Las Vegas Gleaner

Idiot voters saved from themselves!

The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that term limits really do exist, but not for anybody that you care about, at least not this year, or something like that (AP). But most importantly, this shocking ruling has sent at least 17 people in the local political-industrial complex into some sort of tizzy or some damned thing.

Gleaner's mid-summer state o' the race analysis: Hopeful Tomorrow still well-positioned to eke out victory over Bitter Yesterday

The nation's political press corps tends to concern itself first and foremost with the horse-race end o' things anyway so it's understandable that everyone is contemplating what Obama's World Victory Tour will mean for his chances.

But in keeping with what this little corner of the interwebtubes has always considered the most promising thing about Obama, a separate point: Obama's trip has done more  to tell the world that the United States is not, in point of fact, full-on batshit crazy anymore than any other event, statement or action, official or unofficial, of the last seven years.

In a way that arguably no one else could, Obama has already kick-started the effort to rebrand the U.S. as, taken all in all and on the whole, a good thing (and one of the big reminders coming out of the Europe trip especially is that people would really, really like to like the U.S. and fervently hope that America will stop being such a dick).

To be sure, however, assurances that the U.S. is no longer a Superpower Gone Wild may be dialed back considerably if the warmonger John Sidney McCain III were somehow elected president.

To that end, let's watch a short clip that increasingly famous and influential Nevadan Jed Lewsion dug up from his own recent archives:

Ah yes, what with McCain spending most of the past week whining bitterly in front of any camera that would focus on him about how Obama is so much more interesting than he is, it was easy to forget about the solemn promise to veto all the beers.

There are still conventions to stage and veepees to pick, micro-scandals to obsess over, wedges to exploit and all the rest between now and November 4. And most importantly, there will be a few weeks in October when the undecided voters -- morons by definition -- will lift up their heads long enough to be exposed to a just a snippet or two of information that will then allow them to make a decision based on gut feelings.

The McCain camp (subtly) and its surrogates (not so subtly) can be expected to fill that time, and aim for those middle American mid-sections, with reminders that Obama and his entire family are elitist radical black Muslim socialist revolutionaries who love gays, Mexicans, gay Mexicans, terrorists and, worst of all, taxes but hate the troops, whereas McCain was the bestest prisoner of war in the history of both prisoners and war.

That messaging is likely to move a moron or two.

But the more people see of that smart young hunky Obama fellow and ol' Sidney the III, the overwhelming impressions that hopefully will settle in the gut of America's standard-issue oblivious undecided voter are a) Obama's cool and b) McCain may be a good man (prisoner of war!!!) but holy shit what a geezer.

McCain will hold town hall meeting with Iowans in Nevada

Or maybe it's a town hall meeting with Nevadans in Iowa?

The laugh-a-minute presidential campaign of John Sidney McCain III announced Thursday that the candidate will be appearing at a town hall meeting in Sparks July 29. The visit coincides with a fundraiser that McCain has scheduled with the not-Cindy-McCain-rich-but-rich-enough people of Lake Tahoe.

Because one never knows when Cindy might offer to fly liberal bloggers to one of her husband's events  -- Western states being simply too big for the non-elitist McCains to navigate save by private plane, after all -- the lowly Gleaner followed the link to get more information about the town hall meeting, only to find that the Sparks visit is yet another stop as the Straight Talk Express rolls through the heartland.

The truly unfortunate thing for McCain is that there aren't any offshore drilling platforms in either Iowa or Nevada where he could steal headlines from that snooty African-European Barack Obama by cleverly scheduling and then canceling press events.

But the McCain campaign's lovable madcap antics aside, let's not lose sight of the true significance of adding Sparks to the McCain for President itinerary. Sparks is the childhood home town of one James Arthur Gibbons, the nation's worst governor. What could possibly be a better place to formally and officially introduce America to the the McCain-Gibbons ticket!

Let's toss up Jon Porter and see what comes down

Toast, perhaps?

The Cook Political Report (sub. req.) has moved the race between Jon Porter and Dina Titus from "lean Republican" to "toss up." The full analysis, or at least the part that found its way into the Gleaner's email, is pasted in an unattractive but persistent font after the jump.

It's mostly stuff that Gleaner readers already know. Except for the last bit: "Porter's problems in this race are clearly more atmospheric than personal."

Oh that seems awfully charitable. It also severely underestimates the image Porter has nurtured as a career politician and common opportunist eager to do the bidding of his corporate masters though willing to change position in a heartbeat for political gain, and an overall putz-about-town who is far more concerned about making a fool out of himself playing in his preposterous band than representing the interests of his constituents.

