No, we didn’t forget to take a gander at the papers while we were away in paradise (aka the great city of Los Angeles). Here’s a few Quick Hits that arose therefrom:

» A lot of people make a big deal about approval ratings. They cite President George W. Bush’s low-30s approval ratings (or even better, Vice President Dick Cheney, who hovers at 9 percent!) to prove they’re right about a particular issue.

Gov. Jim Gibbons, who was pegged at 29 percent recently, falls into this trap in this week’s Political Notebook in the Review-Journal. He says that other governors had low approval ratings, too, and that it’s no big deal.

Our point is this: If Gibbons is a crappy governor (just stretch your mind and accept that premise for a second) it wouldn’t matter if he had 100 percent approval; he’d still be a crappy governor. Conversely, if he was a great governor, he could have Cheney-class rankings and still be a great governor, no? The public is notoriously fickle about these things, and "approval" is a useless measure in almost all political calculations.

U.S. Sen. Harry Reid should learn this lesson, too. After Reid said recently "this war is lost," Cheney jumped on him with both cloven hooves for being a defeatist. In his reply, Reid mentioned Cheney’s 9 percent approval rating, as if to suggest Cheney was wrong and Reid was right. But that’s plainly ridiculous. Only on Wikipedia do we decide truth by collective accord.

What Reid should have said was this: Dick Cheney has been wrong about nearly every aspect of this war, from making up false connections between Saddam Hussein’s Iraq and al-Qaida to the idea that we’d be greeted as liberators to the existence of WMDs to the notion that the insurgency is in its "final throes." He’s a joke! Listening to him would be like taking sartorial advice from a homeless guy who lives under a bridge and wears a box! Next question!

The only place approval ratings come into play is in the spending of political capital. When you’re not well-thought-of, you don’t have much to spend. And that puts both Bush and our good governor into the political poorhouse.

Not to mention that none of the governors mentioned in the Political Notebook are, say, under investigation by the FBI for allegedly using their former congressional offices to help defense contractors get fat contracts in exchange for free travel. That one is owned exclusively by Gibbons.

Oh, and not for nothing, but could perhaps Gibbons has a low approval rating because he fibs so much? For example, in Friday’s Review-Journal, he said this: "I’m disinclined to support new fees, but I have said I will review any request for fee increases on a case-by-case basis."

Technically, that’s what we call bullshit. Here’s a couple passages from the Feb. 14 R-J: "I always said the public runs this state. They elected me because I oppose tax and fee increases. If the public wants to implement a tax on themselves, that is up to the voting public. A vote of the public will supersede a governor’s reluctance to raise taxes," Gibbons said.

But wait, there’s more: "Brent Boynton, Gibbons’ director of communications, said later the governor was not encouraging legislators to simply hand the issue to voters without examining other options for funding highway construction.

"During the interview, Gibbons reiterated his no-new taxes pledge and added he considers increasing fees the same as increasing taxes.

"As a result, he is reviewing his earlier decision to allow the state Health Division to implement four fee increases.

"’We will probably pull them out,’ he said."

Now, does that sound like Gibbons will "…review any request for fee increases on a case-by-case basis"? Or does it sound more like he’ll review the truth on a case-by-case basis, and toss out any inconvenient ones?

» We knew university chancellor Jim Rogers was inviting trouble when he called recently for a personal income tax in Nevada. Them’s fighting words in this libertarian state!

Sure enough, the Review-Journal editorial page weighed in, slamming the chancellor for saying (we admit, wrongly) that Nevadans don’t pay any taxes now. (We’re pretty sure he meant to say we pay fewer taxes than some of our fellow Americans in other states.) The editorial goes on to say cut wasteful government spending to find the money to put into higher education.

And to think that Editor Tom Mitchell was writing just across the page lamenting that nobody teaches Aesop’s Fables anymore! The idea that the needs of the nation’s second-fastest growing state can be met by simply cutting waste is sure as hell a fairy tale!

Rogers isn’t the first to be slammed for the income-tax idea. Back in 2002, while serving on the task force that examined state tax policy, Las Vegas Sun Editor Brian Greenspun floated the idea, too. He got slammed as if he’d suggested the Earth was flat and the center of the universe, by people who believe that the Earth is flat and the center of the universe.

While a state income tax has little realistic chance of passing, it would accomplish one significant thing: It would provide a further nexus between the people and their government, and reinforce our favorite notion of late: You can’t get things like roads and schools for free.

