Las Vegas Gleaner

Curses! Foiled again!

Even operating from The Original Heartland, bitchy little area megalomaniac (BLAM) Sheldon Adelson could not buy a victory for a War Party drone in a hitherto safe Republican congressional district in Mississippi (AP).

Freedom's Watch, Adelson's personal congressional campaign finance machine, dropped more than a half-million dollars to remind the good people of Mississippi that Barack Obama is a black man just like that one pastor who was in the news last month, and Obama is a Democrat, so don't vote for Democrats  (WSJ). Adelson's contribution was on top of about $1.3 million that the National Republican Congressional Committee threw at the race(TPM).

Alas, Democrat Travis Childers eked out a victory over the War Party's Greg Davis anyway, marking the third time in as many months that Adelson and his underlings at the NRCC have seen one their puppets go down to defeat.

On the bright side, Adelson was able to withstand this bitter loss while in Israel, where there is a more than ample supply of guns and religion to which one can cling in difficult times.

Miniglean

• "U.S. tycoon" (or "bitchy little megalomaniac" as he's known to his friends) Sheldon Adelson is in Israel for Zionist Aggression Celebration Week or whatever they call it, and it turns out he is beloved and courted by corrupt politicians in that nation, too. Haaretz.com
• Dina Titus had somebody else pay her filing fee to unseat Congressman Cad/Dork/Hack Jon Porter, providing yet another example of how Democrats tend to be more fiscally sound than their borrow-and-spend kookwit counterparts. NVDems, AP
• "Obama’s remarkably swift and complete consolidation of Democratic Party power [is] an unprecedented seizure of control that has built him, over the course of a year, the most powerful field organization and the largest financial network in American politics, leaving many existing structures — traditional party organizations in many states, the Clintons’ long-nurtured national network — in the dust" (Politico). But, but, Hillary says you can't be president unless you win West Virginia!
• Meet West Virginia. AP video via Wonkette
• What with members of Congress calling for a criminal investigation of the Crandall Canyon mining tragedy in Utah, and this being the first presidential election year since the Sago disaster in West Virginia, you'd think West Virginia's little primary thingy would have been a good opportunity for Clinton and even Obama to attack the core Republican belief that mining corporations should be allowed to kill a few of employees from time to time. And again you'd be wrong. Maybe they didn't want to discomfort Harry Reid with radical talk about holding mining corporations accountable.
• In a stunning and unexpected reversal, that batshit crazy preacher, fearful of the negative impact he's having on the presidential race, takes it all back and says he's sorry. AP

Nevada man hopes to carry on powerful Quayle legacy

An old adage says there are two things that everyone thinks they know how to do better than everyone else, and one of them is run a newspaper.

But there's a third thing that everyone seems to think they know how to do better than anyone else — picking vice-presidential candidates.

And so those of you who are convinced that some U.S. senator or other should be on a presidential undercard may want to consult The Hill, which asked all 97 senators who aren't running for prez if they'd accept the second banana job.

Of local note, Nevada's prettiest senator, John Ensign, said "It’s so much a hypothetical it’s not even worth answering," which loosely translates to "Oh god please let it be me please please please please."

In addition to the Dan Quayle precedent whereby splendidly coiffed industrial heirs with magnificent golf swings get to be vice president (pictured, John Ensign version 1.0), several other disturbing reasons why Sen. Hairdo McWedgeshot would make an ideal vice-presidential nominee for the War Party have been inventoried in a prior post.

Meantime, Sen. Harry Reid told The Hill that "I’m looking forward to serving the people of Nevada and leading an expanded majority in the U.S. Senate well into the future," which needn't be translated at all because nobody gives a shit because there's no way in hell Obama would ever consider Reid.

As a living breathing human unit, the lowly Gleaner is just like everyone else: absolutely convinced of personal rightness and infallibility vis-a-vis who should be selected as a running mate. Which is to say when Joe Biden answered "I’m happy being called ‘Mr. Chairman,’" clearly, he was just being coy.

The Nevada Way

A Lake Tahoe elitist who lied about being in a band, but not a particularly good or interesting band, accuses another Lake Tahoe elitist of molesting his daughter, and the latter elitist in turn is defended by a French-cuffs-wearing governor who has been accused of molesting a single mother, so now the elitist accused of molesting the other elitist's daughter is going to hook up with the snazzily-cuffed governor, who also by the way is definitely not having an extramarital affair so that isn't news, and together with a handful of greedy bidnesspeople who hate government, they'll decide what's best for the state and it's future while everyone else shuffles along quietly like innocent bystanders. Go Nevada! (RJ, Sebelius, Monger)

Agent of change (And bills. And checks. Credit cards accepted too.)

