Las Vegas Gleaner

Reid clears up public option issue once again

"Remember, a public option is a relative term," Reid said. "There's a public option, there's a public option, and there's a public option. And we're going to look at each of them."

And yet some progressive organizations are reportedly going to run ads, right here in Harry Reid's very own Nevada, to pressure the majority leader to include the public option in the Senate reform bill when it hits the floor. They seem to think he won't do the right thing without some nudging.

Damn those loony lefty moonbats! Why so little faith? What part of Reid's latest rumination on the topic don't they understand?

John Ensign is a grotesque, pathetic and probably criminal figure, New York Times learns

New and interesting things in a very long story include but are not limited to:

• Ensign not only had to find his good friend/former employee/cuckold Doug Hampton gainful employment with political handler Little Mikey Slanker, Ensign then had to put out and line up corporate clients to justify Hampton's job as a lobbyist, and basically hold Hampton's hand as he went a-lobbying. Which was probably illegal. As Ensign knew. But he didn't care. Because that's how he is.
• Everybody is always screwing everybody else in Washington anyway so nobody gave it a second thought when the Hairdo showed up all over town with Cynthia Hampton on his arm.
• While in Iraq, the 'Do called Cynthia Hampton -- code-named "Aunt Judy" -- all the time to talk about how he was going to use her for his own pleasure or whatever, and then he (or his parents?) gave her $1,000 to pay the phone bill. International calls from countries we shouldn't have invaded in the first place can be so expensive!
• Slanker secretly calls his company "Ensign, Inc." Is that touching or what?
• Now Doug and Cynthia Hampton are both out of work and Ensign hates them. But maybe his parents will give them some more money anyway?

Even at his age, Ensign is going to be popular in prison.

Dicey question looms over Lowden candidacy

Sue Lowden, who now officially thinks she's senatorial material, can natter on and on and on about government takeovers and socialism and such. And she will!

But if she thinks she's going to have any chance of winning her party's nomination and then defeating Harry Reid next year, at some point she's going to have to be candid with voters and explain the one and perhaps only action in her professional life that actually has had a discernible impact on the lives of average Nevadans: WTF WERE SHE AND HER LAYABOUT HUSBAND THINKING when they shut down the Wet 'n Wild water park only to end up renting the land to an equipment storage operator?

Whether the electorate will accept her apology is anyone's guess.

And, again, let's be really careful out there

No matter how unique or disturbing the circumstances of each individual incident, there is one nearly lockstep constant in Southern Nevada when someone dies at the hands of law enforcement: It's not the officer's fault.

Of the 171 cases spanning more than 30 years ... only one was ruled criminally negligent, back in 1976. In one other case, in 1994, an inquest rendered a decision of "accident with negligence"...

The other 169 cases have all been ruled "excusable," a suicide or, in the vast majority of cases, "justifiable."

Nothing's changed since I wrote that back in March 2008, except of course that the number of "justifiable" fatalities has gone up. No doubt this week's death of 15-year-old Tanner Chamberlain will be ruled "justifiable" as well.

Neither county commissioners nor members of area city councils seem inclined to say a discouraging word about anything having to do with cops. No votes in it.

And much of the community appears to accept or even approve of Southern Nevada law enforcement's point-and-shoot approach to crisis management.

Maybe the feds will take an interest some day. To reiterate, every case is unique -- and when the farce that passes for Southern Nevada's inquest process rules Chamberlain's death "justifiable," as it inevitably will, the ruling may indeed be "justifiable" in this instance. But Southern Nevada law enforcement's virtually spotless record of proper and justifiable fatalities over more than three decades seems not unlike Bernie Madoff's reported return on investments -- too good to be believed and screaming for federal investigation.

Meantime, while waiting for accountability to be visited on the area's trigger-happy law enforcement culture, be very, very careful whenever you're around cops, no matter how seemingly benign the situation. As long as we can't trust the system to hold police accountable, we can't trust the police.

Wake me when it's the other way around

Tarkanian's son will be campaigning with Palin's father.

Protesters take concerns to wrong address

• 

  Your Nevada Democratic Party staged a protest against Republican inaction on health care reform, even though the much more germane and pressing problem is that posed by the Senate majority leader's readiness to mollify conservative Democrats and pass legislation that will be known primarily for forcing people to pay more than they can afford to corporate profiteers for insurance coverage that will continue to suck, thus dooming Democrats nationwide to defeat at the polls for generations to come. But as a wholly owned subsidiary of, and reliable moving part in, the Harry Reid machine, the state Democratic Party can't really say anything about any of that, so everyone should just hush, m'kay?
• Meantime, Beltway navel gazers begin pondering a post-Harry Senate. Evidently the biggest change would be that the Senate Democrats would be led by someone from the party's Democratic wing.
• Utterly disgraced John Ensign hates the public option because it will help people, a view which fits tidily into his vulgar C Street contempt for all who, unlike Ensign, are not among God's Chosen Masters. So far so good. But can someone explain why this otherwise perfectly serviceable news story neglects to mention that Ensign makes his parents pay for his sex? Weird.

