ASSHOLES AND ACADEME. Here's your cheap shot of the day, and it couldn't happen to a more deserving soul than Roger L. Simon:

As a graduate of two Ivy League institutions (Dartmouth and Yale) I am beginning to question the Ivy educational hegemony in general.

Knowing that, so are we, hat boy! A little traveling music, maestro!

Seriously, and I say that with ferocious air-quotes, why do these guys keep bitching out the good schools? If Simon and his fellows think Columbia is anti-semitic (or too hard on Israel, which, these days and in their world, is the same thing), or too liberal, or insufficiently respectful of bloggers, or whatever, why not let the magic of the marketplace rule -- and send one's young'uns to Jerry Falwell's Liberty Law School? Yeeee-haaawww:

Like law students everywhere, students at Liberty spend much of their time reading and discussing judicial decisions. But where mainstream law professors tend to ask questions about judges' fidelity to precedent and the Constitution, Liberty professors often analyze decisions in terms of biblical principles.

"If our graduates wind up in the government," Dr. Falwell said, "they'll be social and political conservatives. If they wind up as judges, they'll be presiding under the Bible."

Yeeee-haaaawww! Thass some good education, hoss!

Like good moderns, our conservative education reformers (who are not shy about using political litmus tests and the force of law to enforce their "reforms") want it all: they want their kids protected from ideas they don't agree with, and they also want a swank brand name on the kids' diplomas. Even so I can recommend Falwell's inquisitor mill to them, because in the hell toward which this society is rapidly descending, no one'll be respectin' them fancy-pants schoo's no-how, and the only questions they'll ask yo chillens is have yew been saved? and how much money yuh got? Yeeeeee-haawww, Roger!

VIEW FROM A LOCKED WARD.

I suppose it's time to look in on PJ Media kingpin Roger L. Simon. What'd he think of the debate?

No more bets, ladies and gentlemen. The game is over. Donald Trump has won the nomination.

Explain, please.

Everyone acknowledged as much, heads nodding around me in the press room...

They told you it was the press room, Rog, but your tip-off should have been Robert Stacy McCain calling everyone "cousin," or all the "reporters" wearing black vests and pants and white shirts saying "it come wid two side."

...when, nearly at the end of the debate, Hugh Hewitt served up by far the most serious, in the sense of fateful, question of the night by asking Trump to answer finally whether he will support the Republican candidate under any circumstances.

The Donald smiled, stared straight into the camera with the practiced skill of a Cronkite or a Murrow, though more playful and, one reluctantly admits, winning...

"This... [distant explosion] is London, very classy town, not a lotta conveniences but wait'll I put in the Trump Fallout Shelter, it'll be huge."

...and acknowledged that, yes, he will. He has been treated well by all concerned and even come to like and admire many of the candidates on the stage with him. Murmurs of approval all around.

All around what? The tinfoil on your scalp?

And then he administered the coup de television. Looking square into the lens at America he promised to beat Hillary Clinton in November. And he did so in full recognition by all concerned, barring force majeure, he already was the nominee and everybody knew it. He was taking a graceful bow.

Game, set, match, tournament and whatever they say in bocce.

Then come a lot of Fellini references, which is probably Simon preparing an "it was just a dream" excuse for later. I'm trying to imagine, though, what other reason he might have for publishing this. Help me out, readers? Is there actual money in working the odds on this nomination?

DRAMA QUEEN. Lionel Chetwynd, a rightwing Hollywood martyr known mainly these days for his videos with Roger L. Simon, has written an indignant Letter of Resignation from some group you never heard of (the Steering Committee of The Caucus for Producers, Writers & Directors) to protest the anti-conservative bigotry of some guy you never heard of (Vin Di Bona), which he learned about from Ben Shapiro's book about how Sesame Street is trying to turn our children into socialists.

Whatever normal people may think of this slap-fight, Chetwynd takes it very, very seriously:

Shame on all of them. Their sickness is an infection that belongs in Europe of the 1930s.

It's like a beer-hall putsch, only with cocaine.

