Las Vegas Gleaner

Porter's energy policy inspires constituents

It turns out that Jon Porter's sophisticated plot to lower gas prices by collecting everyone's gas station receipts isn't the offensive affront of a lame-ass stunt that pessimistic malcontents had suggested, but actually inspirational: Several of Porter's constituents, led by the Nevada Democratic Party, were planning to arrive at Porter's office at 2470 St. Rose Parkway in Henderson at 10:45 Monday morning to give Porter a receipt for "the $210,000 he has received from Big Oil companies raking in record profits while Nevadans struggle to pay for gasoline."

Porter underscores own pointlessness by stealing fellow backbencher's lame-ass gimmick

The answer isn't immediately jumping out from Mr. Google. But there seems to be an information morsel lodged in a remote nook of the Gleaner brainpan that wants to attribute the phrase, "It's not if you steal, it's what you steal," to B.B. King, delivered when somebody was interviewing him years ago about coming up with guitar licks.

Hey, maybe Jon Porter would know! In addition to being a career politician, rent lord, insurance salesman and dashing putz about town, he's also a groovy musician with a snazzy combo.

On second thought, there's no way that Porter could be familiar with the phrase. Otherwise he wouldn't have stolen something so lame as his ultra-super-lame-ass idea to have people send him their gas receipts so he can give them to Nancy Pelosi and then put out a press release about it later.

Some other obscure War Party congressional nimrod got a few headlines out of the gas receipts stunt last month. Apparently the idea is that if a Republican backbencher accosts Pelosi in a hallway and informs her that gas prices are really high, the Pelosi palm will go to the Pelosi forehead in a blazing realization that all her San Francisco liberal values are hopelessly and tragically wrong, and she'll agree that Congress must immediately adopt the House Republican energy strategy of staring at the ceiling and thinking of the queen while the world's largest oil corporations lay the wood to American consumers.

Porter has decided to steal the gas receipts gimmick (KLAS). It isn't clear whether Porter was going to bother to tell anyone that some other pointless congressman has already pulled the stupid stunt, which by the way is just an offensive affront to people who can't afford to put gas in their cars. But it probably should be noted that attributing the idea, dumb as it is, to someone else would entail some measure of honesty and integrity whereas the subject of this blog post is Jon Porter.

Coal (cough cough) does not make us (cough) sick, America tells Harry Reid

Only 22 percent of voters surveyed nationwide by Rasmussen Reports agree with Harry Reid's YouTubian diagnosis that "coal makes us sick."

More than half of the respondents, 52 percent, disagreed. About half also disagreed with Reid's assertion that "oil makes us sick," while 31 percent agreed.

Though survey respondents were divided in their reaction to Reid's blunt assertions, a nearly unanimous 97 percent of all those polled agreed that the idea of Rasmussen spending money to poll them about it made them sick.

John Ensign: The nation's most out-of-touch senator

Harry Reid is making sure that the solar power industry is favored with the same government largesse -- cheap and/or free land -- historically bestowed on all the other industries that have made untold riches economically colonizing the American West while falsely promising to bring sustainable prosperity to the region's backward and insecure residents. (NYT, Sun, RJ)

Well, Harry's got an election coming up in 2010, so he's eager to show that he hasn't lost touch with Nevada and that he still cares about the folks back home.

Nevada's other senator, by contrast, is not burdened by petty concerns such as the narrow interests of his constituents. There are far more important considerations commanding the attention of John Ensign. For instance, given a chance to help Nevadans taken in by a rapacious, unregulated and unscrupulous mortgage lending industry, Ensign instead leveraged the full measure of his senatorial power and influence to stop legislation aimed at providing relief to struggling Nevada homeowners.

Why would Sen. Hairdo McWedgeshot do such a thing, especially since Nevada is the Saudi Arabia of home foreclosures?

The ostensible answers involve Ensign's love of partisan political posturing and tawdry beltway gamesmanship.  And to be sure, when it comes to members of Congress being out of touch with their own state, particularly with regard to economics, John Ensign takes a backseat to nobody.

But there's a more fundamental reason why Ensign could so cavalierly turn his back on Nevada, a reason that is a) hinted at in the cheesy photo illustration accompanying this blog post and b) explained in the Gleaner's latest column in CityLife.

Change that isn't too threatening for bitter clingy Americans to believe in

Thanks mostly to year piled upon year of failed, incompetent, corrupt and venal U.S. foreign and domestic policies, many Americans can't afford fireworks this Fourth o' July, let alone the gas it would take to drive to the res to buy them.

