Las Vegas Gleaner

Sharron Angle and Harry Reid are both hated, scorned and laughably unelectable, survey says

The latest survey from the other sketchy outfit that regularly polls Nevada's hilarious Senate race finds the electorate split right down the middle: 45 percent of likely voters can't stand Harry Reid so they'll hold their noses and vote for Sharron Angle, and 45 percent are horrified by Sharron Angle so they'll hold their noses and vote for Harry Reid

The candidates have been locked in a statistical/mutual dead heat of wholesale voter disdain and disgust for weeks, and if that pattern continues, the super-dooper Senate race will probably be settled by a handful of extremely low-information borderline morons -- or "independent voters," as the media calls them -- who somehow will manage to make it to a polling place and then decide at the last minute whether they want to keep Harry Reid as the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a related development, sort of ... J. Patrick Coolican, who used to write for the Sun and could have stayed in Nevada to cover The Most Important Election Ever but was too snooty and elitist to be intrigued or amused by the doings of the always thoughtful Nevada electorate so moved to California where he will be taxed into the stone age, stripped of his guns and forced to gay marry an illegal immigrant, has put together an item for the venerable Nation saying that if Reid loses, he'll be "getting what he deserves," though not for the ludicrous reasons spouted out of Sharron Angle's nutjob piehole.

Dawn Gibbons seeks divorce from Sharron Angle

The stunning 15-month-old news that failed Republican Dawn Gibbons is supporting whatshisname, that guy who's running against Sharron Angle, has understandably surprised and confused more than a few Nevadans. Indeed, I think I speak for everyone when I ask, Why weren't Dawn and/or Jim Gibbons selected to be on the exciting new season of Dancing with the Stars?

Nothing good ever happens in Nevada, sniffle.

Anyway, whatever the political impact of Dawn disclosing how she and Sharron Angle sadly and tragically discovered that irreconcilable differences doomed their relationship, Angle can make it all better when she rolls out her much-anticipated endorsement from beloved American lemonade maker Bristol Palin.

Sharron Angle finally gets something right...

...characterizes American policy as "militaristic."

Las Vegas police refrain from shooting disturbed but harmless woman

In a dramatic departure from standard operating procedure, Southern Nevada law enforcement authorities confronted and apprehended a visibly troubled woman without killing her Friday.

The failure to shoot to kill former professional pseudo-celebrity Paris Hilton was widely viewed as an early test of recent revisions adopted by the Metropolitan Police Department whereby officers are encouraged to occasionally allow unarmed, non-violent suspects to live.

Officials cautioned that the new procedures are still being reviewed and may have to be further revised, depending on practical results in the field. Authorities also stressed that the new guidelines for officers notwithstanding, when citizens are shot and killed by police, no matter what the circumstances, the shootings will be ruled justified, and the officers involved will be fully exonerated, in accordance with long-standing policy.

The high-profile decision not to  fire on Hilton unnecessarily is sure to stir strong sentiments in a community that tends to support established practice allowing police to shoot whoever they want whenever they want because they can.

Meantime, Republican Party officials expressed relief that police refrained from shooting Hilton, who is generally viewed as the party's most effective spokesperson for eliminating the estate tax.

Growing number of Nevadans disillusioned with war on Harry Reid

Why would the Las Vegas Review-Journal want to ask true patriotic Americans desperately longing for "Anyone Butt Harry Reid" if they wish their Republican Senate nominee was Anyone Butt Sharron Angle?

Because it's never too early to start making excuses for why everything you've been saying with so much certainty for so long is probably wrong.

Two-thirds of those who intend to vote for Angle say they wish she was someone else, according to a poll conducted earlier this week.

Your Gleaner has long anticipated the poll's hardly surprising findings and in fact explained their meaning nearly three months before the survey was taken, on that momentous evening in June when Angle won her primary. Nutshell: Own it, wingnuts.

After all, tomorrow is another day!

I know, I know. All our corporate captains, our industry visionaries, our keenest political insiders and the rest of Nevada's respected and beloved civic leaders assured us that they were smarter and more grown-up than the rest of us so they knew best.

Poop.