This is a time of inflamed political confrontation, evoking Bleeding Kansas of the 1850’s or even the Civil War itself.

In this reading, Chetwynd is Topsy and Obama is Simon Legree.

I realize, now, the enormous special obstacles put in my path by my supposed colleagues, obstacles that over the years made earning a living or a quiet pursuit of my trade so unusually onerous, were not a matter of political difference; they were a declaration of my unworthiness to be one of them. The rejection was not of my ideas, but of my person.

Now that I can believe.

Next up: How the failure of Hollyweird liberals to cast Kelsey Grammer as Batman is Birkenau all over again. (h/t Dan Coyle)

NEW VILLAGE VOICE COLUMN UP...

...about Trump's Russian adventure, and the wingnut schism between those who feel they have to pretend to give a shit to make it look good and those who believe Trumpism is forever and rush to defend his sellout.

Among the outtakes, we find our old friend PJ Media's Roger L. Simon who, in response to Bernie Sanders' criticism of Trump's Russia maneuvers, counters that Sanders had "picked the Soviet Union for his honeymoon" and John Brennan actually voted for Gus Hall, then rambles on about how horrible the Soviet Union was for several paragraphs before accusing Trump's critics of "Russia Derangement Syndrome" and -- referring to Democrats' alleged love for the USSR back in the day -- "the equivalent of a sex change operation over Russia." Simon, a former screenwriter and novelist, can still turn a phrase; what he can't do is turn it into something that makes sense. (I always knew what conservatives really hated about the Soviets was that they paid lip service to communism, and that every horror the Reds employed would be okay with them once they ix-nayed the arxism-May.)

MAKING IT PERSONAL. I'm of two minds about Mark Sanford. On the one hand, of course, ha ha ha. On the other, it is something to see a person with so much money, power, and status -- not to mention a strong identification with the Christian faith -- so unmanned, as it were, by passion. All of us have seen, and some of us experienced, l'amour fou, and know how disruptive it can be, but it's still a surprise to see even so titanic an ego as a successful politician must possess shattered by it. You don't have to think much of Sanford or his probity to marvel at the bizarre lengths to which this largely epistolary romance drove him.

Of course Sanford has picked up the pieces as well as can be expected, and put on an interesting show in his press conference. Aside from blunting the impact of his admission, the strategy of devoting so much time to self-analysis and a survey of all the people he'd "let down" and "hurt" -- which really made Clinton's TV confession look austere by comparison -- put the emphasis on his character outside his unfaithfulness, and his sincerity, such as it is. This may, once the shock wears off, help at least some of his supporters get past this. Even I was temporarily distracted from the fact that Sanford had concocted an elaborate scheme to conceal his actions, and only spoke up because he had no other options left. It was not so much a Swaggart strategy as an Oprah strategy: when it's over you hope the audience learns enough about you to focus on that, and not what you've done.

There's been a lot of praise, from left and right, of the decision to keep Mrs. Sanford off the bandstand, but even if (as I suspect) it was her decision rather than his, it was probably good for Sanford, considering how much attention has been lavished on the humiliations of Silda Spitzer, Dina Matos McGreevey, et alia.

As to the way operatives will work it, The Perfesser is a reliable indicator of rightwing spin, and his link to a comment at Roger L. Simon's blog is very instructive:

Think carefully, now. In all honesty, what’s going on here -- and what Simon says -- is exactly the purpose of the media’s initial stories here...

...if the Republicans and their supporters and associates form up a circular firing squad and fall into an orgy of self-loathing and recrimination, that will totally destroy their effectiveness in opposition to Team Obama and his media whores. Take them totally off message. It will be like Abu Ghraib all over again...

The novel comparison of Sanford's Argentine mistress and Abu Ghraib aside, the right will fall back on its traditional position that any conservative's malfeasance, even one that cuts to the heart of their alleged religious principles, is merely another point of proof that liberals and their media enablers are the real source of all evil. You can hardly blame them. The mysteries of the human heart can be very frightening, and the temptation to solve them with an easy answer very great.

