acing falling approval numbers that recently dropped lower than Bob Hope's balls, President Bush this week resorted to his usual tactic of becoming more conservative when threatened. The president may have gone too far this time, however, alienating even his core base of religious assholes.

After having his personal dog walker rejected for a seat on the Supreme Court, and his backup neo-Nazi facing a similarly tough uphill climb, Bush outlined a bold new philosophy in a televised speech on Sunday.

"Jesus was a fag," the president announced to a stunned roomful of didn't-know-Jesus-was-a-fag listeners. "Love everybody? The meek shall inherit the earth? Give me a break. The man didn't even have a reliable hairstyle."

"Women should be seen, not heard," continued Bush, attempting to carve out his own niche deeper in the dogmatic hinterlands. "But by 'seen' I mean just their eyes, as the rest of their sinful bodies should be covered up in padded dog-attack training suits to restore some modesty to this once great nation."

Over the course of the president's speech, Bush called for the dismantling of the Internet, a moratorium on all music, and the banning of all dancing that isn't line dancing. This latest development has renewed national debate over where the president is crazy like a fox, crazy like a cuckoo bird, or stupid like a bathtub.

Bush's approval rating dipped even lower during the speech, scraping audibly against some theoretical bottom of the barrel, and an instant poll immediately afterward pegged the president's approval at 12%, a record low for a US president and below even the ratings for Osama Bin Laden, syphilis, sour milk, Gigli and total thermonuclear annihilation. Political observers, however, were most impressed that a full 12% of the population still support Bush.

"Apparently more Americans than we had previously assumed agree with the president that Jesus was a homo," explained a stunned Walter Dumruch, of the McClurg Institute. "God knows how long they've been waiting for a political figure to give voice to their inner convictions. The president takes these results as a mandate to push forward with his new 'Screw Jesus' agenda."

By stepping off the edge of the political world and officially becoming too conservative for even the nation's the most extreme conservatives this week, the president embarked on a journey through uncharted territory that has left critics at a loss for words.

"It's weird, it's almost like he's wrapped around to almost being liberal now, but not really," mused Danby Frinkman, local man of letters. "He's lapped the field, in terms of conservatism, but no one's sure what that means."

What it most certainly means is that Bush will have to reconsider his nomination of Samuel A. Alito Jr. for the Supreme Court, since even a man so conservative that he doesn't believe in dinosaurs or long hair on dogs would be seen as too soft to be in keeping with the president's current philosophy. Several deposed foreign dictators and cartoon villains are likely to be considered for the president's next nomination.

Bush's political handlers hope these recent developments can be explained by an external trauma, like the president being hit in the head by a falling brick some time last week, or anything a shovel-hitting intervention might be able to correct. The president's handlers hope to jostle Bush back to his comfortably untenable "Jesus was Straight/Screw the Poor/Bomb the Brown People" conservative agenda by early next week at the latest.

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The good news here in the commune offices is my court case has resulted in a nice out-of-court settlement. The bad news is… well, I'll get to the bad news in due course.

Frequent readers of my column, or actually anyone who read the last one, will remember that I was taking legal action against the author of the play based on my life, without my authorization, Ching! Ching! I Owe Fred Scarsdale A Lot of Money. My lawsuit was on the fasttrack toward a big fat payoff for the commune, and me in particular, when we found out the author of the play was none other than black sheep of the commune family Raoul Dunkin. Now, insiders and outsiders with insider contacts know that Raoul Dunkin was the first reporter hired when the commune made the jump from publishing on the back of pre-published pamphlets to the internet, where the overhead was considerably lower and the journalistic standards likewise lower. Which made it all the harder when he and his money-hungry blade backstabbed me and his brethren by running off to become a hot-to-trot M-TV veejay.

Apparently, M-TV and Dunkin were a poor match from the get-go and even the coveted 3-5 a.m. timeslot couldn't make him a star. He pink-slipped that job and ended up writing plays off-off-Broadway, specifically the Vlanch Community Theater in Vlanch, Pennsylvania. Which is where I saw the Fred Scarsdale bit. Cut to September of 2002, and a very pissed-off Red Bagel demanding compensation. Now we're talking settlement.