But hey, why dwell on the past? The future! That's the ticket! Nevada can  start fresh and develop a more textured economy that offers a rich panoply of diverse and rewarding career opportunities. Nevada can build a dynamic new prosperity, strong, broad and sustainable enough to weather turmoil without becoming America's national repository for horrible misery and despair. Yes, Nevada can ...

Wait ... we already screwed that up too?

Pretty much, says your Gleaner in this week's CityLife.

Rory Reid unveils ambitious plan to attract attention to widely, deeply ignored campaign

Two central premises underlie Rory Reid's long-threatened plan to deal with Nevada's estimated $3 billion budget shortfall.

The first premise holds that for decades, to say nothing of the last four years, Nevada has been governed stupidly.

So far so good.

Unfortunately, the second premise is that with regard to Nevada tax policy, the stupidity should continue apace.

There is much to analyze in the plan -- perhaps your Gleaner will more closely analyze some of it one day! (Probably not). Meantime, highlights gleaned from a cursory review:

• Continue to pay state employees less than they used to make and not give any of them a raise until our national greatness is restored or China takes over the administration of local governments in the former United States of America, whichever comes first: $480 million.
• Reinventing government!!!! Fashionable circa 1993, this phrase has been taken down from the shelf, dusted off and held up as the magical way that Nevada will save simply oodles of dough, just by being crafty! Examples range from imprisoning fewer potheads (m'kay) to cozying up with transportation "public-private partnerships" (usually scams) to "promoting home- and community-based care" for geezers (which sounds nice but could cost some money up front?). Estimated savings: $680 million!!!! Look! Up in the sky! It's pie!
• Turn that frown upside down. In this bold and and truly imaginative portion of the plan, Rory simply refuses to believe current economic projections, which are based on Nevada's comprehensive failure, as a state. Instead, Rory has come out strongly in favor of the position that it would be better for everyone if the economy improves some day. Estimated additional revenue resulting from Team Rory's wishful thinking: $615 million.

Additional money would also be saved/gained by rearranging deck chairs on Nevada's sinking ship of state, er, consolidating government agencies, getting better at going after money for states that dad's Congress authorized, "making more cost-effective policy choices," and etc., etc., etc... for a grand total of 2.5 billion hypothetical American dollars. Some of that stuff appears meaningless, while other parts of it might mean something to somebody, though probably not in a nice way.

But any attention at all, whether positive or negative, to Rory's campaign at this point would constitute a seismic shift in the gubernatorial race. Or so Rory hopes.

Of course there is nothing in the plan about Nevada's regressive, unfair, inadequate tax structure, because Sarah Palin, the Review-Journal and other teabaggers, after thoughtful consideration, have decreed that we can't have a sensible, mature or candid discussion on that subject, and obviously Rory wholeheartedly agrees.

So would Rory's plan save Nevada, or half of it, or some of it, maybe, someday? Republican Brian Sandoval is still the cute one, has a better (or less worse) last name, and also thinks the teatards are right on! about taxes, so we'll probably never know.

Back-country chucklehead: Why aren't filthy poor paying more taxes if they still have money?

Do-gooder dorks who think about such things periodically examine who pays how much taxes in all the self-described "fiercely independent" states of the United States of America.  Last year, for instance, it was reported that the poorest 20 percent of Nevadans pay 8.9 percent of their total income in state taxes, while the richest 1 percent pay only 2 percent of their total income in state taxes. In other words, the poor pay four-and-a-half times more of their income in state taxes than the rich, which renders Nevada's one of the most regressive tax systems in America.

This presents quite a conundrum to Nevada's elected officials. Specifically: Isn't there some way to lighten the burden on the rich by making the poor pay more?

Enter Nevada Assemblyman Pete Goicoechea (pronunciation: "toomuchtruckforbrain"), R-Who Cares. Determined to redress the wrong in which the socialist nanny state forces Nevada's super-rich to pay a trifling little something once in a blue moon while the state's working/non-working families still have money left over to squander on back-to-school shoes, Ramen noodles and generic brand peanut butter, Goicoechea proposes to make the system more fair by taxing the noodles and peanut butter (the shoes are already good to go), along with any other groceries that poor people can afford to buy with money they got at the pay day loan store.