And thanks to the flag-burning Democrats who wrested control of Congress from the War Party (at a time of war, too; go figure) in the 2006 midterm elections, this Independence Day marks the second in a row that the nation is not treated to an informative and enlightening debate over a proposed constitutional amendment to ban flag "desecration."

Demonstrating their keen grasp of issues that matter most to American economic and national security, Republicans in the House of Representatives had proposed the flag-burning amendment nearly every year that the party controlled Congress, from 1995 through 2006, because Republicans love America more than just plain old regular Americans.  The Republican-backed flag burning amendment always somehow managed to be introduced right around July 4. Some might describe that as a freakish coincidence but really it's nothing less than a sign of America's special place in god's heart.

So between fewer colorful explosions on our streets and a diminished effort by House Republicans to exploit the citizenry's natural love of country for cheap political gain on our teevees, Independence Day might seem just a little less festive for some this year, especially the only true Americans, i.e., the traditional values-totin' god-fearin' gun-lovin' inhabitants of the heartland.

Let us reflect, then, on remarks delivered earlier this week by that nice young Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

...it is worth considering the meaning of nationalism because the question of who is – or is not – a nationalist all too often poisons our political debates, in ways that divide us rather than bringing us together. I have come to know this from my own experience on the campaign trail. Throughout my life, I have always taken my deep and abiding love for this country as a given. It was how I was raised; it is what propelled me into public service; it is why I am running for President. And yet, at certain times over the last sixteen months, I have found, for the first time, my nationalism challenged – at times as a result of my own carelessness, more often as a result of the desire by some to score political points and raise fears about who I am and what I stand for.

So let me say at this at outset of my remarks. I will never question the nationalism of others in this campaign. And I will not stand idly by when I hear others question mine.

Most uplifting and ... what? Obama wasn't talking about nationalism, but patriotism? Oops, boy is the Gleaner's face red -- especially since all the bitter clingy heartlanders Obama was targeting with his remarks are so keen on the distinction.

Anyway, Obama also has been saying some very nice things about Goddy McGod lately, so all he has to do now is get a concealed weapons permit and Americans can celebrate the Fourth of July comfortable in the assurance that an Obama presidency will represent change that isn't too icky or scary for them to believe in.

Area man tingly at gubernatorial prospects

Jon Ralston went on KLAS teevee Tuesday night to report that senatorial offspring and Clark County Commissioner Rory Reid bought a poll and dang if it doesn't show that Reid the Younger would swamp the nation's worst governor in a head-to-head, 49 to 32.

Yes, most startling. Who could have imagined that 32 percent of any poll respondents would express a willingness to vote for Jim Gibbons, no matter who he was running against?

Rory's poll also showed him crushing Madame Speaker Barbara Buckley in a Democratic gubernatorial primary, 51 to 20. On the bright side, at least for Buckley, if Reid runs for governor, his campaign would likely be managed by Dan Hart.

Was that too mean? The Gleaner can never tell.

T. Boone Pickens, honorary Nevadan

If one element has been sorely missing from America's angst over $4.40 a gallon gas and the broader debate over the nation's energy future, it's a summit. Finally, that glaring omission will be rectified, as the Great and Powerful Harry Reid has announced that Las Vegas will host something called the National Clean Energy Summit at UNLV August 19.

And now here are some words that were put into the Great and Powerful Harry's mouth by the "Let's Get Harry Some Innocuously Positive Headlines Division" of his media message development center:

"I am hopeful that this event will result in some consensus ideas and principles that participants can carry to the parties’ political conventions and on into the next Administration.”

Dang. Obama was in town just the other day speaking in a rather detailed and yet comprehensive manner about, as Harry might say, the "ideas and principles" guiding his clean energy policy. Just imagine how much better Obama's proposals would be once he and his several hundred policy advisers have digested the magnificent consensus that will emerge from Harry's Supercalifragilistic Energy Summit.

Okeydokey, perhaps the snark should be dialed back a tad -- especially since Harry's diagnosis that "coal makes us sick" and "oil makes us sick" is so popular on the YouTubes (via Sun). Besides, the more promotion of sane energy policy the better, and certainly no harm could come from the Reid/UNLV/Center for American Progress confab. By the way, people who are scheduled to attend include but (presumably) are not limited to: Bill Clinton, who hopefully will have resumed his former status as an ex-president by then, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, Colorado Gov. Bill Ritter, and Wall Street darling and Clinton administration Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin.