OK, JUST A PEEK. Let's see what Hindrocket of Time's Blog of the Year 2004 is on about today:

IS OBAMA INTRODUCING NATIONAL SOCIALISM TO THE UNITED STATES?

In the immortal words of Curly, "Ngggnnyahh!"

Hinderaker, which I guess is what Hindrocket's calling himself these days, compares Obama to Lenin and Mussolini because 1.) They all had posters that showed them looking serious ("It is ironic that Mussolini looks downright modest compared to The One"); and 2.) wingnut email-from-Grandma fodder like "the Obama family costs U.S. taxpayers something like twenty times what the British Royal Family costs its subjects," which is so lame Doug Mataconis has debunked it.

I still think Romney has a good chance to win, so I don't see why these guys have descended so precipitously into madness -- oh wait, maybe that's the reason: They're anticipating the crushing disappointment of National Romneycare ("Better Than Obamacare, Because Not So Much Abortion!"), and for these guys that's like waiting for Cthulhu to eat them.

If that's not enough crazy for you, you can read Roger L. Simon's "We Live Under a Media Coup d’État." Apparently it all started with Adolph Ochs, or Woodward and Bernstein; whatever, now the Rule of Katie Couric is so oppressive that "this year the Republican Party allowed the coup plotters to control the debates, even those that determined their own nominee."  Maybe Simon and his like-minded souls will start a resistance movement, and call it "Bathrobe Media" or something. But will it sell?

IN WHAT SHOULD BE THE NADIR...

...of the current wingnut skreefest over Obamacare, the legal expert who told Bush he could torture prisoners says Obama's insurance fix is unconstitutional. Can't someone just give Yoo a "screams of pain" relaxation tape and send him away, preferably to Den Haag?

That should be the low point, but this is the kind of situation in which the brethren are actually expected to earn their wingnut welfare with a higher order of bullshit, on the double! So they're more energized and, if such a thing can be imagined, less scrupulous. Here's today's brow-slapper from Megan McArdle:

Some of the left-wing commentators I’ve seen seem to be under the impression that health insurers make fabulous profits...

Whereas one quick look at tar-paper shacks that house these humble businesses will show they're merely scraping by.

And this just in -- Roger L. Simon demands Obama resign over Obamacare: The headline begins, I swear to God, "Was Benghazi Not Enough?" My question is: If incompetence is a reason to resign, why is Simon still running PJ Media?

LINE OF THE WEEK (SO FAR).

My favorite wingnut line of the week -- and possibly of the month or year, though I'm sure the competition will as always be fierce -- comes from Andrew Klavan, normally one of conservatism's comedy stylists but dead serious in a PJ Media column about, get this, how the right can win over gays and the straights who don't want to see gays boiled alive.

The essay starts with colloquy between two great conservative intellects, Roger L. Simon and Bryan Preston. Simon basically says that liberals use gay marriage "fairly or not, to paint the right as bigots" to the young people, and maybe conservatives should keep their rage over it on the QT and strictly hush-hush. Preston basically says aargh blargh, fags make Christians take pitchers of their so-called weddings, young people are stupid but will learn to hate gays with age, Sharpton has a "hot young thang," under Gay Hitler "the state will feel free to crush what’s left of Christian faith in America under its boot. Go ahead and scoff. It’s coming," etc. (He also calls himself a "libertarian-leaning social conservative," which hilariously conforms with what we know about libertarians.)

Klavan tries to split the difference:

I don’t think Catholic adoption agencies should have to cater to gay couples, and I certainly don’t think a religious photographer should be forced to photograph a gay wedding.

On the other hand:

Either sex is an expression of love that involves the whole person (not just his body parts) or it is a purely mechanical operation. If it is purely mechanical, then you’ll have to explain to me why one robotic sexual action is any more sinful than another. Penises don’t sin, after all; people do.

Believe it or not, the penis line is not my line of the week. It's this one, about how conservatives should talk nice about gays so they can get votes:

So often, the left wins debates by a flagrant and self-serving display of compassion.