Nevada's Democrats and more mainstream Republicans, meantime, have indicated they intend to rely on more traditional methods to address Nevada's $3 billion budget shortfall: Perpetuate blatant and brazen political dependence on campaign contributions from industry lobbyists, and then let the lobbyists figure it out.

The Ferraro Group, R&R Partners and other leading lobbying firms generally represent all the same industries, so instead of legislators negotiating with each other or even lobbyists for one industry getting bogged down in messy negotiations with lobbyists for another, a high-powered Nevada lobbyist, theoretically, only has to negotiate with himself. Indeed, conceivably, the Nevada budget could be ironed out in tense but amicable discussions between Pete Ernaut and Pete Ernaut.

Such a traditional mainstream Nevada approach is much easier than, oh, Democrats undertaking the hard work of presenting an agenda, marshaling arguments in its favor and mobilizing public support. Why bother with all the muss and fuss of a functioning republic incorporating elements of a thriving democracy when we can rely on private-sector efficiency?

And the rich should take heart -- just because some bumpkin with a preposterous moustache really can't protect Nevada's fanciest, wealthiest and, of course, best people by sticking it to the overpaid undeserving filthy unwashed and not infrequently unwhite poor, Nevada's most talented and highly regarded lobbyists will most assuredly find a way.

Nevada overwhelmed by adorable wishful thinking

First, one of the 493 white male wingnuts who writes columns for the R-J vows that Democrats in the Legislature are committed to reforming the state's tax structure.

Then, in a Sun political story uncharacteristic for August by virtue of failing to mention the tragic revelation that the president is a Muslim, it is asserted that Harry Reid "believes" in a rigorous Keynesian solution to America's economic problems.

And finally (as reiterated in that same Sun story), Sharron Angle is certain that if we give businesses tax cuts they'll start hiring people to produce goods and services that consumers can't/won't buy.

What do these assorted, seemingly random items (and many more like them) share?

Alas, if only they were true.

New York Times interviews Sharron Angle for no readily apparent reason

The New York Times was granted an exclusive interview with famous Nevada Republican Senate candidate Any One Butt.

As might be expected from America's premier ongoing journalism experiment (and as the transcript of the interview shows), the Times made the most of its rare opportunity by aggressively challenging the candidate to answer those crucial and tough questions that today's troubled voters care about most:

• How's the horse race going?

• Are you packaging your message effectively?

• And of course most importantly, Do professional political consultants like you?

The candidate responded by reiterating her heartfelt belief that the founding fathers said Harry Reid is a stinky poophead.

She was also asked if Barack Obama would win Nevada again.

This is what makes the New York Times such an an insightful publication and august American institution. Of the many, many questions that reporters, bloggers, people, etc., in Nevada might pose to the Senate hopeful given the chance, who if anyone would have thought to ask for her profoundly consequential views on who will win the 2012 presidential race?

For the news story (as distinct from aforelinked interview transcript), the Times placed the candidate's comments in the thoughtful context that Americans have come to expect from their most revered journalism outlets, and it must be said that the Times still belabors obvious points and regurgitates conventional wisdom as ably as any media outlet in America today.

Butwaitheresmore!!! Loathe to publish a mere one-source story (unless it's about the unquestionable threat from Saddam Hussein's WMD and the source is anonymous), the Times also interviewed some other people besides the candidate. And in what is a very significant ... well, newsworthy ... OK, mildly amusing thing, it turns out that Jerry Tarkanian's son, asked by the Times (what else?) to handicap the race, thinks the dingbat will probably lose. Just like journalism did today!

When Harry Reid caves to Sharron Angle, the terrorists have won

Harry Reid is a flibbertigibbet, a changeling, a mere noodle of a man whose positions rarely (if ever) reflect any consideration other than the deeply held interest in whether one course or another will be good for Harry Reid. To see him fold after infantile taunts from Sharron Angle on this senseless Manhattan Muslim pseudo-controversy is about as surprising as Angle, upon examining the same issue, promptly grasping a copy of her beloved Constitution and wiping her ass with it.