Notably absent, obviously, is Al Gore.

Conversely, conspicuously invited is "businessman T. Boone Pickens, who is committing to build the largest wind farm in America."

Oh for cute. After decades of making jillions in the oil industry, Pickens is building a big wind farm in Texas. Not only does it stand to earn him a buck or two. He also gets to greenwash his reputation.

To be fair, the oilman and erstwhile corporate raider's enthusiasm for wind power isn't the only thing he has in common with Nevada. It's not even the most important thing. Before he concluded that wind power could be profitable, Pickens realized that if he mined the Ogallala Aquifer beneath the Texas panhandle in a water privatization scheme and then piped the water to Dallas and San Antonio, he could make a huge profit (especially if the wind farm transmission line and the water pipeline share the same easement corridor).

As it says right there on the "A suprising environmentalist" page of "T. Boone Pickens. His Life ... His Legacy" ... his website:

The water is high quality, it is not needed for local irrigation because the land it rests under is unsuitable for farming, and studies support that supplies can support a prudent plan of drawing off water from the aquifer.

See? Mining aquifers is profitable and environmentally harmless. Southern Nevada Water Authority Czarina Pat Mulroy couldn't have said it better herself. Nor, for that matter, could Harry Reid, who has done so very, very much to facilitate Southern Nevada's very own aquifer mining schemes -- all part of official Nevada's long and storied commitment to the care and feeding of the corporate growth industry.

Meantime, Harry's Supersonic Summit is yet another event that was organized without consulting the Gleaner. Otherwise, Amory Lovins would be keynoting.

(Disclosure: Several years ago while employed with some simply wonderful people at a place called Public Citizen, your lowly Gleaner was paid to advocate against water privatization schemes generally and, if memory serves, did a nominal amount of work in opposition to the Pickens scheme specifically.)

Innocent bystanders waddle up to state trough, submerge snouts

Regular Gleaner readers, all seventeen of you, are familiar with the axiom wherein when a politician says something, often as not, the exact opposite is true. Needless to say, it goes double for lobbyists who shill on behalf of big bidness.

As an example, let's take the manner in which a bill died during last week's not-so-special session of the Nevada Legislature. The bill would have tried to protect state and local governments and school districts from having to fork over as much as $150 million to the world's biggest gambling corporations, a burden that hangs over the state's head because Nevada's conflict-of-interest-ridden courts determined the industry needn't pay taxes on meals comped to drug runners, arms dealers, slave traders, tin-pot dictators and other preferred customers at area casino-resorts.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio swears to the Las Vegas Sun that the bill simply got bogged down in partisan politics and as for the gambling industry, why, it had no influence whatsoever in killing a measure that might have deprived the industry of tens of millions of dollars. Raggio has been around long enough -- 217 years, by some estimates -- to know that some people are morons who will believe such nonsense, and most of the rest who recognize it for the inane drivel that it is just don't care because cynicism has inured them to politicians and their bullshit.

Bill Bible, a former head of the state Gambling, er, Gaming Control Board who liked the industry he used to regulate so much he decided to go to work for it, also made statements premised on the apparently sound belief that the public is by and large comprised of idiots and suckers and/or a jaded citizenry who can't be bothered to care when a key representative of the state's largest industry shamelessly feeds them a line of crap:

Bible, head of the Nevada Resort Association, said he hadn’t done any lobbying, nor did he have time to poll all his members on whether they supported the bill.

He dismissed the notion that this was an example of gaming’s influence.

“Quite frankly, I thought the bill would be approved and passed out,” he said. “It appears to me it was bogged down in partisan wrangling at the tail end of the day.”

If true, and Bible did not lobby on nor canvas his employers about a piece of legislation that threatened to cost his industry as much as $150 million, he should be fired for negligence and incompetence. He won't be fired, of course, because what he told the Sun is full-on bullshit. (By the way, another axiom that rarely misses: whenever someone is quoted in a newspaper saying "quite frankly," whatever they say after that is almost guaranteed to be a lie).

So while institutions such as those comprising Nevada's education system or the state's social services safety net suffer under more and deeper budget cuts, the good corporate citizens in Nevada's gambling, er, gaming industry stand to gain a $150 million windfall from more or less the same pool of money that funds those public institutions. And the industry didn't even have to ask; the bill to stop the grand giveaway just withered away, as if by accident or divine intervention, and the gambling industry and its lobbyists were mere innocent bystanders. Lucky industry, no? No wonder the house always wins.

