Las Vegas Gleaner

Hmm, this sounds like a promisingly impeachable offense

What with him being a neurotic, emotionally stunted glassy-eyed pathological liar with sociopathic tendencies, sometimes it's easy to forget that Jim Gibbons, the nation's worst governor, is also a corrupt, venal crook -- but not for long! There's always something there to remind us, in this instance provided by AP reporter Sandra Chereb:

Gov. Jim Gibbons asked for and received a property tax break on a vacant rural parcel he owns in Elko County that saved Nevada's chief executive thousands of dollars a year and left the county assessor feeling pressured.

Records show the first-term Republican governor lowered his annual property tax liability to $15 from about $5,000 on the 40 sagebrush-dotted acres he owns near Lamoille by getting it designated as agricultural land rather than residential.

The story goes on to tell how the nation's creepiest governor slammed Elko County Assessor Joe Aguirre up against the wall in a parking garage and told him to put out or else. OK, that's paraphrasing. But not much.

The state Democratic Party rushed out a release Friday afternoon under the headline "'No-new-taxes Gibbons' doesn't pay his own taxes," and accused Gibbons of being "reckless and self-indulgent in using his power as governor ... once again, it looks like Gibbons is abusing the trust of Nevada voters."

Well, yeah. But this might be a little bigger than that.

Gibbons was trying to get out from paying taxes by claiming that the land qualifies for an agricultural designation because he makes more than $5,000 leasing a measly 40 acres of dirt and rocks, primarily for grazing livestock. As AP reported:

Forty acres isn't a lot of ground for an animal that needs 800 pounds of forage a month, industry experts said. The Nevada Cattlemen's Association said one rule of thumb is 100 acres per cow if the land is mostly scrubby sagebrush, though less is needed if the land has higher quality feed and water.

Grazing land lease rates range from $1.35 to $20 per animal unit month, meaning that if Gibbons' 40 acres could support a cow, the going rate would be $240 a year on the high end, about $500 if it supported two cows.

Gibbons -- for whom the phrase "all hat and no cattle" might have been originally coined, after all -- is either flat-out lying, as usual, when he claims the land earned more than $5,000, or he found a crony in the form of Washoe Disrict Judge Jerry Carr Whitehead to substantially overpay him -- or at least make it look like he was paying him.

Through lawyer and Nevada Tax Commission member (!?!) John Marvel (son of the geezer legislator), Gibbons ...

...submitted copies of the front side of two checks from Whitehead to Gibbons in the amounts of $1,500 and $4,227, with notations saying they were for 2007 lease payments, according to documents obtained by the AP. Aguirre said from the documentation provided he couldn't determine whether the checks had been cashed and he didn't feel comfortable questioning the governor or Marvel on that matter.

Whitehead, contacted by phone, declined to comment, saying it was a private matter.

In other words, this is not just another in the interminable string of Gibbons lies. He also could be involved in ... well, the Gleaner is not a lawyer and not sure what one would call it but "conspiracy to commit fraud" and "fraud" come to mind for starters, no?

For the record, the story includes the requisite hollow denials dutifully trotted out by increasingly discredited-by-association Gibbons spokester Ben Kieckhefer, the poor, poor bastard.

McCain-Gibbons '08 dream ticket - keep hope alive!

What do Ross Perot and Nancy Reagan have in common?

If you said "they're both batshit crazy drooling geezers with really big ears and only a tenuous grip on reality," you'd be wrong. The former first lady's ears aren't all that big.

Rather, it turns out that both of them think John Sidney McCain III is a despicable cad who should be tortured anew for the way he treated Carol, his first wife who by several accounts retained her inner beauty following a car crash but alas lost something that mattered even more to Sidney the III, her outer beauty-queen looks.

"McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory," Perot recently told the Daily Mail. "After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history."

Apparently inspired by a foreign newspaper's interest in the personal life of one of our presidential candidates, the LATimes this week reminded everyone that the magnificent and sainted Reagans also thought McCain was a colossal asshole for dropping his wife and chasing a woman young enough to be his daughter (Sidney the III was 42 and Cindy was perhaps not yet wholly terrifying at a mere 24 when the conservative married man started chasing her like, well, a conservative married man).

Meantime, the story also finds that Sidney has told a bunch of lies (just another day on the Straight Talk Express) about how and when he dumped his first wife and started schtooping the inevitably terrifying heiress. For instance, in his memoir he said he was separated from Carol when he was making time with Cindy; in fact he was still living with Carol for at least nine months while he was angling his way into Cindy's checkbook, er, pants, er, heart.  Also...

While McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Cindy Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. In fact, McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

Hmm. That's not change we can believe in.