The religious nutjobs who made The 9-11 hoped that a glorious day would ultimately come when Americans would be forced to abandon their preferred and successfully test-marketed brands of hocus pocus and start buying Muslim hocus pocus instead, American women would be issued burkas, and the E! network and other cherished American freedoms would be eradicated from your teevee.  But under the heading "intermediate goals" on the Blue Ribbon Terrorist 2020 Vision Stakeholders Task Force Report, presumably, is something along the lines of "make America freak out until it's too stupid to persist as a credible empire."

Mission accomplished.

John McCain loses Nevada again

In one of a series of poorly worded random-ass queries posed by a mid-rate pollster at the behest of men in ridiculous hats who run a local right-wing blog called the Las Vegas Review-Journal, Nevadans were asked if "the country would or would not have been better off" if John McCain's desperate gambit to Put America First by selecting an incompetent demagogue as his running mate had worked and the bad socialist black man had been defeated.

Forty-six percent of those playing "let's pretend" said no, if the Republicans had been allowed to continue force-feeding faith-based crony-approved economics to a nation Republicans had just spent most of a decade systematically destroying, nothing would have been better. Only 38 percent said life would be less miserable and pathetic somehow if the country were led by the celebrity knucklehead and whathisface who was on the ticket with her. Sixteen percent said they didn't know (which is almost assuredly true).

The poll's findings appear to suggest that a majority of Nevadans either don't think Barack Obama ruined the economy on purpose, or aren't sure -- a stark deviation from the hysterical Obamaphobic narrative the Review-Journal pushes relentlessly and without fail each and every single day.

"Readers can rest assured that one poll result, no matter how surprising and disappointing, won't stop the Review-Journal from doing what it does best, and that's fairly and accurately reporting the news that Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid are to blame for everything," said R-J publisher Sherm Frederick. Probably.

Added R-J Editor Thomas Mitchell, "Who shit in my hat?"

The Most Important Election Ever! (2010 edition)

Nevada's toxic socio-economic conditions aren't the fault of one guy in Congress, as the dingbat Sharron Angle contends, and won't be fixed by one guy in Congress, no matter how supercalifragilistic he is. Nevada can't rely on a powerful senator to make everything better any more than it can rely on tourists to pay all the taxes.

Economic diversification and social and cultural progress, spearheaded by the establishment of a credible educational infrastructure and enabled by a fair, equitable and adequate tax structure -- none of that hinges on Harry Reid.

And nothing of consequence will ever hinge on Sharron Angle. Even if she wins...

Her status as the most powerless and pointless person in the Senate would be a dead certainty, if not for stiff competition from Nevada's other senator, the despicable, disgraced, discredited poor little rich boy, John Ensign.

See, in this week's CityLife column, your Gleaner adopts the role of anti-pundit and takes the view, no doubt rejected as perverse by some, that the 2010 election is, at the end of the day, probably not really all that important. As you might expect, there is a reference to Snooki.

Outraged Republicans accuse Harry Reid of stealing their racism

In his latest "gaffe," Harry Reid belabored the obvious point that Hispanics shouldn't vote for ignorant paranoid xenophobes. Naturally, the xenophobes, also known as Republicans, are pretending to be outraged, and pockets of America's majestic press corps are dutifully taking the bait.

Same old, same old.

But along comes the Reno News and Review's Dennis Myers. Brimming with delightful historical context, confronting the substance of the issue instead of its effect on the horse race, laced with a mature and intelligent perspective -- the Myers approach to this issue reflects a man who clearly has no clue what passes for political or social analysis in America today. Oh, you can read the Myers essay on Harry and the Hispanics if you want. Just be forewarned that this type of thoughtful content has no place in this nation's political discourse.

Sherm. Now that guy's stuff is state-of-the-art.

Relax - state's demise sure to be smooth, orderly

Like everyone everywhere, your Gleaner gets lots of pointless/senseless email that exists for the sole purpose of being deleted and never opened. And right up there with the traditional pleadings from exotic lands seeking help securing long lost inheritances are the invitations for political fundraisers. Ha, the joke's on them -- no funds here!

