"...being exposed as emotionally stunted and even possibly a sociopath can really work to a Republican's advantage."
Or put another way, does the the election of Nevada's most beloved former governor tell us anything about the possibility of a Mitt Rommey victory?
The disturbing, unnerving but sadly not implausible explanation, in my latest CityLife column.
For decades, and certainly since Lewis Powell published his infamous template for polluting democracy in 1971, the most powerful and wealthy forces behind the Republican Party establishment have cheerfully financed the right-wing infrastructure's jihad against government, facts and sense.
The rich and corporate would prefer to pay less taxes and not be regulated, thank you. So Americans have been subjected to a relentless and uncompromising rhetorical pounding, with the result that a large swath of the citizenry not only accepts but fervently demands a tax system that lets Mitt Romney pay a tax rate half as big as the their own while unregulated industries endanger their health and safety, their environment, their class, their opportunity to achieve economic independence and capitalism itself.
It's all worked splendidly. Well, almost splendidly. It turns out that in their zeal to discredit government specifically and the social contract generally, not only did our plutocrats preside over the creation of the most right-wing major political party in the developed world. They also effectively mainstreamed America's angry, paranoid and benighted fringe. In state after state, teapeople, dittoheads, Paulites and the rest of the wild-eyed right who are the inheritors of the John Birch movement once despised and shunned by the GOP establishment are now the tail wagging the Republican Party dog.
Politicians from the party's corporate wing are wringing their hands. Gov. Brian Sandoval and Sen. Dean Heller, the two highest-ranking elected Republicans in Nevada, deliberately avoided the ickiness of the state Republican convention because they didn't want to get any on them. (Against the backdrop of their party's collective mental unbalance, the selection of a dim but skanky flim-flam man as party chairman seems but a footnote to the NV GOP tale of fail.)
And around the country, Republican officials and the powerful interests that own them worry that their party's ongoing drift to the Island of Whackadoodledoo could seriously damage their electoral, and hence financial, interests in 2012 and beyond.
Yes. Boo fucking hoo.
So we lace these little commentary things through The Agenda -- I like to think of it as video gleaning -- and for the nonce I invite you to watch the little segment at the start of the show embedded below, partly because of it's trenchant yet breezy threading of a rather diverse collection of policy and political affairs, but mostly because it has a funny picture of Bitchy Little Area Megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson. (Added bonus/probably more importantly: Keep watching the clip and meet the only Democrat who is running for state senate in District 1, which is currently held by a "Democrat.")
While making this rare-ish visit to the Gleaner's composition platform I s'pose one should ask, Is America still having one of its periodic post-violent-event micro-discussions about guns? No? Everyone has moved on? Of course they have. But in CityLife the other day I provided a Nevada update on America's twisted compulsion to mistake weapons worship for achievement. So read that if you like. But read Jill Lepore's take in the New Yorker on America's gun fetish, because you must.
Nevada's health care system is every bit as comprehensive, efficient and fair as the rest of Nevada's socio-economic infrastructure: It sucks, too.
The percentage of uninsured people in Nevada is traditionally among the nation's highest, and the individual mandate thing (wingnuts were for it before they were against it) could be helpful 'round here.
But arguably even more helpful are the Affordable Care Act's provisions that aggressively expand Medicaid.
When the more substantial portions of the health care law take effect in 2014, the expert-texperts project that no state will see a more dramatic Medicaid caseload growth than Nevada. And for most of that expansion, the feds will pick up 90 percent of the cost. Which is to say for every dollar the state spends to cover our teeming masses of uninsured, it'll get back, you know, oodles.
Evil terrible horrible "Obamacare" would provide medical coverage to hundreds of thousands of Nevadans who have none -- a key prerequisite to holding down health care costs for everyone. And no state would get a bigger return on investment. (Perhaps some local Democrats might want to say that sometime? No? Never mind.)
So of course Gov. Brian Sandoval, eagerly emulating the competence and wisdom of his disgraced and unhinged predecessor, wants the activist Roberts court to overturn the health care law. (Remember that the next time you see some media report gushing about how practical and pragmatic and non-ideological the magic Sandoval is.)
Anyway, numbers & shit explaining all this in more detail are here, ifn's your interested.
"I got to tell you something," bitchy little area megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson said in response to a questions about frothy historical footnote Rick Santorum. "I don’t want him to run my country."
Adelson did not indicate if he was equally opposed to the prospect of Santorum running the United States of America.
In the same campaign curiosity of an interview, Adelson said that Mitt Romney is "like Obama" (but not in a nice way). And Adelson added that Romney always refuses to give direct and clear answers to any questions that he, magic bajillionaire and reluctant American Sheldon Adelson, asks. Which of course is the most positive thing anyone has ever said about the life-long presidential candidacy of Mitt Romney.