It might be hard to tell ... Islamofascists, Mexicans, Terry Schaivo —  House Republicans are always jumping up and down in fits of apoplectic rage over some damned thing or another. But if the Republican loses a special election in Mississippi Tuesday, that should be just about enough to trip the pronounced House GOP angst over the edge and into full-on panic.

Newt Gingrich and some disaffected War Party ideologues (oh, that's a redundancy) are already alarmed and warning that busting out favored tricks from the old playbook — brainless warmongering, eager government-hating, calling people liberals, etc. — isn't going to work this time. GOP candidates, especially in competitive districts, have to be for something.

Or as House minority leader John Boehner put it in a memo to colleagues, "We can't win SOLELY by tying our opponents to Barack Obama and his liberal views. We also have to prove Republicans are agents of change" (WaPo).

Boehner and Co. still don't have any, you know, specifics, but they at least unveiled a motto Monday. You know how Obama's slogan is "Change we can believe in." The War Party House folks are going with "Change You Deserve" (NYT), which of course raises the questions, Why do Republicans hate Americans so much? What did Americans do to "deserve" the next batch of whatever sad, angry and pernicious policies Republicans come up with?

And speaking of Rep. Jon Porter ...

The Sun took a look at Porter and Democratic challenger Dina Titus on issues in Nevada's House CD3 race. Though an early and rather cursory overview, it's still instructive.

For instance, dusting off a talking point from, oh, 2005, Porter reiterates his commitment to staying in Iraq to "get this job done."

Porter is also against "socialized medicine." And Porter proudly boasts "I'm against amnesty."

What else do "socialized medicine" and "amnesty" have in common, besides being things that Jon Porter says he's against? They are things that virtually nobody is for. Arguably the only place that "socialized medicine" exists is in the minds of people like Porter. Likewise, there is no serious legislative effort to grant undocumented immigrants "amnesty." (One of Gleaner's recent CityLife columns, the one that hounded Robert Daskas out of the CD3 race [just kidding, mostly] reviews the myths about "socialized medicine" and "amnesty").

So to recap: Porter wants to thump his chest and say "support the troops" over and over again while standing firmly opposed to non-existent threats.

Change? Porter was reportedly going to officially file for re-election Monday, but his campaign is already stale and tiresome.

He's looking out for you

Some enterprising video archive afficionado embedded this over at the big orange blog and the email cascade ensued and now here it is for you. Be forewarned the audio is not safe for work. And it doesn't really have anything to do with anything, in keeping with O'Reilly's carnival barking shtick of a career generally. Funny though.

UPDATE: Oh looky, the YouTubes has made the nice man's video go away. It was a profanity-laced temper tantrum, for those who missed it. UPDATED UPDATE: Thanks to the commentariat for noting that Gawker still has the clip.

Oh well, it's probably been a while since you've read the transcript (TSG, bottom o' page) of that taped conversation where O'Reilly threatened that poor woman with "the falafel thing." That's not safe for work either, btw.

Presidential race swings back to Nevada

Even as the husk of the once mighty Borg finds it's way to history's dustbin, the emphasis on white people who don't have any schoolin' and so will probably vote Republican anyway will continue, particularly when Obama and McCain duke it out over Pennsylvania and Ohio.

But now that the general election has pretty much started, it's time to revisit the not-so-distant past and watch the media return to writing lots of thumb-sucking navel-gazing stories about a demographic group that is even more interesting and dynamic, namely, Mexicans.

Over the weekend the NYT took a gander at where the swing states are and, best as can be discerned, why:

Hispanic voters could find themselves drawing more attention from presidential candidates than ever before. Their votes could prove critical in determining whether Democrats capture states like Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico and whether Republicans have any chance of being competitive in California.

Mr. McCain’s identification with legislation that would have permitted some illegal immigrants to attain citizenship, a position he moved away from in the primaries but never renounced, gives him an opportunity to compete for those voters, who except for Cubans in Florida appear to have largely settled into the Democratic camp in recent years.

