Tune up your fiddles. Get your ukuleles out of their musty cases. Soak your harmonica in water in the old fruit jar. It’s time for the hypocrite waltz again. Slick back your hair, grab your partners, and head for the big dance floor. It’s kind of fun to watch the variety of dips and dodges going on now that it has been revealed – to I mean no one’s real surprise – that sweet and syrupy old Karl Rove was the one who let slip to the press the fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA operative thereby divulging classified information and putting many people’s careers and lives at risk just to score a few political points he didn’t need and claim a little payback that he obviously felt he did need from her rogue husband Joseph Wilson.

Rove’s first line of defense is that he didn’t actually “use her name” (nudge, wink, cough, chortle). This tactic was something Rove picked up during his graduate study years at the Bill Clinton School of Advanced Obfuscation and Hair Division. Now, he’s saying that “the press made me do it.” The mean old press forced him to be a miserable stoolie.

This is good. This is truly Rovian.

Rove recently took a break from touching up his war paint and dancing naked in the tribal firelight with his fellow battle-lusting conservatives after drinking the blood of a freshly slaughtered wolverine while prepping for the next unnecessary foreign invasion to stand several feet behind George W. Bush who claimed he was “standing with” Rove as he faced the nasty media and their accusations that the pair of them were flat out liars with badly chiseled teeth.

Now, no one really thinks that the Republicans are going to do anything about Rove, who is turning into a big, floppy embarrassment that ought to be doing hard time lifting and carrying rocks from one pile to another barefoot on scorpion-infested turf. What has further come to light is that while everyone thought during Bush’s first term that Dick Cheney was the real president and that Bush occasionally showed up for roll call, now we know that the real president all along has been Rove, so he is not going to fire himself, is he?

You can’t really bring down the most powerful man since Creation over only being an informer. He can only bring down himself, though, and Rove, left to his own devices, is doing a pretty good job of that lately. The Democrats should encourage him to keep doing the terrific job he has been doing all along. He’s got his whole party back-pedaling trying to cover for him. This keeps them away form other issues and doing even more damage to the world, the environment, the country, the tilt of the Earth, the cost of whiskey, etc.

In another time and dimension, Rove would be chained to his desk and floating face down in the Potomac by now, but we live in a kinder and gentler time and dimension. All the hollering about firing him is just wasted breath because nobody on the other side is going to call for it except for Tennessee State Representative Chris Clem, who is, as we know, a master of and a slave to consistency.

Karl is just falling prey to a little old fashioned hubris. You can see it in every one of his mug shots. He thought he was outing Valerie, but he was really outing himself. Now, he has women taking the fall for him. This guy is a classic.

The Washington press corps should have uttered a huge collective “duh” when this news broke. You really have to wonder what these guys and gals do all day long. They have pretty much let the Bush gang get away with the lesser offense of manslaughter for nearly five years with only a flurry of activity usually well after the fact like this time around. Instead of asking White House press secretary Scott McClellan “How could you lie to us?” they should be asking “Why did we believe anything you have ever said to us?”

Let’s face it: others you can replace, but not Rove. So, I say we just leave Rove exactly where he is and wait to see what’s the next shenanigan he has in store for us. It ought to be a doozie. He’s the kind of guy who just has to top himself each time out. In the meantime, the Republicans can console themselves by imagining all that gold dust and all those bearer bonds they once had to themselves that are now blowing away in the wind were just nothing but gobs of nacho cheese.

Bart Whiteman
Bartwhiteman@aol.com

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I would like to thank Bart Whiteman for his story about Rove and Nachos. My name is Michael Callis. I play the fiddle and dip my harmonicas in whiskey. I live and was raised in New Hampshire and play for contra dances. I am a liberal Republican and ran against Bush in the primary. Bush won the election but lost the state.

Your article was very entertaining and revelatory and I am proud to say I was born in Tennessee. The following is a letter to the editor I just composed in the hope someone will print it. But thank you for your wit. Vox Vobiscum

Letter to editor:

The Cattlemen association is up in arms about the recent re-classification of a cow testing negative for mad cow disease before the election and now positive. Mad Cow is nature's potential weapon of mass destruction. The actions of political operatives to interfere with science and intelligence is at the core of Karl Roves trouble with the former ambassador and author of the Niger 'Yellow cake' report, Joe Wilson, a Republican

Karl Rove bantered the name of Wilson's wife about Washington to reporters and the result is an investigation generated on request of the CIA. The Red Meat Republicans and Wilson have something in common, a concern over the integrity of intelligence and science used by the administration.