Oh, why the Gibbons reference in the headline and the picture of Gibbons and McCain together? Just gratuitous skank-linkage.

Whiners? Americans?

The conservative ones certainly are. Your standard-issue Hannity-watching Limbaugh-listening American conservative usually can't participate in a conversation for any more than 27 seconds before going, as Phil Gramm might say, "mental" and launching into a whinefest about regulations strangling poor put-upon corporations and how evil it is for rich people to pay more taxes than poor people and that damned political correctness won't even allow a bidnessman to discriminate on the basis of race, gender or sexual preference etc. etc. etc.

Or to paraphrase an old joke, What's the difference between a conservative and a 727? When a 727 lands in Hawaii, it quits whining.

In other lame-joke-related news, the worst president in the history of the United States bid adieu to world leaders Thursday with a jaunty "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter," demonstrating yet again that his wit is every bit the equal to his judgment.

Phil Gramm, George Bush, John Sidney McCain III -- Thursday's headlines were chock full o' jackasses, to be sure. But at least Americans could take some comfort in knowing that their next president has a fairly decent sense of comic timing:

Though in fairness, Sidney the III is pretty funny, too, albeit unintentionally.

Miniglean

• Perhaps he's still bitter about missing several years of Social Security benefits because he had already reached the age of eligibility long before the program was established in 1935. Then again, John Sidney McCain III's bitter hostility to the program may simply stem from a conviction that if deadbeat Americans want some measure of economic security in their declining years, then they should quit their whining, suck it up and go find an enormously wealthy if terrifying heiress who will always support them in lavish oppulence, like McCain did. Or perhaps because throughout the entire course of his astonishingly long adult life, he never worked a single day in the private sector, he never developed any regard for the program. Whatever the reason, Sidney the III says that Social Security is an "absolute disgrace" and so of course now America will have to bomb it before it destroys all our freedoms and forces all our women to wear burkas.
• The nation's worst governor's is a fan of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (NORM!). But of course he is.
• Speaking of tasteless Republicans who work hard every day trying to balance the competing pressures of appealing to a family-values base while repeatedly leaving their wives, Rep. Jon Porter says Dina Titus can raise all the money she wants and she'll never have as much money as he does because he's always done whatever he's been told by oil, health, financial services and insurance industries and those industries will give him as much money as he wants, so neener neener neener. And if that's not enough, Porter puppeteer, transnational warmonger and bitchy little area megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson will spend gazillions to tell lies about Titus, too, starting with robocalls that people are always so happy to receive. Well, at least that's how the Gleaner read this RJ story.
• Whatever your opinion as to whether coal makes us sick, surely everyone can agree that Susan Estrich does. Sun
• This year the Latinos are really going to show up to vote. No, really. Not kidding this time. While the RJ story accompanying that biannual assertion is not without interest, its comment thread is a small but earnest testament to Nevadans at their ill-informed xenophobic best.
• When Las Vegas Water Czarina Pat Mulroy says jump, a lowly state engineer can but only bow his head, tug his forelock and ask, "how high, ma'am." SLT, RJ, Sun
• John Ensign's, the nation's most out-of-touch senator, gets his ass kicked while Ensign's trusty sidekick, little Mikey Slanker, helplessly looks on. Politico

Why are Nevadans so mean and stingy?

Now that the charming mid-summer Las Vegas temperatures have settled in and most life forms have been rendered too stationary to make much in the way of news, a question: Can someone please explain why cell phone photographs showing the nation's worst governor in compromising situations with women who aren't his wife are not flooding the email in-boxes of area website operators?

Almost every day there are rumors tossed hither and yon about Jim Gibbons throwing back some alcohol and grabbing a little ass here or hitting on some woman half his age there or awkwardly caught in some other disturbing junior-highish public display of affection.

But where are the photos? Surely, there must be photos. It is simply not believable that all or even most of these sordid tales of Nevada's skanky governor's tawdry behavior are mere baseless accusations; if he's proven nothing else, it's that rumors about him are always true.

So why, Nevada? Why are you hoarding the pics?

That goes double for all the beautiful people who saw Gibbons at Tao (via Monger) in Sheldon Adelson's Venetian the other night. If anyone knows any of those bright young things, tell them that in those hilarious digital images they took of an aging full-on ass clown clumsily trying to drape himself over some young woman who looks like she's about to throw up, the pervy old fart is actually Nevada's governor, and those pictures rightfully belong in the public domain.

(And if the snazzy Tao clientele answer that they'll try to sell the images to TMZ, remind them that Nevada's governor is about as marketable a celebrity as, oh, Sherman Frederick. Who, they'll ask? Exactly).