Mr. Obama also supported measures that would have allowed immigrants to attain citizenship but struggled to win over Hispanic voters in his primary fight, signaling a potential problem for him in the fall campaign. Mr. Obama’s aides said the endorsement by Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico, one of the nation’s most prominent Hispanic leaders, could prove more critical in the general election than in the primary.

Both sides say the states clearly in play now include Colorado, Florida, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin.

Republicans said they hoped to put New Jersey and possibly California into play; Democrats said African-Americans could make Mr. Obama competitive in Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina. Mr. Obama’s advisers said they had a strong chance of taking Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio and Virginia away from the Republican column.

In case the three mentions in five paragraphs left any doubt, it appears that the campaigns are certain  Nevada is going to be a swing state. Again.

That's tough for McCain. Not just because he doesn't have any organization in Nevada to speak of because he didn't care about the state or it's War Party caucuses and didn't even compete here. And not just because he thinks dumping all the nation's nuclear waste in Nevada is a great idea. And not just because the Nevada War Party, by virtue of harboring and sheltering the nation's worst and creepiest governor (pictured, explaining to McCain a year ago that it's "Gibbons" not "Gibson") is a laughingstock throughout the state and beyond. And not just because Nevada is lousy with libertarian kookwits, both in the Republican Party and out, who normally might be expected to vote with the War Party but many of whom will likely jump on board the Bob Barr bandwagon to nowhere instead. 

Though that stuff will hurt.

Inasmuch as McCain was for comprehensive immigration reform before he was against it, he now can claim to come down on both sides of the issue depending on his audience and so yes, of candidates that the War Party might have nominated for president, McCain might be the least repugnant to Latinos.

But it's often said, usually by Latinos, that Latino voters have most of the same concerns as everybody else. And that's probably true when it comes to McCain. Whatever his position on immigration at any given time, McCain has remained steadfastly consistent in being a 187-year-old warmonger who doesn't know jack about the economy. That's what'll sink him.

Miniglean: Mr. Lucky

• First it was the Paultard and the Muthtard. Then it was Jim and Dawn. Now it's Bruce James and John Mason (KLAS, RJ). Is there no end to the bizarre, tawdry and hilariously entertaining spats between creepy War Party wingnuts 'round here? Here's hoping the answer is no.
• Overpaid War Party apparatchik Pete Ernaut in the Reno paper: "The divorce and some of the other things present challenges, but I believe his re-electability is going to be more defined by how he handles the budget crisis and the dire issues facing the 2009 Legislature." So, the political future of the nation's worst governor hinges on whether Democrats in the Legislature stand up to him? Lucky sonofabitch.
• Separate overpaid War Party apparatchik (can't swing a cat in this state without hitting one) Ryan Erwin in the same story: "If the divorce reveals personal trust issues of significant proportions, it will not help him." Well, the extramarital affair that the governor definitely isn't having still isn't news. Lucky sonofabitch.
• Anybody know who's doing Dawn's PR? They're awfully good. RJ

Area woman foolishly enables Clinton's sad, tragic denial

Apologies for being the last website in the United States to note that the most apt analysis of what's left of the Hillary Clinton campaign was not performed by Karen Tumulty in Time, or by Peggy Noonan (of all people) in the WSJ, but in the Monty Python scene with the Black Knight.

Now, if only Rep. Shelley Berkley would get it.

Berkley, D-Tel Aviv and Las Vegas, is one of 16 17 Democratic members of Congress who signed off on a letter Friday urging the party's superdelegates to ignore all that stuff about who has the most votes and who has the most delegates, and just give the party's presidential nomination to Hillary Clinton anyway because she's not black.

OK, that's paraphrasing. But not much.

"Hillary has won the big battleground states by connecting with voters whose support we must have to win the general election," Berkley and friends write.

What voters might those be? Why, "working, hard-working Americans, white Americans," as the former first lady helpfully explained to USAToday earlier in the week, "whites in both states who had not completed college ..."

Berkley and her moderate-to-conservative-to-bluedog colleagues also touted Clinton's "ability to connect with voters we must deliver in the fall, including blue collar Democrats who can sway this election as they have in the past."

Hey, isn't that supposed to read white blue collar Democrats?

