Las Vegas Gleaner

Trigger-happy cops can and will shoot whoever they want, area newspaper helpfully explains

Over the years, your Gleaner has mocked and belittled the Las Vegas Review-Journal -- the phrase "right-wing masturbatorium" may have surfaced once or twice. And rest assured the R-J will be mocked again.

But credit where credit's due. The R-J's series on area law enforcement's shoot-first-ask-questions-later culture is exactly the type of enterprising and investigative reporting that the penny-pinching paper traditionally has shied away from, probably because it's too expensive.

This time the paper went all in, and the result may be the best thing the R-J has ever published.

Yes, yes, the R-J's interest in police gunning down the citizenry wasn't truly spiked until cops shot that white middle class guy at Costco. The victim had a concealed weapons permit, and the R-J brain trust won't be happy until all good Americans are packing at all times, so you can see why that particular shooting raised eyebrows at the paper.

And yes, it being the R-J, there is a distinct possibility that the series will conclude by blaming law enforcement's trigger-happiness on Obamacare and the onerous tax and regulatory burdens shouldered by "job creators."

But if Sunday's first installments are any indication, the series is as fascinating yet troubling as the issue itself, exhaustively detailing

...an insular department that is slow to weed out problem cops and is slower still to adopt policies and procedures that protect both its own officers and the citizens they serve. It is an agency that celebrates a hard-charging police culture while often failing to learn from its mistakes.

It's a devastating look, and of course one hopes the series sparks a public outcry that is so loud and so strong that even county commissioners, whose relationship with Metro is characterized chiefly by fawning approval, can't ignore it, and finally we'll get some genuine, meaningful reform.

So, since who knows when the opportunity will again present itself, if ever, without further ado: Hooray, R-J.

GOP gives thanks for President-elect Gingrich

T'was by no means the most morally repugnant moment of the so very many morally repugnant moments that have characterized the publicity stunt masquerading as Newton Leroy Gingrich's presidential campaign. But now that the ethically obtuse and generally repulsive Gingrich is atop the GOP presidential polls, your Gleaner would like to elaborate on an exchange between Willard and Gingrich from last month's debate in Las Vegas.

During the debate, Willard was under attack for that one time he was sane and got on board some modest health care reforms in Massachusetts. Gingrich, arrogance and condescension dialed to his default "turbo" setting, was all "your plan essentially is one more big government bureaucratic high-cost snort gurgle blahbity-blah-blah-blah pffft" etc. Then Mittles was all Hey Pugsley we got the individual mandate idea from you, so neener neener. And Moob Gingrich said nuh-uh.

Lots of Mitt said-It said ensued, and at one point a sanctimonious Gingrich (is there any other kind?) pretended to become agitated and basically called Willard a liar. Ooh, tense. But Willard had Gingrich at a disadvantage because Willard actually is running for president and so he prepares for debates. Long story short, Gingrich was forced to admit that yes, he championed the individual mandate back in the day, and so when he mustered all the high dudgeon and called Mitt a liar, he, pissy Newt Gingrich, was the one who was lying.

And all the stern indignation the insufferable windbag had displayed mere seconds before just washed away, as Gingrich smiled the smile of a man who has no intention of ever being president and in fact finds the idea ludicrous, but who is allowed to use the presidential selection process to make money and satisfy his lust for attention, so goodness what a wonderful country -- American exceptionalism! -- for a reprehensible cad to fulfill his tawdry goals. That's what Gingrich's smile said to me, anyway.

Watch the exchange, if you like.

All flash and self-aggrandizement, a flim-flam man driven by his own bottom line and harboring no serious concern for what might actually befall people as a result of the policies he purports to prefer ... Gingrich might have been a natural favorite among Nevada's Republican leaders.

Alas, Romney will win Nevada's profoundly irrelevant Republican caucuses, so Joe Heck, Mark Amodei, Brian Krolicki (whoever he is) and eight of ten GOP state senators are backing Willard, because they're hacks, and that's what hacks do. Jones Vargas government affairs representative Brian Sandoval's endorsement of Mousse in Boots, btw, is generally chalked up to a personal relationship but it also reflects the fact that the most overrated commodity in Nevada politics is Sandoval's competence.

Anyway, congratulations Republicans in Nevada and nationwide. Sure, Gingrich is laughing at you, not with you -- all the way to the bank. But you certainly have the presidential frontrunner you deserve.