But fooled like an amateur by a "meet the candidates event" subject line, an email from presumptive Democratic Assembly Speaker John Oceguera was opened, whereupon it was discovered there will be a joint fundraiser for the Assembly Democrats and the Senate Democrats in Reno this week and the hosts include Greg Ferraro and Pete Ernaut, the magnanimously pro bono yet indispensable advisers to Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Sandoval.

The suggested cost to pay, er, meet the candidates is $1,000 for corporations and $500 for individuals. I know. It should be at least ten times that, but the economy is broken. But just imagine how much smaller the suggested donations would have to be if Nevada imposed icky taxes on  corporations and wealthy individuals, like the vast majority of other so-called "states." Hapless put-upon lobbyists and corporate executives would have to scrape and save to pay, er, meet their candidates at the Reno event -- to say nothing of the eleventy-seven other campaign fundraisers that these same people shell out for like clockwork.

Fortunately, business or personal taxes will never be imposed here, thanks in no small part to fundraisers like this one.

So Pete and Greg can nurture their close personal relationships with incumbent Democrats, and establish close personal relationships with new Dems -- strong, meaningful, enduring relationships forged in that most cherished experience shared by lobbyists and legislators, the exchange of American dollars. Ultimately, Pete and Greg will merely have to issue orders to, er, coordinate with their shiny new Republican governor, and everybody will be on the same page when it comes time to implement The Plan.

With Nevada steadily and relentlessly slipping further into irreparable social, economic and cultural decay (Nevada: The Entropy State!) citizens can rest assured that the people who (again) have done so much to guide the state to where it is today will continue to have their hands firmly on the wheel.

And (again) evidently that's the way the voters like it.

Nevada blessed with abundance of generous souls who will make everything better

Nevada owes a deep debt of gratitude to political fixers and juice peddlers Pete Ernaut and Greg Ferrarro. While hundreds of thousands of un- and semi-employed Nevadans cower in their worthless homes agonizing over how to make ends meet and grousing about a corrupt system that concentrates wealth at the top while methodically eliminating the middle class, Ernaut and Ferraro are effectively digging into their own pockets and selflessly providing their talent, expertise and magical backroom conniving powers to Nevada gubernatorial candidate Brian Sandoval -- for free!

But then, Brian Sandoval is quite a catch. Upon resigning from the federal judiciary last year to run for governor, Sandoval was immediately hired by the Jones Vargas Barristers Warehouse and Lobbying Emporium, where the strapping Latino heartthrob "focuses his practice on mediation, arbitration and alternative dispute resolution." How can a man who's been running for governor full-time from the nanosecond he left the bench (or before) also perform quality work/billable hours for clients whose very livelihood may depend on his attention to each detail of their niggling little problems? He's Brian Sandoval, that's how.

Then again, sleepwalking through the least consequential gubernatorial campaign in American history is a full-time job, so maybe Sandoval hasn't been doing much (any) work for the firm since signing on. Hopefully, Jones Vargas has found a way for Sandoval to earn a little extra money to take care of his family of Real Americans while he's running for governor anyway -- especially during these our Scary Sad Times. The rainmaking power of having Nevada's next pointless governor on the firm's payroll must be worth a buck or two.

Some other guy, Rory Reid, is also running for governor, and he too is benefiting from absolutely free and generous assistance from a professional campaign operative (albeit one who has never won a race that anybody cared about so this might be a case of you get what you pay for).

Like Sandoval, Reid too is connected with a firm whose revenues hinge largely on cronyism, er, an "extensive experience in government." And Reid isn't merely an attorney at Lionel Sawyer & Collins, he's a shareholder. Good -- he'll need something to fall back on. His chances of becoming governor are twofold -- slim and fat. (And channeling Jim Gibbons must have seemed like such a good idea at the time.)

Anyway, back to The Important Point: Nevada and Nevadans enjoy a veritable bounty of exceptional politicians, selfless consultants and public-spirited legal/lobbying firms, all working together to sustain the same quality of thoughtful, mature leadership that has done so much already to make the state what it is today.

And most importantly of all -- Nevada voters wouldn't have it any other way.