The industry is magnanimous, too. Just ask them. For instance, whenever any discussion of the state's tax structure comes up, leading industry figures and their political apologists are eager to note that gambling, unlike other businesses in Nevada, at least pay a little something in taxes 'round here. And that's true, which is why the Gleaner, along with every other thinking Nevadan, has long and repeatedly called for a broad based tax to make other big bidnesses start paying something, perhaps even as much as -- gasp! -- their fair share.

But it's a crying shame that the state education association struck a deal with the gambling industry in May and backed off the ballot initiative to significantly increase the gambling tax. As was proved yet again last week, the gambling industry, at the end of the day and taken all in all, is just another gaggle of corporate pigs who aren't going to do anything for the state on their own volition, but instead must be dragged to the table kicking and squealing every time.

In a development bound to make the RJ happy...

UNLV President David Ashley announced in a staff memo Monday that 29 people were given "notices of non-reappointment." That follows on the heels of another 70 people who lost their jobs at UNLV earlier this spring as a result of the state's budget shortfall.

In an interview with the Gleaner, Ashley said some of the 99 total people who have been told they're out of a job were from the instructional staff, but most of them, including the 29 who were sent notices Monday, were from the ranks of administrative staff rather than instructors or professors (disclosure: Gleaner is married to one of the latter).

Ashely warned that more cuts could be coming down the pike. As a result of the latest round of state budget cuts ratified by the Legislature last week, UNLV will likely have to slice another 3 to 4 percent off the budget. Hopefully, those additional cuts can be achieved through measures such as buy-outs and early retirement, Ashley said.

Meantime Ashley also responded to parts of the Gleaner's snippy broadside the other day, in which the UNLV president was taken to task for, among other things, suggesting that Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki was "a great champion of higher education."

Through spokesman, Gibbons holds firm on vow that he did not have sexual relations with that woman, either

Trying to milk the diversion for every last possible meaningless headline that might distract the public and the press from the nation's worst governor's hilarious scandals, Jim Gibbons and John McCain adviser Sig Rogich had Gibbons press person Ben Keickhefer write a statement Monday announcing that Gibbons had signed the bills passed by the special legislative session.

The release also put a bunch of words into Gibbons' mouth about state policy on a going-forward basis -- words that Gibbons himself will likely forget before the week is out assuming he ever read them in the first place. So of course the far more interesting information bubbling up from the depraved depths of the Gibbons-Rogich Anxiety Vortex has to do, as usual, with Gibbons' laugh-a-minute antics involving  awkward moments with women who aren't his wife.

Specifically, Kieckhefer dished up an elaboration on why Gibby the Rodeo Clown was holding hands with whatsherface when she was giving birth.

"The Governor and Mrs. Gibbons were friends with Leslie, who was about to become a single mother," Kieckhefer is reported saying in Dana Gentry's blog. "They were together one day late in her pregnancy when she went into labor. The Governor and Dawn went with her to the hospital and stayed with her during the birth to help out their friend. Nothing else to it, really."

Kieckhefer stopped short, however, of clarifying Gibbons' stated position vis-a-vis any woman who he has witnessed giving childbirth, i.e, that her sexuality is irreversibly and forever neutralized.

NV War Party financiers unfazed by area economic collapse

As you may have heard, times are tough here in Nevada and people are struggling to make ends meet. Fortunately, however, some Nevadans still have enough money to lavish campaign contributions on out-of-state Republican politicians, if those Nevadans are shaken down, er, asked by the right person.

"I bring people out and raise money for them in Nevada that they could never raise anywhere else," Sen. John Ensign boasts to Congressional Quarterly. Those Nevada donors are ponying up  "only give because I’m asking them," the ever-modest senator adds.

The great and powerful Ensign, or Sen. Hairdo McWedgeshot, as he's known locally, has used his considerable charm to loosen $560,000 from "his prosperous state" for candidates defending War Party Senate seats this year, according to the CQ story.

Ensign is head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee charged with raising money for GOP Senate races. For months, Ensign has been whining that his fellow senators haven't been forking over enough money to the NRSC effort.

Frankly, it's hard to see why that would surprise him. If Ensign -- and Nevada -- learned anything from the failed fight to override George W. Bush's designation of Yucca Mountain as the nation's nuclear waste dump, it is that the Hairdo has no influence whatsoever with his fellow Republican senators.