Granted, as a politician from Nevada, Berkley's constituency, pound-for-pound, likely includes more white people without a college education than is found in the average congressional district. But while the Clinton campaign has cynically embraced and even disgustingly exploited ugly prejudices in an effort to "connect" with the least educated and most fearful and ignorant among the citizenry, it should be noted that Berkley is not a member of that demographic. In fact, she's a bit of a smarty boots.

As such, she knows damned good and well that it's over, that the former first lady isn't going to win the presidency this year (and probably not ever).

No one expects Berkley to say that publicly at this stage of the game. She is a Clinton supporter, loyalty is a virtue and Obama will secure the nomination in due course without Berkley saying anything one way or the other.

But pretty much the entire Democratic Party is — for now — showing a little patience and hoping that Clinton snaps out of it and calls it a day, preferably sooner rather than later, and stops flailing around in hopeless but nonetheless disturbing futility. The last thing Berkley should be doing is egging her on.

Extramarital affair that nation's worst governor definitely isn't having still isn't news

• Now Canadians are chortling over the worst governor in the nation, too. Oh, our nation. Not their socialized medicine-riddled Iraq invasion-hating nanny state. NationalPost
• Amid growing cries of "vive la feminista" (no one tell Dean Heller), Dawn wins one, gets divorce case moved to Reno (AP), a town where the nation's worst governor might be thought to be having an affair if it hadn't been asserted by his official spokester definitively and in no uncertain terms that the governor is not having an affair.
• That assertion, btw, just makes salaciously crafted wild rumor-mongering about how the governor rekindled a new flame with an old girlfriend all the more reprehensible and irresponsible. So here's the link.
• "Who's Kathy?" asks a commenter on the Reno paper's website after a couple other commenters make reference to the mysterious person who obviously Jim Gibbons couldn't be having an affair with because his spokester says the governor isn't having an affair. Whoever else at Nevada news organizations may find the question of the nation's worst governor's fidelity or lack thereof icky and beneath them, it isn't the web maintenance people. Thankfully.
• Really, there are so many subjects to which one could turn on any given day to underscore how Nevada's governor is the nation's worst. The New York Times, for instance, goes with the hepatitis thing.

Oh fergawdsake just resign already

"This hysteria has been created by people not getting the right information," the nation's worst governor said in March. "The fact is they haven't found more than those six people (who contracted hepatitis C)."

Thursday, public health officials announced that 77 more people have been diagnosed with hepatitis C because of shoddy practices at incompetently regulated and under-inspected outpatient clinics.

Sebelius about sums it up. Again.

Big bad Democrats continue mean attacks on poor little rich man's recreational spending

In contrast to local Democrats, who hush and take money from him, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has filed yet another complaint against Sheldon Adelson, or to be precise, Freedom's Watch, the wingnut warmongering propaganda arm generously financed by the bitchy little area megalomaniac.

The latest complaint charges that Freedom's Watch isn't reporting its spending on teevee ads it has run against Democratic congressional candidates in special elections in Louisiana (won by the Democrat) and Mississippi (election next week). The complaint follows earlier ones filed with the Federal Election Commission alleging that Freedom's Watch is coordinating advertising with the National Republican Congressional Committee in violation of federal election laws.

"Freedom’s Watch is operating as the cash-strapped NRCC’s de facto independent expenditure campaign," the DCCC said in a release Thursday. "Clearly, Freedom’s Watch thinks they are above the law," the DCCC added, insightfully drawing everyone's attention to one of the key delusions that so often accompanies megalomania.

For it's part, when it's not hiding behind Adelson's skirt, the NRCC is stuck in a jam. In a giant clam. Or, as Politico's Joe Bresnahan put it in a delightful lede to a story this week: "Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money."

More from that story:

...in a closed-door session at the Capitol, National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) told members that the NRCC doesn’t have enough cash to "save them" in November if they don’t raise enough money or run strong campaigns themselves.

So War Party members o' Congress nationwide increasingly might be hoping our bitchy little area megalomaniac can "save" them.

But wait — "As the NRCC looks to Freedom’s Watch to save them," the DCCC said in its release Thursday, "the NRCC, Republican Members, and Republican candidates need to decide whether it’s worth it to return to the hay days of Republicans’ culture of corruption by being tied to a group that regularly breaks the law."

