A.J. Delgado on why the Iraq War was a colossal mistake. And why even saying, "Well, the world is a better place without Saddam in power" is not accurate.

Here's a theory that will never be proven or disproven: If you polled every person in this country who makes his or her living drawing funny pictures and asked them whose talent, of all the others still alive and sketching, they most admired…the winner would be Mort Drucker. I have seen some of the world's most admired cartoonists look at Mort's work, shake their heads and mutter, "How does he do that?"

And I have seen artists, when called upon to render a caricature of some famous person, rush to see what Mort did when he had to draw that person. Even if their eventual drawing will not be in the Drucker style, seeing how Mort handled them is educational. His eye always catches the salient points to exaggerate, the basic personality and key features of the face. A celebrity never looks so much like themselves as when Mort draws them.

Last week at the National Cartoonists Society's annual gathering — held this year in Washington, D.C. — Mort was honored with the group's Medal of Honor. This is the first time it's been given out and as Tom Richmond explains, they seem to have invented the honor just so they could bestow it on Mort. Who better?

Sepp Blatter says he will step down as FIFA's leader.

Lydia and Sylvia, the two feral cats I feed in my backyard, spent today sleeping on an old lounge chair I have back there.

Tune in next time for more exciting Adventures of Lydia and Sylvia!

Here's an episode of CBS Summer Playhouse, which was a series back in 1987 that played off unsold pilots. There are two here, hosted by Tim Reid and Daphne Maxwell Reid, who were about to star in a new series (i.e., a sold pilot) called Frank's Place.

The first of the two unsold ones is Puppetman, a situation comedy from Jim Henson's company, all about backstage at a TV show not unlike Sesame Street. Fred Newman stars as the lead puppeteer. Fred specializes in odd voices and sounds and had done some work with Henson at the time, I believe. The other puppeteer is played by Richard Hunt, who was one of the key Muppeteers, handling — among others — Scooter, Beaker, Janice and Statler. Also in the cast were Julie Payne and Jack Burns. Burns had worked with Henson as a writer on The Muppet Show.

I've worked with Julie Payne for years on Garfield cartoons — she plays Jon's girlfriend Liz among other roles — so I called her and asked her to write down what she recalled of it. Here's what she sent me…

My being cast may have been thanks to Jeremy Stevens, one of the writer-producers. He was a childhood friend of my husband, in Brooklyn. The idea of working with Jim Henson and doing scenes with his puppets was a bit of heaven. I looked forward to working with him and getting to know him, but that didn't really happen; he was busy with the puppeting aspects, and we actors were working on scenes. Very friendly cast. But the week was a bit of a blur. I got the flu and sat through the rehearsal days with my head on the table, getting up only to run through my scenes. Someone on the crew told me to take two of her favorite antihistamines — big mistake. I remember driving home on the freeway at about 30 miles per hour.

The other pilot in the half-hour is called Sawdust and it was created and written by Gary Markowitz, who worked on a lot of good shows (like Larry Gelbart's United States) in the seventies and eighties. It's a fun, interesting show about circus performers and while it seems a bit too unusual for CBS at the time, I enjoyed it…and hey, it even had a small role in it played by the unofficial Stooge, Mousie Garner…

Bernie Sanders is currently polling higher in Iowa than anyone seeking the Republican nomination.

I don't think that means he has a real shot at the presidency. I mean, being one of two or three candidates is a lot more advantageous position than being one of around ninety. It may just be a function of how many people in Iowa are leery of Hillary Clinton. I do think though it means that Sanders deserves a lot more press coverage and attention than he's gotten.

Of course, today no one who's running for president is getting anywhere near as much press coverage and attention than Caitlyn Jenner. You know, I admire Mr./Ms. Jenner's courage in some ways but I recall when someone else who had a gender conversion said something like, "My goal in going public with this is to help move America to the day when no one will care about this kind of thing." Well, just speaking for myself, I'm already there.

This is a little hard to watch but Tracy Morgan was on the Today Show this morning, giving his first interview since the ghastly freeway accident that injured him severely and took the life of fellow comedian James "Jimmy Mack" McNair. I suspect this appearance had a lot to do with the surely-huge monetary settlement that he just accepted from the Walmart company. Morgan had his attorney with him to prompt him on things he wanted to or had to say. It sure sounds like that as a condition of the settlement, he had to make this public appearance — and maybe others — and say what he said about Walmart. One assumes it's sincere.

