Vindicate Mazzeo

July 2009

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Googly

Nevada Republicans Need to Embrace Their Inner Gibbons

Lowered expectations: Desparately seeking governor who can wear pants.  
Ah, yes, the only readable bit of the Sunday Review Journal--the Reporter's Notebook--had this quote from the ex-mayor of Nor'Town and Gubewannabe Mike Montandon:

So, you need someone to lead the party of Larry Craig, Dick Cheney, Mark Sanford, and Rush Limbaugh in Nevada? Why, he's already there!

Vote Jim Gibbons for Governor--in the Republican Primary!!

Elsewhere:. I vaguely remember some folk talking about impeaching and recalling the Gube a while ago--tho I suppose we have to grant the point of a local pundit that nobody prominent ever called on the Gøøber to resign. Nope. Just riffraff. Nobody prominent.

Twitter Suspends Feed Mocking Gibbons

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Twitter has shut down one of the funniest feeds on Twitter!

The feed, called GovGibbons, mocked the Governor mercilessly by posting faux-tweats of the Gube's adventures between those daily naps. On the very day we celebrate all our freedoms, too. Sneaky so-and-so's--they figured nobody would be watching.

By the way, I am NOT the author of GovGibbons. Whoever it is, they're funnier than me. I run a dull feed called Scandalmonger.

Andrew Kiraly over at LVCityLife occasionally posted excerpts. Here's a pdf generated from the Google cache of the feed.

If you go to the feed at www.twitter.com/govgibbons, you'll only see the suspended message, and a place to add a comment. So, go place a comment protesting the shutdown!

It's unclear why the feed was shut down. There are lots of parody feeds, like FakeSarahPalin which ran through the election and was even funnier than the real thing. Perhaps GovGibbons should have been called FakeGibbons, tho there's already a dead feed by that name.

Dullard-Mush, on the other hand, seems to have done Dean Heller a service by filling in Heller's feed while the idiots in the Congressman's office struggled to join the 21st century and took over the feed.

So, here's a question for our enterprising MSM to consider between mouthfuls of 4th of July hotdogs and potato salad: why did Twitter shut down the feed? Did they get a call from the Governor's office, because Dan Burns finally learned about Twitter? Or did the Gube get tired of tweating MILFs and finally searched for himself on Twitter?

Say, if the Gube's already twittering on that blackberry of his, what do you suppose his Twitter moniker is? There are a number of interesting nicknames for the Jim Gibbonses on Twitter, like jagibboyahoocom, slimjim269, or the very suspicious Horngreen--who's really into bayonets.

Say, LuvGuv's still available!

Who's the Lamest? Gooblets

View Results.