There's something  beautiful about this, and applicable to many occasions. Liberals don't want the unemployed to starve? Well, what do you expect -- they're always flaunting  their compassion like a bunch of show-offs. Real Americans find it difficult to show empathy; not to say they don't have it, but they have to save it up for the next time someone makes fun of Sarah Palin.

UPDATE. Comments (a joy as always) contain more than a few references to the Piranha Brothers. "He used compassion," scripts Spaghetti Lee. "He knew all the tricks. Empathy, sympathy, love, brotherhood, caring..." Susan of Texas wonders how far up the chain this compassion racket goes: "let's look at Jesus, the flaming compassionista. Throwing his selfish unselfishness in people's faces..." I look forward to the day when conservatives bitch about The Religious Left like it was the Moral Majority, and start referring to Unitarians as "Yoonies."

NYUK, NYUK, NYUK. So how's the Most Powerful Nation on Earth doing against the Axis of Evil -- or, as I like to think of them, Moe, Larry and Curly? Iraq -- originally the Curly of the outfit, though now downgraded to Shemp or perhaps even Joe Besser status -- has been "liberated" and "pacified" -- that is to say, it's a basket case, where daily life has become so dangerous that authorities recently had to stick a flak jacket on Condi Rice before escorting her from Baghdad Airport. Even the Donald Rumsfeld publicity bureau known as OpinionJournal today declared in an offhand tone that "if another 10,000 or 20,000 or however many troops would reassure Iraqis in the months ahead... then by all means President Bush should deploy them."

Iran, the Larry of the outfit, is treading water, with Ahmadinejad working a global charm offensive while riding herd on his opposition back home.

And North Korea, proving a worthy bearer of the mantle of Moe, just blowed up a big bomb. Remind him to kill us later!

We all knew this was coming, given the ham-handed U.S. approach to NK nuclear negotiations. Though previous administrations had managed to maneuver North Korea away from H-bombs, Bush treated and spoke of the Korean nuclear situation in oh-well, whattaya-gonna-do terms, as if it were out of his control: "I think what we have to do is plan for the worst and hope for the best."

Now Kim's got a working bomb, and naturally the conservative response is: we have GOT to keep the Democrats out of office, or they might fuck up even worse than we have! "...we know what the Democratic Party and its media surrogates will want to do -- begin a comprehensive and multi-lateral campaign to BLAME BUSH!!!" cries Dean Barnett. References to 9/11, WWII, and Awakening the American People to their Grave Peril naturally follow.

"When the conflagration comes, it will burn as surely as night follows day," intones Josh Trevino from atop a plinth, toga rippling in the wind. "The puerile predator in Pyongyang will do no less. We have failed to prevent: now it falls to us to deter, and in time, avenge." Avenge what? Maybe he means the North Korean "slave state," generally; Trevino once lived near it, of which joyous days he still has happy memories of "leftist students assaulting our housing compound," apparently forging a lifelong bond between Trevino and his noisy neighbors. Or maybe he seeks vengeance for this: if we nuke North Korea, maybe the radiation will seep over into Seoul, and that guy Trevino couldn't get arrested in '05 will finally get his.

Others also appear optimistic -- not for the imminent bloodshed, but because of the possibility of Republican political advantage. "Mr. Kim drives Foley off the front page -- or does he? Well, he better," sez Roger L. Simon. But his heart's not in it -- not like the old days of the Iraqi cakewalk and flag lapel pins! "Foley was starting to get boring," yes, but still there is a "fundamental lack of seriousness of a great part of our society, especially in the political and media classes" -- not like Simon, playing Stratego with Victor Davis Hanson and Michael Ledeen all night long! "In a way I hope the Democrats win in November, so that they are forced to face reality." Wow -- he's so rattled, he's forgotten we're all traitors!

In short, thanks to the persistence of human stupidity, this urgent worldwide crisis promises to be as hilarious as any other.

