Pssst. Don’t tell Karl Rove, but I’ve just come up with a fool-proof plan guaranteeing a national Democratic Party sweep in 2008. And the best thing about it is, it works no matter whom the Dems throw up as their presidential candidate: Barack Edwards, Hillary Obama, or John Clinton. Hell, they could run a Howard Zinn-Noam Chomsky ticket, and back it up with senatorial candidates from the Grateful Dead. It just wouldn’t matter!

Interested? Okay, then listen up, because I’m not going to repeat this for you sluggards in the back who’d rather watch reruns of American Idol than learn anything useful. Time is of the essence here, so let’s not waste any more of it sitting around drooling into our tippy-cups. We need to act fast in order to take advantage of the opportunity right in front of our noses. Ready? Here goes.

The first thing you gotta do is to sell your house. That’s right, you heard me, sell your house. You’ll need to do it by next Monday.

“But how can I sell my house in a week?” you ask.

Easy. Just make a sign out of an ordinary flattened-out cardboard box, duct-tape it to an old garden stake, and pound it into the middle of your front lawn. (Don’t forget to mow the lawn first; it makes for better “curb appeal.”) Then, grab a felt-tip pen and write a bunch of numbers on it. Offer to sell today, at say 65% of current market value (or make it 55% -- it doesn’t matter). Put an ad in the Pennysaver. Whatever, just sell the damn thing.

“But even if I sell it the first day it’s on the market, how can I get the deal finalized in less than a week?” you inquire incredulously.

The answer is simple. Bribe everybody involved. I’m talking real estate agents, bankers, title company employees, escrow guys, the whole sorry-ass bunch. In my experience, 90% of these assholes are the sort of criminally venal Republicans who’d sell their own grandparents into indentured servitude in Darfur for a 50” plasma-screen TV. So make sure you spread the C-notes liberally and evenly all along the entire crooked Conga line. Trust me, this is no time to be stingy.

Once the deal closes, the bank’s gonna try to sell you on all kinds of bogus “investment opportunities.” Tell them to just piss-off. You want your money in stacks of hundred dollar bills, and you want it now.

“But is it safe for me to carry around hundreds of thousands of dollars in a duffle bag?” you ask.

Of course not. That’s why you and your friends are gonna need to pitch-in and buy a Brink’s truck on E-bay, and make sure that sucker’s got a full tank of diesel. Hallelujah, boys and girls, we’re going to Vegas!

“Why Vegas?” you wonder aloud, to which I answer: Look, how am I supposed to make it through this presentation if you people keep asking all these unnecessary questions? Okay, okay, I’ll answer this one, but that’s it, and I mean it.

You’ll be going to Las Vegas on November 6^th to find an international bookie who’ll place a hefty wager for you at one of London’s high-end gambling parlors. You’re betting the entire farm on America’s 2006 elections, and you’re betting it on the Republican Candidate of your choice. Pick some really cheesy, hypocritical, slicker-than-snot, wife-beating sack-o-shit who specializes in regurgitating implausible White House talking-points on Hardball or Meet the Press. Go ahead, pull a name out of the GOP’s realistic-looking fake plastic army helmet.

Just for fun, let’s say you decide to lay your nest egg on the lovely and talented Katherine Harris of Florida (who presumably has no wife to beat, but is an otherwise admirable choice), the witty and urbane Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania (who never lays a hand on his wife, but is rumored to beat his dog senseless with a cat-o-nine-tails), or even the charming and dapper Kenneth Blackwell of Ohio (who recently sold off his controversial collection of vintage lawn-jockeys at Sotheby’s for an estimated 2.6 million dollars). Whomever you choose, remember, the odds against them should be nothing less than astronomical -- at least thirty to one.

After you’ve placed your bet, just check into the four-star hotel of your choice; gorge yourself on all-you-can-eat lobster; then waddle on over to the Mirage and get sloshed as you watch Siegfried dance with the Tiger That Ate Roy. Relax and enjoy yourself.

Early Wednesday morning, order a big breakfast from room service, then go out and collect your winnings. It should come to about ten or twenty million bucks or so. Put a million of that in your wallet right away. You’ve earned it.

Now, bundle up the rest of the money, throw it in the back of your new bulletproof titanium Humvee, and head on out to Midtown Manhattan. We can all meet in front of Fox News Headquarters late Sunday afternoon. Don’t forget to bring some beer, brats and cheese, cause we’re planning a gigantic armored-car tailgate party in the middle of Times Square.

First thing Monday morning, we open negotiations with Rupert Murdoch to buy the Fox News Division. When he asks to see the money, we’ll just point out the window at the Brink’s convoy surrounding Rockefeller Plaza. I figure he’ll get the point.

Once we have controlling interest in Fox News, we’ll need to be careful not to make any drastic changes, at least not at first. Everyone will keep his or her job, and folks like Sean Hannity, Fred Barnes and Bill O’Reilly will get substantial raises to stay on under the new corporate management. Regrettably, Roger Ailes will be squeezed out (of the window of his office overlooking Times Square, that is), but don’t worry, he’ll be offered a golden parachute prior to his departure (meaning, of course, a parachute made out of 24-karat gold, which we sincerely hope will help him achieve terminal velocity within the first seven stories of his spectacular fall).

As for programming, the initial format modifications will need to be subtle, but noticeable. For example, all the Fox News anchors will continue to dress as normal, except that all the men will be wearing Mr. Potato-head hats, and the women will all have huge lavender bows in their hair like Daisy Duck.

Or perhaps we might decide, on ten Wednesday nights in a row, to interrupt The O’Reilly Factor with an “Emergency Broadcast System” alert warning of new and terrifying biblical plagues, you know, swarms of giant, pet-devouring locusts the first week, highly contagious and permanently disfiguring facial boils the second, armies of HIV-positive flying vampire-frogs the third, stuff like that. Following these alerts, rather than return to the Factor, it might be nice to take Fox News viewers directly to a Nigerian cricket match dubbed in French, an Inuit whale-butchering demonstration live from Greenland, or an amateur musical theater production of The Best of Chinese Opera. That should give “Battle-axe Barb” something worthwhile to waste her beautiful mind on…

But the coup de grace we hope will crush Fox News’s credibility once-and-for-all will revolve around an insidious plan to have its commentators tell the truth on the air every third day or so for about an hour. Just imagine the effect that’ll have on the fragile consciousness of the average Fox News viewer. It’ll be like pouring sugar into a gas tank…

After six months of such creative high jinks, the Bush Administration will have no alternative but to buy back Fox News from us at a vastly inflated price. Then, after loading up our fleet of armored cars with gold bullion at Fort Knox, we’ll head across the river to Ohio to meet with Congressman Bob Ney and the good folks at Diebold . . .

Mark W. Bradley is a schoolteacher and political satirist in Sacramento, California. He can be contacted at: markwbradley@comcast.net.