Adelson also said something something blah something about Newt Gingrich whatever.
Only a relatively few U.S. House seats are genuinely competitive. And Nevada's 3rd congressional district race, pitting incumbent Republican potted plant Joe Heck against Democratic political-industrial cog John Oceguera, promises to be the dullest and most easily ignored potentially competitive House contest in America.
But then, it's not about them, I politely explain in this week's CityLife.
Tragically, Nevada's reigning queen of whackadoodle doo will not be a candidate for office this year.
My reaction was televised at the top of Friday's edition of The Agenda. Nutshell:
....Bill Raggio is still dead. He did more to make Nevada all it is than probably any other politician of the last half-century. But everybody said nice things about him anyway.
It's been a couple weeks since the Sandoval "administration" released it's strategy to grow and change Nevada's economy. As is customary with each and any effort purporting to do something, anything, about Nevada's economy, dust has already begun to settle on the plan.
Eh, it's a relatively vision-free and inconsequential document, in any case. Is it's ineffectiveness due to Sandoval's cautious and unimaginative leadership? But of course.
But Nevada, you see, is also constitutionally prohibited from implementing an economic plan that would actually help the economy. Like mine.
So a trio of Assembly Democrats are under fire for failing to report they spent campaign money on living expenses while the Legislature was in session and ... wait. What? It's OK for legislators to let Barrick and MGM pay their living expenses so long as they report it? Go, Nevada, go!
Also... is Republican Sen. Mike Roberson lucky or what? Roberson was once a glorified gopher for disgraced Dancing With the Stars contestant Tom DeLay, and he can't wait to return to Washington. Except next time, instead of being a flunky for a fruitloop, he hopes to be the fruitloop, with flunkies all his own. In other words, he's a candidate for U.S. House or Senate within, at most, three election cycles. Guaranteed.
But meantime, Roberson needs Nevada cred. And so as the ablest Republican in the state Senate (it's a low bar), he has been scurrying to raise enough money to a) elect Republicans and b) make sure they don't have to pay their own bills either while hermetically sealed every other year in the Carson City Bubble. Alas, Democratic Sen. Sheila Leslie delightfully decided to switch districts and challenge a sitting Republican, so the Roberson math, it hurts. Complicating matters further, after a half-term of thoughtless and reflexive wingnuttery, GOP Sen. Elizabeth Halseth has decided to treat her office as she has treated her senses, and now both will be vacated, opening up yet another opportunity for Democrats.
Poor Mike Roberson. Except! He can blame circumstances beyond his control when the Republicans fail to win the Senate. AND more importantly, he can settle into the comfort of the minority and just throw teabagger-approved stinkbombs at everyone for the foreseeable future -- or as the political consultants call it, nurturing the Republican base -- until the federal race comes along that feels right for MIke.
Finally, one-percenter and erstwhile legislative lobbyist Harvey Whittemore may have paid his fellow one-percenters and juice brokers at R&R Partners as much as $70,000 a month over five years for -- public relations? Advertising? Persuading every politician in a 600-mile radius that Harvey Whittemore likes them? -- because that's how these people roll.
That money is but chicken poop compared to the jillions that may or may not have been his and that Whittemore reportedly threw around indiscriminately in the course of failing to develop the Hilariously Most Ridiculous Idea in the History of Western U.S. Real Estate, or as the media insists on calling it, "Coyote Springs."
Which brings us back to ... the vaporized political non-career of Elizabeth Halseth? Yes, Halseth.
Here we have a state where lobbyist/campaign money oozes out of every inflamed pustule of the public process, a state where campaign contributors (i.e., lobbyists) even pay living expenses for lawmakers while they're performing their duties as elected officials. Yet a sitting state senator who never exhibited the slightest compunction about enthusiastically parroting anything that anyone in the private sector said evidently couldn't find a single inluence peddler who would arrange a simple six-figure sinecure for her so she could continue to utter mindless wingnut noises, stimulus-response fashion, in the senate.
That may be the most shocking recent revelation of all in the pathetic saga of venality, incompetence and dysfunction that is Your Nevada Legislature.
News reports from the last several days suggest that Pig Newton for President financier and bitchy little area megalomaniac Sheldon Adelson may have interrupted Newt Gingrich's relentless gush of adverbs masquerading as ideas long enough to look Gingrich in his puffy yet beady eyes and tell him "that'll do, pig."
That is, no more yummy millions.
As your Gleaner has observed on many occasions in multiple venues, without Adelson's money, there is no Newt Gingrich campaign. This is of course sad because next to Google entry Rick Santorum, Gingrich perhaps more than any other American represents the best possible hope that Democrats could retake the House and hold their own or even make gains in the Senate. Oh well. Romney may prove just as productive. For Democrats.
