June 19 2009 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qxNDp5Ro0M

New Rule: Iran must stop accusing the U.S. of meddling. We are not meddling in your election. We learned the hard way what happens when you start screwing with elections. [slide of George W. Bush]

New Rule: Let's not all act shocked that the new Miss California is also against gay marriage. Of course they're conservative. They're beauty pageant contestants. If they were liberals, they'd be in college.

New Rule: Twitter didn't save Iran. Iran saved Twitter. I'm happy that information is getting out there, but admit it, Twitter users, if anyone had asked you two weeks ago what Iran was, you would have said it was the new treadmill from Apple. [slide of "iRan" treadmill]

New Rule: Now that the Olive Garden has pulled its ads from Letterman's show because they say his Palin joke was "not consistent with our standards and values," someone has to figure out a way for me to boycott a restaurant I would never eat at in the first place.

And finally, New Rule: He's your president, not your boyfriend. Now, last week in this space, I criticized President Obama for not fighting corporate influence enough, and it made some liberals very angry. My phone rang off the hook, my email filled up, and Nancy Pelosi got so mad her face moved.

Look, folks, I like Obama, too. I'm just saying, let's not make it a religion.

And, as far as you folks on the right who think that we're now somehow in league, we're not in league. I was criticizing Obama for not being hard enough on the corporate douchebags you live to defend. I don't want to be on your team. Pick another kid.

So, I stand by my words. But, there is another side to the story. And that is that every time Obama tries to take on a progressive cause, there's a major political party standing in his way: the Democrats. Now, people talk a lot about a third political party in America. We don't need a third party. We need a first party. You go to the polls and your choices are the guy who voted for the first Wall Street bailout, or the guy who voted for the next ten.

This year, we're hearing that a public option for health care is unlikely because it doesn't have the support of enough Democrats. Even Ted Kennedy's plan-- Ted Kennedy, yeah -- leaves 37 million uninsured. This is because we don't have a left and a right part in this country anymore. We have a center-right party and a crazy party.

And, over the last 30-odd years, Democrats have moved to the right, and the right has moved into a mental hospital.

So, what we have is one perfectly good party for hedge fund managers, credit card companies, banks, defense contractors, big agriculture and the pharmaceutical lobby; that's the Democrats.

And they sit across the aisle from a small group of religious lunatics, flat-earth-ers and Civil War re-enactors who mostly communicate by AM radio and call themselves the Republicans. And who actually worry that Obama is a socialist.

Socialist? He's not even a liberal. I know he's not because he's on TV. And while I see Democrats on television, I don't see actual liberals. And if occasionally you do get to hear Ralph Nader or Noam Chomsky or Dennis Kucinich, they're treated like buffoons. Okay, these are not three of the world's most charismatic men, but then nobody is going to confuse Newt Gingrich for Zac Efron. And I have to look at his fat face on TV more often than that free credit report song.

Shouldn't there be one party that unambiguously supports cutting the military budget, a party that is straight up in favor of gun control, gay marriage, higher taxes on the rich, universal health care--legalizing pot--and steep, direct taxing of polluters? These aren't radical ideas. A majority of Americans are either already for them or would be if they were properly argued and defended.

And what we need is an actual progressive party to represent the millions of Americans who aren't being served by the Democrats. Because, bottom line, Democrats are the new Republicans.

It's like when some Chinese company buys the name of a great old American brand and slaps it on some cheap crap. You buy it out of reflex, and it's only later that you think, wow, I didn't even know Woolworth's made dildos