Las Vegas Gleaner

Comic relief from Yucca fatigue

If you're like most Southern Nevadans, you not only love the area's climate and ample parking. You also suffer from a condition wherein your eyes glaze over and your brain tunes out at the least mention of the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste dump that Republicans are dead-set on forcing down Nevada's throat.

And if you're an educated, intelligent, well-informed Nevadan with a sense of civic responsibility (the very typification of an average Gleaner reader!), your Yucca fatigue is compounded with disgust at the sight of Nevada Republican politicians pointing to their opposition to the waste dump year after year after year as a) an example of "independence" from their party and the worst president in the history of the United States and b) the one and only position they invariably trot out as evidence that they're "for" the environment.

So when Gov. Pervus A. McSkanktard announced that he wants to bring all Nevada's whoopti-do politicians together for a "summit" to coordinate the fight against Yucca Mountain blahblahblah (RJ, Sun, AP), in a blatantly transparent attempt to distract people from the fact that he's the worst governor in the Unites States currently and maybe ever, the not unexpected result was yet another in a never-ending stream of headlines in local newspapers that effectively shout "Warning: Inconsequential story ahead — read NORM! instead."

And yet it all turned out to be sort of fun — not because of the pointless genuflections to a no-brainer issue on the part of humiliated and disgraced assclown governor;' his mumblings are unlikely to ever warrant anyone's serious consideration — but because of the reactions to the aforementioned assclown.

Jon Summer, a spokester for Sen. Harry Reid, said the Great and Powerful Harry might pay some attention to the nation's worst governor  "once Gov. Gibbons contacts our office with details like what this event would actually be and when it would occur."

Translation: Yes, although his duties as Senate Majority Leader place severe demands on the senator's time, he is fully aware that Jim Gibbons is a fucking moron.

Rep. Shelley Berkley "welcomes the governor's recognition that the Bush-McCain Yucca Mountain plan is a threat to Nevada families," Berkley spokester David Cherry told the media. Well played, sir.

Members of the Congressional delegation from McSkanktard's own party were only marginally less dismissive.

A spokester for Jon Porter, who perhaps more than any Nevada Republican hastens to politically exploit his opposition to a project that he indisputably would favor if he was from any other state in the nation, offered vague statements in support of, you know, a meeting. Hairdo's office spewed out some similarly meaningless blather.

And then there was trophy spouse and obscure backbencher Dean Heller. His office couldn't even be bothered to mouth insignificant nothings, citing the need for more details.

One possible explanation for the response from Heller's office is that he doesn't want to do anything that would in any way give any support or comfort to Gibbons, because if Gibbons, in an act of profound stupidity of the sort for which he is so well-known, decides not to walk away after one term, Heller will have to take him out in a primary.

Of course another wholly plausible interpretation is that as his freshman term as the most impotent person in the United States Congress winds down, Heller still has failed to competently organize an office capable of fielding a simple media inquiry on a Friday afternoon. Which of course underscores why he is exactly the sort of person Nevada Republicans, hostile to sane let alone effective government, would pick to replace Gibbons.

In risky campaign gambit, McCain admits to being a fool and a fraud

John McCain is launching an ad in Nevada and nine other battleground states in which the deceptively affable looking powderkeg says that "only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war" and says he hates war so vote for him because he was in a war and he'll start other wars, my friends, more wars that will last for hundreds of years. Well that's how the ad sounded here at Gleaner HQ.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, trying out some chops in his new role as an Obama surrogate in Nevada, s'pose (hmm, that should go well), had somebody whip up a couple sentences saying McCain's ad is poopy because McCain likes war at least as much as Reid likes Joe Lieberman. Or something like that.

But more importantly...

During an interview Thursday with USA TODAY, McCain also made it clear that he would emphasize his steadiness and experience — particularly on national security issues — to counter the vibrancy and oratory skills that have made Obama a sensation on the campaign trail.

"I believe that people are interested very much in substance," McCain said. "If it was simply style, William Jennings Bryan would have been president."

All together now: If anyone would know...

Meantime, look, it's a picture:

McCain is the one in the front row to the ladies' right.