A few related items, in no particular order of importance...
1. Weekend NPR listeners may appreciate the cleverness exhibited by Wonkette commenter Lucidamente1:
"So, Will, can you give us the answer to last week's Puzzle?"
"Sure, Rachel. I asked you to supply the name of a real douchebag of a campaign donor; take his first name, replace one letter, and rearrange the result to get his last name."
"And the answer is?"
"Sheldon Adelson."
2. ICYMI, Reuters & ABC have both recently recapped the ongoing federal investigations into alleged shenanigans in Macau. Something about a Las Vegas casino mogul's company being involved with widespread corruption and bribes and organized crime and sex slaves, etc., etc. Titillating, yes. But is it news?
3. Al Jazeera's mini-take on Adelson, for the nonce...
Particularly moving is the part where Adelson apologizes because "The uniform that I wore in the military unfortunately was not an Israeli uniform. It was an American uniform." Gingrich was never pressed on it, but when Adelson shifts his jillions to Romney, perhaps the national media would care to take that Adelson quote and ask Willard why he agrees to take money from an American citizen whose loyalty evidently is pledged first and foremost to another country.
While working on a CityLife column to be published later this week your Gleaner asked the calculator a couple simple questions about the 2012 Nevada Republican Presidential Flop held over the weekend:
Throw in a couple bonus statistics -- 100 percent of what Mitt Romney says is wrong and 0 percent of Americans want to have a beer with him -- and you could say that Barack Obama won the whole danged weekend. Except of course Madonna did.
Sheldon wouldn't give Newt an advance on his allowance so there was no ad war to speak of.
And his handlers wouldn't release Mitt Romney from his hermetically sealed environment long enough for the nominee-by-default to suggest that poor people should self-deport or somesuch other mitticism.
So just as in 2008, in 2012 everyone is left wondering: Did the Nevada Republican presidential caucus even happen?
Time-share mogul and tasteless tie line namesake Donald Trump endorsed Mitt Romney and not Newt Gingrich because if he endorsed Gingrich he would have been expected to donate millions to the Sheldon Adelson Memorial Newt Gingrich PAC. And Trump is all hat (or petroleum product-based hair-like substance, as the case may be) and no cattle.
Obviously.
Mitt, on the other hand, is not in desperate need of Trump's alleged riches.
Easy choice if you're the nation's most craven media whore and don't really care who is president so long as you get some headlines.
Oh well. At least Trump only questioned Obama's birth certificate. Romney, at his Las Vegas rally Wednesday night, accused Barack Obama's very DNA of being un-American.
And that, then, is just some of the high cheese your Gleaner tossed around in this special Nevada's Dumb Caucus edition of The Agenda:
This week's CityLife column unpacks how the Nevada Chapter of Billionaires for Obama has singularly reshaped the Republican presidential race, so read that, ifn's you want.
Due to print deadlines the column was necessarily written a few days before Thursday's Florida debate, an event which sadly (for Democrats) indicated that Newt Gingrich (the very name is, as Mittles would say, "repulsive") will not be the GOP nominee: One of Gingrich's central arguments is that Newton and only Newton can out-debate Barack Obama. And yet when he had to, Newton couldn't even out-debate Mittles. Sigh.
Also at the Florida debate, Rombot floated Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval's name as a potential cabinet appointee. Sandoval has also been mentioned as a possible VP choice, speculation that your Gleaner has typically dismissed. But upon reconsideration, Marco Rubio or Chris Christie would shine in comparison to the personality-challenged Romney, overshadowing the (alleged) human at the top of the ticket. No threat of that with Sandoval.
Prior to the revelation that Adelson Inc. will vomit up another $5 million to the Gingrich super PAC, I confess I thought our bitchy little area megalomaniac (and/or spouse) might cease bankrolling Pig Newton.
Allow me to 'splain...
Con job performance settings dialed to industrial strength, Gingrich once convinced Adelson that Newt, too, thinks one country's interests must be protected above all others, right or wrong and no matter what, and that country is Israel. Adelson has been financing Gingrich's phony baloney "policy" slush funds ever since. So when Adelson pooped out the first $5 million to Newt's vanity presidential campaign a few days after the Iowa caucuses, well, it looked as if there was no threat that Gingrich could actually be competitive. Adelson might have been just throwing a dog a bone as small token of appreciation.
But then! (Your Gleaner's more thorough review of "but then" and what it means for the NV GOP caucuses will be in CityLife later this week.)
In the last year or so, it has not been unusual for Gingrich's favorable rating to be 30 points upside-down. I'll leave it for others to confirm (assuming it can be confirmed; too lazy/bizzy to look), but presumably Gingrich's favorable rating has not been higher than his unfavorable rating at any time in the current century.