UPDATE. At Ace of Spades HQ, poster "Dave from Garfield Ridge" (who reveals, to our horror, in comments that "my day job touches on a lot of what I write about...national security stuff...") repeats the new wisdom: "The big lesson today is the most obvious one, a lesson most any reader here could have imparted long before we got here. Namely, that any nation that wants nuclear weapons will eventually get them, and will get them by any means necessary." Gee, if they've felt that way since "long before we got here," when Bush gave his original Axis of Evil speech, why didn't he just say, "We give up"?

Actual sensible commentary here.

THE COMPANY THEY KEEP. When Left-Left-Me Types harsh on their former comrades, they can always expect megadittos from their commenters, who are generally not former liberals, to say the least.

But when LLMTs come up with an anti-anti-gay post -- it's rare, but it happens -- the cheers fade into confused grumbling, boos, and, in places, the sound of seats being ripped out.

This is what happens when Roger L. Simon condemns John Derbyshire's anti-gay remarks. Major finding: homosexual pedophiliac assault, whether completed or merely attempted, can lead to conservatism.

I was an innocent twelve year old kid who liked to go walk around the reservoir near our home. One summer evening I was approached by a man who seemed nice... The shame. The guilt. And the fucking homosexual hadn't even succeeded in seducing me! You liberals. You noble, tolerant liberals. Go fuck yourselves, forever!

Butt-rape narratives aside, the consensus is that gayness leads to/results in "degeneration of concepts of manliness" etc. But the gays share the hate with their enablers: those "nice, respectable, bien pensant" types, who will "check [their] brain out in exchange for that warm, moist feeling: 'I'm so ENLIGHTENED...'" That is, the same people Simon's commenters hate already.

Oh, a lot of the commenters hate Andrew Sullivan, too. But you know what they say about stopped clocks.

CONSERVATIVES REVIEWING MOVIES THEY HAVEN'T SEEN IS THE NEW BLACK. Roger L. Simon explains what's wrong with Looking for Comedy in the Muslim World, based on his own ignorance ("I haven't seen Brooks' film") and the talking points of the day ("traditional Hollywood libs like Brooks don't seem to have the guts for satire anymore... The Brooks crowd [all of them] are more worried about seeming 'nice' these days then telling the truth"). Oh, and on "reviews," though if Simon really put such faith in critics, he'd have blown his brains out after Scenes from a Mall.

These guys are getting so used to reviewing movies by their trailers and posters -- and sometimes just by what their ideology demands -- that I wonder if they go to movies at all anymore. Why bother, when the Politburo will tell them what is good and double-plus-ungood?

It gets clearer all the time that culture warriors are actually making war on culture, not for it.

SHOOTING ANOTHER MESSENGER. Flush from their CBS victory, the banshees are after Sy Hersh, who has reported US intel Iran incursions. The New York Post implies that Hersh's reporting is untrustworthy, based on -- get this -- Ted Kennedy's denunciation of Hersh's Kennedy book. protein wisdom does the usual hatchet job, to which pw's hatchettes add piss and vinegar, or piss anyway ("Herschshit!" "P.S. Symousr Hersh is a putz").

In a spectacular display of trick-shot spinning, Roger L. Simon points out that Bush "has now essentially corrobrated Hersh" -- but this does not exonerate the reporter (Hersh's story is called an "infusion of goo," despite the Presidential corroboration); it proves that the Feds planted the story on him. By this reading, Hersh can be right, but simultaneously a tool and an infuser of goo. See how it works? (And don't protest it doesn't work on you -- even the dimmest alicublog reader is several grade levels ahead of Simon's target audience.)

Among other achievements, Hersh broke the Abu Ghraib scandal, which is why he is hated by the current batch of wingnuts, and the My Lai massacre, which is why he is hated by the Birchers from whose loins the current batch of wingnuts sprang.

REVISED -- Originally misrendered the name of Protein Wisdom in my white-hot, partisan rage.