Little wonder, then, that Ensign and his trusty sidekick, beltway consultant darling Little Mikey Slanker,  would resort to their financial comfort zone of Nevada gambling/hotel industry executives to raise some cash in a desperate last-ditch effort to make it look like they were at least marginally competent while presiding over the loss of several Senate seats currently held by warmongering government-hating Republicans.

Meantime, in a somewhat-related story, bitchy little area megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson's personal political propaganda arm, Freedom's Watch, is launching radio ads against 16 House Democrats from coast to coast (WaPo).

Freedom's Watch declined to disclose how much of Adelson's money it is spending on the radio spots.

But between the ad buy attacking Democrats nationwide and Nevadans contributing generously to Republican senate campaigns from around the country at the Hairdo's behest, one conclusion is inescapable: Now, clearly, is no time to raise the gaming tax.

Days later, 'Straight Talk' continues to exhilarate Nevadans

Sen. John Sidney McCain III explained last week that he just doesn't know anything at all about how Jim Gibbons is a lying philanderer whose madcap antics have made the nation's weirdest governor a laughingstock not just here in Nevada but nationally and even internationally.

But while local Sig Rogich promoter Sig Rogich, who advises McCain as well as Gibbons, did not bother to make sure that the Republican standard bearer was fully briefed on easily the single most important  and talked-about political storyline dominating the news in a crucial battleground state, Rogich apparently did make sure that McCain was intimately familiar with the details of boilerplate, certifiably ho-hum speech that Gibbons made a few weeks ago and that was mentioned in perhaps as many as two paragraphs toward the bottom of a couple local media stories on the Nevada Republican Convention.

In that speech, Gibbons failed to sufficiently marvel at the magnificence of a man who didn't bother to campaign for Nevada's failed Republican presidential caucus, the McCain campaign tells the RJ. And that speech, not Gibbons' hilarious scandals, is why McCain picked Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki and not Gibbons to be the figurehead for the presidential candidate's Nevada campaign.

These startling new details reveal that the McCain campaign is:

1. Profoundly tone-deaf and clueless about what's going on in Nevada;
2. Shaped by the mercurial temperament of the man at the top, which is to say surly, mean-spirited and eager to nurture petty grudges, or;
3. Liars liars pants ablaze.

Though of course those possibilities are not mutually exclusive.

Time for media to cover Gibbons fairly, objectively

The Legislature moved some deck chairs around so now Nevada can resume sinking into infrastructural, educational and economic oblivion quietly without all the headlines.

In a particularly odious element of the proceedings, the gambling industry, led apparently by one of bitchy little area megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson's minions (no, not the governor but another one; Adelson wanted results) made sure to cover its own ass. Again. Whatever.

But the truly startling developments out of Carson City and environs of late involve first, the notion that Jim  Gibbons has something to say about policy, and second, the confirmation that the two top staffers for the philandering imbecile are the latest to abandon ship and retire from the "Gibbons administration."

No, there's nothing startling or frankly even interesting about those things in and of themselves. The startling thing is how the media reports policy statements Gibbons makes or movement among his staff as if there is actually a cohesive entity called the "Gibbons administration" and that the aforementioned fiction is motivated or even influenced by rational thought either for good or ill. What's up with that? The only thing of any consequence where Jim Gibbons is concerned is his many hilarious and humiliating scandals. All the rest of is just a bunch of noise.

At times like these -- which is to say on a Saturday morning with errands to run and chores to do -- the Gleaner likes to save time by self-plagiarism:

In the course of reading newspaper stories about the antics of the nation's worst governor, it is disappointing and frankly tiresome to see reporters repeatedly seeking color commentary from consultants of one party or another or analysis from political science professors. If one had a broken leg, after all, one would not seek a diagnosis from a political scientist or a campaign industry consultant. One would see a doctor. Similarly, if any truly useful insight into the administration of Nevada's current governor is going to be rendered by external observers, that expertise would most likely reside within the psychoanalytical community.

That was published seven months ago and the eleven people who saw it perhaps thought it was a joke. No, that'd be Gibbons.

Gibbons helps another woman find her truck

Oh look, it's Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons doing one of his favorite things -- being chivalrous to a woman who isn't his wife in a parking lot.

