One o' those days...

Arrrrgh, the pirate ship Jolly W be takin' a rough beating today; after the buffetting it took in the winds o' Katrina, the speech he made to the nation only caused more water to flood its hull: Gallup shows Bush's approval ratin's fell 6% to 40%. 'Tis be what's happenin' when ye do somethin' that angers the only sailors that have yet to abandon ship on ye: spend $200 billion o' yer treasure without any plan to cut costs and while cuttin' yer taxes at the same time. Democrats and Independents have already fled the Administration en masse, and this be incensin' everyone in the Republican party from their seedier contingents of selfish "Why should MY money be used for them?!" types and freelance racists, to the saner fiscal hawks and small government advocates (the survey even shows that the captain's greatest losses occurred among Republicans). Also, only a quarter o' those polled think the captain can handle the reconstruction o' the Gulf Coast.

It be gettin' worse fer Captain W in other parts o' the poll as well. Support fer his raidin' o' Iraq fell to... get this... 32%! Only 39% be thinkin' the raid was the right thing to do, and 63% be sayin' they want to start pullin' the sailors out.

On the same day as the poll, one o' the captain's chief scallywags, David Hossein Safavian, Administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, was indicted on 3 counts o' pirating (lyin' and obstructin' a federal investigation). 'Tis be particularly troubling fer the Captain, as Safavian's previous sailin' was done under the arch-pirate Jack Abramoff aboard the Preston Gates, and the indictment involves a certain August 2002 golf trip to Scotland that he was sent on by the lobbyist with whom he had dirty dealin's. Who else was on a golf trip to Scotland in August 2002, ye might be wonderin'? Why, first mate Tom Delay o' course, sent there by Mr. Abramoff himself!

Corruption within the captain's quarters with the same scallywags as Delay. 'Tis be awful news for an Administration already sufferin' from public distrust.

All this combines to put more water in the hull than Captain W can hope to toss out. From the HMS American Spectator (c/o DailyKos):

But at this stage of the game, barring some imaginative political moves that bear some resemblance to the Bush Administration circa 2002, Republicans on Capitol Hill and even some longtime Bush team members in various Cabinet level departments say this Administration is done for.

"You run down the list of things we thought we could accomplish and you have to wonder what we thought we were thinking," says a Bush Administration member who joined on in 2001. "You get the impression that we're more than listless. We're sunk."

Too pessimistic? Maybe not. Rumors are flying through various departments of longtime senior Bush loyalists looking to jump, but with few opportunities in the private sector to make the jump look like anything more than desperation [...]

Congressional committee sources on both sides of Capitol Hill predict tough slogging on anything of policy consequence. "Social Security is dead as far as my chairman is concerned. So are the tax cuts," says a Ways and Means staffer of Chairman Bill Thomas.

The American Spectator, just so ya be knowin', 'tis be a right-leanin' publication.