I like to viddy the old films now and then

If you came for my research into the secret origins of Foleygate, scroll down a post or two. More on that score will appear soon. Right now, though, I'd like you to see a few videos -- nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more.

"Had Enough?" This is the new Democratic commercial, and it's good stuff. Variants of this one will appear in a number of congressional districts; I've linked to the one covering the Hastert/Laesch race. This video features a clever combination of jazz, funny lyrics, hard facts, and "found" footage from the 1950s.

And in this corner, we have an astonishing piece of paranoia. There are terrorists among us, you see, and they don't look like Middle Easterners. They're white, seemingly friendly, and they lurk in your offices and sporting clubs. In other words, they're liberals. They all secretly support Osama, you know.

I don't know who sent me the link to this video -- did I get on the wrong list somehow? -- but at first, I thought that this over-the-top piece of scaremongering must be a parody of a Republican commercial. Part of me still suspects as much.

What really floored me was a line toward the end: We are told that, in order to combat the terrorist menace, we must "Buy products exclusively from great Fortune 500 companies."

I didn't make that up! At one time, Republicans became infuriated by the suggestion that they did not support small business. Now, the party has explicitly told us never to patronise small shops or use items created by American start-up firms. Hand-crafted goods are right out. Don't you dare buy a belt, t-shirt or dog-grooming brush unless a Fortune 500 company imported it from China!

Tell me that this video is just a joke, friends. Please.

Back to Foley... This dramatic reenactment had me laughing so hard I spat up Diet Shasta. Of course, I'm a big fan of Monty Pythonesque humor that ignores the line between funny/strange and funny/ha-ha.