The Carson City paper ran this and other photos of the nation's worst governor and September 1989 playmate Leslie Durant hanging and kanoodling at the rodeo the other day. The photos were taken by Brad Horn, who gets a Gleaner shout-out for having the good sense to realize that stalking the nation's creepiest governor was a much better use of his time and photographic talent than getting shots of grown men forcing terrified baby cows into bondage while Republican voters looked on approvingly.

The paper's photos of course are not the first of Gibbons and Durant together -- those were published in the lowly Gleaner a few weeks back. But whereas imagery of the couple provided by a Gleaner operative merely showed the governor looking like an idiot in the IHOP, the new photos show him exhibiting public demonstrations of affection.

And all on the up-and-up, or at least that's what the nation's oddest governor told the Carson City paper:

“She was upset, crying,” he said during a quick hallway interview with our reporter, who’d been trying to get a comment from the governor or his staff for two days. “She couldn’t get her breath. I put my arms around her.”

Such gallantry. But then, as Gibbons told Nevadans after helping Chrissy Mazzeo in a parking lot, "my reputation means everything to me."

And to all you cynics and Gibbons haters out there, well, if you stop and think for a minute, you'll realize that the description of a distraught woman in need of comfort is perhaps the most credible thing that the philandering imbecile Gibbons has said in months. If you had agreed to voluntarily see Jim Gibbons socially and repeatedly, and then held hands with him and let him hug on you and stuff in public, wouldn't you be "upset, crying" too?

It is in that light that Sig Rogich, currently a beloved and trusted adviser to both Jim Gibbons and John McCain, is all the more admirable. Has Rogich been photographed upset and crying and in need of hugs? On the contrary. He was photographed working feverishly to divert the state and it's media's attention away from his client's hilarious personal life through a needless sham of a special legislative session. Which started Friday, by the way, in the event that anyone has fallen for the Rogich sleight-of-hand and actually cares.

To recap...

Gov. Jim Gibbons: No new taxes blahblahblah mangled syntax cough excuse me flippity-floppity flippity floppity again and again like the flibberdigibbet I am but no new taxes and everybody please forget that I'm a philandering imbecile.

Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley: Asshat, ain't he? Meantime, Raggio and I will work it out.

Philandering imbecile governor drives his constituents to drink

Several readers, which is to say at least two, have made inquiries with regard to some "drinking game" that might be created to go along with the speech scheduled to be delivered by Jim Gibbons, the nation's worst governor, on statewide television 6:30 p.m. Thursday.

The Gleaner knows nothing of drinking games and has never participated in them, not even during the late middle half of the last century while pretending to go to college. The Gleaner has never viewed drinking as a game. An illness? Can be. A way of life? Once. An art demanding dedication and concentration like any other? Eh, probably not. Still, to treat drinking as a mere "game" is the stuff of amateurs, not unlike "partying" with willful abandonment on New Year's Eve or Halloween.

But if you insist...

Yes, whenever the nation's worst governor vows that there will be no new taxes, take a shot. By all means, whenever he suggests that he has shown "leadership" or congratulates himself for making "tough choices," take two shots.

And if by chance he decides to use his special televised moment to reiterate that he most definitely did not have sex with that woman, and not with that other one, either, take your alcohol to the rodeo or the farmers market, get photographed playing grab-ass with women who aren't your wife and be disappointed when the coverage of an asinine distraction of a special legislative session isn't the most interesting thing in the newspapers over the next few days.

McCain, in an obvious lie that should offend Nevadans but probably won't, pretends Rogich never told him about kindred spirit Jim Gibbons

Sen. John Sidney McCain III tells the Reno paper that he has never heard of Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons:

In a telephone interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal during his campaign stop in Las Vegas, McCain said he didn't know enough about Gibbons' political ills to comment on whether they will hurt his own efforts to woo Nevada Republicans this fall, as some political observers have speculated.

"To be honest with you, I don't know enough about his situation to make a judgment," McCain said. "I just haven't kept up with it except the barest info. I know that the governor is going through a divorce or is divorced or something like that, but honestly I don't know much more about it."

McCain added that while both he and Gibbons served as Western Republican members of Congress together for a decade, "I just didn't know him that well."

Though they would be photographed together in 2007 at a fundraiser hosted by their shared master, bitchy little area megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson, it's perfectly understandable that while they were in Washington together McCain wouldn't have known Gibbons if he ran over him with one of Cindy's beer distributor trucks. Gibbons' congressional career, after all, was characterized chiefly by profound back-benching obscurity, occasionally rising to the level of moderately entertaining buffoonery.