  • The Sun raises the question today: who's the lamest Mayor who wants to be Gube? There's Oscar Goodman of Sou'Town, who, if he ran as an independent, would probably split the Clark County vote and hand the win to the survivor of the Republican primary. Hence, no doubt, Jim Gibbons has been on the phone begging him to run. Then there's Bob Cashell. The only thing any of us know about him down here is that he can't make up his mind if'n he supports Reid for the Senate or not and that, apparently, he's not the fave of the loony 10-percenters running the Gropers Only Party in Nevada.
  • Eh? You say I left out a lame mayoral Gube wannabe? Nope. The guy you're thinking about ain't mayor of doodly-squat anymore, and he's only looking to get a little name recognition so as to be poised for a shot at something like Shelley Berkley's congressional seat. Besides, who wants someone who is (a) the darling of the Review Journal gabbering Editorial Bored and (b) missed his projected fund-raising goals so badly he's skeered to show a reporter his balance sheet?
  • The other crazy Republican running for Gube is out tea-bagging this weekend. (RJ)
  • Say, who's got the lamest Twitter feed? Heck or Montandon?
  • GovGibbons certainly isn't.
  • Meanwhile, Goober's handpicked Nevada Hunter Association (formerly the Nevada Wildlife Commission, but the Gube wanted to reserve that name for his MILF-posse) decides to emulate the Governor's freewheeling lifestyle of cronyism and extra-marital affairs, not necessarily in that order. (RJ)
  • You'd think that our MILF-happy Gube would be against policies that reduce the northern Nevada cougar population, wouldn't you? Sadly the four-legged cougar is being wiped out because of "sport" hunting. (SD,Plos) Don't look to the lame duck Goof for any change in hunting law, tho. He's been a pal of the Safari Club way too long to change his spots now. (Gube,Sun,SourceWatch)
  • Self-annoited Senator Jim Gibbons?? Gibbons rants: dog bites man. (VT&S)
  • Hey, Laughlin! You like him so much, why don't you keep him? (LNT) And did he really tell Arizona to "pound sand"? Still, I think the distractive invasion will be into Utah.
  • Yes, Virginia Sam, Gibbons could anoint himself Senator. So, everybody please e-mail Mr. Ensign and BEG him not to resign. Unless you want VGO to hang around a few more years....
  • Area woman abandons $97K-plus job. (Sun) Yep, Patti Cafferata has resigned from the Nevada Ethics-Schmethics Commission. During her tenure, we witnessed the gutting of commission powers by ex-Nevada Senator-Lobbyist Warren Hardy, whom we only wish had discovered his true calling a few terms ago, and some first class partisan Gube-ass-kissing. Say, I think Sig Rogich would probably be a worthy successor, don't you? Or, how about Mr. Hardy hisself? He could work to ensure the commission has absolutely no jurisdiction over any portion of state government. Anyways, Ms. Cafferata can now get back to her previous career--suing Ely.

Bipartisan_not

Everybody's A Literary Critic

A Federal Court Judge will allow Chrissy Mazzeo's lawsuit against the Gube and his cronies to go forward, as long as her attorney dumps some of the more inflammatory lingo from the suit. (Sun)

Jim Gibbons' hapless mouthpiece had this to say:

“It’s going to be costly to litigate, and the governor is not a man of great means,” she said. “On the other hand, it’s going to give an opportunity to the governor and the other defendants in the case to rid themselves of any residual taint from the allegations raised against them.”

Er...What? Isn't there that legal defense slush fund for the Gube to dip into for his unending, self-inflicted court battles? Or did it all get spent on nights out with Reno MILF's?

As for that "residual taint" hovering around the Guv and his boys, I suspect a whole month of Sunday baths won't get rid of that stink.

Meanwhile, ex-mayor of Nor'Town Mike Montandon threatens to turn state into North Las Vegas if elected Gube. (RJ) Well, Nor'Town's already made Nevada numero uno in home foreclosures. However, I wouldn't let him near a housing authority for anybody's money.

Governor Continues Principled Non-Governance

Jim Giibbons -- The Most Dangerous Game Lot's of fun quotes as Governor Jim Gibbons carries forward his principled plan of full day napping minimal governance.

The Nevada higher education system has done little if anything to develop additional sources of revenue. This failure is not because of lack of efforts. The reason is that Nevada has never believed in higher education and therefore never saw the importance of investing substantial seed funds.

With a governor who refused to lift a financial hand to save the System from extinction, with a legislature faced with an impossible burden of having to solve every problem with a two-thirds vote to override the vetoes of this most dangerous man, a businessman in another state looking into Nevada would have good cause to believe that solving every problem in Nevada is such a monumental task that one would rather live and do business in other more progressive communities. (Jim Rogers' last memo as Chancellor via Fox5)

Ah, yes. Jim Gibbons: the most dangerous game.

And Jimbo catches more collateral damage from the Ensign snogging:

Jim Gibbons (R) struggles to reach double digits after winning a campaign marked by a cocktail waitress's accusation that he tried to force himself on her in a parking garage.

"These things don't end quickly," said Robert Uithoven, who managed the Gibbons campaign. In Carson City, Gibbons's poor political performance was reinforced by a spectacularly tendentious divorce from his wife of 22 years, who for a while had the governor's mansion to herself.

