numbers in Iraq), the dozens of Rove wannabees over at the The Federalist Society are planning their fifth, sixth, seventh move from now in their uninterrupted plunder. They’re thrilled you think they’re running scared, because that means you’ll go back to watching ‘Sex & The City ‘ marathons.

Because while you’re in your HBO or ‘Desperate Housewives’ coma, they’re moving way beyond small potatoes stuff like Valerie Plame and Patrick Fitzgerald. They’re plotting new ways to get at our money in places you’ve never even thought of. They’re gonna spread those Medicaid cuts to every state in the union, they’re gonna make billions overcharging us for avian flu vaccine, they’re plotting ways to dissolve land trusts via ‘eminent domain.’ They’re paying lawyers to strategize ways to let every corporation in America out of honoring pension and health insurance commitments.

While you’re smirking about them finally getting their comeuppance, they’re hiring investigators to find out if Barack Obama ever had gay sex, Elliot Spitzer ever paid a maid under the table, or Kenye West ever went to a hooker. They’re plotting Phase II of the ‘social security debate,’ and the PR sliming of China and Venezuela into the new Russia and Cuba. They’ll have every anchorperson in America calling environmental and animal rights activists ‘domestic terrorists,’ Homeland Security monitoring the email records of college students, and the ATF following future Cindy Sheehans by tracking their EZ Pass.

Think I’m wrong? Ten years ago, could you have imagined evolution being challenged, ‘affirmative action’ a political liability, or a pregnant GI posing for torture photos?

If these are the actions of a humiliated cabal, imagine what an emboldened one would try to get away with. The mind reels.