Las Vegas Gleaner

Miniglean

• What, no Kumar? (RJ) If true, the wisdom of the Gleaner's decision to take a pass on the state Democratic convention in Reno is fully vindicated.
  • UPDATE: Obama wins Nevada some more. NVDems, AP
• This, on the other hand, casts serious doubt on the wisdom and judgment of both the Gleaner and Howie Dean.
• Flaming kookwit Sharron Angle gives all those so-called "conservatives" up yonder an opportunity to vote for a true believer and oust Bill Raggio, the Republican liberal tax-and-spender who has been running the state Senate since way back when John McCain was married to his first wife (RGJ). Rest assured the so-called "conservatives" up yonder, for all their busy squawking about how much they hate government, will stick with the guy who brings home the pork.
• In other last minute  candidate filing news, First Wronged Wife Dawn Gibbons decided against mounting a primary challenge to mere trophy spouse Rep. Dean Heller. No, there is no indication that she was ever giving it any consideration. But at least it would have been something interesting. As for other last day o' filing related items, rundowns are here and here and here and here and ...
• As one additional small note vis-a-vis the excitement of last-minute filings for local political offices, there's this passage rendered by some local nimrod a while back: "Whoever your county commissioner, you can bet that person has close friends in the growth/development and gambling/hotel industries, meets frequently with senior citizens and enjoys petty backbiting. And while people may not be able to name their state legislator, they know with a fair degree of certainty that whoever it is, that elected official can be relied upon to muddle through with no intention of championing anything significantly progressive anytime soon."
• Look. It's Myrna. RNR

Conservative values update

Nevada's governor, the nation's worst, can hunker down in a bunker and refuse to listen to anyone, let alone consider something anyone might have to say. He can gleefully gratify his simplistic and naive ideological obsessions by doing nothing to stop the state's institutions and infrastructure from slipping further and further into disarray and decay that will only be much, much more expensive to fix the longer they are ignored. As the state's economy struggles, he can be counted on to respond with a staggeringly conspicuous absence — not only of a plan to try to help the economy recover, but of even any indication that such a plan is necessary or desirable. He can humiliate himself and shame the state repeatedly and often. He can bungle all the decisions, take all the bribes, peddle all the influence, appoint all the cronies, have all the affairs, tell all the lies and slam all the women up against all the walls of all the parking garages and tell them to put out or else that he wants.

But if he violates his "no new taxes" pledge that's a deal breaker.

Professional talking wingnut shockingly exposed as blithering idiot on national teevee

For those of you looking for an entertaining and, at moments, hilarious way to kill seven minutes or so at work (via TPM):

Once in a while, every now and again, Chris Matthews does something that makes you think maybe he deserves a teevee show after all.

'Kumar' to visit Reno

The Nevada Democratic Convention will meet in Reno this weekend to select delegates to the Democratic National Convention in August.

Earlier this year, the Clark County Democratic Convention collapsed under the weight of super-duper attendance coupled with the spectacular incompetence of county party leadership, and had to do a re-do. Then the Nevada War Party convention failed to withstand an attack from profoundly insignificant but mildly entertaining Paultard hordes, and still must do a re-do.

True, in all probability, the thousands of delegates, alternates and observers at this weekend's state Democratic Party Convention will be subjected to the customary micro-controversies over some obscure rule or other (or the selection of all-important party leaders!), controversies started perhaps by people who are sincerely and genuinely nuts. Those who stay on into Sunday might even have the opportunity to fight over language in the party platform that nobody pays any attention to.

But if by the end of the proceedings the state Democrats have selected delegates to the national convention, that must be considered nothing less than an unqualified success by recent local standards.

Or as one state party official quipped when asked about the outlook for the weekend's festivities, "We've got a pretty low bar."

Meantime, the indisputable highlight of the convention in Reno will be an appearance by actor Kal Penn, who plays Kumar in the recently released Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay and also is a regular on the outstanding television series House.

Penn will be speaking on behalf of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama (RGJ).

Also appearing at the convention will be Bill Clinton, who used to be an ex-president.

Move along nothing to see here

Remember the extramarital affair that Nevada's governor (the nation's worst) is definitely not having and so it isn't news?

For the nonce, and by way of answering some email from more than a couple correspondents, a thought or three if we may...

It has been well-established for years that if a high-ranking public official (a category presumably including a governor of a state) is having an extramarital affair, that is, for better or worse, and for now, news. The public may care. Or they may not care. Or they may care selectively — Republicans tend to think it's nobody's bidness when one of their own has an extramarital affair (JulieAnnie, Gingrich, McCain), while they think if a Democrat does it it's an impeachable offense. But however the public might react to such news, be it with forgiveness or condemnation or apathy or somewhere in between, the public has a right to know.

That right to know seems particularly pronounced in the case of James Arthur Gibbons.

Plagiarism. Communists under the bed. Chrissy Mazzeo. Bribery allegations. A lie as his first official act as governor. A shady legal defense fund. Overpaying his estranged wife from his campaign payroll. His influence in nabbing her a lucrative consultant salary for arranging press conferences that no press ever attended. His blatant and routine cronyism (potentially an especially intriguing flaw in the context of secret relationships, no?). And on and on and on, ad fucking nauseam. The central and constant characteristic of the Gibbons administration, right up there with the raging incompetence, has been the governor's integrity, honesty and credibility, or more accurately, the lack thereof.