"Isn't that ironic?" said Sig Rogich, a longtime Republican consultant. "In the land of quickie divorce, this is the longest one I can remember and it's the governor's."(WaPo--via Ralston Flashything)

Ah, the Washington Post. Only you could catch Uithoven in a lie--by quoting puppet master and Gibbons-election co-conspirator Siggy Rogich.

And then there's the lady who runs Nevada's AmeriCorps who learned that the Guv didn't come up with any matching funds for a grant that would have brought $7.5 million to the state:

"At this point, we're not sure what went wrong," Lecker-Pomaville said Monday, adding that without the matching dollars "we would be the first state in the country to lose our federal funding for AmeriCorps."(AP)

Oh, Ms. Lecker-Pomaville, you tried to promote volunteerism in the state of Gibbers, who has learned never offer a helping hand to anyone.

One Phil Mattera, who works for a government transparency group, apparently has never met a Gibbons-spokester before. Just check out his reaction to a Gube-spokester trying to spin the fact that the state's website about recovery funds is worse than American-Somoa's:

Asked about the critiques, Mendy Elliott, Gov. Gibbons’ deputy chief of staff and overseer of all things stimulus in Nevada, said, “I can’t disagree ... that our Web site is deficient.”

In an initial conversation, Elliott blamed the state of the state’s site on a lack of time, as officials had been so busy with the Legislature. The four-month session ended June 1. But Mattera said other states have held legislative sessions in recent months and still developed more comprehensive, user-friendly sites.

“I don’t think we’ve heard this excuse before,” he said. (Sun)

Oh, Mendy, Mendy, Mendy. The right response is that the empty website reflects the guv's philosophy of minimalist government, hence Nevada has no state government to oversee.

Woah! Mendy's the state Stimulus Czarina, too!

In Nevada, where President Barack Obama made a major speech touting the achievements of the stimulus plan, the state's share of stimulus money is "very deficient", said Nevada's stimulus czar Mendy Elliott. "We are certainly grateful for the help that we received but the fact of the matter is ... there should have been some thoughtfulness." (WSJ)

Oh, that mean old Obama! Forcing the Gube to take all that stimulus funding! How thoughtless of him!

Just a suggestion, though. Nobody call her "stimulus czar" in the Gube's presence, okay? I mean, you'd just be asking for trouble.

Finally, something Gibbons knows something about: he says sex scandals don't get in the way of his daily nap principled non-governance. (Fox5)

This just in: Gibbons denies he ever fondled a ferret. (Fox5)

Oh, come on. I wrote "fondled" didn't I? What verb would you have used?

The Reno-Gazette Journal Should Hire Mazzeo's Lawyer Gøøblets

Veto stimulator.

  • Chrissy Mazzeo's lawyers have more luck getting phone records out of the Gube than the Reno-Gazette Journal did with those e-mails. (RJ) So, what to expect? 347 text messages to Siggy on Midnight Jim's infamous Night Out? 137 calls to then-Sheriff Bill Young's cell? 1,349 billable minutes to 1-900-BEATUPAMILF?
  • Say didn't the "Gibbons Incident" used to be a "Scandal"? I wonder what tower of journalistic jello caved to Gibbons to make that name change?
  • State Archives, now open for about 10 minutes a week thanks to Gibbons, will display Guv's self-inking veto stamp. (Sun) Two years from now, when the Archives close permanently due to lack of funding, it will be thrown in the trash to be discovered 10,000 years in the future, wrapped in Dan Burns' skeletal fist, by aliens who will identify it as an anal stimulation device. Okay, I'm just sorta guessing about that last part. The aliens part, not the stuff about Dan Burns' skeletal fist.
  • Hmm. I wonder how often the Gube did that self-inking stuff alone in the office, after hours, blackberry in hand?
  • Gibbons, in a desperate attempt to garner some media attention and appear relevant to Nevada 11-percenters, fires up the state Global Warming Denial office to waste state funds on a report about gasoline prices that a 10-minute call to one of the local universities would have produced--back when Nevada had local universities, that is. (Sun)
  • Gube-rival attacks venerable North Las Vegas icon is cynical attempt to look family-friendly after supporting myriads of taverns, dollar-loan centers, and casinos.
  • Hey, give me a break! The Palomino Club is as close to a "venerable icon" as Nor'Town gets.
  • Oh, yeah. Even constitutionally-denied Schwarzenegger has a better chance of becoming Prez than the current Gube of Nevada. (NPR)

Scandal? Incident? What's the diff?

