Blue Q is a clever little company that creates and markets amusing novelty items, including "Gay Gum" and "Gay Accent Breath Spray." The latter product boasts a "patented Extreme Voice Enhancing formula" that "puts the sizzle in your ‘s’s and tightens your ‘t’s for pristine pronunciation," giving the user an "upper hand at job interviews and casting calls."

John and I do quite well with the Blue Q line at our gift shop in Florida, though one disappointed young woman recently returned her opened container of "Gay Accent," asking, "So, how much do you need to use, anyway?"

"Just one little spritz works for me," I responded, but she wanted to exchange her tube for another of the company’s breath sprays, "Irish Accent."

"Perhaps you should just stick to Altoids," I suggested.

The best-selling of all of Blue Q’s 250-plus products, both in our store and nationally, is a car air-freshener with a photograph of the President’s face that can be dangled from one’s rear-view-mirror. It’s called "George Bush’s Dumbass Head on a String," and when we first brought it in I braced myself for some strong negative reactions from Republicans, who make up about half the voters (depending on which votes are counted) in this state.

Even though we display the head in our window, the anticipated protests haven’t materialized. Lately we’ve been selling nearly as many of the items to admitted Republicans as to traditional Bush haters. At first, they’d say something like, "I’m getting it for my brother-in-law." But now many are buying it for themselves, concurring with what the polls are saying. As one elderly GOP stalwart told me the other day, "I’m so disappointed with this guy. He really is an embarrassment, dumber than dirt."

Being a student of political polling, I’m taking bets: When will the President’s approval-rating fall to a single digit? It has been plummeting ever since the government’s bungled response to Hurricane Katrina and then the revelation that (in the grand tradition of Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover) the Bush Administration has been spying on American citizens without court approval. As of the most recent CBS News survey, Bush was hovering just above 30 percent, and his trigger-happy vice president’s favorable rating had dropped to a meager 18 percent.

What’s more, the CBS poll was taken before several newly damaging news stories commandeered the headlines, including the sorry fact that Iraq (as comes as no surprise to many longtime Middle Eastern observers) is on the brink of sectarian civil war, despite our nation’s half-trillion dollar investment of money since our occupation and nearly 2,300 American lives lost.

The poll also was conducted before the public learned that the Coast Guard and Homeland Security Department had expressed concerns about the Administration’s decision to turn over the operation of several of our major ports to Dubai Ports World, a plan about which Bush said he had no advance knowledge but would veto any effort to halt. And the poll came before the Associated Press got hold of a video tape showing that, before Katrina hit, Bush and his homeland security chief Michael Chertoff had been clearly briefed by FEMA Director Michael Brown and the National Hurricane Center regarding the strong likelihood of levee breaks, inadequate evacuation teams, and the exact kinds of mayhem and devastation that resulted in New Orleans.

With so much to be humiliated about, even many Repub-lican legislators, especially those who must run in this year’s mid-term elections, are distancing themselves from their party’s leader. In countries with a Parliamentary system of democracy, the growing outrage at the Bush Administration’s inept and often deceptive manner of government would likely lead to a vote of no confidence, forcing an immediate election.

But, in this country, unless the people rise up to demand impeachment proceedings, we have no choice but to shake our heads, purchase a dumb head on a string and continue registering our dismay by way of the media’s opinion polls— as well as keeping the pressure on Congress to assert some smart leadership, for a change.

Speaking of not-so-bright heads, disbarred attorney and homophobic minister-to-the-few Fred Phelps is in the news again, having unwittingly forged a coalition between a group of some 5,000 bikers, the Patriot Guard Riders, and gay-rights activists who would like to stop Fred’s disruption of funerals of Iraq war veterans. Fred, who created a disturbance at the funeral of Matthew Shepard eight years ago, believes that American deaths in Iraq are "divine punishment" aimed at our country because it tolerates homosexuals. At military funerals, his protesters have been showing up, wearing upside-down U.S. flags and carrying signs thanking God for the IED explosives that have been a major killer of our troops. The bikers have shielded the families of dead soldiers from the protesters, overpowering their jeers with patriotic chants. Now, more than a dozen states (to the concern of many First Amendment advocates) are working on or already have passed legislation to limit Phelps-style protests at funerals.

Meanwhile, one of my favorite syndicated daily-newspaper columnists, Leonard Pitts of Tribune Media Services, has penned an extraordinary piece in which he argues that the Rev. Mr. Phelps himself may be gay. Phelps, who writes that "next to this guy, Pat Robertson is a model of statesmanlike restraint," reminds us how often we have seen "public moralists railing against that which they themselves secretly indulge." He cites Dr. Laura’s pose in the nude, Jimmy Swaggart’s liaison with a prostitute, and former ex-Spokane Mayor James West’s opposition to gay rights while recruiting in gay chat rooms. (West, by the way, is the winner of this column’s top "Two-Faced Award" for 2005.)

As for Phelps, Pitts says "he needs not our condemnation but our understanding. Maybe he’ll go on to be the greatest gay-rights activist this country has ever known. Maybe then, in the arms of the right man, he’ll stop hurting."

Or, at least stop hurting so many others. In the meantime, the folks at Blue Q might do well to serve up a heaping portion of Pitt’s rump on a phallic-shaped stick.