Las Vegas Gleaner

Careful, ladies

On track to be freed from his estranged wife, an equally estranged, or at least strange, governor is trimming down — in anticipation, presumably, of sipping wine with single mothers half his age who he can later lure into parking garages where he can slam them up against walls and force them to put out or else.

Southern Nevada's beloved/intrepid NORM!, showing the rest of the media how it should be done, reports:

At the beginning of the interview, I mentioned to Gibbons that his weight loss was a topic of conversation at the event, the eighth Governor's Black-tie Invitational at Southern Highlands...

"I'm back to my fighting weight," said Gibbons, who volunteered that he's lost 40 pounds and is down to 185 pounds.

The former combat pilot and decorated veteran of both the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars said he's been working out, "watching my diet, and I'm feeling so much better."

"It's called the divorce diet," said a friend of the governor's.

Gov. Pervus A. McSkanktard getting his game on and going on the prowl. "Ooh, governor, is that a No New Taxes pledge in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?" Rrrrooowww!

Make it stop

The cover story indictment of the nation's worst governor by CityLife Editor Steve Sebelius is an an attempt at perhaps the most comprehensive inventory of McSkanktard's batshit crazy antics ever compiled in a single source (websites dedicated to the subject not included). The conclusion — that Perv should not let the door hit him in the ass on his way out of the governor's office — is of course unassailable.

There is one element of the story (and its sidebars) in particular, perhaps, which should be singled out for praise.

Virtually every print writer in Nevada has unloaded on the nation's most incompetent governor at one time or another, often scathingly, incisively and with wit and aplomb. Which stands to reason inasmuch as McScurve supplies a steady and inexhaustible supply of fodder for the time-honored fish-in-barrel school of journalism.

All too often, however, mainstream media stories, columns and commentaries that otherwise make perfect sense are burdened with an underlying assumption that the governor is a person who can be appealed to on the basis of reason and logic. And so perfectly good broadsides taking him to task are routinely sullied by a underlying hope or expectation, usually tucked into a concluding paragraph, that if only the governor can be made to look at facts placed before him he might respond as a rational being.

The underlying premise of Sebelius's lengthy review of Gov. AssClown's pathetic excuse of an administration, by contrast, is that "there really is no there there." Sebelius throughout refrains from assuming that reason is an effective or even relevant persuasive technique with regard to the decisions and behavior of the nation's worst governor.

So let that be a lesson for the other kids.

Big city columnist goes down on area jillionaire

No mention of Freedoms Watch and warmongering. No acknowledgment of owning the nation's worst governor outright. No mention of serving as not only the state Republican headquarters but also as a must-do venue for every national War Party politician with a hand out. No reference to bankrolling countless lame-brained initiatives and campaigns emanating from the addled minds of the state's merry band of wingnuts. Instead, just a softball puff piece about how Southern Nevada's very own bitchy little megalomaniac, Sheldon Adelson, is a simply wonderful bidnessman and a marvelous human being.

Hmm. The Gleaner is old enough to remember when George Will was a political columnist.

Armstrong Williams, William Fumento, Michael McManus and Maggie Gallagher, Chuck Muth's very own Doug Bandow ... oh, for the record, any connection between those names and George Will is purely coincidental.