Gropers Only Party, The Sequel

Hmm. You don't think the GOP planned it, do ya?

Gropers Only Party

Gropers Only, Please?

Click the pic for a closeup.

Ensign Affair Suffers From Gibbons-Fatigue

How can you be sick and tired of little old me? So concludes NPR:

If some Nevadans are taking Ensign's affair as just another routine disappointment, it may be because they've already had practice dealing with the scandals of their Republican governor, Jim Gibbons.

Let's see: He's survived a couple of corruption investigations. He's involved in a messy divorce from his wife, Dawn; her divorce papers allege multiple infidelities. He's being sued by a cocktail waitress for allegedly sexually assaulting her in a parking lot.

You get the idea.

Unfortunately, we do. Except they left out the bit about sleeping through the last legislative session and hiring staff off the Legal Defense Slush Fund contributers' list. But, other than that, we get it, we get it.

Is That Your Promise Keeper, Or Are You Just Glad to See Me?

Welcome to the graveyard.

  • "You know you’re at a low point when the only person willing to stand beside you in your time of marital and political strife is Jim Gibbons, the beleaguered Nevada governor who was once accused of assaulting a cocktail waitress, is in the middle of an ugly divorce and has approval ratings below the freezing temperature of water." (Sun) Um, I'd 've said helium.
  • "Meanwhile, Nevada's Republican "Luv Guv," Jim Gibbons, couldn't be on a more prolonged hard-luck streak. He's in the divorce from hell with the first lady, who for a time holed herself up in the Governor's Mansion; his staff regularly jumps ship; and rumor has it that the governor's dog has obtained a restraining order." (Mr. Sherm of the RJ) Oh! THAT'S what's been dogging the Gube! Hard luck! Not incompetence, narcissism, laziness, concupiscence, and a rape fetish! Good thing Mr. Fredricks cleared that up. You know, I could have sworn the Guv initiated that divorce, that HE was the one holed up in the Gube manse while avoiding all contact with the Legislature, that HE was disinterested in doing his job, and that HE was losing staff because he hired incompetent corrupt cronies in the first place. Nothing worse than hard luck of your own making.
  • What better way to start a pointless campaign than with a pointless campaign stunt? In Gunseltown, too, the most pointless of places.(RJ)
  • Huh. Who knew. That SAGE commission still meets, and even the Gube thinks they're stupid. (RJ)
  • Heh. Governor-in-the-headlights look. (CityBlog)

Headlights. So bright and shiny!

Why Does Dean Heller Hate Our Troops?

Ha! You Elkoites voted for a Sociialist Pacifist! Nah nah nah nah nahhhh!

In case you missed it, Dean Heller (R-Pinko), along with a gaggle of Republicans, voted against funding our brave troops out fighting the Global War on Whatever the Global War is a Global War on.

Man, I waited so long for this, after listening to years of Republicans justifying unfettered defense budgets funding such important defense projects such as how to waterboard without leaving marks and eTreppid software that works great as long as you got some guy behind a curtain pressing the spacebar at the opportune moment.

So, stand back. Here it comes.

Leaders need to stand up with our military. Every politician who voted against this funding request is sending strong messages to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, their families at home, to Saddam Hussein and his supporters, Islamic terrorists, the international community and to their fellow Americans. The message was not one of support or encouragement – it was one of abandonment and cowardice.

Dean Heller is telling the troops that you are on your own. While we may pay politically correct homage to "supporting our troops," the reality is we don't. We aren't going to provide the funds necessary to continue caring for you in the field. What's more, we don't approve of what you have accomplished thus far. Your mission in Iraq and Afghanistan has been a failure, and that would make you failures.