It's just sad to see a funny man like that suffering…though comforting in a way that he's mended enough to make even this appearance. But everyone's rooting for this guy and I'm imagining one of the biggest ovations in the history of television when he's well enough to make even a tiny cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live.

I met Betsy Palmer briefly at a thing called the Game Show Congress which was out in Burbank in 2006. Since she just passed away at the age of 88, that would mean she was 79 then. She sure didn't look it. She looked maybe fifteen years older than the last episode of the original I've Got a Secret instead of 39 years older. That was probably my favorite game show and she was an integral part of it.

She's known for that and her roles in the Friday the 13th horror movies. She should also be remembered for all the acting she did on stage and screen, including stints on Broadway shows like Same Time, Next Year and Cactus Flower. She also did a lot of regional productions of South Pacific and Annie, Get Your Gun and a few other shows that required a strong, forceful female lead who could sing. I never saw her in any of those but the reviews said she was pretty darn good in them.

I really don't have anything to say about her except that she was charming when I met her and charming on the screen. With the passing of Bess Myerson last year, Jayne Meadows not long ago and now Betsy, it means everyone who was ever a regular panelist on the original I've Got a Secret is gone. How sad.

Daniel Larison states what we all know: That newly-announced Republican candidates Santorum, Graham, Perry and Pataki have zero chance of getting their party's nomination.

He discusses, as many do, these folks' reasons for entering a contest which they can't possibly win…but I never see anyone discussing one reason that always occurs to me. It's the same reason Max Bialystock wanted to produce Springtime for Hitler. Has anyone ever really followed the money on all these going-nowhere presidential campaigns? Has anyone investigated how often the candidates profit in financial ways?  I mean, above and beyond getting Fox News contracts, book deals and higher speaking fees.

I remember one article back when Pat Buchanan was mounting his unsuccessful presidential bids that claimed he had found perfectly-legal ways to pocket a lot of the money that citizens were donating for his candidacy…like having his advertising handled by a company that his sister owned and which claimed a large percentage of the money for its services. Was that true? I dunno. I think it would be interesting to find out if any of the cash that people donate to support Rick Santorum's efforts winds up buying groceries and goodies for Rick Santorum's family.

Larison's piece is over on that well-known left-wing commie website, The American Conservative. While you're over there, you might want to read Kelley Vlahos on how John McCain and Lindsey Graham are trying to rewrite history to blame the Iraq war and ISIS on Obama.

And Rob Dreher has a piece on how some on the Fox News comment board have been enjoying the death of Joe Biden's son and the breaking of John Kerry's leg. I point this out for the benefit of my friend Roger who thinks this kind of assholishness is only on display on Liberal message boards. No, I'm afraid, all sides have some really, really swinish members.

Last night, I was stopped at one of those "pop-up" screening points that local law enforcement sets up to look for inebriated drivers. Everyone driving south on Fairfax was herded into two lanes where men who I believe were from the Sheriff's Office give us a quick check for tipsiness.

I've been through these before and they usually go like this: The officer asks me if I've had anything to drink that evening. I say no. He says, "Well, good evening to you, sir" and off I go. It always seemed to me like it would be pretty easy for someone who was a wee bit intoxicated to get through but I figured it had to do some good. I have seen them ask drivers to step out of their cars and submit to a field sobriety test of some kind.

Anyway, last night when I was stopped, it took a few minutes, not because of me but because of the driver in the car ahead of me. That person was engaged in a long discussion with an officer and I couldn't drive onward until they'd completed it. So when another officer came up to talk to me, we had a long discussion of our own. It went roughly like this…

HIM: Sir, thank you for stopping. We just want to ask you if you've had any alcoholic beverages this evening.

ME: No, I haven't had a drop in forty years.

HIM: Fine, fine. Well, as soon as the car ahead of you is done, you can be on your way. Forty years, huh? What made you stop?

