aced with tough questions about the economy and pre-war intelligence failures this week, President Bush interrupted a press conference Thursday with an unusual display of astronomical panic.

“Look! Up in the sky!� shouted Bush, pointing upward in mock terror. “We’re all going to die!�

According to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, the airborne terror President Bush cringed beneath before darting out of the room was the “Evil Eye� galaxy, a distant cluster of stars recently photographed by the Hubble space telescope, which according to Bush staffers will soon spell our mortal demise.

“The President cannot stress enough the importance of putting aside divisive squabbling involving lost jobs or unnecessary invasions,� explained McClellan. “Our very lives may be in his hands this day, and it’s time for the American people to band together with the president, now and through this coming November to repel this terrible threat to the American way of life.�

All available scientists and high-school educated adults have dismissed the president’s claims that the Messier 64 galaxy, known as the “Evil Eye� for an unusual appearance caused by stars and interstellar gas rotating in opposite directions, will within the next ten months attempt to suck the United States of America off the globe like a small child sucking the sticker off an orange. While no scientific evidence exists to suggest this is even the remotest of possibilities, President Bush remains steadfast in his message.

“Holy shit, run for your lives!� Bush screamed before ducking out of the room during a press conference on Saturday, shortly after being asked to reconcile conflicting statements he’d made about rolling back last year’s tax cuts.

Political pundits have observed that Bush’s obsession with the M64 galaxy began shortly after the results of a recent AP poll were released, showing the president had taken a sharp nosedive in public opinion after a month of Democratic presidential candidates pointing out his ample flaws. For the first time during Bush’s term, polls showed more Americans likely to vote against the president than for him, and similar polls showed Bush losing to Democratic presidential hopeful and dead man walking John Kerry in head-to-head voting. Bush staffers refute these claims, however, pointing out that Poles are unreliable and often the butt of stereotypical humor.

Other results of the AP polls show Bush’s numbers across the board as down sharply from one month ago, signaling that the president’s attempts to distract voters with fantastical tales of moon bases and Mars adventures were largely unsuccessful and kind of silly.

“Obviously putting a man on Mars didn’t turn people’s cranks as much as the president had hoped,� commented political strategist Vaughn Casey. “So Bush has wisely returned to his ‘Greatest Hits’ playbook in an effort to parlay national paranoia into a second term. It’s a longshot, sure, but if the president could convince average Americans that Al Qaeda actually posed a serious threat in their everyday lives, then I suppose some kind of sucking space monster isn’t really a giant leap of faith from there.�

Further requests to question the president as to the scientific basis of his fears were turned down on the grounds that Messier 64 might be listening.

54-year-old Berlin man was arrested on charges of contributing to the delinquency of a house pet last week for allegedly teaching his dog the “Heil Hitler� salute, according to German authorities. Though he admits his sheepdog can do the salute, Hans Roland insists he must have learned the gesture from other dogs in the neighborhood.

“It’s not my fault the pound sold me a Nazi dog,� claimed Roland through an interpreter. “You never know what you’re going to get, a carpet pee-er or a radical skinhead or whatever.�

“Sieg Heil!� screamed Roland at the sheepdog, Adolf, after it began to lower its paw.

When this reporter pointed out that Roland’s denials were implausible, given that he was wearing a t-shirt with a picture of Adolf Hitler on it at that very moment, Roland called such allegations “absurd� and pointed out that the dog doesn’t know it’s Hitler.

“The dog’s not very smart,� explained Roland. “He thinks is Charlie Chaplin.�

Under German law, Roland can be prosecuted for displaying symbols of an unconstitutional organization and faces up to three years in prison. The laws against public display of Nazi symbols are meant to prevent a recurrence of Nazism in Germany and date back to the end of WWII. They likely wouldn’t pass constitutional muster but for the lucky fact they’re in Germany, which through a convenient loophole is exempt from American laws. Roland also faces lesser charges of contributing to the delinquency of a canine, a charge usually reserved for pet owners who give their dogs beer.