Now is (still) not the time for pointing fingers

In a spat between campaign industry cynics getting paid to pretend Sharron Angle is competent and campaign industry cynics getting paid to pretend Harry Reid likes you, the great and powerful Senate majority leader has been accused of historical revisionism, Iraq-wise.

About time.

In 2007, Reid was asked if he regretted voting to give Bush & Co. a blank check to go a-warmongering in Iraq in the first place.

"The evidence at the time was persuasive -- especially if you go back and look and see what Secretary of State Colin Powell did at the United Nations," Reid told a newspaper that would later issue a fatwa against the senator.

"We've learned since then that the evidence was manipulated," he said. "So the answer is no. I'm not going to apologize."

Reid and a majority of his Senate Democratic colleagues (who, it is often forgotten, controlled the Senate at the time) voted for America to invade Iraq, for politics, in October 2002. Powell didn't unload his stockpile of utter bullshit about WMD at the UN, thus cementing his place in history as a narcissistic lightweight who was mere putty in Dick Cheney's hands, until February 2003.

The lamestream media has never asked Reid to explain how Powell making an ass out of himself in 2003 influenced Reid's full-throated endorsement of naked military aggression the previous year in what appears to be a clear violation of the space-time continuum.

But then, it's an awkward subject for Your American Media, isn't it? In 2002, nearly the entire U.S. media-industrial complex was operating under the same rationale as Senate Democrats: So terrified that if they didn't fully back Real America's lust for blowing up Arabs, they would be accused of being insufficiently patriotic. So the press and Reidian Democrats alike thumped their chests, waved their flags and politely refrained from asking uncomfortable questions.

Thank goodness Reid is finally being held accountable for the most important -- and worst -- decision of his career and ... um ... er ... wait. That's not the Reid Iraq revisionism that crackpot Sharron Angle and her mercenary wingnut apparatchiks are nattering on about?

Oh. Then as always when the subject is Democratic, media and public complicity/responsibility vis-a-vis our glorious invasion of Iraq, never mind.

Why won't Elena Kagan let Sharron Angle shoot Harry Reid?

Radical fundamentalist extremist Sharron Angle (on the campaign trail, at right) objects to the infidel Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, claiming that Kagan is soft on the right, bestowed by a vengeful Goddy McGod, of angry ignorant white people to shoot anyone who displeases them. But of course.

If the truth must be told (and your Gleaner believes it must), I spent perhaps as much as 12 minutes paying attention to the Kagan nomination process, because as everybody is always saying the court nomination process is such a farce all 'round anymore. If I wanted to see otherwise intelligent people twist themselves into rhetorical contortions so as to avoid saying anything that matters to anyone, I'd watch the Nevada race for governor.

Anyway, in those 12 or whatever minutes, it became pretty clear that Kagan was not going to be the intellectual counterweight to twisted radical jihadist Antonin Scalia that all the libtards keep hoping will get appointed to the court one day. Kagan, rather, could end up being just one more mushy moderate who can be counted on to raise the occasional polite objection to the Roberts court's head-long rush to TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!!!! to the Gilded Age when an unfettered plutocracy was allowed to do whatever was good for America whether America needed it or not.

But ... on the bright side (where your Gleaner is always looking)! I stumbled on an interview with former 10th Circuit Judge Michael McConnell, in which the former judge, now directing Stanford's Constitutional Law Center, speculated about how Kagan might influence the most right-wing court in any of our lifetimes:

I think that justices who are either more extreme substantively or who are more abrasive in terms of their personality sometimes have the effect of causing the justices in the middle to shift a little bit the other way. So an addition of a strident, very left-wing justice might well have the effect of conservatizing the court by inducing Anthony Kennedy to be more likely to be in opposition. Elena Kagan is not that. She is indeed the opposite of that.

In other words, if Obama had nominated someone, oh, half as liberal on the left as Scalia, Alito, Thomas and Roberts are radical on the right, it would tend to push your swing justice, Kennedy, to side with the the court's teabagger wing.

McConnell also noted that Kennedy's seniority means that if he sides against Roberts & Co. to form a non-radical-right majority, Kennedy gets to assign the opinions, which apparently like totally matters to these guys.