In colossal campaign gaffe, Obama makes world like him

The campaign of John Sidney McCain III lashed out at Barack Obama Thursday for a speech Obama gave to hundreds of thousands of adoring Europeans.

Obama's speech was uncalled for and completely out of bounds for an American politician, the McCain camp said. Specifically, Europeans (pictured, at right) tend to hate patriotic Americans such as George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Sean Hannity and McCain. But they like Obama. Therefore, a McCain spokesman said, Obama should admit that he hates America and quit campaigning for the presidency.

The McCain camp took particular umbrage at lines like this in Obama's speech:

The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.

Eager to pounce on a perceived gaffe, the McCain campaign rushed out a statement:

"Hasn't black Barack Obama -- who by the way was never a prisoner of war -- been listening to the concerns of normal Americans as expressed through their AM talk radio hosts? What this world, and especially this nation in particular, needs now is to build walls, not tear them down, starting of course with a big wall to keep out all the Mexicans that John McCain used to love until he found out Republican voters hate them so now he hates Mexicans too."

OK, that statement was actually made up out of thin air. The genuine early pushback from War Party apparatchiks was far more sad and ridiculous, consisting of some boilerplate stuff about the "left wing Democratic" Obama "who vowed to 'end' the war rather than win it," and delivered by ... Rep. Thaddeus McCotter???

Let's recap:

• Barack Obama went to Germany, inspired a crowd of 200,000 people with a vision of the U.S. and Europe working together to tackle the world's greatest challenges smartly, sanely and in concert, and was greeted, as the media says, like a rock star.
• Not to be outdone, the Republicans trotted out their own rock star. Well, sort of. McCotter is the guitar player in Nevada Rep. Jon Porter's incredibly sucky garage band.

Given the performance of the McCain campaign of late, perhaps the consensus on possible veepee picks needs to be revised. Hell, at this rate, Sidney might pick Porter.

Miniglean

• It's from Elko so it took a few days to reach America, but the Elko Daily Free Press prepared a blistering expose that lifts the lid and exposes the dark underside of the nation's worst governor's latest nemesis, Elko County Assessor Joe Aguirre.
• Blond Republican backbencher Dean Heller hires some out-of-staters to call a Nevada reporter and tell her how wonderful he is and how icky Jill Derby is and mispronounce everyone's name, which is to say it all went about as well as most things associated with Dean Heller. INP
• It's unnerving -- no? -- to watch Harry Reid and former ex-president Bill Clinton hooking up with T. Boone Pickens, a known squelcher who financed the despicable "Swiftboaters for Truth" crap against John Kerry. Sure, it's useful, s'pose, for Pickens to drop a bundle to televise his "this is one emergency we can't drill our way out of" shtick -- and it's a hell of an improvement over his last big TV buy, which was used to promote a bunch of disgusting lies about a Vietnam War veteran. But if anybody knows anybody who knows Harry, tell him that one of his biggest flaws is that he is not always as smart as he thinks he is, and whatever he does he absolutely positively should not trust Pickens any further than he can throw the Ogallala aquifer (a good portion of which Pickens plans to mine and ship to the Texas growth and development industry for a magnificent profit).
• Nevada's dysfunctional revenue system is unsustainable. RJ
• But nor can the area ecologically sustain Southern Nevada's economic model (more strip malls full of nail salons and payday loan stores for everyone!) so it all works out. RJ
• Oh. So that's what Michael Zahara looks like. RJ

Romney-Gibbons in 2012!

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, the only non-white Republican elected official at any level of government in the entire United States of America, says he will not be a vice presidential running/losing mate for John Sidney McCain III (CNN).

This is excellent news for Nevadans everywhere who continue to hold out hope for the exciting McCain-Gibbons dream ticket. Or at least a McCain-Ensign ticket.

Alas, more and more of the talking heads in the grown-up media are prattling on about the likelihood that Sidney the III will go with fellow non-elitist Willard Milton Romney (pictured, with his admirers at his side) as his running/losing mate.

You heard it here first. No. Really. Back in February, even before Willard was officially out of race for the War Party nomination, your lowly Gleaner explained why Willard would make the perfect veepee candidate for Sid...

...vice presidents are expected to quickly and happily champion the policies of the person at the top of the ticket, no matter how much those policies might contrast with or even offend the vice-presidential candidate's own deeply held convictions and principles. This would pose no problem whatsoever for Willard. If Willard has gone to enormous personal expense to demonstrate nothing else in the course of his otherwise pointless campaign, it is that he has no deeply held convictions and principles.

