Las Vegas Gleaner

Internets still a magical venue for individual expression, etc.

The question has been raised as to why comments to the posts on this little website are now accompanied by symbols from the lost civilization of planet Zobglax (which of course tragically collapsed into a self-generated black hole created when that world's entire population became media professionals).

Typepad, the outfit that provides the platform for the Gleaner and oodles of other little corners of the internets, did a rethink a while back, and evidently now anyone who files a comment gets a doodlydingbat too -- unless they go to Typepad and set up an identity (which appears to be free and anonymity-friendly) and load up an avatar or a photo or whatever. For instance, I'm currently going with the upside down Nevada flag (or as it's identified in my file folder of frequently used Gleaner art, "so fucking fucked.jpg")

If commenters sign in with Facebook or Twitter or whatever, then evidently your profile picture from those places gets used. I'm sure there's some way to protect anonymity if you do that but social networking sites mostly just make me feel scared and alone and I never know how they work so really I'm just guessing.

Of course you can do nothing and just take the risk that the symbol auto-generated next to your keen insight or witty bon mot is not the secret icon that will trigger sleeper cells of Zobglaxian refugees who will saturate the earth with the antics and ramblings of Jon Gosselin, Glenn Beck, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin and other putrid toxins until humanity is reduced to an easily manipulated population of ignorant cows operating under the delusion that they are thinking for themselves. But I digress.

Agreed -- Typepad's avatar tool is cumbersome and clumsy, which is rather inexcusable because other platforms have been doing the same thing in simpler ways for years. But I think we all know I am way, way too lazy to switch this site over to a different platform.

Oh, and consider this your Gleaner's requisite post on Harry Reid's early ad buy.

Oh it's far, far too late for that

Speaking Wednesday evening at a function in Washington, Republican Sen. John Ensign of Nevada candidly confided that his strategy is to "last as long as I can, and not embarrass myself."

Gubernatorial candidate unveils plan to paint hundreds of lines across U.S.

• RORY (reid) is running for governor and he has a booklet to prove it. He doesn't say anything significant about how or even if Nevada will have enough money to keep being a state or if we'll just have to dissolve into a post-apocalyptic desert ghetto marked by misery, anarchy and chaos.  But his vision statement is full of maps and graphs indicating that if elected, he intends to cover the United States with a complex web of multi-colored criss-crossing lines. Pretty. By the way, though you would never know it from reading the biography part in his campaign booklet, Rory is actually the son of none other than U.S. Sen. Harry Reid -- I know, you probably thought the same last name was just a coincidence. Rory doesn't make a point of bringing up his famous and powerful dad. Out of modesty.
• Speaking of Harry, he's trying to say less to the press, because when he does speak to them it's always so awkward and awful, reports the Hill.
• That same story finds Sen. John Thune, who is famous for not being Tom Daschle, promoting the conventional media narrative that Reid's problem lies primarily with the fact that Obama's agenda is out of touch with Nevada voters. One's gratitude toward some hick-ass bumpkin from some Dakota or other for telling everyone how the Nevada electorate thinks notwithstanding, this now-prevalent storyline about a presumed disconnect between Nevada voters and Obama's agenda:

a) overlooks the incontrovertible fact that Harry Reid is the least personable politician on the contemporary public stage and maybe in the entire history of the U.S. Senate, and...

b) assumes that Nevada selected Obama over Sarah Palin and that other guy by more than 12 percentage points because voters had been entranced by Obama's Kenyan-Muslim magic spells.

Yes. As a matter of fact I will have much more on this later.

• Harry's engaging personality is on display in this video that his people sent out about how the first day of caving to Olympia Snowe went. It went well! You'll note that Harry insists he will work hard to have a public option in the bill. Unfortunately, he has already assured everyone that he doesn't have any influence on the process. Will he come through? Again, it's fifty-fifty.
• You know, castaway ferret Dawn Gibbons might just let her unbalanced husband keep some of whatever is left of his financial assets in divorce court if Jim Gibbons appointed her to a lucrative job as a United States senator when John Ensign resigns. Just trying to help.

Schumer: Senate majority leader may be more important than minority party backbencher!

It goes without saying that Olympia Snowe is the most important, powerful and influential person in the history of the world. All the grown-up media kids know that. And that's why there will be no public option in the final health care reform bill so just get over it m'kay have a nice day.

And yet get a load of Chuck Schumer. He has the audacity to suggest that the fate of the public option rests not with Her Obscure Excellency the Senior Senator Representing the Maine Colony and the Discredited Minority Republican Party, but instead is in the hands of Nevada's very own Harry Reid. Apparently Reid's the Senate majority leader or something!

Leader Reid has the option of putting it in the final bill," Schumer said of the public option. "If he puts it in the final bill, in the combined bill, then you would need 60 votes to remove it. And there clearly are not 60 votes against the public option. And so we're urging him to do that, and he's seriously considering it."