Yes, well, three points:

1. Republicans and "a group that regularly breaks the law" is a redundancy.

2. The DCCC's persistent reluctance to single out Adelson by name in its media assaults on Freedom's Watch is increasingly confounding, and one can only hope that omission will be rectified when the DCCC actually starts using some of its substantial cash advantage to discredit Freedom's Watch — and Adelson  — in teevee ads aired in districts where Adelson is throwing money around later this year. Some suggested language, in case the DCCC missed it the first time:  "What does the world's 12th richest man, a Las Vegas gambling kingpin who is building a casino empire in China, expect to get in return for helping elect (insert War Party candidate) to Congress? Will (insert War Party candidate) be good for (insert state), or good for Chinese casinos?"

3. It's "heydays," not "hay days."

Phoning it in with Frank

Frank Fahrenkopf, former head of the Republican National Committee, co-chairman of the Commission on Presidential Debates, current head of the American Gambling, er, Gaming Association and overall long-time member in good standing of the Washington D.C. club for rich white guys in ties recently took a break from his busy schedule packed with important duties to write a letter to CityLife blasting one of the Gleaner's columns that appeared in that free weekly with sex ads in the back.

Fahrenkopf's trigger was tripped by the column's contention that the amount of casino industry revenue generated by local people with gambling problems is a) vastly underestimated and b) something that Official Nevada doesn't want to talk about.

Writing in defense of the special interest he has represented in Washington for so long, Fahrenkopf characterized the column as an "outrageous commentary" based on "utter fallacy."

So severe an admonishment from such a powerful and respected beltway lobbyist made quite an impression on the lowly Gleaner.

In fact, it seemed the only responsible thing to do was to write another column about how the casino industry's bottom line is fattened by problem and pathological gamblers, but this time featuring a close examination of Fahrenkopf's strongly worded denials.

So please read the Gleaner's latest column in CityLife. Perhaps you can help settle a matter of no doubt deep and growing concern to Nevada's casino industry — whether Frank has lost a step, or he just doesn't care anymore.

For what it's worth...

Fatigued by the media's politeness, the Gleaner figured ah what the hell and sent an email to Ben Kieckhefer, spokester for one James Arthur Gibbons, governor (in exile) of the state of Nevada:

From: Hugh Jackson
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2008 2:08 PM
To: Ben Kieckhefer
Subject: a question...

Hi Ben, I have an on-the-record question:

Is the governor having an affair?

Subject: RE: a question...
From:"Ben Kieckhefer"
Date:Wed, May 07, 2008 2:44 pm
To:"Hugh Jackson"

No.

And so there it is, on the record. From a spokester, anyway.

Assorted gleanettes from the madcap world of Jim and Dawn

• "Why now?" asks local columnist. To reiterate, there seems to be a false premise underlying the entire discussion about Jim and Dawn's madcap divorce, and that is the assumption that either unstable whack job is acting in a rational manner. Which is to say one can ask questions such as "Why now?" but, really, why bother?
• Yes, goodness, how awkward for the media to cover this oh-so sensitive issue. But demanding openness would be a start, says the RJ's Smith and the Sun in an editorial — though neither jumps on the Gleaner's call for the media to mount a gubernatorial stakeout. Having said that, one can't argue with Smith's assertion that if the nation's worst governor "wanted to keep his divorce private, he should have resigned from public office." The suggestion comes a tad late, though; the nation's worst governor should have resigned when he started his administration with a lie — and not just any lie, but a lie wherein he cynically tried to use the "war on terror" to mask a tawdry bureaucratic act of vengeance on his predecessor.
• Welcome readers from far and wide who saw the url for the lowly Gleaner in the wire service story in your local newspapers. Expecting someone taller? Sorry. Anyway, here's the post that's mentioned in story, ifn's that's what yer looking for, though this one certainly features more in the way of mean-spirited rumor-mongering.
• Emerging feminist cause celebre Dawn Gibbons seeks a change of venue (AP, RGJ). Apparently she doesn't trust a judge who ordered the case sealed at her idiot husband's request without even telling her lawyer the request had been filed. Women are so suspicious.

Heller offers agenda of hope to frightened, hateful voters

Obscure War Party congressman and cute blond trophy spouse Dean Heller says he is in tune with the ignorance-driven paranoia of the fearful, cloistered constituents who elected him, so they should return him for a second term of ineffective representation laced with silly wingnut rhetoric.