Meantime, thanks to the comment boards at the Carson City paper, Nevada at least can laugh at the picture (above and cropped to protect the innocent) of Gibbons with his texting BFF Kathy Karrasch, as featured in the Huffaker Elementary yearbook. The pair were captured for photographic posterity in February, nearly a year after Kathy Karrasch apparently told Gibbons to quit texting her like a crazed glassy-eyed stalker because he was freaking her out and she never really liked him that much anyway. And judging from the smile on her face, Gibbons by that point in time may well have heeded her wishes and moved on to the next chapter in his sad empty life which he is so desperately trying to fill via promiscuous sexual conquest.

But wait, Dawn, the forsaken Gibbons, was clearly talking about Kathy Karrasch as the Chrissy Mazzeo lookalike/object of her husband's "infatuation" in her incendiary divorce papers, and they weren't filed until the end o' May. So surely Gibbons still must have been having, if not textual, than at least sexual relations with that woman in February when the school photo was taken, right?

Eh, not necessarily. As they used to say back in the day, the wife is always the last to know.

But really, the identity/identities of the hapless souls whose judgment is such that they would willingly carouse with a sociopathic lying scuzball like Jim Gibbons is neither here nor there. The important thing is to have embarrassing pictures so everyone can have a laugh to lighten the oppressive summer heat. Come on Nevada. Here we are now entertain us.

UPDATE: Remember when Gibbons was helping that woman find her truck? No, not that one. The other one, at the rodeo? Looks like she found it.

Well, if it isn't Miss Moneybags...

In just two months, Dina Titus has raised almost $600,000 (NVDems). Her opponent in Nevada's third congressional district, War Party incumbent congressman and putz-about-town Jon Porter, has raised $1.6 million for reelection since he started raising money the day after his last election in 2006, and is already sitting on more than $1 million in cash on hand, a number that assuredly will be much larger after Porter's fundraising numbers for the last quarter are released.

Well, to repeat, Titus is not going to beat Porter by outspending him. But she appears to be well on her way to having enough money to buy TV ads showing Porter playing piano with his sucky garage band while the world has been going to hell in a handbasket, and so she will be your new member of Congress. Yay.

Celebrity conservative hospitalized

Warren Jeffs,  whose dedication to practicing faith-based values without interference from the collectivist nanny state helped elevate him to the leadership of god-fearing gun-toting government-hating thousands throughout the intermountain West and elsewhere in the American heartland, was hospitalized in Las Vegas Wednesday (AP).

Colleagues and associates expressed hope that Jeffs would recover in time to join with kindred spirits such as Alan Keyes, Richard Viguerie, Ward Connerly, Grover Norquist and a host of other celebrities, personalities, curiosities and oddities from conservatism's most extreme fringe when they gather in Las Vegas in September for the annual Conservative Leadership Conference sponsored by Virginia-based Citizen Outhouse.

Let's get sicker

Fresh from rendering his celebrity diagnosis on the health effects of oil -- it makes us sick and will lead to painful, miserable death for everyone and everything on the planet -- Harry Reid apparently thinks that what the world needs now is more of it. Preferably by drilling offshore, no less. From the WSJ:

Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin (D., Ill.), said "I'm open to drilling and responsible production," adding that he and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, (D., Nev.), could support a modest expansion of offshore production.

Sen. Durbin said any compromise on drilling, however, would be contingent at a minimum on a requirement that oil and gas companies sitting on existing acreage either produce oil on those areas within a specified period or return the leases to the government.

Reid himself is not quoted in the story and so there is not much in the way of an explanation as to why he suddenly is supporting the McCain offshore flip-flop, undermining Obama's message and reinforcing the Oil Party's attacks on Obama's energy plan.

If in fact that is what Reid is doing -- Gleaner has made queries to the Harry Reid Media Message Development Center, Gets Paid to Take Calls from Lowly Bloggers Division, and will share any info as it arrives.

UPDATE: "Sen Reid has stated repeatedly and still believes that America cannot drill its way out of this crisis," Reid spokester Jon Summers said in a statement sent to your Gleaner. "His point is that the oil companies are sitting on 68 million acres of land, which they could start drilling today if they wanted to increase American production. He would be supportive of that. However, he is not supportive of giving oil companies tax breaks only to see them not being invested in refineries or renewables."

So apparently it's not so much that Reid, along with Democrats who have been floating talk of an energy legislation compromise, are interested in allowing more offshore drilling as they are in pressuring oil companies to put up or shut up on the oil leases they already have (some of which, by the way, are offshore). Which is actually very similar to positions Obama outlined when he was in Las Vegas a couple weeks ago.

Having said that, the McCain campaign and its apologists in the media, neither of whom are renowned for nuance, are pushing hard on the bogus storyline that Obama's energy policy consists mostly of saying no. So it won't be too surprising if a wingnut or three jumps on the Durbin/Reid statement and crows that even Senate Democrats want to drill offshore and only lonely Obama doesn't so he could never be president even if he wasn't already disqualified by virtue of being a Muslim who was never a prisoner of war. Democrats. Always with the carefully coordinated messaging, no?