Schumer continued:

It's very important to see if a public option is in the bill that Leader Reid puts together. He hasn't yet made up his mind, but many of us who believe in the public option are urging him to do so, and so far we're getting heard.

Schumer said this solution might take some of the heat off conservative Democratic senators like Sens. Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) and Ben Nelson (D-NE), since they wouldn't have to explicitly vote to put the public option in the bill, but would merely have to support a bill that already included a public option.

So, will Harry do all he can to assure there is a public option in the final bill by including it when he merges the Finance and HELP committee bills? Or will he cave to Her Majesty Empress Olympia and sacrifice the public option so the Democrats can claim the legislation is "bipartisan" (as if anybody outside the Beltway cares)?

The line on Reid hasn't moved -- it's still fifty-fifty.

UPDATE: Reid denies the reckless assertion that he leads the Senate.

What happens here has already been totally figured out by people elsewhere so never mind

For seemingly the 473rd time in as many days, some purveyor of Beltway mainstream media conventional wisdom has drawn on his keen powers of observation to repeat what has been said 472 times before, albeit usually by Republicans: Harry Reid appears to be having a tough time serving as the leader of Senate Democrats while also seeking reelection in a state that used to vote Republican.

Meantime, the Sun King of the Known Blogoverse has declared that the 2010 election is already over and Reid won, because Nevada has so many Democrats.

When it comes to parsing the respective outlooks from such esteemed sources, well, obviously your lowly Gleaner is not worthy.

Having said that, it might be possible -- just throwing this idea out there, mind -- that both the Post's Chris Cillizza and Markos of Kos could be presenting, shall we say, less than nuanced reads of Nevada's political lay o' the land. A harsh view might even go so far as to suggest that really, when you get down it, these guys basically know fuck-all about Nevada.

But of course your Gleaner would never venture to make such a rash statement.

No, in this instance, instead of piling punditry upon punditry and prognosticating what will happen, I'll innocently fall back on a little self-plagiarization and share what I think should happen:

Democratic politicians should focus on governing. Moreover, they should govern not so as to placate the often-irrational fears of the right or in a play-it-safe manner calculated to offend the fewest number of ill-informed independent voters. They should govern to secure and promote social and economic justice. Because they are Democrats. That is what they were elected to do. They can't control the media. But they can control their policy agenda. Besides, the old adage bears repeating: Good policy is good politics.

Survey: Men are pigs, while independents tend to be morons

Upon further review, a previously overlooked set of numbers in the aforementioned survey of the RJ's studio audience sort of pops out (even accounting for the paper's customary nickel-ninety-eight approach to polling).

To be sure, in a head-to-head gubernatorial match-up between Rory Reid and Jim Gibbons, Reid comfortably disposes of the nation's most mentally and emotionally unbalanced governor. So far so good.

But Gibbons does beat Reid the Younger among Republicans and Northern Nevadans. Oh wait. That's a redundancy.

Moreover -- this is where it gets disturbing -- Gibbons also beats Reid among men, 45 percent to 42 percent. And the pathological liar, flim-flam man and governor beats Reid among independents by a bizarre and inconceivable 45 to 31.

It must be due to the sentimental willingness of Nevada independent men to extend forgiveness and generosity, coupled with their reluctance to judge others.

Or maybe they're just creepy.

Maybe the all-powerful Reidian collective should be more appreciative, hmm?

To those who suggest that this little website is sometimes unfairly critical of the majority leader of the United States Senate, a couple points:

1. Consistent assaults on Harry Reid from the left contradict the much more common media narrative in Nevada -- that he is too liberal. That laughably inaccurate perception, fostered by knee-jerk Nevada Republicans and their Arkansas-headquartered pamphleteer division, is evidently much, much more worrisome to the Reid political-industrial complex than any concern about dissent from Nevada progressives -- who indicate they can be taken for granted to dutifully fall in line in any case. So by challenging the senator's commitment to progressive values, and hence the prevailing local conventional wisdom, national progressives, and maybe to some teensy degree even the lowly Gleaner, are doing the Reid machine a favor.

2. Please note that in the conclusion of this item for the Guardian, I play it straight down the middle. Sort of.

Survey says ....

If the election were held today, Harry Reid would lose to everyone. Except maybe Rory Reid.

At least that was my takeaway from the latest poll of Nevada voters.

Also, Oscar Goodman could be elected governor as an independent -- a finding of no practical political significance but that will loom large as Goodman spends the rest of his life telling anyone who will listen that he is the most beloved Nevadan in the history of ever.

Meantime, a contest pitting John Ensign against Jim Gibbons would be too close to call.

And also too close to call is the race between Nevada voters and Nevada politicians to see who is the most flaky.