The governor's — this governor's — affair is common knowledge (and if reporters feel icky about reporting "common knowledge," well, hence the Gleaner's call for a stakeout). By not reporting it, the Nevada media looks silly.

Thanks for asking.

And call the vet...

And now for some insightful political analysis as delivered by Virginia Rep. Tom Davis in a memo to his beleaguered, embattled and utlimately pointless colleagues:

"The Republican brand is in the trash can...if we were dog food, they would take us off the shelf."

Reid says McCain's temperament no better than his own

The Greenspun Media Empire should have to buy an ad for this, but...

Jon Ralston just emailed out a pretty good teaser for Thursday's episode of Mug to Mug on the teevee. Entering the final leg of his magical book tour, the Great and Powerful Harry Reid apparently told Ralston that "John McCain does not have the temperament to be president." As Ralston put it in his Flash email:

It's one thing for him to say the presumptive GOP nominee has a temper but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid took it a significant step further on a "Face to Face" that will air tonight. For the first time, after refusing in previous interviews to give examples, Reid gave one. See it tonight, along with this reaction to Freedom's Watch:

"Sheldon Adelson, and I've told him this to his face and I'll say it on television, your program. He's wasting his money with all these right-wing wacko deals. This is pure nonsense."

This all seems worth mentioning for at least two reasons. First, as everyone knows, Ralston is much too modest to do his own self-promotion, so the lowly Gleaner just wants to help. Second, what Reid says qualifies as "news," but you still might not hear about it anywhere because it's being said on Ralston's show, which means the local newspaper will almost assuredly pretend it never happened

It's on the cables.

Stop us before we vote again!

Some woman up yonder says she can run for the school board as many times as she wants because term limits don't apply to her. AP

Like virtually everyone else in the U.S., Nevadans voted to limit terms of elected officials in the 1990s amidst an exhilarating era of Ross Perot-packed, Newt Gingrich-approved reform.  The ostensible argument had something to do with entrenched politicians becoming elitist and out of touch with the little people if they stayed in office too long blahblahblah, but the fundamental point was that if voters embraced a cheap and simple gimmick then they could pretend they had done something in the way of civic responsibility without actually ever having to pay attention.

It's not clear whether Jonnie Pullman, the Washoe County school board member who has made all sorts of people uncomfortable by seeking re-election, is brazenly defying overwhelming popular/populist sentiment in a deliberate challenge to term limits, or if she merely lost track of how many terms she has served.

But it doesn't matter.

The important thing is that voter-imposed term limits are wonderful as they represent a rare moment of electoral candor wherein voters freely acknowledge that they're a bunch of idiots who can't be trusted and who, left to their own devices, will just keep doing the same stupid stuff over and over again.

What, there was a choice?

John Edwards is endorsing Barack Obama, an act which would seem to be wholly redundant and unnecessary unless ... wait, there's someone else besides Obama and McCain still running for president? Oh yeah, forgot about that other candidate. But hey, isn't Ron Paul running as a Republican this time? Whatever. NYT, WaPo, AP

Local man garners national attention

Loyal Gleaner readers — both of you — will recall that for some time this little corner of the cyberwasteland has been wondering why oh why the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee wasn't firing back at Freedom's Watch by unloading on bitchy little area megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson, you know, personally, in those districts where Adelson's propaganda arm, Freedom's Watch, has been attacking Democrats.

Turns out the DCCC has been doing just that. From Politico:

In Mississippi, a DCCC radio ad asked why (Republican candidate) Davis was accepting support from “the world’s No. 1 casino czar and one of atheist China’s top American business partners.” The DCCC referred to a massive casino Adelson’s Sands Corp. owns in Macau, just outside Hong Kong, as “an investment in a country that steals our jobs, persecutes Christians, uses forced labor and forces women to have abortions.

“And what has Greg Davis said about all of this?” the ad asked. “Absolutely nothing.”

In Louisiana, DCCC print and radio ads said Republican candidate Woody Jenkins had engaged in “amazing hypocrisy” by accepting the support of Adelson and Freedom’s Watch.

In one print ad, the DCCC superimposed a photo of Jenkins onto images of a slot machine and a singer wearing gold lamé. In another, the DCCC put Jenkins in front of a Chinese flag and proclaimed: “Woody Jenkins talks about family values, but a casino billionaire heavily invested in a country notorious for forced abortions is bankrolling ads for him."

A spokester for the Adelson-financed Freedom's Watch told Politico it was a "preposterous charge that [Adelson] is responsible for religious persecution and forced abortions."

And if anyone can speak authoritatively on preposterous charges — not only with regard to the degree of their absurdity but also their effectiveness during an election — it'd be a War Party apparatchik of the sort who would hook up with Adelson's outfit.

All in all, the DCCC's nastiness is most impressive. Except the reference to "atheist China" is confusing — isn't the idea to make China look bad?