McCain declares "hope" the front line in the war on terror, vows to crush it

Oh look, it's the latest ad running in Nevada and ten other all-important battleground states touting John Sidney McCain III, who will never be an elitist no matter how many thousands of dollars his terrifying heiress wife runs up on her credit cards to handsomely furnish their many swank condos in some of America's most expensive enclaves of refined and gracious living.

So it turns out Sidney the III was a POW. Hmm. You'd think his campaign would emphasize that more.

Heller explains why GOP would be better off without him and Ensign

One sure sign that the nation is locked in the grip of a slow news month is when the paper runs an interview with War Party Rep. Dean Heller that appears to have been saved up for a day when there wasn't enough crime and mayhem copy to fill the paper's local news section.

Arguably the most obscure and statistically among the least relevant of all the members of the U.S. Congress, Heller was no doubt delighted to receive a call from the working press in the first place, and used the rare moment as the subject of someone's attention to explain that the reason America hates Republicans so much is that Republicans aren't Republican enough.

"I'm of the position that we really need to clean house in this Republican Party, and I think the next couple of election cycles are going to do that," Heller said.

Republicans who should be swept out, in Heller's view, include some from the historic class of 1994, which gave the GOP a majority in the House for the first time in 40 years.

"It's an old mantra: they came to change Washington, and Washington changed them," Heller said several weeks ago. "I think we got to the point where the majority of Republicans were trying to change America and tell (Americans) what they wanted instead of listening to ... what they need."

Although Heller did not mention his name, Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., was one of 73 members of the GOP freshman class of 1994 in the House. Through a spokesman, Ensign declined to comment on Heller's statement. (RJ)

"Several weeks ago," eh? Actually, it makes perfect sense that an interview with Heller would exhibit such an impressive shelf-life -- anything the career politician says is unlikely to be any more or less consequential no matter when it is revealed to the public, and the importance, or lack thereof, of the cute blond's utterances certainly won't grow or diminish much over the course of a mere "several weeks."

But yes, Ensign is the nation's most out-of-touch senator and his complete and total submersion in the darkest and deepest crannies of a cloistered beltway subculture goes without saying. Still, it's nice to see Heller say it.

Meantime, what are we to make of the rest of Heller's sophisticated political analysis? (That analysis is shared of course by any number of Republicans, conservatives and their apologists nationwide who contend that the Republican Party's big problem is simply that it has "gotten off track" or somesuch; it's not like Heller thinks up this shit on his own.)

On the one hand, it sounds as if Heller is suggesting that...

• tax cuts for the wealthy and the world's largest corporations;
• regulatory neglect of the sort that allows coal miners to die, children to play with lead-tainted toys, the credit system to nearly collapse, etc.;
• rigidly knee-jerk conservative ideology blocking the development of pragmatic policies in the areas of energy, health care and economics;
• hating gays;
• hating civil liberties, and;
• disastrously arrogant military adventurism

...may have been things that Republicans in Washington wanted, but were not what Americans needed.

Then again, perhaps Heller was trying to explain that if Republicans continue to do just what they've been doing, except more of it, i.e., ...

• even more generous taxpayer-funded handouts to the wealthy;
• more dead miners, unsafe consumer products, teetering financial markets, etc.;
• wholesale, aggressive inaction on economic policy;
• stepped-up and uglier intolerance of law-abiding hard-working fellow Americans;
• increased assaults on individual freedoms and;
• as Heller's beloved War Party standard bearer -- who has been in Washington so long that it has changed him several times over --  puts it, "other wars, my friends ... other wars"

... Americans will love the War Party again just like they did after 9-11 when people liked Republicans so much they even said nice things about venal little ogres like Dolph JulieAnnie and, for a few minutes there and unimaginable as it retrospectively seems, Dick Cheney.

Either way, Heller and like-minded conservative extremists certainly are charting a provocative course, and hopefully they'll let us know how that works out for them.

There's just one niggling little hitch in Heller's otherwise insightful prognosis. Since getting in the game at the federal level, Heller has tacked hard, hard to the right, not so much to please the most hard core right-wingers in his own district (though their flavorful wingnuttery is frighteningly well-developed), but to assure that he will never be attacked from the right flank by a well-funded Washington conservative extremist insider special interest group called Club for Growth. In other words, Heller, once widely thought to be mostly sane, may have run for Congress to change Washington, but Washington most definitely has changed him.

And so to be on the safe side and by his own standard, any housecleaning in the Republican Party should probably include Dean Heller.