The Republican National Committee distributed a report calling Wilson a liar. This theme was editorialized in the Wall Street journal on July 13 and Newt Gingrich repeated that Wilson is a liar to Bill O'Reilly on Fox TV. The media spin by the RNC in attacking Wilson's creditability in order to defend Rove is another example of the facts being distorted and fed to what can only be described as a propaganda loop.

Red meat Republicans feel betrayed after the election. The librarians and the National Rifle association have joined forces to challenge the Patriot act. Bush's poll numbers are dropping. And yes Karl Rove, Republicans eat their own.
Michael Callis (liberal Republican) Eaton Center, NH
info@FRANKENSTEINWEB.COM

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The Lost Treasure of Sierra Nachos? Now that is a catchy phrase and title. I just could not wait to weigh in on this latest piece by Mr. Whiteman.

For all you Chattanoogan.com readers out there, you will recognize that this is another "Whitemanism" as I like to refer to it. An opinion article full on flower, fluff, literary or movie prose but not much else. It is usually what could be refered to as "FACT LITE"! But facts have never been something Bart concerns himself with because it is all about opinion and not about the truth.

Here is a bit of REAL, honest to goodness truth, in case anyone is interested in that. There is a current investigation going on about who, if anyone, leaked the identity of a CIA agent. Funny thing is that Karl Rove is not the target of that investigation. HHHMM, that is puzzling when you read articles like these. According to Bart, Karl is the chief culprit and is already guilty. But when you look at the facts, what you really get in the Bart Lite column is maybe one sentence or two of real truth. I think the only truthful one was, "This guy is a classic," (referring to Rove). That is true.

So as Bart roams about looking for another issue or story to write about maybe we can all imagine the fun, the hubris and the lite on facts that will be his next target. Maybe the headline will read, "Saddam Hussein Reveals CIA Operative's Name While Giving Birth to Alien Baby." Now maybe that would be a story to hear his opinion on.

Joshua Project
joshuaproj@yahoo.com

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Joshua Project,
You were really trying to fry Bart Whiteman for pointing his finger at Karl Rove as the source of the Plame leak. Made him sound like a real psycho for even suggesting that Rove was the source. Just got my copy of Newsweek. Cover says "The World According to Karl Rove - His Hardball Style Elected Bush and Changed Politics. Will It Save Him?" Save him from what? You must wonder. Jury duty?

I read the story, and concluded that Bart has indeed increased his audience, as Newsweek is simply echoing everything Bart says. So is CNN and any other number of news sources. I suppose you have some idea who the leaker is. Rove says it's Bob Novak, yet Novak describes two White House officials.

Ann Coulter, the whisky-belching author of Treason, says that Joe Wilson outed his wife himself for some insane reason ( Novak's article was published before Wilson made any mention of his wife). Someone else said the CIA outed her - ate one of their own in a manner of speaking - and asked the Justice Department to launch an investigation to cover their tracks. Now, that's what I do, when I commit a crime. I call the police and say, "Please find out who borrowed my car to knock over that bank that was robbed last night."

Now you think Saddam and aliens did it? I'm not surprised. Mack and Jack were a great team. Mack would throw the brick through the liquor store window, and Jack would go in, since the place was wide open, and "rescue" the liquor. Neither one could be accused of "breaking and entering," since neither did both the breaking and the entering. Rove and Novak have used this strategy, too. One revealed that an individual worked for the CIA, and the other revealed the name of that individual. Classic tag team. Now, which one should go to jail, Mack or Jack? Maybe it depends on who got more of the liquor (I don't really want any more reporters to go to jail - I think Judith Miller is a hero). But either Rove is lying, or Novak is lying. My money is on Rove.

Funny thing just occurred to me. Rove and Libby supposedly confirmed Novak's statements about Wilson's wife working for the CIA by saying "Yea, I heard that too." I wonder if it is standard practice for everyone in the Bush administration to discuss the career histories of the spouses of all the retired U.S. diplomats. There must be thousands of them.

Quick, who was the ambassador to Uruguay in 1994, and what did his wife do? Bonus points if you can name the breed of his dog. You've got ten seconds - Karl is on the line.

Ted Payne
theodorejpayne@yahoo.com