Despite the bullshit you’re fed night and day, don’t think for one nanosecond that America’s elite political and business classes don’t pay attention to what you think.

Prime example: The kinder, gentler nut jobs over at the voracious, right-wing political advocacy group Freedom’s Watch have been scrambling for the past 72 hours to burnish their public image after finding themselves the latest target of anti-war protests held in front of the Venetian (and across the country) this weekend.

In a classic PR move, detailed here by the New York Times, Freedom’s Watch overlords (among whom Venetian owner and Las Vegas Sands Corporation Chairman Sheldon Adelson reigns supreme) announced they’ve hired former Mitt Romney political director Carl Forti to run their “issue advocacy campaign” this fall. Which is marketing speak for shitting bricks and using desperation hires in an effort to garner public support for their failed, exposed-as-batshit-crazy ideology.

Careful readers will remember Forti as the bloviating communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee, where he personally directed the group’s 2004 and 2006 electoral smear campaigns (also here).

Granted, the overlords over at Freedom’s Watch likely don’t give two shits about the group of 100 or so locals who used their choice of Saturday’s venue as a sign of added dismay with Mr. Adelson. The more likely scenario is that the brain trust at Freedom’s Watch, along with nearly every other American conservative, knows the GOP is fighting an uphill battle both to hang on to the White House and to persuade Americans that more war is a good idea. They need a good hatchet man who can decapitate the eventual Democratic presidential nominee and terrify the rest of the country into a permanent state of combat. With his particular sociopathic skill set, Forti should fit right in.

From free-spirit-turned-feisty-librarian in Party Girl to the demonic Darla in Dazed and Confused Parker Posey is truly the queen of indie films, and it looks like it’s destined to stay that way.

Fox network picked up Gilmore Girls creator Amy Sherman-Palladino’s new series, The Return of Jezebel James, a half-hour of quirky comedy co-starring Posey and Six Feet Under’s Lauren Ambrose. But don’t look for it on your TiVo again; after a scant two weeks and three episodes, it’s been canceled. Four episodes, including “The Return of the Crazy Jackal Shillelagh Lady,” remain unaired.

Too bad the execs didn’t sandbag the uber-unfunny vehicle Unhitched. Here’s hoping it’s next on the hit list.

The latest batch of Election 2008 financial disclosure reports rolled in late last week, detailing the record-breaking amounts of campaign cash that each major presidential candidate raised in the last quarter. But a closer look at how much Las Vegans are ponying up to fund the lamest political show on Earth is revealing.

Among the report’s most revealing takeaways:

1. No surprise here, but Las Vegas led the state as ground zero in this year’s political fund raising war, at $9,873,552. Reno politicos came in second here in the state, donating $2,096, 901.

2. Of the Top 10 Nevada ZIP Codes in which voters have thus far donated the most, Vegas neighborhoods locked up each of the top five spots: 89109 (home to many of the biggest casinos on the Strip) at $825,213; 89117 at $721,678; 89113 at $696,048; 89134 at $567,969; and 89102 at $448, 559. Interestingly, residents in the Henderson ZIP Code 89074 nearly cracked the top five, giving $424,717.

In a bizarrely cruel twist of fate, former presidential hopeful, ex-Massachusetts governor and 2008 Nevada Republican Caucus champ Mitt Romney, despite pulling out of the race back in early February, still leads with the largest cumulative donation, at $783,020. Willard is followed by former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani, at $574,390; U.S. Sen. Hillary “Duck-and-Cover” Clinton, D-N.Y., at $541,809; U.S. Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., at $357,864; and U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., at $343,378.

Follow the money here. Get local here.

Gotta love polls. They’re like a choose-your-own-adventure story, except they’re about things like national energy policy. And, also like choose-your-own adventure stories, polls also allow people to create their own mystical universe of infinite wishes in which an energy-independent nation happily crisscrossed with solar-powered vegan mass transit also has no gas taxes whatsoever! Those are more or less the findings of a new Pew Research Center poll released today.

Among the poll’s highlights:

• Nine in 10 Americans favor requiring better auto fuel efficiency standards, while substantial majorities also support increased federal funding for alternative energy (81%) and mass transportation (72%).

• Support has fallen for increased federal funding for ethanol research (57%, down from 67% in Feb. 2006).

• Voters are evenly split over promoting more nuclear power (48% against vs. 44% in favor).

• Voters are evenly divided over drilling for oil and gas in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (50% opposed, 42% in favor).

Of course, they just don’t want to pay for it.To wit:

• The public overwhelmingly rejects boosting gas taxes by a margin greater than three-to-one.

Dorkz! Perhaps most interestingly, an overwhelming number of Republicans, Democrats and Independents polled favored tougher auto emission standards and more research into alternative energy. Does this signal a tectonic shift in the American mindset when it comes to energy policy? Maybe.

Then again, we suspect they all would’ve also been in favor of perpetual motion machines and flying griffins filled with free Tootsie Rolls.

Gov. Jim Gibbons says he’s still working on a deal to allow three doctors to step down from the state Board of Medical Examiners, yet still retain their dignity. How? Well, he’s going to give them his personal official gubernatorial seal of being A-OK!