THE NEW CRITICISM. Now Roger L. Simon is doubling as National Review theatre critic. He begins his maiden review (of Frayn's Democracy) with a few character observations that evince some knowledge of dramaturgy, but, anxious to please his Soviet masters, gets soon enough to the political money shot:

Like many successful playwrights in today’s iffy theatrical market, Frayn has formed an entente cordiale with his audience. Two of the plays more pointed laugh lines are "What does Communism have to do with the Left?" and "Never mind football! Try parliamentary democracy!" The audience is encouraged to chortle at a kind of soft cultural relativism of low expectations, their conventional liberal values reinforced and almost willfully unexamined. These views also fit a majority of that tiny segment of the American community still going to serious drama on Broadway. It’s not quite a "status/business deal" in the way the purchase of modern art was described by Tom Wolfe years ago, but it’s not all that far off.

With a few names changed, this wouldn't have been out of place in the New Masses.

I would recommend that Simon examine the work Terry Teachout, a conservative whose theatre criticism is about the plays rather than the goddamn audiences, but I fear the lesson would be wasted.

SIMON DRINKS THE KOOL-AID. I had a feeling this would happen.

Professor Glenn Reynolds used to tell people he was not a conservative, using a pro-gay-marriage stand as his trump non-con credential. But once he had descended sufficiently deeply into the Bush tank, he felt it necessary to issue this post (much longer than usual, because the need for obfuscation was so great), in which is explained that arguing for gay marriage was the worst thing its advocates could do ("that sort of thing can only serve to alienate Republicans"), and told his no doubt astonished gay readers that Bush's plan to amend the Constitution to exclude them was "not worth getting too excited about."

Now it's Roger L. Simon's turn. He has said that Bush's stance on gay issues "make[s] me cringe." Well, he ain't cringin' no more (not in that sense, anyway)! The tone of his Damascene conversion is less tortuous than Reynolds' and, as befits one who has shed some confining principles, more liberated and breezy:

Sure, [Bush] doesn't support gay marriage. But hardly anyone even talked about gay marriage in the whole history of our country until a few years ago. Relax. Gay rights are on extraordinarly fast upward curve. Take a slight breather to give the Islamic world a chance.

En otras palabras: Relax, bitches, we're goin' to Mars!

How long, do you figure, before Andrew Sullivan comes around?

HEH INDEED. I thought the Lakers were supposed to have won by now. What do you mean, there's no more games?

At least Roger L. Simon doesn't have to feel sorry for Larry Brown anymore.

And, Roger, for once I agree with you: I would definitely like to see Bush "be like Kobe," at least in this instance.

I will now devote the remainder of my summer (and fall, too, if needed) to growing my hair like Ben Wallace.

CONDITIONAL RESPONSE. Roger L. Simon (the "L" is for conservative) wonders why liberals who were so exercised about the murders committed by the Pinochet regime aren't complaining about the crimes committed by the Saddam Hussein regime.

As a credible spokesperson for the entire left, let me say that the crimes of Saddam Hussein were a very bad thing. Any disagreement, fellow traitors? Good.

The Nixon Adminstration, of course, assisted Pinochet in his bloody overthrow of the elected Allende Government and the Ford Administration was practically complicit in some of the ensuing Pinochet-era "disappearances". I don't recall anyone suggesting that we invade Chile, take over, and install a more democratic government. That would hardly make sense, since we had done so much to ensure the opposite result.

As for other points of comparison, I have a hard time keeping straight the various rationales for the Iraq invasion -- WMDs, stabilization of the region, freedom for the Iraqi people -- so I'll wait until they get that sorted out before treating it further. I will say that Simon's former comrades do show some consistency in objecting when the Government engages in foreign adventures that make no fucking sense.

SIMPLE, SIMON. Roger L. Simon asks:

Why didn't George Bush enlist Stephen Spielberg to help with Iraq? Because he's a Democrat?

No, because he's a fucking movie director. And the mess in Iraq isn't something you can fix with CGI.

