Living in New York, I’m generally not impressed with other states’ political shenanigans, but what’s going on in Nevada right now is pretty special. You’ve got a sitting governor, Jim Gibbons, who: (1) is being sued by a Vegas cocktail waitress for sexual assault, (2) publicly claimed to have not had sex for fifteen years after being spotted consoling a Playboy model, (3) was caught repeatedly lying about a trip to Washington with his alleged mistress, (4) was recently investigated by the FBI for 18 months (though eventually cleared of wrong doing).
And then you’ve got Republican Senate primary where the chicken-for-checkups advocate Sue Lowden is regarded as the more sane of two leading candidates:
And as part of this effort, (Senate candidate Sharron) Angle reportedly wants to go to the Senate to fight to privatize Social Security; build nuclear power plants inside Yucca Mountain; eliminate the federal income tax; pull the country out of the United Nations; and allow unlimited campaign contributions. She’s also a hard-right culture warrior, backing the far-right line on immigration and supporting bans on nearly all abortions.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal, a conservative paper, conducted a survey that identified Angle as the Nevada Assembly’s “Worst Member.” Twice.
Angle and Lowden are neck-and-neck. Gibbons, unfortunately, is well behind in the polls.
Update. And, yes, I forgot about John Ensign.
Dork
And here I thought the post would be all Jane Goodall, Africa, and primate extinction discussions.
MikeJ
@Dork: Nah, he was obviously thinking of Caesar’s Palace.
Brian J
Hearing about candidates like this makes me feel just a little bit better about the midterms.
Punchy
Whoa whoa whoa……say what?
Gregory
And then you have John Ensign.
aimai
Anybody remember when Gary Hart lying about having a mistress was reason enough for the entire press corps to stake him out, 24/7? In my day, when journalists were journalists, they’d have felt it their moral duty to find out if Gibbons *had* had sex in the last fifteen years. I mean, he’s asking for it, at least by the gold standard of journalism as we once knew it.
aimai
Keith G
@Dork:
Dude. Gibbons live in Sumatra.
Mmmmm….coffee.
c u n d gulag
I never thought we’d come to see a time where the John Birchers seemed reasonable in comparison to many Republican candidates for office.
Eliminate the Federal Incone Tax? Uhm, how do you plan to continue to run your beloved military?
Nuclear power plants INSIDE Yucca Mountain? Why don’t we just build them inside your head? There’s plenty of room.
Bobby Thomson
@MikeJ: Or Plato’s Retreat.
Ash Can
I seem to recall reading somewhere that, on top of everything, Gibbons rarely showed up for work, and his staff was stuck with the actual business of running the state.
Frankly, the background on Nevada politics in general makes Harry Reid look like FDR.
Alex S.
I knew that Sue Lowden would be a disaster as a candidate. After all, she was the chairwoman of the state GOP of Nevada.
Linda Featheringill
Hey, folks out in Nevada have to do something for entertainment. Lots of empty spaces out there. Lots of long and dark nights.
:-)
Dork
@Keith G: Not professing to be an apeologist.
Had no idea the LVRJ was considered conservative. With all the smoking, drinking, clubbing, hookers, nudie baseball card handouts, gambling, and general debauchery going on in Vegas, kinda hard to picture anything in that town “conservative”.
bemused
A Las Vegas relative was absolutely disgusted & flabbergasted when Gibbons won the governor seat. She couldn’t believe that many people actually voted for the creep.
Ash Can
@Dork: I’m sure the conservative wackos are getting nice kickbacks from all that debauchery, so it’s all good as far as they’re concerned.
Dr. Squid
These two loop jobs mean that Danny Tarkanian will get the nomnomnom. Here’s guessing his campaign is a wet towel to chew on.
The teabaggers hate him, though.
r€nato
@Ash Can: I read that last week, I was in Vegas so not sure if I read it there in a local paper or on the web while home. Anyway Gibbons sure believes in laissez-faire government; the guy basically didn’t want to be bothered with anything.
aimai
@Ash Can:
I read that article. It was pretty astonishing. He didnt’ even bother to look at the budget,s how up for any meetings on any topic, or to sign important legislation. And everyone knew it. His very high turnover staff did everything for him, including signing stuff. He just wasn’t interested.
aimai
DougJ
@Dork:
Clearly, you know nothing about modern conservatism.
DanF
We did test a lot of nuclear bombs in Nevada back in the day. That HAD to have some unintended consequences for the gene pool…
Mike Kay
what ever happened to what happens in vegas stays in vegas?
I no longer feel it’s a safe place to take my mistress.
lotus
Meanwhile, DougJ, have you seen the story that Esquire‘s telling about Eric Massa (who’s telling a story about Cheney and Petraeus)?
Woo-eee.
me
@Mike Kay: Vegas is fine, unfortunately for Gibbons, what happens in Carson City apparently doesn’t stay there.