Specifically, it makes heartland heads hurt to think about America's catastrophically bungled and morally offensive warmongering. And any serious consideration of the structural causes for national and global economic instability is precluded within most of Heller's district as it would require an abandonment of simplistic and vulgarized conservative ideologies that Heller's supporters hold so dear.

Not surprisingly, then, the one issue that Heller says he hears about the most from his thoughtful electoral base is the pressing need to require that federal ballots be printed only in English (RJ, RJ, RGJ).

Heller's bill would make an exception for ballots printed in Native American languages because, as the blond explains, "they were here first" — by which he appears to mean "they were here before blond Republicans like me."

In 1776 when America was still an English colony and the "American" notion of wilderness didn't extend much west of Boonesborough, Spanish explorers were scouting Heller's congressional district.

A half-century or so later, trappers would work the region. In French, often as not.

The Mexican territory that would become the state of Nevada was ceded to the United States under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War in 1848 — three years before Willard Romney's ancestors would establish the first "white" settlement in the state. Among the treaty's provisions was a stipulation that the civil rights of Mexican nationals living in the ceded territory would be protected.

Meantime, in recognition of his constituency's empassioned nationalism, Heller is also reportedly drafting legislation to change the name of the state from Nevada, which is the un-American and offensively Spanish word for "snow-covered," to the more patriotically appropriate "Whiteland."

Hillary still not president some more

Oh look, despite the overwhelming support of her key constituency (rural white Catholic senior citizen female truckers without a college education, pictured, at right), Hillary Clinton still isn't going to be president any time soon.

All the embarrassing performances by her husband the former ex-president, all those new personalities and personae adopted as quickly as the old ones were discarded, all the pandering, the pathos, the pantsuits — it was all for nothing, as an apparent split decision between Indiana and North Carolina effectively amounts to sound and fury signifying no more than the next inexorable step toward the nomination of Barack Obama that has been inevitable for months.

What's even worse for the Clintons is that notwithstanding their best efforts to render the Democratic nomination wholly worthless on the theory that if they don't get it this year they can come back in 2012 and try, try again, Obama is still going to win the presidency because John McCan't is such an old stinky fart. But for now, of course, it's time for the media noise machine to spend a week pretending West Virginia matters.

Miniglean

• "She doesn't believe that just because her husband is trying to divorce her that she should not be performing acts for the common good," says lawyer for Nevada First Lady and feminist icon-in-the-making Dawn Gibbons (LVRJ). Quite the contrary — dragging the nation's worst governor through a humiliating public divorce is easily the most significant act for the common good Dawn Gibbons has ever performed. Story also underscores yet again how Gov. Wussy McScaredofhiswife has to ask the court to give him his governor's mansion back because he doesn't have the balls to go get it himself.
• "The public is entitled to know the affairs of and the nature of the governor's activities," adds everyone's new favorite lawyer (RGJ). Sounds like another vote for the media stakeout.
• WaPo runs an overview of the story so far, no doubt prompting something along the lines of ... "Hey," says Congressman X, "did you see the story about that dullard from Nevada getting a divorce?" "Which one?" asks Congressman Y. "Gibbons," answers Rep. X. "Who?" asks Rep. Y? "Glassy-eyes, shit-for-brains, Pombo's boy," breaks in Congressman Z after overhearing the conversation. "Oh yeah, forgot about that dumbass," says Rep. Y, nodding in acknowledgment. "They elected him governor? Damned Nevadans must be as stupid as he is."
• Ooh, you too can get the latest exciting news about who is filing for political offices from Congress to the Legislature all the way down to the Overton Power District 5 race! (County Election site). Of course you may prefer to spend time in front of your computer screen in a more interesting and productive manner, in which there's always Bejeweled 2.
• If Harry Reid's book is as entertaining as his appearance on the Daily Show, well, again, there's always Bejeweled 2.
• Another Tuesday, another pair of pointless contests in the miserable battle for the once-highly valued but now increasingly damaged prize that is the Democratic presidential nomination. Yay, Democrats! Yay, Clintons!

What could he possibly have to hide?

Hoping to keep details about his philandering, shady deals, corrupt practices, boorish behavior and mental instability from showing up in headlines, the nation's worst governor managed to get a judge to agree to seal the records in the governor's madcap divorce case against his wacky wife.

Reports AP:

The judge cited a state law that says a judge “shall, upon demand of either party, direct that the trial and issue or issues of fact joined therein be private.” Under that law, Gibbons’ lawyer can move for secrecy and first lady Dawn Gibbons’ attorney can’t challenge him.

