Hot Air has a special correspondent in Las Vegas for the “nutroots convention” convened by The Daily Kos.

An excerpt from Dispatch 1:

People here are largely, disappointingly, golf-shirted, short-haired, and white bread. Grooming and hygiene are up to western business standards. There is one dude wearing a pith helmet and another guy in a kilt, but the freakish T-shirts I brought along a camera for are not popping up. Oh, I spoke too soon, there’s a girl in an I HAD AN ABORTION t-shirt. For such a routine, ordinary, medical procedure she seems awfully proud of it. Can I get an “I HAD A TONSILLECTOMY” shirt?

On the other hand there’s a buzz-cut grey-templed fellow in a pinstripe suit and an American flag tie. Hmm…maybe they’re catching on. The media is here pretty strong, so maybe they cleaned up and want to look respectable…

That descriptive paragraph provoked an excitable response from Andrew Sullivan–you know, the guy who called America a “rogue nation.”

Our correspondent adds some anthropological commentary:

Oh-one always wants to know whether the other side’s women are more attractive. So rest assured, my gentlemen readers at Hotair, you are on the right side of history. Again, not an extreme case: If you had pictured nothing but young, budding, be-Birkenstocked Helen Thomases traipsing through the Riviera’s halls, seeking whom they may devour, it’s nowhere near that bad; it’s just that I’ve been to CPAC; and this, sir, is no CPAC.

In Dispatch 2, our correspondent’s reports from a training panel for future left-wing TV pundits–and catches some global-warming Zarqawi mania:

I’m at the second training session, and I clarified the rules with Jennifer Palmieri of CAP, told her I was writing for a blog called Hotair, and she said that while the discussion was on background, I could quote her.

I don’t want to bother the people who are now doing the practice interviews–in fact I felt sufficiently voyeuristic that I went and got a “press” badge–but one bit of discussion illustrated a lot of what I’ve seen today–the impact of the wild, untamed nutroots with the center-left political establishment.

We were discussing the general pitfalls of shows like Hannity and Colmes, and one trainee pundit spoke up to volunteer that leftist guests “need to have more humor on these shows.” Hmm, I thought. They are learning. There were some murmurs of assent. And then she added, “We need to look at these people who are asking these questions and just ask them, ‘ARE YOU A NAZI?’”

Jennifer Palmieri jumped in quickly, gently, and cautioned, “No, no, no, don’t call them a Nazi.”

Oh, and here’s a gutsy response from a video’s pundit-in-training to a curveball question. During her practice interview, the other CAP presenter switched from asking her about global warming and then asked her if Zarqawi’s death proved Bush’s strategy was going better than expected: “Haven’t we heard several times before that Zarqawi was dead? It seems like there’s less certainty whether Zarqawi’s dead than whether the earth is warming.”

We just finished reviewing her performance on tape and there was a wonderful exchange where Palmieri said, now, when you tell a joke like that, you should sort of smile at your own joke. Otherwise people will think you’re … like those people who don’t believe in global warming.” (In other words, in Kosland, a nut).

No, [the trainee pundit] clarified, she wasn’t joking…

Crikey.

Stay tuned for more. Today they scheduled an all-star day of moonbattery.

This morning, Gen. Wesley Clark is speaking about…science. (BTW, I met him in the green room at Fox last week and asked him about his decision to attend the fringe confab. He babbled about the moonbats’ right to participate in democracy or something like that. Didn’t listen to much more because he is a, uh, close talker.)

More:

9:30 AM - 10:45 AM

* CIA Leak Investigation - Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Dan Froomkin, Jane Hamsher, Larry C. Johnson, Christy Hardin Smith, Marcy Wheeler, Murray Waas

* A Sustainable Energy-Energize America - Jérôme Guillet, Mark Sumner, Adam Siegel, George Karayannis, Governor Bill Richardson

11:15 PM - 1:15 PM
Lunch Keynote - Senator Barbara Boxer

More Kos infiltrators:

Ryan Sager for the NY Sun.
Byron York for NRO.

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