Five ways to save the Democratic Party

From Bob Shrum* at Huffington's Toast:

As the orchestrator of nearly a dozen major campaigns which tanked against
overwhelming odds, I’d like to add my two cents RE Democratic Party
strategy.

1. Why aren’t we talking more about Wicca? Everyone loves Harry Potter, right? If the GOP wants to be the Christian party, we’ll be the party of worshiping trees and lesbian goddesses. Not that this would be a big move from where we are right now.

2. Instead of campaign buttons with Hillary’s picture on them, why not box-cutters? We could put a cute slogan on them. “HIJACK THE VOTE!” Just a thought.

3. I’m loving what Howard is doing for us, but how about some celebrities to help carry the load? Let’s start with Michael Jackson. He’s sexually ambiguous, he used to be a minority, he has an alcohol problem, he’s being prosecuted for a sexual offense…what Democrat can’t relate to that? If he’s convicted, even better. We need an advocate for victims’ rights. Of course, I mean victims of our criminal justice system. One day they’re telling us we can’t rape little boys. The next day, they’re banning books other than the Bible.

4. Reparations. HOLD IT! I don’t mean reparations for blacks. That’s been tried. I mean reparations for the stupid. Blacks were only persecuted for 400 years. The stupid are still persecuted every day, and they make up 60% of the electorate. Howard could push the idea in a rap song. Call himself “Reparation H.” We could give them government money and food stamps. What? We’re already doing that?
Skip it.

5. Let’s take the money we’re wasting on homeland security and spend it on education. Did you know there are still public school infirmaries that don’t stock flavored condoms? Open your eyes, America. The Puritans are winning.
Give me a call, and I’ll do for Hillary what I did for John Kerry.

*not really

And furthermore...

While I'm catching up on old news, the Supreme Court's ruling on medical marijuana is a travesty... for civil liberties, for states' rights, and for common sense.

Enough said.

UPDATE: OpinionJournal, an unlikely source, backs me up! And Clarence Thomas sided with dope-smokers over Scalia! HT: Instapundit.

Kerry post

John from Blogenlust asks,

What, no thoughts on Kerry's records release?

Although, I noticed you took the counter down.

It's really quite strange that he didn't release them
sooner, what with all the discrediting of the Swift Boat shit
included...

Maybe it was his bad grades...

I've been traveling and haven't kept up with the story. I'll have to read up more on the alleged discrediting of the Swifties.

However, I would tend to agree with Kaus's thoughts from a few months ago: the record better be damning or Kerry's an idiot for withholding it during the campaign.

Kaus:Kerry's military records, when fully opened, better show something at least mildly embarrassing! If they're completely innocuous, why couldn't Kerry have signed Form 180 a year agoand cleared up many of the rumors that helped sink his candidacy (and his party)?"

Before we celebrate the exoneration, however, PoliPundit and others (Powerline) ask whether this is a full release of the records, and based on some of the language from the parties involved, it may not be.

And it's a bit amusing to see that after all the bluster about the "chimp" or "idiot" president, that the sophisticated, French-speaking alternative was even dumber.

And if the Swifties have truly been discredited, why is there no discussion of it on Blogenlust?

That's all, folks

Put a fork in it. This turkey's done.

Tony Blair is putting an end to Jacques Chirac's fantasy that a miraculous massive change of opinion in Britain would revive the EU Constitution.

As if we didn't see that coming.

Why would Tony Blair sacrifice his own already precarious career to do a favor for the vile Chirac by creating a Union of European Socialist Republics? Answer: he wouldn't!

But he put his hands on his hips!

OpinionJournal tells why John Bolton is the right man for the job:

On Thursday, Samir Kassir, a prominent Lebanese newspaper columnist and long-time critic of Syria, was murdered in Beirut when a bomb exploded under the hood of his car. The following day, we learned that Syria had test-fired three missiles the previous week--one Scud B, with a range of 190 miles, and two Scud Ds, with ranges of 400 miles. The missiles, of North Korean design, are configured to carry chemical warheads, according to Israeli security sources; they can hit any target in Israel along with U.S. military installations in Turkey, Iraq and elsewhere in the region.

There are several lessons here, but one of them is this: John Bolton was right.

President Bush's nominee to be Ambassador to the U.N. has been assailed because he pushed U.S. intelligence services for evidence of Syrian work on weapons of mass destruction. As Senator Chris Dodd put it, Mr. Bolton "was trying to convince people that there are weapons of mass destruction in Syria, at a time when there was no evidence of that."

We're glad somebody was on the Syrian case. A ballistic missile test is provocative enough, but missiles configured to carry chemical warheads are not the act of a country that wants to change along with the rest of the Middle East. The firing of the missiles--the first such "test" in four years--came just two days before Lebanon held its first round of parliamentary elections since Syrian troops quit the country in April.

...

Which brings us back to Mr. Bolton, who has been denied a Senate confirmation vote because, among other charges, he challenged accepted intelligence wisdom. In the Syrian case, Senator Dodd and his comrade-in-filibuster Joe Biden concede that Mr. Bolton's final testimony to Congress on Syria's WMD was accurate and cleared with the State Department. But they claim that he was too aggressive in early drafts of his statements, and they want to see the names of fellow U.S. officials whose communications were secretly picked up by a U.S. spy agency. Those names have already been seen, as is the normal practice, by the ranking Senators on the Intelligence Committee, who claim they show nothing of import.

But he put his hands on his hips!

The Huffington Post

The Huffington Post: because if there's one thing the world needs more of, it's opinions from C-list celebrities.

Shocker: bias from the New York Times

Defenders of the media try to debunk bias claims by showing that Republican and Democratic candidates are treated roughly equally. I won't concede that point, but it's a side issue.

The most insidious media bias is in the way they portray issues, not candidates. By distorting the facts, they manipulate public opinion.

Ankle Biting Pundits catches the New York Times in a typical example of this type of bias. The Times has a graphic that makes the tiresome case that the rich get a disproportionate amount of the benefit.

Why do high income earners benefit if income taxes are cut? Because high income earners pay all the income taxes! Well, DUH! Will the next New York Times analysis show us that if cigarette taxes are cut, smokers will benefit disproportionately?

ABP also points to this great IRS data that show how the rich are carrying our sorry asses. The top 5% pay 53% of all income tax as of 2001, up from 43% in 1991. Why don't we see graphs of this in the New York times?