Preznit Flightsuit to Planet Earth:

"I'm Not Naked!"

Later that night, the Lincoln Memorial was TPed, and a bag of napalm and dog poo was left on David Souter's porch.

Of course the rank-and-file of the GOP have amply demonstrated for the last 30 years that they have absolutely no problem with jamming one Glock down Liberty’s gullet and the other up their own asses and giddily squeezing the trigger.

Seven or eight times.

And of course polls are twitchy. Polls reflect people. Granted in the most funhouse-mirror way imaginable, but it is a reflection nonetheless and a whole lotta people jump around like roaches on a hot plate.

Remember the mysterious 5-7% of the electorate who were still polling as “Undecided” about 11 minutes before the 2004 election? Mindless followers with not a single opinion or preference to call their own. Our decorative, cultural carbon automata who need the mass media to tell them what to do, that to think, how to dress, and how to vote so they could say they were on the winning team. And up until the last poll was taken it was too close too call, thus depriving the sheep among us of someone to tell them who to stand up and cheer for.

And if you read the whole article I excerpted, it's not as if people were flocking to the Democratic banner in their millions. 30 year of relentless GOP propaganda, a supine and complicit press and past Democratic bungles and ball-lessness over important issues has done their damage below the waterline.

It's not like we’re virgins here.

Still, this from the NYT is enough to give this old libertine the tiniest, vestal blush of hope for the battle that is coming in November…

September 20, 2006
Poll Finds Most Americans Displeased With Congress
By ADAM NAGOURNEY and JANET ELDER

With the midterm elections less than seven weeks away, Americans have an overwhelmingly negative view of the Republican-controlled Congress, with substantial majorities saying that they disapprove of the job it is doing and that its members do not deserve reelection, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

The disregard for Congress is the most intense it has been since 1994, when Republicans captured 52 seats to end four decades of Democratic control of the House and retook the Senate as well. It underlines the challenge the Republican Party faces in trying to hold onto power in the face of a surge in anti-incumbent sentiment.

By overwhelming margins, respondents said that members of Congress were too tied to special interests and that they did not understand the needs and problems of average Americans. Two-thirds said Congress had accomplished less than it typically does in a two-year session; most said they said they could not name a single major piece of legislation that cleared this Congress. Just 25 percent said they approved of the way Congress was doing its job.

The Times/CBS News poll also found that President Bush did not improve his own or his party’s standing through the intense campaign of speeches he made and events he attended surrounding the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The speeches were at the heart of a Republican strategy to thrust national security to the forefront in the fall elections.

Mr. Bush’s job approval rating was 37 percent, virtually unchanged from the last Times/CBS News poll, which was conducted in August. On the issue that has been a bulwark for Mr. Bush, 54 percent said they approve of the way he is managing the effort to combat terrorists, again unchanged from last month, though up from earlier this spring.

Republicans continue to hold a slight edge over Democrats on which party is better at dealing with terrorism, though that edge did not grow since last month despite Mr. Bush’s flurry of speeches on national security, including one from the Oval Office on the night of the Sept. 11 anniversary.

…

Across the board, the poll found marked disenchantment with Congress, highlighting the opportunity that Democrats see to make the argument for a change in leadership and to make the election a national referendum on the performance of the Republican-controlled Congress and Mr. Bush’s tenure. In one striking finding, 77 percent of respondents — including 65 percent of Republicans — said that most members of Congress had not done a good enough job to deserve re-election and that it was time to give new people a chance. That is the highest number of voters who said it was “time for new people” since the fall of 1994.

“You get some people in there, and they’re in there forever,” said Jan Weaver, an Aberdeen, S.D., resident who described herself as a Republican voter, in a follow-up interview. “They’re so out of touch with reality.”

…

Evidence of antipathy toward Congress in particular — and Washington in general — was abundant. Seventy-one percent of those polled said they did not trust the government to do what is right.

“If they had new blood, then the people that influence them — the lobbyists — would maybe not be so influential,” Norma Scranton, a Republican from Thedford, Neb., said in a follow-up interview after participating in the poll. “They don’t have our interest at heart, because they’re influenced by these lobbyists. If they were new, maybe they would try to please their constituents a little better.”

…
Voters said that Democrats were more likely to tell the truth than Republicans when talking about the war and Iraq and about the actual threat of terrorism. And 59 percent of respondents said that Mr. Bush was hiding something when he talked about how things were going in Iraq, while another 25 percent said he was mostly lying when talking about the war.

…

So where are the really debauched election-eve parties being thrown this year, because who knows but what we may just have a cause or two to celebrate.