ROTFLMAO CITY

I used to live in Washington DC. But for the past while now, I, like so many millions of other Americans, have been residing in Rotflmao City. It’s a fun place to be, but it can be exhausting. A number of my muscles, such as those attached to my rib cage, have become achingly sore. It’s a very distracting place to be. You keep losing your focus, and keep being uncontrollably seized by convulsive behavior. Yet I, like so many others, don’t have a choice. We’re all going to be living here for the next several weeks.

Moving to Rotflmao City is easy. All you have to do is read a news item like this:

Datelined September 21, 2004, ABC News ended its story on the activities of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates for the day with this closing line:

President Bush will address the UN at 10:30 a.m. All day long, he will be meeting with world leaders. John Kerry appears on “Live with Regis and Kelly,” before moving on to Florida for more campaigning.

See what I mean? You have no choice in the matter – without warning, you’re instantly transported to Rotflmao.

“Rotflmao” you see, is the latest acronym of the Web Log set, the “bloggers” who gutted Frequency Dan Ra^th better than catfish caught by Chippewa Indians in the Okeefenokee Swamps. It stands for: Rolling on the floor laughing my a** off.

Never, never, has a Deathwatch been so much fun. You can’t leave Rotflmao City because the stuff that transports you there keeps coming relentlessly. So you might as well accept it that this is our home until November 2. Think you can leave? Just try uttering the name “Lucy Ramirez” without splitting your sides. She’s the Mystery Lady who “Nutcase Bill” Burkett dreamed up as the source for the Killian Memos he forged.

(Yes, Burkett has got to be the forger: only someone as stupid and crazy as him would make such amateurishly bad forgeries, plus he’s Texas Army Guard – Bush was Air Force – and there are Army, not Air Force, terms in the memos.)

Or how about liberal dinosaur columnists like the WaPo’s E.J. Dionne still demanding the President of the United States “answer the questions” on skipped drills 32 years ago? It’s not that the Dems don’t get it that America could not possibly care less about this – it’s that they can’t get it. There is some seriously bad karma that is impelling them to their doom.

As I told you two months ago, during The Dem’s Boston Convention when Kerry was peaking (“The Impossibility of John Kerry,” posted in Classics), this election was going to be a Bush Blow-Out. And back in April I said Kerry will be lucky to carry Massachusetts (“Good News! Kerry Rescued by New York Times,” TTP Weekly Report, April 30, 2004).

Yes, that was hyperbolic, but not by a lot. Forget the “Battleground” states, like Ohio where Bush is up now by 11 points. Those solid Blue states are getting paler by the day. Bush is now ahead in Pennsylvania, tied in New Jersey, tied in Maryland, just 4 points down in Illinois, and only 5 down in… New York! The flip side is that there’s not a single Red state now trending for Kerry.

Remember, the nationwide polls do not count any more than the overall popular vote — and they are way overweighted with big and blue population centers like California. Kerry is sliding fast in state polls, which is where the electoral vote matters. (The best place to check all polls, state and nationwide, is Real Clear Politics .)

Want another indication of how bad it’s gotten for Kerry? Even radical feminists like Naomi Wolf hold him contempt. By Teresa’s insistence on using her former married name of Heinz, Wolf observes in the New Yorker , his wife is “publicly, subliminally cuckolding Kerry with the power of a dead man.”

So – we see now where the Kerryistas are placing their entire pile of chips: on the debates. And we see the Bush folks quivering in fear, doing their very best imitation of Br’er Rabbit pleading, “Oh, please, please don’t throw the poor tongue-tied president in that terrifying briar patch.”

Bush is going to lure Kerry so far into that debate briar patch and embed so many rhetorical thorns so deeply into his flesh that he’ll come out of it deserving a real Purple Heart.

To get a glimpse of what’s in store, read GW’s address to the United Nations on Sept. 21. But you really have to watch it to understand the power and clarity of this magnificent speech. You can do so on the C-SPAN website.

When the Dems come up snake eyes in the first (and most watched) debate, and realize that all is lost, it is going to get coyote ugly. They’ll be chewing each other’s arms off in blame and bitterness – while you and I will be in Rotflmao City.

But this will be no time to let up and run out the clock. Just remember that the mirror-image of Hugh Hewitt’s If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat is that if it is close they can – and will – cheat. So read John Fund’s sobering cold shower of a book, Stealing Elections , and continue to do everything you personally can to make sure Michael Moore won’t be sleeping in the Lincoln Bedroom next January – even while you’re rotflyao.