America has the best-trained, most professional, most well-educated military in the world. But Dean Heller wants only to hear the myths of the soldier-as-victim or the soldier-as-brutalizer or soldier-as-indentured servant by cutting their funding.

I cannot help but put myself in the place of our brave soldiers who are fighting the war on terrorism, while the new generation of Jane Fonda's - people like Dean Heller- deride their efforts. Further, I know that such efforts to break our resolve in Iraq are also used to inspire the insurgents to continue their assault against the elected Iraqi government, the Iraqi people, and our soldiers. While I respect their right to free speech, I also have the obligation to exercise my right to free speech when I believe that their words harm our soldiers.

So, why, O, why is it that Dean Heller hates America so much and wants to abandon our troops?

Call Dean the traitor today and ask him why he hates the troops!

202-225-6155 (D.C. Office)

775-686-5760 (Reno Office)

702-255-1651 (Vegas Office)

Tell him, if he hates our country so much, why doesn't he move to Iran? Tell him, his positions on war funding would make perfect sense, if say an Iranian mullah or Iraqi insurgent held them.

-- O crap. I think I channeled Gibbers and "borrowed" some of that. But, hey, I support our troops and I won't apologize for that. Anti-war votes by Dean Heller and other Republicans in Congress hurt troop morale.

O crap...

Best Quotes From Ensigngate

Got up on the wrong side of the bed. In my humble, twisted opinion.

From a comment on TPMmuckraker:

I can't imagine anyone fucking this guy. Eeeewww.

Tho, not everybody had that opinion:

Is John Ensign a bisexual swinger?

Inquiring minds want to know...

To which an inquiring mind responded:

god, i hope so. lol.

Then there's this:

Christian politicians and evangelical leaders commonly follow an unspoken rule not to meet behind closed doors with women staff members or travel alone with them. The Rev. Billy Graham, for example, has famously refused to be alone in a room with any woman except his wife since he married her in the 1940s.

Rep. Steve Largent (R-Okla.), a Christian conservative, insists a male staff member is present whenever he meets with a woman, his spokesman said. John Ensign, who is running for senate in Nevada will not be alone in a car with a woman. (WaPo)

Out Gibberin' The Gibbers

Hey! They're goofier than Gibbons!

Oh, I don't mean the junior Senator from Nevada, who's imitation of Nevada's first groper has certainly been entertaining. Who can't enjoy myriads of newspaper reports all ending up pretty much the same: with a reminder that Nevada is the state with the gropey guv?

Now, Ensign has admitted to an indiscretion similar to accusations dogging Gibbons, who's embroiled in a messy divorce and ranks among Nevada's least popular politicians. (LAT)

One difference, tho. Ensign seems to have consummated his affairs, while Gibbers' victims tend to fight him off.

No, I mean the loony toons running against the Guv for the privilege of representing that 11% who think Nevada should be 100% privatized--policed by mining hired goons and educated by blackjack dealers, I'm guessing.

The Republican gube-wannabes, Joe Heck and Mike Montandon, were spotted the other day protesting Gibbons' non-vote for the visitors' tax and for not negotiating more with the Legislature. No, the problem isn't that Gibbers didn't spend more time with the Legos shoring up health care or education. Nope, he should have spent more time negotiating to keep the puny tax hikes' down:

Montandon accused Gibbons of failing to build enough of an alliance in the Legislature to prevent the tax increase.

"Do you remain true to your (no-tax) pledge when you know full well that your veto can be overriden?" Montandon asked. "Just standing on no new taxes isn't enough. He had to come up with a plan and he had to sell that plan to both the citizens and the Legislature. He wasn't able to do so."  (AP)

So, the Republican primary scramble will be a fight over who's the least no-new-taxiest. Such a seductive platform!