Of course, bending over on command for Adelson isn't the only thing Gibbons and McCain have in common. They also share a key adviser, Sig Rogich promoter Sig Rogich.

So perhaps McCain can ask Sig to regale him with the madcap tale of how Sig got Gibbons drunk and then Gibbons slammed a single mother half his age up against a wall and told her to put out or else. Then, after Sig called in some markers and got it all covered up, Gibbons got elected governor and damned if he didn't start having an affair with a woman who looks exactly like the single mom that Gibbons/Rogich worked so hard to destroy in the court of public opinion. And Gibbons, well, he's a fucking liar through and through, Sig will continue, so of course Gibbons is lying his ass off to his constituents about his sexcapades, which is pretty damn rich when you remember that Gibbons voted to impeach Clinton. And look, Sig will conclude with a proud flourish, the imbecile is still the governor and (thanks to Sig, of course) he's even managed to distract the media from his lying cheating ways by calling a completely pointless special session of the Legislature.

It is a tale that McCain will no doubt appreciate. For one thing, he must be delighted to have unparalleled talent like Sig on board. And secondly, being a womanizing skeezer himself back before he became all old and shriveled and started lashing out at his fabulously wealthy trophy wife for pancaking on the make-up like a trollop, the cu ... oh never mind.

Anyway, what with Nevada being a highly prized swing state and all, and Sig being not only McCain's chief Nevada guy but also so very closely involved in all things Gibbons, it's sort of surprising that Sig hasn't told him all about the nation's worst governor already, no?

Area man breaks silence for no good reason

With Nevada's lying governor suffering publicly from neuroses and dementia, Sen. John Sidney McCain III turned elsewhere for a reliably docile Nevada Republican who would snap to attention, say Sidney the III is right about everything and introduce the presidential candidate at public functions when necessary (unless of course the function is something that's actually important, like a fundraiser, in which case the candidate would be introduced by Sig Rogich promoter Sig Rogich).

Accordingly, when Sidney the III showed up to scare everybody with his bitter-teleprompter face at UNLV Wednesday, he was introduced by Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki. (For the record, Krolicki muttered some utterly forgettable words of praise for McCain about as serviceably as might be expected from a man who holds a totally useless job with no responsibilities.)

And Krolicki himself was introduced by UNLV President David Ashley. That's moderately intriguing on at least a couple fronts.

First, Ashley sightings in and of themselves have become a rather rare commodity since he assumed the presidency two years ago. While his predecessor, Carol Harter, was undeniably the face of the university, always out front and trying to champion her cause, Ashley has largely ceded that role to Jim Rogers, the Lord High Chancellor of Nevada's higher education system. Rogers, in turn, has joined the battle of the budget with the nation's worst governor, arguably in as vigorous and energetic a manner as anyone in the state, which just goes to show jillionaires can be useful on occasion.

But curiously, as Rogers has fired ammo against the governor in the form of memos and letters, he has drawn on expertise or assistance not from UNLV's president, but from a UNLV provost or a UNLV dean. Indeed, Ashley's silence as an imbecile of a governor plots the economic hollowing out of his institution is nothing short of unseemly -- unless of course Ashley is feverishly working behind the scenes to protect his university from the governor's simplistic cut-and-run solutions to the budget crisis. But if that's the case, it's difficult to see any evidence that such a strategy is working.

Anyway, so there's Ashley Wednesday morning, suited up and in front of McCain's Nevada faithful explaining how delighted he is that UNLV is at the center of the national policy debate blahblahblah. And then he introduces Krolicki, referring to him as "a great champion of higher education."

As the Gleaner has said on more than one occasion, the single greatest piece of legislation enacted in the state of Nevada in the last quarter century if not more is the Millennium Scholarship program that makes college affordable for Nevada students. That program was started in 1999 with money owed Nevada through the tobacco lawsuit settlement, and annual tobacco settlement payments have continued to help fund the scholarships ever since. Krolicki has proposed that the state basically borrow against future years of the settlement, in a fiscally irresponsible scheme to spend the money now to tide the state through its budget crunch.

As CityLife's Steve Sebelius has taken the bother and the trouble to helpfully explain, Krolicki may be a political opportunist willing to use public money, even unlawfully, to advance his own career, a crony capitalist, an ethically challenged hack ...

Krolicki may be many things. "A great champion of higher education" is not one of them.

Ashley should know that. If he doesn't, someone should tell him. And someone should also tell him that he might want to think about, you know, getting in the game.