The order says the divorce complaint, filed Friday along with the secrecy request, plus any answers and replies, the court’s findings, judgment and any orders will be public.

But “all other papers, records, proceedings and evidence, including exhibits and transcript of the testimony ... shall be sealed,” the order states, adding that during the trial nobody other than the Gibbonses, family members, their lawyers and their witnesses can be present.

So when Dawn files an affidavit explaining that she knows exactly what happened to all the bribe money and gambling chips Warren Trepp forked over during that cruise, but that she lied about it to federal investigators to protect her husband, and ergo, he owes her big time, that will be kept secret. After all, it is just a personal matter.

The same goes for other almost-certain filings in the case, like, say, Dawn's tear-jerking account of how Jim deliberately and mean-spiritedly flaunted the fact of his mistress in front of Dawn at every opportunity, and/or the report from the private investigator that Dawn hired months ago and who has been documenting exactly where Jim goes and who he goes there with.

OK, maybe there isn't a private investigator's report. Neither Jim nor Dawn Gibbons has demonstrated any competence to speak of in any area of endeavor for quite some time so there's no reason to suppose one or both of them would be accomplished at tearing each to smithereens.

Which is why when the Gleaner was on Ralston's TV show Monday along with the pretty much always entertaining Steve Wark, and Ralston, after noting our earlier (and not uninteresting) dialogue about the role of the media in covering Jim and Dawn's big adventure, asked how the media should be treating the story now, lowly Gleaner was pleased to promptly suggest that what the media should be doing is staking out Jim Gibbons.

Prurient interest? But of course. The mean hope that revelations will humiliate the nation's most disgusting governor and further damage any ability he might have to advance his tortured agenda designed to take the state backward? Yes, Gleaner's motives are wholly transparent.

But there's also a credibility thing. Gov. Perv McScurve wants her to pay his legal fees, and maybe even pay him alimony (Perv wants spousal support "awarded pursuant to law"). But if while he's going after her, he is in fact the one engaged in behavior that makes her the injured party, it raises a question that even a Republican might ask: Exactly what would be the subject matter or item of public policy on which Nevadans could trust the nation's most embarrassing governor? Or, put another way, is there anything he wouldn't lie about?

True, it's hard to imagine a task more thankless or just plain icky than shadowing Pervus McSkanktard. But in those awkward moments that are bound to arise as the media is following Jim Gibbons in shifts from another bungling day at the office to love nest liaisons and back again, reporters could pass a little time by asking him a question or two, like, oh, if he ever entertains second thoughts about voting to impeach Bill Clinton.

'Porter's nudge greenward'

Eager to come up with something that would allow him to use the word "green" in a context other than the $216,000 he has scarfed up from the oil and gas industry over the years, Rep. Jon Porter has proposed a tax break for rental car companies that buy hybrid cars (Sun).

Ever since narrowly winning reelection in 2006, Porter has been scrambling to find ways to present himself as something other than what he is, i.e., a career politician and an obedient little War Party wingnut who shuts up and does whatever he's told by  by his corporate financiers, White House messengers and his Republican congressional masters.

Porter's support for the greening of rental car fleets may be the most drastic departure yet from his customarily unforgiving right-wing ideology — not because it demonstrates some dramatically newfound  concern for the environment (rest assured, that's a hoax), but because it reflects a stark abandonment of faith in market forces: Thanks to the oppressive price of gas, made possible in no small part because of Porter's continued dedication to the putting the interests of oil companies ahead of those of his constituents, hybrid sales are skyrocketing and rental car companies are already transforming their fleets.

That's not to say that the tax break Porter proposes is wholly redundant or a bad thing. Long-term energy sanity will require thousands of initiatives to promote conservation, and a rental company tax break is one of them.

But that tax break or even support for a couple dozen similarly relatively smallish ideas don't offset Porter's vote for the Cheney energy bill that gave oil & gas and nuke corporations $8 billion in tax breaks, or his vote against tax credits to promote renewable sources, electric cars and energy efficient homes.

No matter how glowingly written (or how nauseating it's accompanying photograph), the occasional mainstream news story about the hack/dork/cad getting behind non-controversial micro-policies is not going to convince voters that he's had an epiphany on the environment and that now he's, you know, "for" it.