Miniglean: Cleaning the Glass-Steagall Act without a permit

• In what must come as a shocking revelation to the nation's worst governor and his apologists such as self-styled math whiz state Sen. Bob Beers, it turns out that when you cut the state's budget, there's less money in it. Sun
• But don't worry. It's going to hurt you a lot more than it'll hurt them. Sun
• Inspired by the Gleaner's moving tribute to magnificent scumbag Phil Gramm, an informed reader emails to wonder when someone in the media is going to get around to asking the Former First Lady how she feels about her former ex-president of a husband caving to Republicans and signing off on repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act. Or, as the headline on one of the links provided by the aforementioned informed reader describes it: "Bill Clinton's Role in the Mortgage Crisis."
• Remember when Las Vegas was famous on the teevees for a few minutes that one day because the Monte Carlo was on fire? The contractor that started it, reports long-time area growth & construction reporter Tony Illia (via Stiffs & Georges), was "welding under a window washing permit instead of a 'hot' permit, which can take four to five weeks to process, say county fire officials. A window washing permit, by contrast, takes less than half the time to obtain." Needless to say this example of local officials sloppily endangering public health and safety so as to expedite a project at a Las Vegas megaresort is most assuredly an aberration and not the sort of thing that occurs on a daily, routine basis.
• "He went in with a stick and he poked a hornet’s nest, and the resistance he got was a little bit more than he bargained for," an anonymous official in Baghdad told the NYT. Gotcha! The official was not referring to Bush, but to Iraqi PM al-Maliki's assault in Basra, a fiasco that served only to weaken the prime minister while strengthening both Sadr and Iran in Iraq. Any comparisons of al-Maliki to Bush are unfair in any case, as al-Maliki is never going to wield enough clout to destabilize entire subcontinents at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. There's only one person on the current geopolitical scene who can be fairly compared to Bush, and that's Norman Conquest veteran John McCan't.

Bumpkins for Barack

Wyoming's governor (who shockingly, remember, is a Democrat) and some former political somebody from Montana endorsed Barack Obama, joining the growing ranks of superdelegates who are being trotted out every day, day after day after day in a tortuous but relentlessly steady manner like drops of rain slowly but surely eroding the remnant of the once-mighty Clinton campaign as if it were made of mere sand. Or something like that. (AP, MSNBC)

In a related story, the Wyoming guy said he was just helping that sheep over the fence.

Anyway, presumably the lesson we are to take from these endorsements from mostly rectangularly shaped states is that the Democrats are still having a presidential race. Go figure.

Beltway rag largely falls for area asshat's vapid shtick

Once past the customary stomach-turning ooh-look-it's-Las-Vegas bullshit that adorns the top of the piece, a longish Roll Call story advancing Rep. Jon Porter's race against Robert Daskas in CD3 is, eh, serviceable, more or less.

A good part:

When it was mentioned that one Democratic strategy in the 3rd district race would likely be to tie Porter close to President Bush a sharp "what’s wrong with that?' was uttered at the lunch counter.

Exactly. Enough already with focusing on Porter's ties to Bush or even the rest of the corrupt War Party cronies — if the dumb-beat "independent" voters in CD3 cared about stuff like that Porter — an unapologetic disciple of Tom DeLay, after all — would have been ousted a couple cycles ago.

Instead, Porter should be framed for what he is: a twice-divorced opportunistic hypocritical lazy fat ass congressman whose only contact with the electorate happens every two years when he mutters "I'm Jon Porter and I approved this message" at the end of yet another in the long line of his signature contributions to Nevada political dialog, i.e., sleazy attack ads. He should be hammered early and often as a career political hack who would say or do anything if he thought it would get him reelected so he can continue his comfy champagne and caviar beltway lifestyle. Porter should be pilloried as a politician whose opinions have staled and imagination has atrophied after years of lapping up the sweet nothings of corporate lobbyists who pretend to like him and tell him how smart they think he is even as they give him his marching orders.

Meantime, the Roll Call piece largely falls for one of Porter's favorite shticks — the steady guy, determinedly non-flashy, just doggedly and quietly toiling away on behalf of his constituents. Which of course is amazingly rich because in reality Porter is just going through the motions of being a congressman and is stirred from pseudo-policy somnambulance only when it's time to destroy the character of his opponent on teevee. And while there are many things Porter might care about — partying, staying in Washington, plotting his career-capping job as a D.C. lobbyist so he'll never ever have to actually live in Southern Nevada again — helping his constituents is not among those concerns (if it was, he wouldn't vote against their interests and for corporate America's every time a lobbyist tells him to, which is to say every time he casts a vote).

Roll Call requires a subscription but the entire story is pasted after the jump for your reading pleasure (and if Roll Call has an objection to that then perhaps they should remember that when they steal from the Gleaner they don't even have the courtesy to bother with attribution so they can shut up and back off).

McCain brings "honor, courage" to economic policy too

How soon people forget. Sure, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm (lying, at right) is as responsible as any politician dead or undead for the subprime lending fiasco and the accompanying collapse of the American economy. That in and of itself pretty much assures that he would be a leading economic adviser to the War Party's presidential nominee (WaPo).