Meanwhile, the Lahotan pape was upset for the Gube's dawdlin' over his new pick for Adjutant General for the Guard:

Nevada's 28th adjutant general left her post on Saturday. Maj. Gen. Cindy Kirkland spent the last four years of her 31-year career as the state's top military leader, yet Gov. Jim Gibbons decided to replace her without explanation and without a successor before Saturday.

The governor has known about the expiration of Kirkland's term for some time, yet he procrastinated in naming a successor until Tuesday, three days after the ceremony. It is no secret within the Nevada National Guard that Gibbons wanted someone else in the top spot as far back as 2006 after he was elected governor. That is his prerogative, but Gibbons' recent decisions have not been decisive from a Nevada Air Guard pilot hailed as a war hero during Desert Storm. (LVN)

"War hero"? Gibbons makes a mollusk look decisive.

Hey look, a few rats seem to smell a sinking ship. (Sun,RGJ) Josh Hick's departure will leave the banking lobbyist Mendy Elliot running the Gube's office. Now the folks who gave us our mini-Depression are running the state. Mmm. That's good government!

Las Vegas Sun Makes a Big Mistake

Visit Your Local Greenspun Family-Owned Casino Entertainment Center Soon! I have heard that Mike Trask, the reporter at the Las Vegas Sun whose beat was the 'burbs, and that includes Nor'Town, was laid off from that paper.

It probably has something to do with the Sun's difficulties with the online version, or so the Review Journal would gleefully have it.

That's really bad news for Nor'Town since coverage of our city's doings is always considered secondary to Sou'Town and Clark County in the local papes.

We shouldn't let the paper get away with it. Why not write a note to the publisher Brian Greenspun, and let him know he's made a big mistake.

Greenspun owes us Nor'Townies. After all, he owns a big chunk of us and our new mayor. (RJ,S&Gs)

So tell Brian he should reconsider laying off Mike Trask.

Man, this is awful. Who else am I supposed to make fun of over at the Sun?

Cross posted from Nor'Town. Can't you tell?

Gibbons' Country: The Great Excommunicator

Aren't Clark County political parties just silly? (RJ,RJ)
Click the pic to see it close up. -- Gibbons Country
Say, that IS a good question: which one is he?

Click the pic if your eyes are goin'.

More Gibbons' Country.

Gibbons' Country: Senator Grumpy McNugget Comes to Visit

Choo choos in the news. (Sun,Sun)

Click the pic to see it close up. --Gibbons Country
Click the pic to see it up close.

For the record, that name for the choo-choo isn't yet official.

Oh, yeah, there's a historical reading assignment for you youngsters who missed Bush I.

More: Gibbons' Country.

Hosin' Off the Gibbers

Hosing

Huh. That's odd.

The Review Journal decided, for no apparent reason, to run an extended piece about the Dennis Montgomery, eTreppid fiasco. (RJ)

The only thing particularly noteworthy about the piece was some accusations that Montgomery's software didn't work, but loyal VGO readers knew about some of those--back in March 2007. (VGO,VGO) The RJ rehearsed some inventive software demonstration techniques putatively used by Montgomery to make his stuff look like it did things it really couldn't. But, you know, they do that sort of stuff for the Star Wars anti-missile defense space shield doo-hicky, too, but you don't hear a peep about that anymore.

And since Gibbons' lawyer announced that the FBI had dropped the investigation into GIbbers' ties with Trepp, only skeptical cranks have had any interest in the story, the MSM preferring to accept Gibbers' own assessment of the affair: that he had been vindicated of all charges.

Anyways, Dennis Montgomery seems to be the villain of the story, and one Mr. Gibbons some sort of innocent victim of the tug of war between Warren Trepp and Mr. Montgomery over who owned the software--that apparently never worked.

Ah. Perhaps, then, we see some sort of justification for filling up valuable print space where a furniture or pantyhose ad would have actually served some purpose. Is the RJ starting of the 2010 campaign season by doing some preemptive scrubbing of our dirty Gube?