That, then, is the whisp of a shimmer of a forlorn flimsy hope that liberals must desperately cling to in this, the modern age that is so hated and despised by Sharron Angle's Real America. But those of you who spent more than 12 minutes paying attention to the nomination probably already knew all this so never mind and have a nice weekend or whatever.

Angle calls on campaign staffer to bring terrible wrath down on idolatrous sinful America

Pundit/media personality/cottage industry Jon Ralston's column in the Sun Wednesday is pretty funny. But too nuanced (darned media elites)! The journalists asking softball pre-approved questions of Sharron Angle all have the initials RJ. That stands for the Review-Journal. Which is purportedly a local newspaper.

That's going to fly over the heads of honest to Betsy patriotic Real Americans, youbetcha.

Anyway, here's a not unrelated something that's been kicking around in your Gleaner's noggin for a while: The aforementioned R-J, the largest newspaper in Nevada, has become increasingly and remarkably irrelevant to Angle's Senate race against whoever that guy is she's running against. Specifically, the R-J has almost no influence on the narrative told by local TV news.

Traditionally, and especially in small to mid-sized markets (which Las Vegas sort of always has been no matter what the population), the paradigm more or less has gone like this: newspaper writes story, wire service rewrites story, well-coiffed person reads wire service rewrite in front of camera, now here's Tad with your First Eyewitness Action weather. That is, the area newspaper of record heavily influences, sometimes even dictates, the overall local media narrative.

But the Angle race has attracted an enormous amount of coverage from the national mainstream press, new media, and the cable and radio cacophony. With the not unimportant exception of publishing polls conducted for the paper (and recently in partnership with one of the TV stations) by a mid-rate pollster, the Review-Journal is merely another voice in the crowd -- and in the R-J's case, a not very interesting, influential or even timely voice.

The R-J has written comparatively little about Angle avoiding mainstream outlets in favor of friendly right-wing venues, presumably because the R-J itself is a friendly right-wing venue. But Angle also has granted the R-J more access than she has granted other news outlets in the state. And the R-J dutifully takes advantage of that special relationship with the candidate by printing yawn-inducing stories that reiterate Angle's ready stockpile of simple ideas/gut feelings, accompanied by a few words from a Reid spokester, all he-said-she-said style.

Meantime, most of the rest of the press, national and local, is following up on the latest batshit crazy thing that Sharron said.

For the TV stations, footage of Angle scurrying from their pesky cameras to dart into an SUV is much better TV than having some anchor regurgitate a rewrite of the latest exclusive R-J story reporting that Angle wants to cut government. For the TV stations, the fact that Angle won't talk to them but, for an example, she does to talk to God -- and he talks back -- is, again, much better TV.

By the way, Ralston has unearthed another sample of Angle describing her conversations with trusted political strategist God Almighty. It turns out that America has violated the First Commandment and so now Goddy McGod will smite America all Sodom & Gomorrah like. People who rely on the R-J for their news probably won't learn about it.

Should be on TV, though.

Despite (because of) wholesale collapse, Las Vegas retains "first city of the 21st century" crown

"New normal" may be the socio-economic descriptor du jour, but applying it to Las Vegas seems premature. We've still got a ways to fall before we ultimately settle in to a hollow and moribund economy barely sustained by a permanently downsized tourism industry and bitter penny-pinching baby boomers hunkered down in a smattering of tacky retirement enclaves, i.e., the likely new normal 'round here.

But on the bright side (where your Gleaner is always looking), Las Vegas is not alone. America, too, is screwed. Check out this egghead:

"The future I most fear for America is Latin American: a grossly unequal society that is prone to wild swings from populism to ­orthodoxy, which makes sensible government increasingly hard to imagine."

OK, tossing Las Vegas into that mix is unfair. To Latin America.

But try to imagine, if you will, "sensible government." In Nevada.

On second thought, maybe Las Vegas doesn't lag behind the rest of the nation on the road to new normalcy, but is in fact leading the way. Before capitalism collapsed this last time, starry-eyed Las Vegas boosters and even some folks of a more thoughtful bent were fond of calling Las Vegas "the first city of the 21st century." Turns out they were right all along!