But we think that if we’re going to talk about a personal income tax, we should also talk about a corporate income tax, which would include businesses like Rogers’ TV stations and Mitchell’s newspaper (which, by the way, is owned by the same company that owns CityLife, and this very blog). Corporations want to be treated as people under the law, don’t they? Well, how about a nice personal income tax for businesses that really do pay nothing on their gross receipts?

It’s only fair.

» We told you state Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio was smart. For whatever it’s worth, he’s come out for Rudy Giuliani for president. (He was joined by U.S. Rep. Jon Porter, who was also pretty prescient in backing U.S. Rep. John Boehner for House Majority — now Minority — Leader when the disgraced Tom DeLay was forced to step down.)

That sly Raggio knows Giuliani is the Republicans only real hope, what with U.S. Sen. John McCain married to the worst foreign policy mistake in American history, and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney having held all possible positions on the central moral questions of our time. Giuliani is the most formidable candidate the Republicans have!

This totally interferes with our plans to subtly engineer a Romney-Sam Brownback ticket for the GOP, which is religiously nutty enough to win a primary, but way, way to nutty to take the general. Damn Raggio’s keen intellect!

» And finally today, the nice people over at KNPR-FM 89.5 this morning took a break from what seems to be an every-other-month fundraising drive to invite us to talk about our recent piece on taxes. We faced off with our old friend Chuck Muth, that wily conservative activist who lives now in Carson City. You can hear the discussion here, if you’re so inclined, but if you do, you should really become a public radio member.

LOS ANGELES — We’re still digging out from the pile of work that piled up in big piles on our desk while we were away in Carson City and then again this weekend, at the fabulous Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. We spent most the weekend trudging around the UCLA campus like a sherpa, loaded down with books and magazines. But it was a good loaded down with books and magazines, and we’re sure we’ve lost at least 100 pounds in the effort, which puts us within 100 pounds of our fighting weight.

Some highlights, then, from this weekend’s festivities:

» Religion is taking it on the chin! From former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges‘ expose on American Fascists to Richard Dawkins‘ delving into The God Delusion to Sam Harris declaring The End of Faith to Christopher Hitchens deciding that God Is Not Great, it seems Providence has a PR problem.

"The engine of this despotic movement is despair," Hedges said of Christian fundamentalism during a panel on politics and faith, two of our favorite subjects. Poverty and continuing economic inequality are breeding grounds for the misguided and unscrupulous people of the cloth, Hedges said, and if we don’t confront those underlying forces, "then I think our democracy is doomed."

"In many cases, the best cure for religious radicalism [of all kinds] is integration, is assimilation, is participation" in the larger culture, Hedges added.

But that doesn’t always work, he added. Social and economic development might stop terrorism in Palestine or Lebanon, but not in other places, where "jihadists" want nothing and have no goals other than terrorism for its own sake. "They have to be rooted out. They have to be destroyed. Simple," he said. "If you want something, you can be talked to."

Hedges signed a copy of his book for us later at The Nation’s booth, where we picked up another year’s worth of good lefty lapel buttons. Fight the man!

» Hitchens, of course, proved to be the highlight of the two-day festival. He expounded on the subtitle of his new book — "how religion poisons everything" — and deftly made the other people assigned to his panel look overmatched. We actually felt sorry for poor Jonathan Kirsch, whose latest book is about the book of Revelation, and Zachary Karabell.

Religion, Hitchens argued, asks that believers surrender their most valuable gift, reason, in order to be faithful. And Hitchens wonders why in America people ask to be given credit simply because they have faith, regardless of what kind of faith they have. (A question: Must we give equal deference to faiths that directly contradict each other in terms of doctrine, such as, say, Mormonism and Roman Catholicism? Hitchens’ answer: Yes. We should give both faiths no deference whatever!)

While his fellow panelists argued that religion is a vital social force and that the Bible can and does provide inspiration and illumination, Hitchens replied that faith requires the belief that things will end in some apocalyptic way soon. That negates the initiative for progress, he said.

And what’s up with ascribing any kind of morality to Abraham, who is fully prepared to sacrifice his son Issac on God’s orders? While believers cite that as a sign of deep faith, to Hitchens, it’s simply a disturbed patriarch on the verge of infanticide.