CROCODILE TEAR WATCH. Now that the President has, as anyone with eyes to see anticipated, backed the FMA, let us see what the famous liberal Bush supporters are saying:

Roger L. Simon: "We Need a Third Party Candidate! But not that self-satisfied prig Ralph Nader... I feel at a loss. It's going to be a long 2004 for me." (Translation: Gotta make sure my gay friends see this post before I put the Bush/Cheney signs back on my lawn.)

Michael Totten: "Yesterday I took aim at Kalle Lasn, the editor of Adbusters magazine, for cheerleading the mayhem of World War IV. I’m not finished with him yet. His newest editorial is even worse than the last one...." (Translation: If I stay in my happy place, it will go away.)

Actually that last routine is the one currently favored by many in that crowd. Maybe they'll come out of their shells by the time you read this...

At least Sullivan finally got the picture -- for the time being, anyway.

UPDATE 2/25: Simon's lawn signs are already back up, and he's commending Bush for deploring Iran's mullahs. (Never mind his dagger poised at the Constitution -- he expressed disapproval of our enemies! Whotta man!) Totten made a quick negative comment, but his fellow "independents" are now setting him straight in comments, bringing up activist judges and AIDS and other reasoned counterarguments. They probably needn't worry, as Totten defers to someone who basically argues, oh, well, the thing will never pass so we better focus on stopping Kerry, who will invite Osama Bin Laden to pick off random Americans for the amusement of his best friend Jane Fonda.

Or some such shit. I can't even pay attention to these guys anymore. At least the people who are overtly cheering the FMA know what the fuck they're trying to accomplish.

BEHIND YOU ALL THE WAY. November 3, 2004 -- Hours after suffering the worst drubbing in American electoral history, Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman took conciliatory phone calls from moderate supporters Michael Totten, Roger L. Simon, and Andrew Sullivan.

"I swear that, right up till the end, I was ready to be convinced," said Totten. "I was heartened when you stood with the President on the Iraq, Iran, Syria, Nigeria, and Falkland Islands invasions. But last week, when you told the nation that our invasion of the Philippines was 'perhaps overreaching,' that proved to me that you didn't really 'get' the war on terror."

"Tough break, kid," said Simon. "Great scenario, but a lousy third act. You just don't have the looks for a wartime-president role. Bogie could pull off that lip-tightening thing -- you can't. But when Bush pulled out Saddam's decapitated head and sucked out the eyes, that was box-office gold. I was pullin' for you, kid. I didn't vote for you, but I was pullin'."

"I lied," said Sullivan. "I never intended to vote for anyone except Bush. Wait, is this being recorded? What a shocking invasion of my priv-acy."

CONSERVATIVE MINORITY OUTREACH CONTINUES.

Thanks to Jack Fowler at National Review for steering his readers to this amazing promo:

It reminds me of my first job in high school, cold-calling people from a crummy office in downtown Bridgeport to try and get them to attend a presentation about a Florida real estate development scam called Rotunda. (You can read how Rotunda played out here.) It was run by something called the Cavanaugh Corporation, which claimed as one of its partners Ed McMahon -- whose autographed photo we cold-callers offered as a premium.

Also, I never noticed before how much Allen West looks like Alfred E. Neuman.

If you have to watch one of the crazy videos, this is the one: West on Hollywood! After a few fish-out-of-water gags about coming to Los Angeles -- when someone offers him some sushi, he says "I don't eat bait" -- he gets right down to how liberals won't let you say what you really want to, and conservatives are "so afraid of the Hollywood backlash that they meet in secret," by which I guess he means no one goes to their parties except Roger L. Simon. "Is this the America that some of us fought for?" roars West. "Is this some type of new Soviet-style Politburo being formed? Regardless I find it utterly disgusting to think that many of us who fought for the freedoms of our nation so that now it seems a handful of individuals get to define who can and who cannot speak..." He's also mad that Hollyweird stars are against guns: "I doubt Jim Carrey will be invited to give the start command at any NASCAR race. [Pause for laugh.]"

This scam is brought to you by PJTV, who seem to have gotten the down-on-his-luck West the way William Grefe got Rita Hayworth.