Willard of course will jump at the opportunity to spend the next several months criss-crossing the nation explaining to anyone who will listen why John McCain should be elected president in 2008 he should be elected president in 2012.

Meantime, that whining sound you hear is the Mormon population of the greater Intermountain West rekindling their persecution complex.

Miniglean

• The program to help Nevada's poor pay their skyrocketing electricity bills is currently funded to the tune of a relatively paltry $2.4 million and about to run out altogether (Sun). No doubt the nanny-state liberals will complain that here again is yet another example of how Nevada's safety net is threadbare and riddled with gaping holes. But consider this: That $2.4 million is nearly half the $4.9 million that former Sierra Pacific/Nevada Power CEO Walt Higgins was paid in 2007. And what other state's energy assistance program is so generous as to equal half the salary of an individual utility executive, hmmm?
• In his latest weekly memo, Lord High Chancellor Jim Rogers argues that people don't understand how much university professors work because he pays the anchors on his TV station $300,000 a year. Wait. What?
• The nation's worst governor jokes about being a pathological liar who improperly uses the influence of his office and commits fraud to avoid paying a few thousand dollars in taxes (RJ). Well, it is pretty funny.
• Bitchy Little Area Megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson has decided that he doesn't need to build a casino in Kansas because Missouri is going to loosen betting limits and let problem and pathological gamblers lose all the money they have as well as all the money they can borrow or steal just as fast as they can (CNN). Now, clearly, is no time to raise the gaming tax.
• Congress isn't going to do anything meaningful until President Obama moves in so Harry Reid decides to take full-on slack-jawed yokel and dumb Okie Tom Coburn out to the parking lot and kick his ass for him. Hell, it's just something to do. RJ

More wisdom from extractive industry spokesman, congressman and trophy spouse Dean Heller

After confirming his support for nuclear power (but of course), blond backbencher Dean Heller compares drilling for oil to mining for gold: "I think you drill where the oil is," he said. "It's like the mining reform bill. They're trying to tell us where to mine for gold" (RJ).

First, it's nice to see Heller refer to the planet's largest multinational corporate mining conglomerates as "us" -- politicians are usually more reticent about admitting that they are boot-licking head-nodding obedient servants of an industry, so Heller's candor is refreshing.

Second, about the mining reform thing ... it's not really about telling Heller's corporate masters where to mine the public's gold. It's about getting them to pay a little something for it.

Obscure congressman pretends not to love Dick Cheney

Fresh off demanding that all the fire-breathing virgin-sacrificing extremist revolutionaries, er, the Republican class of '94, should be removed from office, cute trophy spouse and freshman War Party congressman Dean Heller is now blasting Vice President Dick Cheney for not knowing jack about energy.

Heller was in Alaska Tuesday with several other Republican members of Congress each of whom are orders of magnitude more important than he is. Given about 45 seconds to say something in a microphone, Heller said (from CQ, sub. req.):

If anything, going to Colorado and then up to Alaska I think we -- it reinforced one thing, and that is our energy policy here in this country is a three-legged stool. Has to be conservation. Has to be renewable energy. And it has to be additional sources of energy that we can bring to the table, here in America, in an environmentally safe way. And I think we can do all three."

If you do one without the other two, you'll fail. If you do two of them without the third, you're going to fail. You have to do all three of them.

Thank you very much for those inspirational words Mr. Blond Backbencher. Most holistic.

But who's going to tell that nice Mr. Cheney?

As some people -- say, the Republicans like John Sidney McCain III who are blaming Democrats for American energy policy -- may remember, Cheney spearheaded the energy policy that would be followed by Republicans for the next several years way back in 2001 after a series of high-level meetings with the American Petroscum Association.

In a major address detailing Republican energy policy, Cheney pish-poshed solar and other renewable sources as "years down the road." And "Conservation may be a sign of personal virtue," Cheney added, the Cheney inspiration controls dialed up to turbo, "but it is not a sufficient basis for a sound, comprehensive energy policy."

Gosh, who can we believe -- an obscure backbencher or the most horrific monster ever to serve in the United States government?

Ha, gotcha -- it's a false choice. Neither one of them can be believed, as Heller was in Alaska to promote drilling drilling drilling because if he says that over and over again oil company fat cats will give him lots of campaign contributions, and all that nattering on about conservation and renewables is just stuff Republicans say but don't really mean. Which is to say Heller is still adhering to Republican energy policy -- as lovingly crafted by Cheney back in the day.