Ensign inadvertently condemns America's love of guns and SUVs

Discredited and grotesque John Ensign, who is liked by no one anywhere, will say anything, no matter how illogical, inane or irrelevant to the issue at hand, as part of his ongoing desperate attempts to distract people from the fact that he makes his parents pay for his sex:

One of Ensign's advisers, assuming he still has any, should tell the Hairdo that when philandering hypocritical yet still sanctimonious pricks start wagging their fingers at people, it almost never ends well.

Meantime, back in the real world, there will be no public option in the Senate Finance Committee's health care bill because Max Baucus, Blanche Lincoln, Kent Conrad, Bill Nelson and Tom Carper are all filthy whores. Thank goodness Reid and Obama let the committee piss away the summer. The results sure are worth it.

Of course the public option is still in the Senate HELP Committee bill (as well as House legislation), and now it's up to the full Senate and Harry Reid and ... oh shit.

Heck planning to cut and run, all Palin-like?

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  Flip-flopping physician Joe Heck may flop his other flip and abort (not a very Republican thing to do) his gubernatorial aspirations to run against Dina Titus in CD3 instead, Sebelius notes. That would be terrible news ... not so much for Titus (who would probably reduce the easily bullied Heck to a quivering blob of shudders and sobs), but for Gov. Jim Gibbons, whose hopes for regaining his party's nomination hinge on the unhinged carrying him through a very crowded primary.
• Forgot to mention ... Grover Norquist, to whom Heck bowed down in defeat and submission in violation of everything the doctor once held dear with regard to values and honor, hates dogs. Just saying.
• Speaking of the the far right and its drones ... if you drive across the dam or over the bridge to Bullhead City, you'll be in this steaming pile of paranoid wingnut extremism's congressional district, fyi.

NYTimes generously writes ad copy for super-important senator

The New York Times decided to report how Harry Reid is getting special treatment for Nevada in the negotiations over health care reform legislation. If Reid's intervention survives into a final bill, Nevada, unlike all but three other states, won't have to pay even a small part of the cost of expanding health care coverage for the poor any time soon, the Times explains.

And doggone it (as Harry Reid and/or Sarah Palin might say) that's the way it ought to be, says Reid spokester Jim -- er, "James P." -- Manley, because "Under Republican governors, Nevada has consistently underfunded programs such as Medicaid."

And under Democratic governors, too, the spokester might have added. With one or two exceptions, Nevada politicians of both parties, from governor on down, have been too cowardly to do much other than apply new layers of duct tape to the state's failing fiscal structure over the years.

Nevada politicians of both parties, from governor on up, have also been willing to put corporate bottom lines ahead of the public interest -- why, it was mere months ago that Reid himself took a break from his busy schedule as majority leader to help shield the mining industry from paying more in state taxes.

Reid has long been Nevada's premier apologist for transnational mining conglomerates, and wielding his considerably influence to coddle them even as they reap record profits may seem a rather smallish turn of events in the grand scheme of things. But it's those little touches that do so much to explain why -- as Reid's spokester would say -- "Nevada has consistently underfunded programs such as Medicaid."

Of course, there's no reason the Times reporter should know any of that stuff.

A bit more puzzling, however, is the story's failure to mention that parachuting himself into the Medicaid issue marks the first recorded instance of Reid actually getting involved in this year's health care reform debate in any substantive way. Reid's rush to compensate for his state's congenital cheapness, after all, comes after months in which he mostly played the role of innocent bystander and whined about how hard it is to be majority leader.

Had the Times explained Reid's role, or lack thereof, in the health care fight thus far, it would have reinforced the story's point about his recent power play on the Medicaid angle, i.e., Reid is throwing his weight around and putting his own political interests -- or, to take the charitable view, his state's financial interests -- ahead of the country's.

Oh well, it's not like Reid or his staff will fret much over what is or isn't actually reported in the story. The important thing, the truly glorious magnificent wonderful beautiful thing, from their point of view, is that on Sept. 29, 2009, this was the headline in the New York Times:

Hope you like it. Because it's going to be on TV next year. About 397,000 times a week.

Media speculates on course charted by mercurial changeling

Harry Reid's office is pushing back on a New York Times story that says the majority leader has decided to pull the plug on the public option.

True, it's hard to imagine who might be surprised if Reid ultimately eschews making a sincere push for the public option in the final Senate bill. Having said that, if there's one thing that can be fairly said about Reid's thus far lackluster performance in the health care debate, it's that over the course of the last four months or so he has expressed support for nearly every specific health care reform that has been proposed in the United States of America. So maybe when it matters, it will be during a time when he is somehow of the mind that he needs to draw on all his erstwhile oft-touted mad skills as mister hot-shot wheeler-dealer and secure a public option.

Still, a little website -- even one that reportedly "tends to be critical of the majority leader" -- might be excused for being pessimistic.