“I don’t know where these rumors get started,� Roland lamented. “Someone says you buy cheap coffee, you’re roaming around the neighborhood in the nude at nighttime, your dog’s a Nazi…�

If Roland is convicted, the dog likely will be housed in the war criminals wing of a local animal shelter.

“It’s just a rotten shame that people are going to judge this dog based on what his owner taught him,� fretted Cindy Farmou of the local animal protection agency. “It makes me sick. This dog probably isn’t even a Nazi, but because his owner was deranged he’ll have to wear that title and a swastika neckerchief for the rest of his doggie life. It’s important to remember the dog is the victim here. He probably thinks ‘Heil Hitler’ means ‘I love bacon snacks’ or something.�

“Fuck that Nazi dog!� disagreed teenager Hammel Stoiber, owner of a Jewish cocker spaniel. “They may say he’s not like the rest, but they’re all the same. Have you seen the look in that dog’s eyes? I bet he’d just love to put my Maxie in a concentration kennel.�

Roland is currently free on bail, preparing for trial by shouting at passers-by and coaching his dog on witness stand etiquette. According to court documents, police also confiscated a ferret named Manson and a parrot named Osama bin Laden from the man’s apartment.

The president took an honest and sincere step toward covering up the recent questions of intelligence (the CIA's, not his) with his creation of a bipartisan (emphasis on the "partisan") commission this week. But the question remains: Are we supposed to buy this bullshit?

That question aside, and the answer is obviously a resounding "yes," issues still remain about the quality of intelligence the administration is receiving about terrorism. If the CIA thinks there are large deposits of chemical or biological weapons in an underdeveloped nation like Iraq, based, I might add, on some barbershop rumor floating around Nigeria, what does this mean for the safety of the country? Are we pretty much left at the mercy of the incompetence of terrorists? Much like they are left at the mercy of our own incompetence.

It might be easier for the American public if they knew exactly how intelligence is gathered for the purposes of national security. First and foremost, we buy it. Any episode of Starsky & Hutch should display this adequately. Foreign equivalents of Huggy Bears come nosing around our embassies, and back alley deals galore abound.

The second way is the kind we think of it most often: large, burly American national security agents wearing fake beards and dressed in swami hats and Lawrence of Arabia robes. These are the real heroes, the deceitful, backstabbing undercover agents who get the secretest information straight from the horse's mouth by putting their lives on the line in barely plausible disguises. There is no more dangerous job in the world, except for being an employee of Phil Spector. Many is the time some jihad-crazy Muslim terrorist flips out and frisks you to yell out, "Abdul's wearing a wire!" It's all over then, sir.

There is also what the government calls "option three": Kicking in doors of suspected terrorists, arresting them on suspicion and searching their base of operations without warrant. Right now this is still hard to do overseas, with their difficult laws preventing illegal search and seizure, at least in the more Westernized countries and some of the third world, but rollback in constitutionally-guaranteed rights in the states has made it a lot easier to fight terrorism on our own turf. We might have to annex the world before they agree.

So whose balls were dropped on this particular outing? Democrats suggest the administration manipulated intelligence to manufacture consent for an unjustifiable war with Iraq. Plausible, yes, and even the most likely case, which makes it a poor choice to discuss in this column. So I point the blame squarely at the acting schools in this country.

What kinds of intelligence operatives are we turning out? Nervous, jittery young rubes who make poor choices in their acting and offer only an overbaked performance any first-year Hamas fanatic could see through. Our guys show up on their doorsteps, spewing anti-American rhetoric in a British accent because it's all they can do, and the terrorist masterminds of the world are laughing at us. They tell our guys six or seven times a month they're ready to launch a major attack on our soil, when in fact their biggest effort is not to giggle while they discuss fake plans to use dirty bombs and chemical agents.

Hopefully this nine-person distraction Bush is calling a bipartisan commission will get right to the heart of our off-off-Broadway operatives. We're the richest nation on the planet, and our security is something we should not be paying half-price for. I say, shell out the $20 million for Pacino. De Niro, Hoffman, any of these guys. We should at least be able to afford Billy Dee Williams. He was fantastic in Mahogany.

º Last Column: Doing it the Gay Way
º more columns