The call came on The Angry Buddhist's cell phone during halftime at last night's Lakers vs Nuggets game. As it turned out the caller on the line had the biggest Nugget of the night.
It was my phone buddy, Karl. Karl Rove. He had told the President he wouldn't call any more journalists and leak on them. So he called The Angry Buddhist instead.
As you gentle followers all know - I am not a journalist. I am, as widely acknowledged, the 21st century Jiminy Cricket.
So with a good 12 minutes before the 2nd half, I took the call.
Karl got right to the point. "I'm out. Stick a fork in me, I'm done. And with my finish, the end to the attacks on our President during war time. So I guess you could say I'm taking a bullet for the big guy."
"So you're resigning?" I asked.
"No fucking way," said Karl. "We get no polling boost from that. No, the President is firing me, to show how decisive he is and uncorrupt. I've scripted the whole thing. It's brilliant."
"Then he's going to admit to making mistakes -- just like Reagan did! Everyone says he isn't capable of it, but we're going to show them how wrong they are."
"Then - and this is the tipping point to come - George will apologize to America..."
"Come on, Karl," I scoffed. "Bush is actually going to say 'I'm sorry?' I'm not buying it, it goes against everything he believes."
"Of course not," laughed Karl. "He's going to say, 'I apologize.' He's not sorry about shit - except how the liberal left has attacked him and the values America stands for. It's not about what he believes, it's about what he needs to do at this time."
He put me on speaker phone and I could hear Karl galloping around the room and slapping his own ass over the phone as he cackled like Charles Nelson Reilly on the "Ghost and Mrs. Muir."
"We've already done the post-apology polling!" yelled Karl the Horse. "He gets a 9 point boost before the pundits even get to opine!"
"The thing is," Karl said, getting back on the headset, "We have no choice. The American people will send us straight to hell in the '06 midterms and we'll be playing "Hail to the Chief" for Hillary come January 2009 if we don't pull the trigger on this. We need Karl Rove to be the fall guy and for the President to wave the magic "apology wand" and make this all go away."
The Laker scrubs were dribbling back onto the Staples Center floor for their post halftime warmups and I told Karl that all sounded great to me and to keep me posted about anything else he had in mind to pull off so I could put it here in the blog. I then hit the "end" button and turned the phone off.
After all, who needs some asshole on United States Air Force approved military-grade speed, bugging me during the second half?
So just remember where you read this first, because it's in the bag:
- Karl is gone.
- Mistakes were made.
- The President apologizes.
Nothing has changed.