One last little thing about the creepy pizza whosit

Republicans love to belittle, cheapen and mangle America's history by oversimplifying it, ignoring the inconvenient parts and of course, whether through historical illiteracy or deliberate rejection of the facts, just cold getting it wrong.

Tiresome pathetic flim-flam man Herman Cain is not now and never will be in danger of getting elected to anything anywhere. But his "genocide" conspiracy-theory claptrap about Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger is of a piece with the right wing's typical disregard and willing distortion of the historical record.

Plus, since everyone was focused on the sexual harassment allegations that will even overshadow his general incompetence to stand as the only thing anyone ever remembers about Herman Cain, his historical interpretive exotica had sort of gone under the radar. And so in this week's CityLife column, your Gleaner writes about Herman Cain, presumably for the last time -- unless local Republicans heed my admonition and the bungling nutjob wins the Nevada caucus.

Area TV executives stun middle-aged blogger, hire him

Through no fault of their own and with little to no warning, innocent viewers of News3 at Noon on Monday found themselves subjected to several minutes of your Gleaner.

KSNV, you see, has hired me to fill big chunks of the newscast between 12:30 and 1 p.m. every other weekday, in a portion of the program titled "The Agenda." If memory serves, the specific directions are something along the lines of "say whatever you want." That's a reasonable job description. Even I can do that.

The days I'm not there, the right-tilting yet thoughtful Elizabeth Crum will be, saying whatever she wants. We'll share the set on Fridays, when, I suspect, we'll explain where the other has gone badly astray.

Hitherto my television experience has been confined mostly to watching it. That I didn't commit even more clumsy and awkward bobbles (the first of many, no doubt) than I did on my first day must be attributed to producer Gina Vereb and everyone else at the station who has patiently and cheerily tried to teach me what makes the TV go.

In case you want to watch, but also because it marks something completely different and just seems like the sort of thing that should be on the Gleaner, my debut is posted beow. I start about four minutes into the clip. It's early days yet and lots of adjusting/tinkering/rethinking lies ahead. This is what I believe the industry calls a "soft launch."

But with the campaign coming up and all, this should be fun, no?

 

 

Oh, come now, Berlusconi would be redundant in the GOP field

After years of corruption, crony capitalism, arrogance, incompetence, buffoonery, pervy sex parties with minors, etc., and with his nation on the brink of comprehensive systemic collapse, Silvio Berlucsoni resigned as Italy's prime minister. So naturally everyone on the twittertubes or whatever the internet is called these days is wondering if it's too late for him to enter the Republican presidential race.

Alas, while they await Silvio's decision, Republican voters must continue to be saddened and unimpressed by the current field of domestic charlatans, chiselers and quacks seeking their party's nomination. Indeed, in the Republican electorate's latest exercise in desperate straw-grasping, Newton Leroy Gingrich is the new Herman Cain, i.e., the media whore posing as presidential candidate who is creeping (literally) up the polls only to plummet later in a swirl of hilarious/disgusting scandal and ridicule.

Another debate was held Saturday night, this one on foreign policy, and no, your Gleaner did not watch (well, not much) and I'm guessing neither did you. Fortunately, America's crack media-industrial complex watched so we don't have to. It turns out Gingrich has concluded that if there's one thing this country needs, it's another war, preferably with Iran. Fortunately, it won't be too long before the only humans forced to listen to Gingrich's puffy platitudes are Bruno, Len and Carrie Ann.

Also during the debate, Rick Perry was asked about waterboarding, and said "I will be for it until I die." Fair enough. Perry is already a dead man walking, a zombie candidate mindlessly stumbling to no place in particular while making incomprehensible and unearthly moans and gurgles. He won't beat Romney. But he might eat him.

And as for Willard, he, too, more or less promised that if elected, he'll start a war with Iran. But the one consistent thing about Willard is that he can always be counted on to change his mind later.

Which of course is why all the Republicans hate him.

Fine, if you're going to be all technical about it, yes, there's a problem with Berlusconi's birth certificate.

But you gotta believe ol' Huckabible is kicking himself for not squeezing into the Volkswagon with the rest of the clowns.

Rick Perry horribly ridiculed for textbook exemplification of contemporary American wingnuttery

"Our nation needs a leader in the White House who understands the role of government and our economy," said Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval.

And then he endorsed Rick Perry anyway.