That’s right: Gibbons is willing to step up and tell everybody that the three doctors in question — Drs. Daniel McBride, Javaid Anwar and Sohail Anjum — did absolutely, positively nothing wrong in connection to the investigation of Dr. Dipak Desai and his Endoscopy Clinic of Southern Nevada (motto: Home of the Hepatitis! Allegedly).

“I am willing to state it has nothing to do with their professionalism and practices as medical professionals,” Gibbons generously offered.

Well, here’s a question, then: If Gibbons thinks so highly of these doctors’s professionalism, why the hell is he trying to force them to resign?!

But seriously, folks: How can these doctors resist this kind offer? A personal vouching from the governor? Why, that’s got to be worth something!

And it would be, if it wasn’t this governor, who has had to apologize, backtrack and otherwise wiggle out of almost everything he’s done since this crisis started, or at least two weeks months thereafter, which is when he decided to start throwing his gubernatorial weight around. Coming from this governor, a personal endorsement is roughly the equivalent of being called an ax murderer, and not in a good way. (UPDATE: Tip o’ the hat to my colleagues Anjeanette Damon and Jon Ralston, who each reported on Gibbons’s statement at the hearing last night that he actually found out about the crisis Jan. 2, which actually makes his pathetic delayed response inconceivably worse.)

Anyway, Gibbons says he’s worried that, because the three doctors have recused themselves because of business or personal ties to Desai, there could be a 3-3 tie when the matter comes before the nine-member medical board for a hearing. But once again, the governor seems unfamiliar with the board’s procedures and state law.

(That’s not to say he’s ignorant; we at Various Things & Stuff didn’t really know how things worked, either. So we did a little thing called research. Oh, yeah, we did it before we popped off about it, which is something the governor might consider one of these days.)

Anyway, it basically works like this: Two physician members of the board and one non-doctor comprise the “investigative committee,” which looks into medical malpractice and other matters with the help of in-house doctors and on-call specialists. Those members then make a recommendation to the full board, which deliberates.

But get this: The investigating committee members cannot later serve on the board when it takes up the matter they investigated. So that means there’s always the possibility of a 3-3 tie! Medical Board Deputy General Counsel Ed Kousineau, however, said he’s never seen that happen in his four-year tenure.

Not only that, but the law contains a provision for the governor to appoint “advisory” members to the board, too. All Gibbons has to do is select three non-conflicted advisory committee members, let them investigate, and let the remaining, non-conflicted board members decide the case.

You know, the way it’s supposed to work.

Local preservation group Atomic Age Alliance has all the energy of a hell-spawned Yorkshire terrier, and it’s proven a useful trait in the group’s fight to save UNLV’s Maude Frazier Hall from the wrecking ball. One thing the group doesn’t have a lot of, though, is money — which is where you — meaning your money — can help.

The group is holding a fundraiser 6 p.m. March 27 at the Design Within Reach studio at 6539 Las Vegas Blvd., Suite C-110; phone number is 947-8100. There’ll be food, drink, a Modernism slide show, and jazz by the Thurston Howlies, named after the jowly rich guy on Gilligan’s Island who talked like he had an Italian loafer stuck in his throat.

It seems to us that U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton’s little Bosnia misspeaking is a bit more of a problem for her than she’s letting on. It wouldn’t be so bad, of course, had Clinton not rhapsodized so specifically about how “I remember” landing in Bosnia under sniper fire, running with her head down to her car and being ferried away to a nearby base.

Video, of course, shows that no such thing ever happened. Quite the contrary, it shows her mingling (along with her daughter, Chelsea) with local officials and even a little girl, all of whom braved the fictional sniper fire and all of whom had their heads high the entire time.

Two seconds of scrutiny is all you need to knock down this story: Would the United States Secret Service allow two key protectees to be exposed to such danger? They don’t discuss their methods of protection, but we’re reasonably sure letting your charges corkscrew into a dangerous landing zone and then running to waiting cars is not exactly in the manual under “good ideas.” But that’s just us.

Still, let’s give the former first lady the benefit of the doubt. She did, after all, visit 80 countries and she does, after all, utter “millions of words” every day. (God, don’t we know it.) So perhaps she was remembering another time, in another place were she had to land, skip an arrival ceremony and run to a waiting car? Certainly her campaign — with full access to her schedules and the principal herself — can produce records or even video of such a time?

Because the alternative is that she created an entirely fictional scenario for the sole purpose of boosting her foreign policy credentials at a critical time in the campaign, for the purpose of inducing voters to choose her over rival U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. There’s a phrase for that in politics: A big fat fucking lie.

We’ll be waiting for that video, Clinton campaign.

“And so the baton is passed. On the conservative side it passes from [the late writer William F.] Buckley to Ann Coulter. I do not know as much about the liberal side.” — R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr., in an obituary for Buckley in the April issue of The American Spectator

Clearly, Tyrrell is gripped with so much overwhelming grief, he’s used the only device that still may raise Buckley from the dead to prevent his legacy from being trashed. Nice try, Emmett.