But just because the current crisis is all newsy and everything, it shouldn't be forgotten that helping to precipitate the disintegration of both the housing and credit markets, while undeniably most impressive, is not Gramm's only claim to fame.

Gramm, who is corrupt, and his equally corrupt wife Wendy were also largely responsible for wholesale electricity industry deregulation that was all the rage at the end of the last century. It is not an exaggeration to say that if not for the Gramms, thieving energy traders generally and Enron specifically would not have been able to manipulate markets, artificially run up prices, stage phony shortages, cause needless brownouts and otherwise gouge consumers not just in California but throughout the West.

And thanks to the breathtaking incompetence of Nevada's electricity monopoly, Nevada consumers are still paying for the Gramms' sleazy behavior to this very day.

Ripping off consumers to enrich the planet's scummiest corporate predators and masquerading the pillage with ideological free market happy talk — and to think people say John McCan't doesn't know anything about the economy.

But the really, truly impressive thing about all of this is what it says about McCan't's willingness to let bygones be bygones and forgive and forget. After all, a lot of politicians who, like McCan't, are so super-sensitive about being perceived as a "straight talker" who isn't cozied up with corporate cronies might not have had the courage to enlist a filthy scumbag like Phil Gramm as a key economic adviser — especially with the nation teetering on the precipice of economic hardships of the sort not seen for 30 years. A lot of other politicians would have turned their backs on a walking talking poster boy for political corruption like Gramm.

But John McCan't is made of sterner stuff. He has been instilled with the "character ... honor, courage, duty, perseverance and leadership" that allows him to stand by — nay, rely on — a key adviser, even when that adviser is a blatantly plundering, craven, remorseless pig. 

Justice looks down on Nevada, laughs, spits

Nevada generally has piss-poor education, health and social service programs. It has one of the nation's cruelest and most threadbare safety nets. Infrastructure projects are backlogged up the yazoo. And now of course all that stuff will be cut even further, the state's quality of life destined for erosion and it's citizens subjected to even more harm because of state budget shortfalls and an unholy alliance between the ideological extremism of one party and the political spinelessness of the other.

So naturally the next thing the state is going to do is just fork over tens of millions of dollars to the gambling industry. From AP (also see RJ) :

The state is scrambling to gauge the impact of a new Nevada Supreme Court ruling that, if pursued by hotel-casinos and other businesses it benefited, could push the state's soaring revenue shortfall closer to $1 billion.

The high court's decision last week held that food provided for free by businesses to customers or employees isn't taxable. The ruling favored John Ascuaga's Nugget in Sparks, but similar claims have been filed by many major hotel-casinos.

In the Nugget's case, the amount of taxes already paid by and now owed to the resort by the state is about $1.2 million. That includes the claim that was litigated plus interest, along with follow-up claims based on the same argument: "comped" meals aren't taxable.

That amount is small change compared with refunds that already are being sought or that can now be requested by other resorts or other businesses that provide complimentary meals in this tourist-dependent state.

Meantime, the world's largest gambling corporations agree: Now, clearly, is no time to raise the gaming tax. (NevadaAppeal, AP, RJ)

Nevadans won't be forced to fund other people's religions — for now

A Northern Nevada Jim Gibbons apologist and million-dollar grassroots activist apparently won't try to use public money to fund religion after all.

From an obituary on an ill-fated plot to put a school privatization, er, "voucher" scheme before the voters:

We knew the other side would sue over a misplaced comma or uncrossed "t," so extreme care was used in consulting with a number of school choice experts, lawyers and political consultants.

Alas, the clock ran out. While we believe we now have an initiative which would pass legal scrutiny, we do not believe we have enough time to get the required 60,000 or so signatures by mid-May to qualify it for the November ballot as a constitutional amendment.

Too bad. Not long ago, some of the private schools that — in the view of boosters, anyway — would be eligible for public funding under the education privatization plan were identified, and each of them have words like "Lutheran," "Christian" and "Catholic" in their names. As one of the schools singled out by the privatization promoter helpfully explains on its website, the school "exists for the sole purpose of preaching, teaching, promoting, sharing and living the Gospel of Jesus Christ, so that through us God's holy spirit might work to make others his disciples."