ME: Well, to be honest with you, I never stopped because I never started. I've never had an alcoholic drink in my life but I've learned that some people don't believe that. They will, however, believe "I haven't had a drop in forty years."

HIM (good-naturedly:) So…you lied to me!

ME: Oh, no. What I said was absolutely true. I haven't had a drop in forty years. I also haven't had a drop in fifty years. If you want the absolute truth, I'm 63 years old and I haven't had a drop in sixty-three years. Hey, now you answer a question for me. When you stop cars and ask them what you asked me, does anyone ever say, "Yeah, I just had nineteen martinis and a couple of bourbons on the rocks"?

HIM: Not exactly like that but they do sometimes give it away that they've been drinking. If they say "Oh, I only had one glass of wine," that probably means they had more than that. If they're slurring their speech or they're acting too cute, we give them the once-over.

ME: Caught anybody tonight?

HIM: Oh, yeah. About twenty minutes ago…a whole SUV full of teenagers. We just took them away. They were all drunk, including the driver. He tried to play it cool but the others in his vehicle were so obviously plastered that we checked him out. He kept saying, "I'm not drunk. I'm the designated drinker." Not driver…drinker. He was way over the limit. Usually though, we can tell just looking at them and asking what I asked you. I asked you and you gave me a straight answer without hesitation. I knew you were fine.

Then the officer interrogating the driver ahead of me came over to him for a brief consultation. From what I could gather, the problem was not that the driver ahead of me was drunk but that she did not have one of those things called a driver's license. He had not asked her for her license but the sign telling us we had to stop said "Prepare to show license" and she had immediately started explaining to him that she'd accidentally left hers home. I had not been asked for mine and if she hadn't started explaining why she didn't have hers, the officer might never have known.

He had gotten on the radio and run her name and (I suppose) other information and he found out that there was no record of her ever having had a driver's license. He had also run the license plate number of the car she was driving and while it had not been reported as stolen, it was registered to someone else. It was a friend's car, she said, but she couldn't come up with the alleged friend's name.

Since this was obviously going to take a while, they were pulling her car out of the lane so I and others stacked up behind me could press on. Just before I was able to depart, the officer who'd spoken with me said, "See? These things do some good." I guess they do.

I am going to steal and quote the entirety of an article by Orin Kerr in The Washington Post…

If I understand the history correctly, in the late 1990s, the President was impeached for lying about a sexual affair by a House of Representatives led by a man who was also then hiding a sexual affair, who was supposed to be replaced by another Congressman who stepped down when forced to reveal that he too was having a sexual affair, which led to the election of a new Speaker of the House who now has been indicted for lying about payments covering up his sexual contact with a boy.

Yikes.

Yeah, that's pretty much what happened.

As I've mentioned someplace here, I wasn't a huge watcher of David Letterman the last ten years or so. I still admire the hell out of the guy as a brilliant, clever man…but I thought his show in its final decade became way too predictable and that the characterizations of him as grumpy or crabby were often not unfounded. Mostly though, he seemed to me uninterested. I'd tune in for a great guest, partly for the great guest but partly because a Steve Martin or a Tom Hanks would usually cause Dave to actually act like he was enjoying his own show. When he didn't, I couldn't.

On Facebook the other day, I got into a bit of back-and-forth with a friend who was declaring it a Cosmic Injustice (or something on that level) that the innovative, edgy show of Mr. David Letterman was beaten in the ratings by the (to him) non-innovative, safe show of Mr. Jay Leno. I told him that if it had been Dave's shows from the previous century being beaten by Leno's shows from this century, I'd probably agree with him. But the Dave of this century was not, to me, the Dave who did things no one — except maybe Steve Allen — had ever done before on TV. Too often for me, he was not even the guy who did things he himself had not done the previous week.

I offer as support for my position that amidst all the well-deserved tributes upon his retirement, few of those who hailed him as a great groundbreaker mentioned any groundbreaking from the last ten years. They all mentioned the Suit of Velcro (1984) or sending Larry "Bud" Melman to the bus terminal (1983) or the 360° show (1986) or crushing things with a steamroller (1983) or the Monkey-Cam (1986) or bits with Andy Kaufman or even a few things from his early days at NBC. Even the clips Dave himself showed of great moments were mainly from 10+ years back. Remember the clip he had on the last show of him working the drive-thru at Taco Bell? That was from 1996.

