For a good many years I had a rather crude cartoon tacked on my office wall, it depicted a rat caught in a trap with an endless line of fellow rats backed up each having their turn at a specific anatomical part of the captive. The caption read: �When you�re down and out, everybody wants a piece of your ass.�

With an approval rating hovering in the mid-30s, and his fellow Repugs distancing themselves from him, like he has an extreme case of body odor, George Bush must feel much like the rat in that crude cartoon. You know it�s bad when one of GW�s staunchest pals -- Ricky (the sanitizer) Santorum -- does not want you campaigning for him in his home state of Pennsylvania.

So while Bush was lambasting his Iraq critics at the Tobyhanna, (Pa.) Army Depot, Santorum was down the highway in Philadelphia making comments like �the war has been less than optimal� and �maybe some blame could be laid at the White House.� Even the Moonie press (Washington Times) has seemingly abandoned poor George given recent editorial criticisms on its pages.

So just what is an embattled leader to do? Well, if you are an unstable, alcoholic like Georgie boy you put on your 800-pound gorilla suit and run your mouth. What this type personality does is to ratchet up the decibel and name calling level in the hopes that by beating his chest and scowling one can instill fear in people and bring them around. Of course, folks can readily see through this subterfuge and the bully becomes nothing more than a pitiful caricature.

However there are other options open to our beleaguered monkey boy. Karl Rove can always roll out the old �tail wagging the dog� trick and we could see a myriad of scenarios unfold which would serve to push Bush�s woes off the front page. Along those lines, it seems there is a �confidential memo� making the rounds of senior Repug leaders which suggests that a �new attack by terrorists on U.S. soil could reverse the sagging fortunes of President George W. Bush -- as well as the GOP.� The existence of this memo was reported by Publisher Doug Thompson of Capitol Hill Blue in a November 10 column.

I can guarantee you that if all of a sudden bombs start blowing up in American cities, I ain�t going to blame Osama bin Laden. All one needs know is that history confirms that presidents are not above sacrificing American lives as a means to an end, and George W. most assuredly needs something right now to boost his poll numbers.

Interestingly enough on Tuesday, November 8, a paper authored by Brigham Young University Physics Professor Steven E. Jones was posted online and in which Professor Jones states that it�s likely that there were �pre-positioned explosives� in all three buildings of the World Trade Center.

Jones is not the first skeptic to raise this issue, but his is a credible voice. Jones� paper, which was accepted for peer-reviewed publication next year, raises a lot of questions in the mind of this writer.

The events of last week, in which a couple of Dems won governorships and the Terminator and his propositions were terminated in California, do not bode well for George W. Bush and his neo-Nazis. I will not hold my breath waiting for a fresh breeze to blow in a wave of reform or knights in shining armor, because the Dems couldn�t hit their respective asses with a board -- if you gave them three tries.

For this observer of the frail American condition, it appears that finally a whole lot of folks have just gotten their fill of the business of corporate business as politics, as practiced by Bush & Company and their Christian Taliban cohorts. And I truly hope that is so, because, for crying out loud, you can only get hit in the face with a stick so many times before you do something about it.

It will be very interesting to see what happens in the mid-term elections of next year. However what will be even more interesting will be seeing what happens in the United States before those elections. We certainly know that there will not be a drastic turnaround in the economy. George and the gang will keep on keeping on with their pillaging of the treasury and rape of the taxpayer.

The Iraq war is not suddenly going to end because George is one hell of a hardhead and we already know that he cannot tolerate criticism -- or sound advice. Of course he may still have a trick or two up his sleeve because now the Repugs have quit talking about a �victory� in Iraq, and, instead, refer to it as a �successful resolution.� But I am thinking that the only �successful resolution� the American public is going to accept is one that stops the killing of our men and women in uniform, and brings them the hell home -- fast!

Finally, Georgie may be down but he is most certainly not out. This is one evil dude here, and he still has a host of friends who can wreak havoc and extract their pound of flesh, as it were. George W. Bush is nothing else but about getting even if he feels -- in his addled brain -- he has been wronged. That is the nature of the beast when it comes to an unstable individual like our monkey boy.