The Jones Vargas government affairs representative endorsed the floundering Texan knucklehead back when some people still thought Nevada's Republican caucus, and by extension the governor's endorsement, could actually matter. Yet the endorsement was reportedly wholly relationship-driven, which is to say Sandoval cavalierly put his personal considerations ahead of the best interest of his state and the nation. Either that or the former judge is, well, a shitty judge. Not that the two scenarios are mutually exclusive.

Anyway, everything's bigger in Texas, they say. The tiresomeness of Texan braggadocio notwithstanding, that's undeniably true with respect to a) the felicity with which the state's sitting governor can execute a nationally televised wingnut campaign implosion, and b) asshats.

 

Spectacularly done, Mousse in Boots. And as Yul Brynner said to Steve McQueen in The Magnificent Seven, "adios."

What's that grim darkness on the edge of the time zone? Oh, it's us!

As long-time Gleaner readers may remember, the whole changing clocks thing just dredges up bitterness here at Gleaner HQ about Nevada's place in the space-time continuum.

Lickety-split it's going to be getting dark around here at, oh, 4:14 in the afternoon. Dreary, depression-inducing, soul-sucking darkness and it's not even cocktail time ... isn't that what North Dakota is for?

Las Vegas is getting ripped off, daylight-wise, because we're on the extreme eastern edge of the Pacific Time Zone. Lumped in with California! You'd think that in itself would trigger Nevada's inferiority complex and rally teabaggers and such to demand that we be disassociated from such a socialist, big government-loving time zone.

Nevada should totally hook up with the Mountain Time Zone. Well, Las Vegas should ... what the rump state does is it's own bidness, though one presumes that the bumpkins out in the sticks shouldn't object because their custom and culture is already in tune with their hick counterparts lightly populating the vast wingnut-friendly Intermountain West.

And then people in Las Vegas with jobs, assuming there are any anymore, wouldn't have to drive home in the dark and everybody would get an extra hour of nice friendly light to help combat the relentless despair.

NV Dem congressional wannabes might be a good fit. Dammit.

Convinced that a corrupt American government is but an obedient vassal slavishly serving its greedy special interest masters, more and more Americans, including the thousands who staged a port-stopping good old-fashioned general strike in Oakland, are demanding economic justice.

So naturally all the buzz in Washington (that isn't about the predatory pizza whosit) swirls 'round whether the congressional deficit reduction supercommittee can successfully impose yet more austerity on the population lest the rich have to start paying a fair share of taxes for a change. And in this week's CityLife column, your Gleaner is concerned that some and really probably all the Democrats hoping to represent Nevada in the aforementioned U.S. Congress are more in tune with Washington's Zeitgeist than the nation's.

Titus vs. Kihuen: It will be interesting to see why (if?) anyone should care

In its story about Dina Titus and Ruben Kihuen facing off in a Democratic primary in CD1, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reports:

Billy Vassiliadis, a longtime Democratic consultant, said he hasn't been paying much attention to the Southern Nevada congressional races...

Poohbahs in Industries represented by Billy's R&R Partners House of Lobbying and Juice Brokerage -- which is to say executives for just about every major industry in the state -- must be wondering, "Why the hell not? Isn't that what we pay you for?"

Then again, perhaps the aforementioned big business movers/shakers who pay handsomely for the services of uber-juiced political fixers are keenly aware of the old axiom that holds: Whenever someone in the political-industrial complex says something for consumption by the rabble, there is an excellent chance that exactly the opposite is true.

R&R is balanced with strategists from both parties so as to assure that in your democratically elected representative government, the comfort and care of R&R's corporate clients are given preference over the public interest, no matter which party is in office. R&R, along with the Ferraro Group, Jones Vargas and other powerful political shops, are the mercenaries who win the policy battles that ultimately strengthen the financial security of the already financially secure at the expense of everyone else. As area activists plot places to protest, your Gleaner humbly suggests they Occupy R&R.

No, we needn't wonder whether heavily funded insiders will play in political campaigns, let alone whether they'll do everything in their significant power to hold sway over the winners of those campaigns. That's a given.

What remains to be seen (and there's more on this in my CityLife column later this week) is whether the 2012 campaigns will find Titus, Kihuen or any other Democrat running for office in Nevada aggressively challenging the status quo that R&R, Ferraro, Jones Vargas and all the rest so ably represent, or if 2012 will be another election season of Democrats merely hoping to navigate their way to victory by fawning over sacred geezers and promising to play well with others while flooding the airwaves with irrelevancies, micro-scandals and nothingness.