When the tributes mentioned more recent moments, they were almost ones where outside circumstances forced Dave into unprecedented territory: Dave returning after his heart attack, Dave revealing that he was being blackmailed, Dave holding our hands after 9/11, etc. He was terrific in how he handled them but then the next night, the comedy bit would be to send Pat the Stagehand up to throw something off the roof. Once in a while, a guest would do something to shake things up like Joaquin Phoenix clamming up or Drew Barrymore flashing — and by the way, I have now seen the clip of Drew exposing her breasts more than I've seen the one of Neil Armstrong setting foot on the moon.

Handed a challenge, he was almost always great but the show he did most nights was configured to not challenge him in any way. There were no surprises for Dave. Penn Jillette wrote a piece about a time he and Teller were on the old show at NBC…

After Penn & Teller's first appearance on his show, Letterman himself took us aside and told us privately to hit him as hard as we could in our next appearance. He asked us to be as mean to him as possible and not to let him know in advance what we were going to do.

Teller got an idea. We called the producer and told him our idea. The producer said it was too mean, we couldn't do it. We asked him to tell Dave that. The producer called back right away and said that Dave wouldn't hear the idea, he just wanted us to do it. We dropped hundreds of live cockroaches all over David Letterman. He freaked. He lost his s—. When we went to commercial, Dave swore at us and pushed us away from him. He wouldn't even look at us. He didn't say goodnight to us. But he called the next day to thank us and tell us we had done exactly what he had wanted. He said it was great TV and he welcomed us back any time.

That was the David Letterman of NBC. That was not the guy on CBS. My friends who prefer Dave over Jay all say, "I loved the old Jay." Well, I loved the old Dave. I thought both those guys took to coasting but it bothered me more with Dave.  He was so good improvising on the fly.

Before at least ten of those friends write and tell me, "I loved Dave even when he was coasting," let me say I understand that. He was a fascinating presence on our TV and I even enjoyed the early stages of that coasting after he seemed to decide he would not venture outside a controlled environment. I hope you can understand how some of us who'd been watching him avidly from the days of his morning show just felt too much déjà vu and also that a guy with his power shouldn't be acting like he was doing his own show under duress.

At some point, I realized that I had a filter available to me…a way of watching for Dave's good moments without sitting through the interviews he clearly didn't want to be doing, the monologue jokes he did without enthusiasm and the desk spots when he complained about things that shouldn't be troubling a guy with his clout and dough. All I had to do was unSeason-Pass my TiVo, not watch the regular telecasts and catch the great, filtered excerpts on YouTube.

Here's one from 2007. I think I was still TiVoing Dave every night at this point but I was watching with a less effective filter — my Fast Forward button. He did not venture out from behind his desk for this one…just sat there and made smartass remarks, but I did laugh out loud at it. They sent guys dressed as Spider-Man — and when they ran out of those costumes, other characters — into a Jamba Juice outlet across the street. The joke, of course, turned out to be that no one in New York City seemed to care one bit. (It helps to remember, by the way, that this was four years before the Spider-Man musical down the street. Guys walking around in Spider-Man costumes were a little more unusual then than they would soon be…but still, no one cared.)

That was funny enough but there were two added elements to the joke for some of us, one being that this Jamba Juice was located in the building that then housed the offices of DC Comics.

Also, you'd never know it from much of the publicity but Spider-Man was co-created by a very gifted man named Steve Ditko who, as was too frequent in comics once upon a time, received neither proper credit nor moola for his contribution. His contributions included designing that iconic costume and much, much more.

Watching this, I was aware that Mr. Ditko's office was (and I believe still is) not far from that Jamba Juice. He could well have been walking down that street at that hour. He might even have decided to stop into that Jamba Juice for a refreshing Mango-a-Go-Go® Smoothie. The bit's even funnier when you imagine that and his reaction…

The Jennie-O company makes about eighty-seven thousand different turkey products, a few of which grace almost every supermarket in Los Angeles. They make your turkey burgers and your turkey franks and your turkey sausage and your ground turkey and your turkey bratwurst and your turkey bacon and your oven-ready turkey breast and your turkey meatballs and your turkey pastrami and your turkey ham and your whole turkeys and…well, you should grasp the concept by now.