El Cruzado
@aimai: You forget that Gary Hart was a DEMOCRAT.
Kelly
@El Cruzado:
Bingo!
DougJ
@lotus:
Yeah, I was waiting for mistermix to treat it. He’s more of a Massa expert.
feebog
The entire Republican bench in Nevada reminds me of the gang of weasels in “Who Shot Roger Rabbitt?”.
Persia
@lotus: I really have no idea what’s going on there any more.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@Ash Can:
Palin/Gibbons 2012!
“No job is so small that we won’t blow it off. Also.”
trollhattan
And you wonder why B.o.B. lives there?
Nevada’s primary reason for being is to serve as a top speed test track for California motorists.
lotus
DougJ and Persia, I know. Massa’s crazy as a betsy-bug, but then so’s Cheney. (I don’t think Petraeus is, though. Deluded about the effectiveness of COIN, yes, but not barking mad.)
SiubhanDuinne
DougJ:
As is so often the case: AWESOME title!
MattF
I guess Nevada is the place for people who have had their fill of Arizona goo-goo leftists.
DougJ
@SiubhanDuinne:
Thanks!
SiubhanDuinne
@trollhattan:
Srsly? Did he say so, or is there internal evidence from some of those photos he used to post? (Is he back, by the way?) I don’t know why, but for some reason I was under the impression he lived in Kansas or Oklahoma.
Not that I have any plans to visit him . . . .
MikeJ
@trollhattan: We can’t stop in Nevada. It’s bat country.
kommrade reproductive vigor
@SiubhanDuinne: His handle linked to a blog about life in Maine and stalking the Somali refugee population in his town.
trollhattan
@SiubhanDuinne:
IIRC he’s serially bitched and moaned about all the CRA- and ACORN-forced home sales to minorities at subprime rates that have ruined Nevada home values and therefore, his house value; also, too, brick oven and all.
I’ll go out on a limb and speculate he could be found lurking at something like this:
http://www.meetup.com/The-Las-Vegas-Glenn-Beck-Meetup-Group/
trollhattan
@MikeJ:
Heh!
kommrade reproductive vigor
Here you go.
http://brickoven.blogspot.com/2009/10/health-care-reform.html
No really, don’t thank me.
aimai
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Damn you, you made me look. I always thought he was a spoof. But I guess not.
aimai
trollhattan
@kommrade reproductive vigor:
Geez, I’m only off by three thousand or so miles. But that’s one thing I’m pleased as pie to be wrong about. Mmm, pie.
Hopefully he’s not bicoastal.
Steeplejack
@aimai:
I think there was “a” BOB that was real. But I think some others–maybe even front-pagers–posted as BOB from time to time. There were at least two or three different “voices.”
licensed to kill time
@Steeplejack:
There was a BOB sighting on Wonkette a few days ago, classic BOBitude though he denied being the BJ banned BOB when maus called him out.
No, no, don’t thank me. It was nothing, really.
Bubblegum Tate
Man, the only way Nevada politics could get any better (read: crazier) is if Mark Noonan had followed through on his threat to run for Senator.
maus
@aimai: Nope. He’s jumped over to Wonkette and other sites, as crazy as ever. I mean, he could be a “troll” in some vague sense, but the person running the persona is still nuts.
Also, back to the main topic- making this even better is that Lowden’s opponent Sharron Angle is a Scientology shill, she espouses Hubbard’s “tech” programs like Criminon.
maus
@maus: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharron_Angle#Nevada_Assembly
NoFanOfAyn's
@Dork: Whereas I assumed an erudite discourse on parallels with the Roman Empire.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
re John Cole “what are you talking about”
Just to answer your question from my comment saturday. I am talking about fuckhead for a couple of months now using my dog as a weapon to attack me, and now recently by corner stone. I thought I heard, I did hear you say once that pets were out of bounds for such purposes, but yet you said nothing, assuming you read your own blog. Only Annie and Anne Laurie could be bothered to say it. I posted pics of
charlie and talk about him as separate to the politcal and personal battles. As for the Glenbot reference, I think that should speak for itself, it is a political label, like me being called a “mindless Obot” and such. And where is the actblue page calling for Obama to be primaried. If I thought what he was doing with the guy in Yemen was as bad as Bush torture, what you and others opined I would not support him either, and would call for a criminal investigation. Though now that he has posted a new video promising to slaughter more Americans, he should be exalted to progressive sainthood and should maybe run for senator or something. Something for the disappointed prog population to rally around.
Please don’t take my criticism personally, I don’t when folks call me pol labels of one sort or another. You are basically a good dude imo, and both of us can be jerks, nothing has changed there, but I am mad about the pet smearing shit. No lie on that.
And I really really don;t like the liberal nutroots, no secret there. And will be by from time to time to mention it when you side with them for poor reasons. Obot troll.