Karl Dodges the Bullet...

... at least that's what everybody thinks. M'self, I think there's a host of forces out there in the real world that might prove otherwise. First, there's karma. Personally, I have my doubts about that, given the number of first-class assholes in world history who've died old and rich. But, still, it's out there, and god knows a lot of Buddhists believe in it. Then, there's hubris. The Greeks (or Grecians, as Rove's boss calls them) knew that people that were just plain full of themselves usually got it tucked to them eventually. They're probably right, a fair percentage of the time.

Then, there's good, old-fashioned natural disaster. Karl might be driving along in his Jaguar se-dan and a big honking deer jumps through the windshield. If it doesn't kill the deer and Karl, the deer gets excited and kicks the shit out of smart-ass fat boy as he drives them both into a bridge piling. Or, the Rovian moon could be sitting in his country house around August 11th, tucking away the best part of a fifth of Jack Daniels (c'mon, Dobson, you don't really think Karl's an observant religious fanatic, do you?) and, bam, a meteorite comes crashing through the roof, which both squashes and incinerates the porky little political operative.

Or, there could be one of those classic "acts of God" that insurance people love to write out of policies. Like aircraft crashes. Water tower collapses. Earthquakes. Tidal waves. Oh, and, yeah, hurricanes. Tornadoes. Nuclear power plant explosions. Lightning. (Karl gets hit by lightning and the odds are 8:5 that I'll start believing in a supreme deity again.) Alien abductions. (Man, could I sell the hell out of the video of that anal probing. What's Arcturan for, "geez, which orifice is his asshole? Which end is up?")

Then there's the seamier side of the situation. Does Susan Ralston get nervous about what she knows and then dresses up nicely and visits Abramoff and Kidan in prison and says, "pretty please, can your friends arrange another hit?" Or, if Cheney figures out that Karl's going to throw him overboard, does Cheney bring his $6000 Italian shotgun to work and just, well, you know, shoot Rove in the face? (Well, you know Cheney. He's gotten away with that sort of thing before.) Does Libby turn into a nine-year-old kid on the stand, yelling, "Rove did it! I saw him do it. He's the one you want, not me, not me!, not me!!! He's the criminal!" And then gives all the sordid details about how Rove did it and talked Libby into going along with it all.

Ohmigod, then there's medical shit. Aneurysms (even Karl Rove can wind up as stiff as an ironing board on his left side). Dengue fever. Tidal Basin ptomaine (oops, my mistake, Rove is a carrier, not a recipient). Rabies. West Nile. Liver flukes. Lou Gehrig's disease. Early advanced Alzheimer's (delicious irony in that). Terminal hemorrhoids complicated by anal herpes. Brain cancer (does that mean Bush goes into a long, slow decline and dies? Hmm. Maybe there's already been a diagnosis we don't know about). AIDS.

Or, Karl could just wind up the victim of a foreign intrigue, because he knows too much, or just because of his choice of pizza toppings.

But, one thing for sure, Karl's not out of the woods yet. The world's a dangerous place. Karl should know that. He keeps telling Bush and the boys to tell us it is.