Well, keep in mind that even though the FBI apparently gave up the hunt, Gibbons' still behaved like a first class Congressional skank during the affair. So, are we supposed to think that a Congressman taking his family on numerous holidays with defense contractors looking for earmarks is a good thing? The story mentioned the boatride with the Trepps that the Gibbons took--and it's still unclear who paid for that. But, hey, there was also that trip to Turkey with the Ozmens, too.

Also note that Gibbons could not tap into the classified "black" earmark money bin, which allowed Congressfolk to throw money at cronies with little oversight, so easily anymore. Congress found the practice so stinky that it passed laws to make those expenditures public. (Hill,CREW)

Indeed, that was probably the most important aspect of the whole sorry affair. Forget Trepp, forget Montgomery--it was all about a sleazy little backwater Congressman trying to game the system to steal taxpayer money to fund poorly evaluated projects without oversight. THAT was what the original Wall Street Journal story was about. The fact that the software may suck just goes to show how unwilling the Congressman was to protect the taxpayer from scams in his eagerness to shell out secret earmarks.

Some hero of the taxpayer! If we could peek into the books of those defense contractors, we'd probably find that it was taxpayer dollars that, in the end, paid for all the little trips, and for Mrs. Gibbons' employment at Sierra Nevada, too.

Nonetheless, Treppgate is old news. The RJ will really need a big hose to wash off that "F" the Governor recently earned from members of his own party and the lobbyists of the corporate bandits who used to fund the grotesque sideshows that constitute his campaigns.

There was one other particular stinker that stood out in today's story, tho. And that is the portrayal of a squeaky clean FBI investigation. Remember, the FBI at one point searched Montgomery's house for the code he allegedly took from eTreppid. The RJ story made Montgomery's accusations that the FBI mishandled the search look like the ravings of a lunatic.

However, a federal judge shared Montgomery's opinion. Judge Valarie Cooke, who authorized the search warrant, would later complain that the FBI had misled her by not telling her that Trepp  and Montgomery were involved in a civil lawsuit with Montgomery. Indeed, the FBI's activities reeked so badly of cronyism that folks wondered if Gibbons was pulling some strings with the Bureau. (Sun)

Better buy a bigger hose, guys. It'll take more water than Lake Mead's got to wash off the stink coming off the Guber.

Scientific Proof: Conservatives are Wimps and Liberals Like it Wet and Sticky

A Cornell Assistant Prof in psychology, David Pizarro, has evidence that politically conservative folk tend to suffer feelings of disgust and revulsion more easily than those on the loony left.

In the first study, published in the journal Cognition & Emotion, Pizarro and co-authors Yoel Inbar of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and Paul Bloom of Yale University surveyed 181 U.S. adults from politically mixed "swing states." They subjected these adults to two indexes: the Disgust Sensitivity Scale (DSS), which offers various scenarios to assess disgust sensitivity, and a political ideology scale. From this they found a correlation between being more easily disgusted and political conservatism.

To test whether disgust sensitivity is linked to specific conservative attitudes, the researchers ... surveyed 91 Cornell undergraduates with the DSS, as well as with questions about their positions on issues including gay marriage, abortion, gun control, labor unions, tax cuts and affirmative action.

Participants who rated higher in disgust sensitivity were more likely to oppose gay marriage and abortion, issues that are related to notions of morality or purity. The researchers also found a weak correlation between disgust sensitivity and support for tax cuts, but no link between disgust sensitivity and the other issues.

And in a separate study in the current issue of the journal Emotion, Pizarro and colleagues found a link between higher disgust sensitivity and disapproval of gays and lesbians. For this study, the researchers used implicit measures (measures that have been shown to assess attitudes people may be unwilling to report explicitly; or that they may not even know they possess).

Liberals and conservatives disagree about whether disgust has a valid place in making moral judgments, Pizarro noted. Conservatives have argued that there is inherent wisdom in repugnance; that feeling disgusted about something -- gay sex between consenting adults, for example -- is cause enough to judge it wrong or immoral, even lacking a concrete reason. Liberals tend to disagree, and are more likely to base judgments on whether an action or a thing causes actual harm. (ScienceDaily)

Huh. You'd think Gibbers would be a Marxist.