Placing licenses in jeopardy, TV stations will cede airwaves to deranged madman

Jim Gibbons, the nation's worst governor, announced Wednesday that he will indeed read some words in front of a camera Thursday evening so that the images of his incompetence and ineptitude can be transmitted into households throughout the entire state of Nevada. Which is to say that as of Wednesday afternoon, the mercurial changeling still seemed inclined to actually call the Nevada Legislature into a special session Friday even though he still hasn't explained, and for that matter may not know, exactly why.

But enough about Nevada's Official State Neurotic and the latest brands of duct tape and bailing wire that have caught the eyes of state legislators. The release from the office of the nation's creepiest governor also features some fine and civic-spirited words from your friends in Nevada's television industry:

Nevada Broadcasters Association CEO Bob Fisher said it's important for television and radio outlets to participate in this public discussion as the state prepares to address one of the worst fiscal crises in Nevada history.

"During his inaugural address, the Governor talked about One Nevada," Fisher said. "Broadcasters have the ability to help keep this state unified, and I'm glad they're stepping up to the plate to play their part."

Hooray for Nevada's broadcast industry! Sure, broadcasters pay no significant state taxes whatsoever. They make jillions by charging politicians to run ads on airwaves that the public (and not the broadcasters) own. And their news programs are, on a good night, a dull regurgitation of stuff that everyone already knows, and more often than not, wholly unwatchable drivel.

But they'll fork over some free teevee time to a guy who thinks the most important thing in the universe is making sure broadcasters don't have to pay taxes -- and then they'll pat themselves on the back for doing it in an official state release. There are probably some malcontents somewhere who think that's irony or a paradox or some damned thing. But here in Nevada it's just called "stepping up to the plate."

 

In symbolic show of conservation ethic, McCain uses EnergyStar teleprompter

America can achieve something called "strategic independence" from stinky poopheads like Arab oil sheiks and Hugo Chavez by the year 2025, Sen. John Sidney McCain III said in Las Vegas Wednesday.

How ambitious is that goal? To put it into perspective, consider this: By 2025, McCain will only be 89 years old.

Energy policy is too important for politicians to rely on the "familiar routine of stale soundbites, staged rallies, and over-managed messages," McCain said, reading awkwardly from a teleprompter before leaving the staged and over-managed event without taking any questions.

McCain's address in Las Vegas also featured that now-familiar staple of his campaign appearances, the long depressing list. McCain spoke of "the same agenda of inaction -- that long recitation of things we cannot do, energy we cannot produce, refineries we cannot build, plants we cannot approve, coal we cannot use, technologies we cannot master. The timid litany of limitations goes on and on."

McCain seemed to be attempting to make some point or other, but it may have been lost on an audience sunk into deep depression by the candidate's profound pessimism.

The Nevadans awakened and applauded, however, when McCain promised to build 45 new nuclear power plants by the year 2030, when McCain will only be 94. No. Seriously. Nevadans applauded -- and that was before McCain offered his detailed explanation of how the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump would fit into his nuclear power plant dreams.

Inasmuch as McCain's position on nuclear waste is particularly important to Nevadans, it is appropriate to publish his prepared remarks on Yucca Mountain in their entirety and word-for-word:

"As Nevadans are well aware, we will need to solve complex problems of moving and storing materials that will always need safeguarding. We will need to do all of these things, and do them right, as we have done great things before."

Straight talk, indeed. (By the way, the Gleaner could not confirm that Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, who is McCain's default honorary campaign chairman, applauded McCain's call for the creation of more nuclear waste at 45 new nuclear power plants. Having said that, the Gleaner would be shocked -- shocked! -- to learn that Krolicki didn't applaud, Krolicki being an obvious political mercenary and spineless sycophant. Still, if anyone who was at the McCain event and who had a better vantage point than the Gleaner can shed light on Krolicki's reaction to his man's call for more, more, more nuclear waste, by all means, hit the comment button).

McCain also promised to "purge" the oil market "of the reckless speculation, unrelated to any kind of productive commerce, that has inflated the price of gasoline," i.e., the reckless speculation that exists largely thanks to the crony capitalism practiced by McCain's most trusted and cherished economic adviser, former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Enron.

Concluding his remarks by co-opting a message that rival Barack Obama has been using to connect with voters, McCain echoed Obama's observation that McCain's energy plan generally and the emphasis on more oil drilling specifically will not help anyone at all any time soon, if ever.