Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight

As avowed liberals, we here at Respectful of Otters live lives of wild and irresponsible hedonism. Tonight being the first Wednesday of the month, we're off to

a revamping of the "political love-in" from the '60s, where pot-smoking hippies would use politics as a guise for picking up dates. Now, Dean -- having "liberated" the gays of the state of Vermont by legislating civil unions, much in the same way he might imagine that Lincoln "liberated" the slaves -- is out to "free" every sex-starved, party-deprived Democrat and give them what they really want: a good time.

Seriously, if you folks have never been to boozy sex parties organized by precinct, you should give the Dean Meetups a try. I know there's nothing like letter-writing and phone banking to put me in the mood.

Unkind people might point out that Rachel Marsden, author of this fantasy, should perhaps not lecture others about sexual ethics. But that's beside the point. Marsden seems to be trying to set herself up as the next Ann Coulter, only with poorer copy editing. Given her already-demonstrated grasp of invective, innuendo, and distortion, I think she'll go far.

The problem is that the Howard Dean gravy train seems to be sputtering toward the end of its track. One can only play "rotate-a-date" for so long, even if it is for a political cause. Looks like they're running out of beer keg money on the Dean campaign trail. They've dropped the fun, playful pretense and are now resorting to flat-out desperation.

On Dec. 28, Dean's campaign manager, Joe Trippi, sent out a mass mailing to every poor sap who happened to give the "Dean for America" folks his or her e-mail address: "We need to raise $1.5 million before midnight on December 31 so we can win Iowa. With just four days left to go, we're $1.2 million short. Please take action right now, because these are the most critical days our campaign has ever faced."

That column was published three days after the Dean campaign announced that the $1.5 million goal had been exceeded by $300K - pushing Dean over $15 million for the quarter, yet another Democratic fundraising record. Doesn't sound like they're running out of keg money to me.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to pack up the bong, lube, and voter registration pamphlets. I'm due at the Meetup in six hours.

(Via Sisyphus Shrugged and others.)