One might have expected that some cooler head among Adelson's courtiers would have humbly but carefully explained to Sheldon and Dr. Mrs. Adelson that Newt Gingrich will never be president of the United States, ever, and that nominating him all but guarantees Obama's reelection -- a prospect that surely must horrify Adelson as much as it horrifies all of Adelson's fellow paranoid and irrational (albeit non-billionaire) Americans bitterly inhabiting the unhinged right wing.
Giving Newt money so he can satisfy his anti-Romney bloodlust: Amusing.
Giving Newt money so he can win the nomination and thus assure that Obama will coast to victory: Priceless (or more accurately, $10 million so far).
It goes without saying but just as a reminder -- nobody tell Republicans that Gingrich is unelectable until after he wins the nomination. That goes double here in Nevada, because if Gingrich beats Romney here, where Romney is expected to win easily, it could go a long way toward assuring that the centrist in the White House gets a second term.
Your political-media-industrial complex has sagely and solemnly informed everyone that since 1980, no one has won the Republican presidential nomination without winning the South Carolina primary.
Guess that's that for Willard.
But did you know that since 1976, no one has won the Republican nomination without winning either Iowa or New Hampshire? Media personality Newt Gingrich finished laughably far back in both.
The evidence is indisputable. There will be no Republican presidential nominee in 2012.
Yes, in fact your Gleaner has several things to say about the cheating elitist bigoted narcissistic one-percenters competing in the 2012 Hootenanny, Dog Whistle and Nimrod Squeal, or as the media insists on calling it, the Republican presidential race.
But I'm saying most of those things, and other things too, on the magic lantern these days.
A recent representative sample? But of course:
Windy, ain't he?
And yes, it is an actual honest-to-betsy half-hour "show" now, called "The Agenda." (Weekdays at 12:30 on MyNews3, as they might say on, well, TV.)
Thursdays I host alone. Elizabeth Crum hosts on Tuesdays, and we co-host each Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Ms. Crum is a pleasure to work with, btw, her conservative views notwithstanding, and she seems to actually know how to make the TV go, as opposed to your Gleaner who naturally finds a new way to break the TV every time he's on it.
Sez yer Gleaner in CityLife:
Bain called itself a "venture capital" firm. But the sort of capitalism it was practicing had nothing to do with attracting capital to increase America's industrial capacity, finance emerging technologies, develop innovative new products or otherwise create jobs and economic growth and add value to society and improve the quality of life for the nation and its citizenry.
The only thing remotely innovative about Bain was that it reflected a then fast-growing leveraged-buyout trend. And the type of capitalism, if it can even be called that, practiced by Romney didn't add wealth to the economy but rather skimmed wealth from it....
Eroding wages, dwindling or nonexistent benefits and an overall decline in job quality have bedeviled American workers for decades. That is not the fault of one person. But Mitt Romney arguably bears as much responsibility for the collapse of the middle class as any individual American.
Oh, and yes, the Bain documentary is indeed must-see TV. Two thumbs way up.
In other news about insufferable Republicans and their unbreakable identity with the 1 percent, ICYMI, here's Romney apologist John Sununu suggesting Las Vegas's very own bitchy little area megalomaniac, Sheldon Adelson, is "not so bright."
Eh, Sununu's the one who's not so bright. The elite investment community takes one and only one factor under consideration when measuring an investment decision: How much money can they steal from everybody else?
You'd think if anybody would appreciate that, it would be a Willard mouthpiece. Jeesh.
Newt Gingrich's much-touted fatwa against Mittens has thus far frankly failed to meet your Gleaner's hopes and expectations. Gingrich has more or less called Romney a stinky poophead, which is fine, s'pose, but the basis for Newt's conclusion vis-a-vis the fecal characteristics of the Willardian cranium has mostly been confined to the complaint that Willard is not conservative enough.
With one foot already in the general election campaign, Romney probably isn't crying much over allegations that he is insufficiently wingnutty.
Gingrich's super PAC is making noises indicating that it could come through with a loving tribute to Romney's tenure as a job destroyer at Bain Capital. That's the good stuff -- that and the fact that quarter-billionaire Willard Romney pays a tax rate lower than yours. (More on why Nevada should remember that Romney knows lots about the economy, but only its bad parts, in your Gleaner's next CityLife column, btw.)
But Gingrich's super PAC may or may not put the Bain stuff on the teevee. Ditherers. And Newt says Mittens is timid. Sheesh.
First Newt says he's going to be nice, and that's a lie. Then he says he's going to be mean. Will that be a lie too? Is Gingrich such a liar that we can't even believe he is lying when he is lying?