My favorite Jennie-O product, as I've mentioned here before, is something they call Turkey Pot Roast (or sometimes, Bone-in Turkey Pot Roast). This is a turkey thigh that's been slow-cooked via a process that makes the meat very tender. In previous posts here, I've itemized the reasons I like them…

1. They taste great.
2. They're easy to make and you can do it without any prep. If at 7:00, you get the urge for turkey, you grab one out of your refrigerator, pop it in the microwave and you can be dining on one of these by 7:15. These are lifesavers when I have one of my difficult-to-plan days…which lately is every day.
3. They're healthy. Or at least healthier than anything else I'd be likely to eat if I didn't have one of these available.
4. And they're cheap…about $3.33 a pound for cooked, almost-boneless turkey. One Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roast usually weighs in around three pounds so for ten bucks, I get an awful lot of good, cheap meals. They also reheat rather well.
5. And did I mention they taste great?  They do.

Note the part about heating them up in your microwave at home. When last I wrote about these, the Jennie-O folks were marketing them two ways. One was what I just described. The other was a version — basically the same but with the skin left on — that supermarkets could purchase to heat up and sell the same way they sell hot rotisserie chickens. This version I don't like as much because…well, here: I'll make another list…

1. They don't give me the above-described convenience of having a supply in the fridge, thereby being able to heat one up whenever I want one. The unpredictability of my life demands that I have something like that available and Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roasts are the best thing I've found that fits into that category.
2. The stores that carry the already-heated ones are some distance from me. The nearest one is about a half-hour drive and they don't always have them.
3. And sometimes when they do, they've been sitting out in the display case being kept warm for hours. Not as good.

So that, as I've written here, is why I decided to always keep a few of the "home" version in my icebox — which is what I did until a few months ago when the Jennie-O folks stopped making that kind.

You may recall I was always on the hunt for them. First, I bought them at Costcos. Then one Costco after another in my town stopped carrying them, despite my repeated calls and urging.  I don't know why they stopped.  Maybe they had to make room for the display of thirty-gallon canisters of A-1 Sauce.

But that was okay because I found out that the Fresh & Easy chain carried them. Unfortunately, the Fresh & Easy chain keeps being acquired and changing management and at some point, they ceased to carry Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roasts. (You want to know why the Fresh & Easy company has been in so much trouble? Try calling them up and asking them to carry a product. I don't think their Customer Service department ever imagined they might have to service a customer.)

But that was okay because shortly after they stopped, the Ralphs supermarket chain began carrying them. That was the easiest of all for me and I was very happy. Now, Ralphs has stopped carrying them…and so have enough other retailers across the land that the Jennie-O company no longer packages the kind you take home and keep in your refrigerator until needed. They may bring them back at some point…and then again, they may not.

So says a senior exec at the Jennie-O company who was inordinately helpful in telling me where to purchase this product back when they made this product. Since they don't at the moment, she has now set me up with someone at one of the markets that sells the other kind, the kind they heat and sell next to their rotisserie chickens. The nice lady at Jennie-O has arranged for me to purchase them unheated from that market.

I mention all this because my past endorsements of Jennie-O Turkey Pot Roasts brought a lot of messages from folks who said they'd tried 'em and loved 'em. I wanted to alert you that if you're looking for them, you're not going to find them where you once did…now. They may come back. They may not. But they can be had in the deli section of some markets, all warmed and ready to take home. (In Los Angeles, they're often at outlets of Jon's Market and also Sprouts. Sprouts is a chain that's kind of like Whole Foods Markets only the selection is better and you can buy meat there without taking out a second mortgage on your home.)

If you find a place that sells them hot and you want to buy them cold, ask to speak to the manager of that department. You may have to buy them as I do in quantity, in vacuum pouches that contain several.

And that's all I have to say on the topic. This has been your update on Turkey Pot Roasts. Stay tuned to this website for late-breaking news on the vital topic of Turkey Pot Roasts. I'm Mark Evanier, your Turkey Pot Roast reporter. Thanks for listening.