EVERYONE HATES BUSH NOW-- EVEN DENNIS HASTERT, RICHARD VIGUERIE AND A RIGHT WING LOON IN BENSALEM NAMED PHIL

The Prince of Darkness reported in his CHICAGO SUN-TIMES gossip column that the biggest man in the House, Speaker Dennis Hastert, had a screaming fit directed at Cheney a couple days ago. Cheney ventured up to the Hill to receive some kind of bogus pro-forma Distinguished Service Award and Hastert started yelling at him-- not because of what he has done to our nation and not for the misery and devastation he is responsible for in Iraq-- but because he screwed over Hastert's old crony Porter Goss, a former corrupt right-wing congressman who was fired from his job as CIA Director after a year and a half of gross incompetence + hookers and bribes (all things that are obviously just water off a duck's back in Congress these days).

"Hastert was so vituperative that a private session with President Bush in the living quarters of the White House was scheduled immediately... With the vice president sitting in, Bush expressed his high regard for Goss. Hastert had criticized the choice of Gen. Michael Hayden as Goss' successor, and Bush urged the speaker to support the nominee." Apparently no one has bothered to tell Bush that the Senate rubber-stamps the appointments, not the House and that Jabba only works in the House, not the Senate. In any case, Hastert didn't yell at Bush-- but he's still pissed off (and vindictive). Bush doesn't need more people hating him. Even extreme right-wing guru Richard Viguerie denounced him in today's WASHINGTON POST. The Hispanic voters he tried courting are sick of his bullshit and are turning on him now. His approval ratings are headed towards zero (not counting Utah and the Aryan Nation) and now every poll but one the Republican Party took, says the American people overwhelmingly rate him as personally unlikeable. (I feel so ahead of the curve-- again. I once booked The Doors to play at my college for $400-- before they were famous-- and Steven Krantz, the sophomore class representative, screamed at me and started a petition drive-- which failed-- to have me removed as Chairman of the Student Activities Board for wasting money on a talentless band like The Doors. I found Bush personally unlikeable when he was still a coke-snorting frat boy trying to act like a big shot in his daddy's White House.)

Anyway, Jabba the Hastert's "wrath reflects the feeling in the House Republican cloakroom that Goss, who gave up a safe congressional seat from Florida for a thankless cleanup mission at the CIA, is being made a scapegoat for the government's intelligence mess. But Hastert's discontent goes beyond the CIA. The GOP mood on Capitol Hill, particularly the House, is poisonous. With pessimism rising over a contemplated loss of their majority in the 2006 elections, Republican lawmakers blame their parlous condition on Bush's performance." They all sense the jig is up and that many are not just headed for unemployment lines but to federal penitentiaries-- like their former colleague Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who, after all, wasn't doing anything that almost all of the House Republicans were are doing.

Even an acquaintance of mine from Bensalem, PA, Phil, who's not terribly bright, a little on the attention deficit end of the spectrum and a rabid right-wing loon-- a gay and poor right-wing loon-- has now turned against Bush. (He's still majorly behind Santorum but is aware that whomever wins the Senate race in November will be representing the extreme right-wing values he so fervently-- if incomprehensibly-- espouses.) It was hard to get Phil to explain why he's gone from Bush-lover to Bush-loather. "I don't want you guys to know," he said. What guys? "California liberals." Eventually he kind of whispered one word: "Immigration." And take my word for it, Phil, like all right-wingers, HATES labor unions, so he's not angry because Bush's immigration plans are aimed at neutering organized labor and keeping wages low for... people like Phil. Nope; like with virtually all right-wing Republicans, you don't have to scratch too deeply beneath the surface to find a weak, frightened, xenophobic, racist a-hole.

Did you watch ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" today? John Edwards was another voice explaining that the emperor is stark naked-- and pretty repulsive to behold. Bush, said the former North Carolina senator, "is the worst president of our lifetime... absolutely" worse than Nixon. He said if he were still in the Senate he would back Russ Feingold's censure resolution. "He's done a variety of things-- things which are going to take us forever to recover from... You have to give Bush and Cheney and gang credit for being good at politics-- you know, good at political campaigns. They're very good at dividing the country and taking advantage of it. What they're not good at is governing, and it shows every single day in this administration. And the country is paying a huge price for that." Edwards, like over 80% of Americans, is not a big fan of Dick Cheney either. "It is not an accident that he's unbelievably poorly thought of. He is one of-- if not the-- principal architects of this disaster in Iraq. He put us on an energy path that the American people are paying an enormous price for right now. He paid little to no attention to making sure the government was prepared to respond to the kind of disaster that hit our Gulf Coast. We've got a health care crisis going on, he's had no proposal of any kind that I know of. And people don't trust him anymore, which is understandable. I wouldn't trust him."

Pretty soon, the only ones who will say they like Bush are people on the payroll and, of course, the prisonfuls of crooked Republican politicians waiting for presidential pardons-- and Jeff Skilling and... Kenny-boy.