It would have been amusing, in the way that culture wars pitting churchy wingnuts against modernity are almost always amusing, to see how a plan to force the public to pay for somebody else's religion would hold up against Article 11, Section 10 of the Nevada Constitution, which says "No public funds of any kind or character whatever, State, County or Municipal, shall be used for sectarian purpose."

Very similar language in the Florida Constitution caused a court to toss that state's voucher program a couple years ago. Now some churchy extremists are trying to strip the language from the state's constitution, and maybe that's the approach we can next expect from our very own voucher-obsessed churchy extremists here in Nevada.

On a sad note, it appears that the demise, however temporary, of the churchy voucher cause also removes the basis of an erstwhile-ballyhooed bid to unseat Nevada's Assembly Speaker. "Odds are, the decision not to move forward to place this initiative on the ballot this year takes my prime reason for moving to Las Vegas and running against Assembly Speaker Barbara Buckley off the table, as well," writes the aforementioned Gibbons apologist.

In the (not unlikely?) event that Madame Speaker was actually looking forward to the, um, challenge, the Gleaner would like to take this opportunity to extend sincere condolences.

Elizabeth Edwards uncovers McCan't plot to kill her and then himself

What with John McCan't spending the week traipsing the South and West reliving his exciting days as an adjutant to Gen. Zachary Taylor, it's easy to forget that the economy isn't the only thing that the War Party's nominee-by-default knows nothing about.

From the LATimes:

Elizabeth Edwards, the wife of former Democratic presidential contender John Edwards, said she and John McCain have one thing in common: "Neither one of us would be covered by his health policy."

Under McCain's plan, insurance companies "wouldn't have to cover preexisting conditions like melanoma and breast cancer," she said.

McCain has been treated for melanoma, the most serious type of skin malignancy. Edwards in 2004 was diagnosed with breast cancer, and announced a year ago that it had returned and spread into her bones, meaning it no longer could be cured.

McCain's plan focuses on offering new tax breaks for individuals who buy their own health insurance. But critics say the Arizona senator's proposal avoids giving insurers requirements on whom they must cover and how much they may charge.

The War Party presidential contest all happened so very, very long ago but if memory serves, there was an awful lot of strutting about as aging white males puffed up their chest cavities and promised to kill more Arabs than anybody has killed ever. There seemed to be something about hating Mexicans, too. But health care, eh, not so much.

Not that McCan't doesn't have a plan. Sure, he doesn't want to create a universal health care system. But he totally wants to get rid of the employer-based health care system. In other words, instead of the dysfunctional patchwork of health care insurance systems the country has now, McCan't would prefer that the nation have no "system" at all. Instead, he wants to set individuals and their families free to go out into the market and, you know, take their chances against a mostly unregulated industry dominated by the largest for-profit health insurance conglomerates in the world.

To that end, he'd establish a $2,500 tax credit for individuals, or $5,000 for families, and that sounds good. Except health insurance benefits currently enjoyed by employees would be counted as taxable income. In other words, not only would McCan't like to unburden people of their employer-provided health care benefits. He also wants to raise their taxes (hey, hasn't he pledged not to do that?).

"For union members with good care plans, the tax increase would be even bigger. An employee whose health benefits are worth $15,000 would have to pay taxes on an extra $15,000 in income," notes (not surprisingly) the AFL-CIO.

"Union members with good care plans," just btw, describes the people who make this town go.

Meantime, while McCan't remains vigorously opposed to universal health care, 59 percent of the nation's doctors are now in favor of it, and fewer than a third are opposed (Reuters).

And yes, John Edwards was the first* and loudest of all the presidential candidates to support a universal health care plan, showing all the other Democrats that they could go ahead and jump in because the water was fine, and someone was telling the Gleaner just the other day how they missed the Edwardses.

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*Oops, as Diana rightly points out in the commentariat, Dennis Kucinich was the first to propose universal care. And it should be added, moreover, that Kucinich was the only person in the primaries and caucuses to promote the single payer system that this country will eventually have one day even though it doesn't know it yet. Thanks for the catch, Diana.