Dunkin always was bad at numbers. Would you believe over 30 people saw his play and he still ended up deep in debt? If over 30 people ever read an edition of the commune, I, Red Bagel, would be rolling in money like a pig in shit. Instead of rolling in shit like a pig in shit. Dunkin's big mistake, as far as I can tell, was paying all collaborators involved in real money instead of skeeball tickets and coupons. He also doesn't seem to have heard of government loans and frivolous lawsuits.

Needless to say, Dunkin could not pay the compensation I demanded, and in fact ran up even more bills thanks to hiring that pricey Bar association-approved "lawyer". Way to go, A-hole. All that money flushed down the drain and you still settled the case with yours truly, the lawyerless commune's fearless editor-in-chief.

All that said and done, as part of the settlement Dunkin is coming back to work for the commune for a while. You tell me who the real loser is! Bludney Plud? I suppose we can all agree on that.

So welcome, dear reader, to a bold new era for the commune. Well, not really. Welcome to an era that reeks of a bold old era. Dunkin is back with his passable news coverage, and yet I'm not firing Ramon Nootles, his replacement I took on staff when the extra coupons I saved allowed me to expand the workforce. At least not yet—he's the kind of reporter who seems to benefit from a healthy fear of the guillotine.

Nobody could be happier about Dunkin's return to the staff, at least I've decreed that nobody can be happier. Dunkin, to his credit, is putting up the appearance that he's not totally miserable, and that's appreciated.

By the way, we have no plans of removing the "Let's Promote Raoul Dunkin!" game as of yet. Let's just see where this is going for a while. The numbnuts does have a history of abandonment, and we may forgive, but we never forget.

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Shinto the Pinto was the nicest car anyone could ever reasonably hope to meet. He drove at reasonable speeds, signaled for turns, and hardly ever ran down baby carriages on the sidewalk merely for sport. His interior smelled like a freshly unwrapped deodorant tree, and his seat covers were refreshingly free of diarrhea stains. But still, nobody liked Shinto.

The problem was, Japanese cars had a reputation for reliability. Everybody knew you could trust a Japanese car to get you from the pig roast to the methadone clinic with no problems whatsoever. No biplane noises coming from the engine, no carbon monoxide pouring through the air vents, and no busted-out seat springs stabbing you in the ass while you drive. Life was good in a Japanese car. Unfortunately for Shinto, all of the other Japanese cars out there were Hondas and Toyotas and Nissans and they generally lived up to the stereotype, driving long hours without giving their owners a lick of trouble. Shinto was the only Japanese car anyone had ever heard of who also happened to be a Pinto, the gold standard for shitty, unreliable cars for years.

If he had been an American Pinto, nobody would have thought twice about the fact that he never ran for more than ten minutes without overheating, or the way his brakes squealed like pterodactyls whenever the pedal was touched. But everyone could tell from Shinto's accent that he was Japanese, and that's where things failed to add up.

Whenever his tires wobbled or his windshield wipers flew off in the rain, leaving the metal arms to drag across the windshield and dig grooves into the glass, people thought Shinto was just messing around or being lazy. Whenever he idled hard enough to make the cars next to him at traffic lights shake, people looked down their nose at Shinto and shook their heads. He was seen as an incredible fuck-up who couldn't do anything right, especially not being a proper Japanese car.

Kids from around the neighborhood would sneak up behind Shinto and bash his rear bumper with sledgehammers on an almost daily basis, none of them believing that Shinto really had as fragile and poorly-located gas tank as he claimed. People of all ages laughed and called him a hypochondriac when he pleaded with them to stop smashing into him from behind, claiming that even a moderate rear impact could result in his fuel tank rupturing and engulfing his entire body in a ball of flames, while his passengers would be trapped inside by his ineptly designed doors. "Suuuure Shinto," they'd say, rolling their eyes and twirling their fingers in the crazy motion around their ears.

Things just got worse and worse for Shinto, and eventually everyone started calling him "Shitbox" instead of Shinto. Everyone thought that was pretty funny, except of course for Shitbox. I mean Shinto. Then one day, a kid on a bike ran into Shinto from behind and he blew up in the biggest fireball anyone living had ever seen. There was a story about it in the paper and a picture of the kid's shoe stuck in a tree. Everyone learned an important lesson that day: that you can't judge a book by it's cover, or by its nationality. But you can judge a car by it's name and for the love of God, don't follow a Pinto too close or even bump into it with your shopping cart at the grocery store. Good lord, if that isn't a recipe to have your ass blown out through the soles of your shoes, then I don't know what is.

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