We were gone toward the tail end of last week, and so we missed our chance to comment on a few things. But the miracle of the Internet is, Quick Hit leftovers taste just as good with a couple minutes in the microwave. Here we go!

• Gov. Kenny Guinn gave Lt. Gov. Lorraine Hunt his non-endorsement endorsement, proving not so much that he likes Hunt but that he hates her opponents, state Sen. Bob Beers and U.S. Rep. Jim Gibbons.

Hunt “has been a critical part of the economic success of our state and Nevada would certainly benefit from her continued leadership,” Guinn said. Sounds like an endorsement to us. The kind of endorsement that came after Hunt no doubt asked Guinn to speak up on her behalf.

Our question is, why did Guinn go looking months ago for somebody to challenge Gibbons? He tried Reno Mayor Bob Cashell and university Chancellor Jim Rogers, both of whom passed on the governor gig. If Hunt was truly so great, why did Guinn go looking elsewhere right out of the gate?

We don’t want to be mean or anything, because we really do like Hunt and she, unlike Gibbons, has shown a willingness to get out there and share her ideas and debate. But it seems Guinn didn’t think she’d be able to beat Gibbons. We wonder if he does now.

• What a surprise! The Helldorado Days parade lacks floats, people and general enthusiasm, causing Mayor Oscar Goodman to say it “stunk.” Gee, wasn’t this the parade that they cancelled because it no longer drew anybody downtown? Why, yes it was! And yet another city-sponsored civic pride initiative falls by the wayside.

Oh, wait, not quite yet. The “Centennial Committee” proposes to spend money on an outside consultant to determine what the city has to do to make Helldorado Days successful. Sounds to us like they could save some money and just listen to Goodman: It stunk.

Solution: Stop wasting money, and let it go. People already come to Las Vegas for things like, oh, we don’t know, gambling, shopping, eating, sightseeing, and, of course, more gambling. Isn’t that enough? Granted, fewer and fewer go downtown to do those things, so maybe it’s time to try something else.

We’re just saying.

• We agree with the idea of naming all 10 of the cheating UNLV dental school students who forged an instructor’s electronic password on some documents. Otherwise, every member of the first graduating class will be tainted by notions they cheated, and the school — already born under highly questionable legislative circumstances — will remain under a cloud.

Who was it that pushed for this school, anyway? Oh, that’s right: Former state Sen. Ray Rawson, now enjoying a retirement sinecure on the state Gaming Commission. Rawson lost a mendacious campaign to then Assemblyman Bob Beers in 2004, but had a soft landing thanks to Gov. Kenny Guinn. Since then, Rawson’s helped start another troubled dental school, this one in Hawaii.

Ah, Nevada. We love it here. Such tales to tell.

• Clark County Commissioner Yvonne Atkinson Gates is right: The county is losing a gem as Manager Thom Reilly leaves to become vice chancellor of the University of Nevada Health Sciences Center.

Reilly was a candidate for UNLV president, a job that came open when Chancellor Jim Rogers unwisely and prematurely forced incumbent President Carol Harter out of her job, just two years before her contract was due to expire. We thought — despite the rotten circumstances — he’d be great for that post.

But the health sciences center idea is a good one, and health care issues are growing ever more important, so we think Reilly’s in a good spot. Our congratulations to him, and best wishes. He’ll be hard to replace at the Government Center.

• And finally today, the maddest of mad props to our friend and colleague, Erin Neff. In her column in the Review-Journal today, Neff argues strongly for not allowing cowardly politicians to dodge interviews or debates with the media. She names U.S. Reps. Jim Gibbons and Jon Porter specifically, Gibbons for ducking gubernatorial debates and Porter for ducking, well, any interaction with a journalist in any forum.

Instead, she says, the media need to demand that the politicians themselves — not their flaks, campaign gurus or stand-ins — answer reporters’ questions and face their challengers in debates. We couldn’t agree more.

Let’s call it the Neff Doctrine, which we at Various Things & Stuff (as well as our newspaper, CityLife) wholeheartedly embrace. Who else is with us?

Give Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman credit: When he drinks the Hatorade, he guzzles it like it was precious gin, and sucks the last drop from the gallon-sized plastic bottle.

Speaking at a City Council meeting Wednesday, Goodman pledged to rid the city’s parks of homeless people, including passing an ordinance banning Good Samaritans from feeding the homeless, prohibiting public drunkenness, asking judges to “throw the book” at homeless people and telling police to grab mentally ill people and drag them off to WestCare.

“I want one person, one lucky person who’ll be our test case … whether they like it or not,” Goodman said. Hmmm. Sounds lucky.

And, Goodman said, he’s not afraid of the big, bad American Civil Liberties Union, and their little “Constitution” thingy they’re always talking about. “If the ACLU wants to sue us — come on baby,” he said.