"Surrender of reason is always and everywhere a bad thing," said Hitchens, ironically echoing the cadence of the liturgical Mass.

» Ralph Nader has written (another) book. This time, it’s on family values?!

Nader’s tome — The 17 Traditions – won’t ever be confused for a book by Bill Bennett, however. His liberal traditions include appreciating nature, being a helpful part of your community and getting involved. Nader recalls his father once asking him upon his return from school, "Did you learn how to believe, or did you learn how to think?" (A damn good question for every parent to ask their kids, if you ask us.)

Nader, who said it’s "too early" to decide whether he’ll mount a third bid for the presidency in 2008, said none of the current crop of Democratic candidates has arisen out of a mass movement, and thus none have a mandate from the people. "We’ve been reduced to spectators, onlookers, observers," Nader said. "We need to be the initiators, and it’s not that hard to do."

Mainstream candidates like U.S. Sen. John Kerry in 2004 are being pulled relentlessly by corporate interests, Nader said, so liberals have to stand up to pull him in the opposite direction. "If you look at it as a tug-of-war, if you don’t tug, you’re going to lose," he said.

And the other side is pretty powerful. Nader lamented the good work done by journalists at the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune even as their company was purchased by real estate mogul Sam Zell. The lives and work of those journalists are "so much flotsam and jetsam" to their corporate owners, Nader said.

"How can we have our self-respect and allow that kind of corporate tyranny?" he asked the applauding crowd. (We think any Times staffers in the audience were probably clapping the loudest of all.)

» Did you know that the Sept. 11 attacks were a conspiracy? If not, plenty of people who showed up at the festival were willing to tell you all about it. They clogged seminars and jumped to their feet to ask "questions" that were really speeches about the government’s "controlled demolition" of the Twin Towers.

We did walk by the booth of the "9/11 truth now" people, but in the quick, no-eye-contact way that most of us avoid mentally ill homeless people or Dr. Phil (who was also at the festival). We considered hearing them out, but realized it was fruitless: If you ignore the conspiracy theory, you’re either stupid or bought off. If you investigate it and conclude they’re wrong, you’re still stupid or bought off. There’s just no way to win. But the fact that there are people out there who fervently believe the American government was behind Sept. 11 is somewhat scary.

Ultimately, it was Hitchens who devised a way to deal with them. "Go away," he boomed at a ringleader itching to ask a "question" in the form of a speech. "We don’t want fascist crackpots taking up our meeting."

» Robert Scheer may have been canned by the Los Angeles Times, but he’s still got the same muckracking spirit that he first developed covering Vietnam. (You can read him now in the San Francisco Chronicle and on TruthDig.com.)

It’s little wonder that Iraqis don’t really care for American-style democracy, Scheer said, given that the version we’ve shown them includes condoning torture, lying about our reasons for starting a war and subverting our own Constitution.

When Vietnam was raging, conservatives warned that a loss there would embolden communists, who would go on a country-by-country conquering tour that would eventually end up lapping at America’s shores. But that never happened. Yet today, the rhetoric over Iraq is eerily similar.

"It’s like you break into a house, you rape the people, you steal their treasure, but you say, ‘We can’t just leave now,’" Scheer said, to applause.

And master of the timeline that he is, Scheer reminded the audience that the crimes against humanity for which Saddam Hussein was hung took place in 1982, and they were known before a smiling Reagan administration official named Donald Rumsfeld showed up in Baghdad to shake Hussein’s hand and offer him military hardware that he’d later use against his own people, the only documented weapons of mass destruction used in Iraq.

Scheer also got a few laughs when he wished for another Hitchens appearance, so to challenge Hitchens’ support for the Iraq war and friendship with discredited Iraqi figure Ahmad Chalibi. We found ourselves wishing to see Hitchens and Scheer square off, too.

We also liked the comments of Scheer’s fellow panelist William Langewiesche, a writer for Vanity Fair magazine. He said the assumption in Iraq has always been that if Iraqis would only be reasonable, they would see the merits of a democratic system. But Iraqis are well-educated, and well-read, and have a far more realistic understand of their nation’s problems than Americans.

America, as a country, bears the blame for the war now, Langewiesche said. "America made serious errors. Our leaders did, and the American people did when they re-elected those leaders," he said. Don’t blame us; we voted for Kerry.

» Quotable: "Are you there, God? It’s me, Hitchens." — headline of New York magazine’s Q&A with Hitchens.