Miniglean

• John McCain's website is currently touting four features — 1) an issues page, 2) the worst speech ever that he gave the other night, 3) the tell-Obama-to-take-a-flying-leap into Iraq thing, and ... 4) McCain golf gear. Everyone on the internets is laughing at the divot tools and such, but Nevadans recognize the McCain campaign's savvy tactic for what it is: not just blatant pandering to the all-important white-male elitist golfer demographic, but the surest sign yet that the McCain campaign is gearing up to name Nevada Sen. John Ensign as his veep. 
• Speaking of Nevada's prettiest senator and the man with the best handicap in the history of representative democracy, "'People up here tell me I'd be a hero," if the Republicans don't lose like, oh, every Senate race in the country this year, Sen. Hairdo McWedgeshot tells the Sun. The 'Do has "done a really heroic job," adds Texas Sen. John Cornyn. Nevadans have always thought John Ensign was a hero, especially after he suffered so bravely for his country when taken prisoner by the sand trap in front of the 14th green while defending our cherished freedoms to ignore course management and go for the hole even when laying up is the wiser choice. Just another argument in support of the McCain-Ensign ticket — not one genuine American hero, but two.
• A "chaotic melee of bouncing and rolling juggernauts." Life aboard the Straight Talk Express when the McCain-Ensign ticket, joined by other Nevada War Party favorites such as Sig Rogich, Sheldon Adelson, Jon Porter, Dean Heller, Bob Beers and of course, Pervus A. McSkanktard, rolls through Nevada? Close. Deadly nuclear waste casks in Yucca Mountain during an earthquake. LAT
• With the state poised on the precipice of ruin and despair even as it is "governed" by an incompetent, pathetic fool, a comprehensive Q&A with long-time Nevada state Senate Leader Bill Raggio couldn't be more timely and .... zzzzzz.

Reid makes second endorsement in as many days

The Harry Reid Media Message Development Center, Now That Even Hillary Is Doing It Division, put a bunch of words into Reid's mouth Friday in the form of a statement endorsing Barack Obama for president of these Unites States of America.

Obama is a "once-in-a-generation" leader, and Harry "could not be more excited" Reid said. And Hillary's nice, too.

"As we turn to the general election," Reid added, "it is obvious that John McCain will try to rewrite his record and divorce himself from the disastrous Bush-Cheney policies he ..."

Wait a minute ... what's anybody's "divorce" got to do with it?

Anyway, the embrace of Obama was not the first bestowed by Reid this week. On Thursday, the Senate Majority Leader delivered a strong endorsement of putrid Sen. Joe Lieberman, also a once-in-a-generation leader.

Somebody's got to do it...

Amazingly, Barack Obama may not be content to merely wait patiently for that distant day sometime in the indeterminate future when Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid might at least give some consideration to possibly getting in Joe Lieberman's zealously warmongering yet pathetically whiny-assed face out about the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Chairman's nauseating bromance with John McCain.

So apparently Obama did it himself, reports ABC's Tapper.

Defending McSkanktard

With so many people ruthlessly piling on, someone simply had to come forth and offer a few words of encouragement and support for Nevada Gov. Jim Gibbons.

And now someone has.

But who oh who would willingly and publicly urge Nevada's governor — the nation's worst, creepiest, looniest, most skankified, etc. etc. — to stick to his guns, buck up and ride out the storm? Who could be so reckless and irresponsible?

Why, who else?

That's right, the Gleaner's latest column in CityLife expresses the sincere hope that Perv McScurve finds either the personal strength or, more likely, the cognitive dissonance to sustain him as he clings, bitterly if need be, to the job for which he is so laughably ill-suited and at which he has so miserably failed. For the good of the state, and even perhaps the nation, he should totally stay the course.

...at least through Nov. 4.

Miniglean

• Remember Dick Cheney? He wanted to make a funny the other day so he played the usually reliable incest card: "I had Cheneys on both sides of the family and we don't even live in West Virginia." Not only did it send poor old Bob Byrd to the hospital (WaPo). It's also a pretty damned nervy thing to say for a guy from Wyoming, where rock-ribbed Cheney-loving Republicans have been spotted kicking the ground and muttering things like "I was just helping that sheep over the fence."
• My friends, when businesses break the law, they should not be asked nicely if they could see their way clear to kindly follow at least a little bit of the law — but only of course if they volunteer to do so and only if it suits them. They should be punished. They should not be politely asked to try to refrain from breaking the law in the future, even though there is no incentive for them to live lawfully because their past lawbreaking is simply ignored by the authorities. They should be forced to face consequences, up to and including fines, penalties and other forms of lawful but stern punishment. But is John McCain's good friend, Nevada Gov. Pervus A. McSkanktard, committed to upholding and enforcing the laws of his state against lawbreaking businesses? On the contrary. The humiliated, disgraced and discredited governor (the nation's worst) is giving those businesses amnesty! What's next, giving them drivers' licenses? He should be rounding up those businesses, putting them on a bus and shipping them out of the country. And then control the borders.
• Citizen Outhouse or whatever whathisface calls his shadowy million-dollar grassroots noise machine conducted an exhaustive analysis of a handful of votes cast by Nevada legislators a year and a half ago and found that all the conservatives are liberals and all the liberals are conservatives or somesuch asshat nonsense (RJ, Sun). That analysis is only marginally more or less batshit crazy then the last time Citizen Outsource used whatshisface's flights of ideological fancy to rank legislators, when it discovered only one even remotely conservative person in the entire state of Nevada, a poor woman tragically locked in a psychological stasis, perhaps caused by farm accident, that forced her to cling desperately to mythical Eisenhower-era welfare cowboy values. Anyway, some area expert-texperts seem to think Citizen Outcast's rankings can be used in ads by politicians such as a) newly conservative Dina Titus and b) the farm accident victim, so that's nice.
• Perhaps readers will forgive the Gleaner for not being caught up in all the breathless excitement surrounding the former first lady's decision to leave the presidential race that already left her, and the accompanying buzz of speculation over whether she might get picked to be Obama's vice-president. Just looking ahead, s'pose, to a few weeks out when everybody will be all "Hillary who?"