Of course, the ACLU responded that it will, in fact, come on and sue. And if the ACLU’s record is anything like it’s been in the past, they’ll also win, which means Goodman will have wasted even more taxpayer dollars. (See below for more on that.)

We at Various Things & Stuff don’t want to oversimplify this issue. There are serious matters here, including the ability of nearby residents to enjoy neighborhood parks, and the potential for crime. (The city says crime has gone up in adjacent neighborhoods since Good Samaritans have been feeding the homeless in Huntridge Circle Park, for example.)

But it’s precisely because they’re serious problems that they require serious, thoughtful solutions, not the bush-league buffoonery that Goodman has raised to an art form. It would be funny, if there weren’t people in city jails for, say, jaywalking.

Why not spend some intellectual brainpower coming up with — and paying for — real solutions. It’s not hard: The continuum of care model that Clark County officials have been discussing is probably the way to go. Emergency shelter first, followed by medical assessments, job training, and an eventual transition to low-income housing, and finally regular housing, all with intense follow-up and guidance. It works, or it could if we did more to promote and pay for it.

But ordering kind-hearted citizens to stop feeding hungry people? Banning public drunkenness? (Tell us that ordinance wouldn’t be selectively applied to homeless people and not, say, tourists on the Fremont Street Experience or even Goodman himself, who is known to imbibe enough to kill a normal man pretty much daily.) And trying to get a supposedly independent judiciary on board with the anti-homeless plan, in violation of the long-established (but, in Nevada, much-battered) separation of powers doctrine?

These aren’t solutions. They’re jokes. Even if every single homeless service provider packed up and went away, we’d still have homeless. Too many to jail, or put in mental health treatment centers, or warehouse in old prisons (another Goodman gem of an idea that went nowhere).

There is a serious homeless problem. We need to come together as a community and forge a solution, based on the best evidence of what works. What we don’t need is an eruption of simple-minded hatred and ridicule from a man who is supposed to be leading the city. (And that means all of the city, especially that part of it that’s most defenseless and in need of government’s help.)

Too bad we don’t have somebody like that at City Hall. We hear they used to call that job “mayor.”

• Speaking of Goodman, the mayor needs to get out his checkbook. He owes the city some dough.

We don’t much care if it’s his personal checkbook, his campaign account checkbook or his Oscar Political Action Committee (OPAC) checkbook, but hizzoner has been spending taxpayer dollars for things he should have been paying for himself.

We admit, this isn’t Watergate, or Enron, or G-sting. But wasting even a few dollars of taxpayer money is a sin, so long as there are unmet needs in the city of Las Vegas. (And, if all the needs are met, that money should be rebated to taxpayers, no?)

And it’s not like the city — or the mayor — is unaware of those needs. Far from it. They don’t have to drive down to St. Vincent’s to see the hungry homeless people Goodman is so fond of bashing. They don’t have to go poking around under freeway overpasses or searching downtown doorways.

Hell, all the mayor has to do is look out his fucking 10th floor window toward the park below and he can see it.

Anyway, here’s our preliminary bill, based upon information provided by the city, both recently and back in 2004, when we were working at the Review-Journal as a big-city columnist and probing Goodman’s curious habit of maintaining a videotaped library of his TV appearances. We think 30 days is plenty of time to pay the invoice.

• $1,200 — for showgirls to accompany the mayor to the International Council of Shopping Centers in May 2006.

• $6,242.50 — for bobblehead dolls. (One, showing the mayor delivering a proclamation, was charged to Goodman’s office budget. The other, showing the mayor with a tennis racket, was charged to the Leisure Services Department and done in conjunction with the Tennis Channel Open.)

• $1,410 — for copies of videotapes of television appearances not related to city business, as concluded by a brief investigation by us back in 2004.

$8,852.50 — grand total, as of June 22, 2006.

Please note that we didn’t include things like the $5,775 that the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority spent to pay for showgirls to accompany Goodman to the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Las Vegas, or the $22,073.64 that the Las Vegas Centennial Committee has spent for showgirls to follow the mayor to other events.

The LVCVA operates on room tax, and if the elected and appointed officials there want to squander tourists’ money for something like this, it’s up to them. (It does make us wonder, however, if more of that room tax isn’t available for local schools. Anybody got a BDR form handy?)

As for the “Centennial” committee, that’s money primarily given voluntarily by people when they signed up for the “Centennial” license plate, which celebrated a six-year-premature 100th birthday of Las Vegas. If they’re not aware enough to do the calendar math, we don’t think they’ll care that their hard-earned dollars are paying for mayoral escorts. (Hey, do you think there are any Centennial plates left? We’d love to get one for the News Cruiser with the personalized message FAKEDT. Get it? Fake date? Oh, never mind.)

Anyway, mayor, remit your payment in full to the general fund of the city of Las Vegas, 400 E. Stewart Avenue, Las Vegas, Nev., 89101. And hurry: We’re going to start adding interest soon!