Maybe somebody should give Democrats John Lee and Mo Denis, who both voted twice against the domestic partners thing, a mud bath or something. You know: to reduce that repugnance factor some.

Say, how is it that conservatives breed, if they don't like to get wet and sticky? Huh?

Best Line From the Legislature

“Sure, he vetoed a lot of bills,” said a GOP legislator. “It was the first time he saw them.” (RN&R)

Where Robinson Went Wrong

Oh, yawn. Somebody keep me awake during the post-mortems. Like Ms. wrong-again Morrison whining in the RJ:

I went from thinking North Las Vegas City Councilman William Robinson didn't have a snowball's chance of becoming mayor to wondering whether his campaign strategy of holding on to Democrats and beating Councilwoman Shari Buck among black voters just might work in a low turnout race.

I should have gone with my first instincts, that he couldn't overcome the post-primary revelation he had been investigated in the early 1990s on bribery allegations, although never indicted. (RJ)

Oh boo hoo. And let's all let overpaid Jim Ferrence off the hook because of a little old FBI investigation, while we're at it, right?

According to the campaign finance reports, Mr. Ferrence's firm Paladin Advertising made over $113,000 in the Robinson race--and Ferrence gets a walk because of one lousy FBI investigation??

But, but, you stammer, nobody could win a race if they were the subject of an FBI investigation for corruption, could they?

Snap out of it Grasshopper! Do you have the attention span of a Nevada voter??

Do you forget so easily: Gibbons v. Titus?

Now, now before you get all choked up with rage, Grasshopper, I will grant that most of us did not learn about the FBI investigation of the alleged bribing of the Gibbers by eTreppid folk until February 2007 after the 2006 election and the jittery in-swearing. (And if you remember that, Grasshopper, then you almost snatched away the stone in my palm--which makes it difficult to type.)

And in fact, the FBI may not have been looking into the sordid story until after all those lovely allegations of poker chips and sailing ships appeared before our eyes thanks to the paper of record itself on November 1st, 2006 just seven days before the vote. And during the last few days of early voting.

Still, shouldn't that have been a knockout blow to the Gibbers?

Of course not, Mormon Cricket! And the Gube's perverted campaign strategy should have been adopted by Robinson, if he had really wanted to win the Nor'Town mayoral race.

What should he have done? Oh, it is so, so simple Grasshopper. You, and Mr. Ferrence, will kick yourselves when you hear it.

Wow! I coulda done a Gibbers. Errrr. Why are his arms white? Robinson should have got drunk and slapped a waitress.

Oh, is it so simple? you cry.

Well, no. You have to get the local police to "exonerate" you--or at least lose the evidence--and sully the victim's reputation mercilessly.

But the key to the Gibbons' strategy is what it has ever been: lower expectations as low as you can possibly get them, and then show up at a public affiar, like at a debate, in an expensive suit and don't throw up.

That's it. Indeed, we already see the master weave his tangled web of idiocy and incompetence--thousands of vetos, groping at the rodeo, divorcing the ball-and-chain and calling her a ferret, on and on and on.

And then, just when everyone says, oh! he's such an idiot! He'll make a complete ass of himself in the debate with Buckley!

Errr...no. A rather goofy man in a nice suit who occasionally knits together a grammatical English sentence will show up, say "no new taxes" and "there goes Barbara TaxMe!" and voilà: second term!

Bottom line: Robinson shoulda pulled a Gibbers. Sure, sure, it's easier for a Republican to pull off. We just naturally expect failure and incompetence from them. But hey, Democrats always come in a close second.

Mr. Ferrence, I know Sig Rogich, and you, sir, are no Sig Rogich.

Oh, okay. I don't know Sig Rogich. But Rogich could've won the Nor'Townie race by pulling a Gibbons. All it takes is setting aside the last shred of one's conscience and intellect. Is that so hard?

Cross posted from Nor'Town. Couldn't you tell?

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