More madcap antics from Ensign and Slanker

In an absolutely astounding act of staggering incompetence and ineptitude, National Republican Senatorial Campaign Chairman John Ensign and his beltway darling consultant Little Mikey Slanker royally screwed the pooch and failed to get their candidate for Senate on the ballot in Massachusetts.

From the Boston Globe:

In a major embarrassment to Republican leaders in Massachusetts and in the US Senate, Jim Ogonowski, the party hierarchy's favored candidate to challenge US Senator John F. Kerry in the fall, failed yesterday by a razor-thin margin to qualify for the GOP primary ballot.

The stunning blunder leaves only a little-known Army veteran and security specialist from Harwich, Jeff Beatty, on the GOP ballot.

What was it the kids used to text to each other on their snazzy phone thingies ... oh yeah — ROTFLMAO.

Also from the Globe story:

The National Republican Senatorial Campaign's website has listed Ogonowski as the only GOP candidate for Senate in Massachusetts, even though Senate Republicans knew Beatty was running. The committee's chairman, US Senator John Ensign of Nevada, has donated $10,000 to Ogonowski's campaign from his political committee.

Gosh, it sure would be nice if Ensign can get all that money back. After all, whatever else happens, and no matter how humiliating the drubbing that Republicans take this year while our very own Hairdo is at the helm of the Senate campaign efforts, Slanker still needs to be paid.

Let the bloodbath begin

Catch Obama's victory speech thingy Tuesday? It looked like this.

(thanks Cherie)

Basically, he said McCain's sort of a dick but Obama likes him anyway because he's an American but Obama's still gonna kick his ass.

McCain, meantime, made a speech too. The great and powerful and talented (and local) Jed seems to have captured the salient points.

Hard to believe that McCain is the Republican Party nominee by default only, selected grudgingly after the party's voters determined they hated all the rest of the party's sick twisted candidates even more than they hated McCain.

Still, one mustn't get overconfident. McCan't is probably just lowering expectations for all those debates he wants to have with Obama. After all, McCan't must have picked up some political tricks since coming on to Washington's political scene during the Van Buren administration.

Speaking of which, did you know that ol' Marty Van was "described as a 'dandy,' and known to be an exquisite dresser who enjoyed expensive wine and rich food." That must be where McCain started acquiring his taste for living in the elitist and snazzy style to which his beer delivery heiress wife has accustomed him.

UPDATE: TPM has also put together an awfully good mash-up of all the TV talking noggins, including even the angry white men on Fox, who spent much of Tuesday evening laughing at, not with, poor old pitiful decrepit John McCain.

Say, that would be a change

After it became officially official and everything that Barack Obama had clinched the nomination, all the smarty-boots on the talkin' noggins monitoring device here at Gleaner HQ were prattling on about how historic it all is and What It All Means and, well, apparently Barack Obama is a black man.

Oh, that's right. In fact, Obama brought it up when he was in Las Vegas last year speaking to the National Association of Black Journalists. Answering a question about his candidacy and possible election and what impact it all might have in the context of American race relations, Obama conjured up the image of playing on the White House lawn with his kids.

"As president, obviously, the day I'm inaugurated, the racial dynamics in this country will change to some degree," Obama said.

Agreed, it's bound to come as something of a shock to America's wholly untrustworthy idiocracy when it dawns upon them, assuming it does, that one of the men on the presidential ballot in November is black. Then again, America voted, and David Cook, not David Archuleta, is the new American Idol, so maybe the electorate isn't entirely hopeless.