You didn’t think we’d forget, did you? No, we’ve located some notes to ourselves on a yellow legal pad amidst the clutter of our office here in the nondescript building in the industrial area near McCarran International Airport. So here we go!

» Gov. Jim Gibbons has a 28 percent approval rating?! He’s closing in on Vice President Dick Cheney! Seriously, people, we don’t usually live and die by these things, but Gibbons is scraping rock bottom with just 1 percent of respondents rating his performance "excellent," (thanks for keeping the Gibbons household in the polling sample, Maxon-Dixon!) and 21 percent rating it as "good."

Three things about this:

1.) Who are the 28 percent of the public who are not offended by midnight lies (or noontime lies, for that matter), knee-jerk promises that will undoubtedly hurt the state, FBI investigations of serious allegations of misconduct and a general theme of incompetence? Whoever they are, they are a forgiving (and perhaps deluded) lot.

2.) Darts to the Review-Journal for publishing it in the Saturday newspaper, traditionally the least-read edition of the week, which is why politicians call breaking news on a Friday "taking out the trash." We’re not ones for conspiracy theories, but the R-J commissioned the poll and could have run the results anytime; its editors chose Saturday for Gibbons’ bad news. Coincidence? We don’t think so. Seriously, what’s in the Saturday paper but the real estate "promotional" section and columns about hiking? They don’t even have a full editorial page, for God’s sake!

3.) The quotes! The quotes are priceless!

"Gov. Gibbons will not govern by polls but by the interests of the people of the state," said Melissa Subbotin, the governor’s press secretary. "He outlined his agenda in the State of the State address, and he’s confident Nevadans will see that he’s upheld his commitments to hold the line on taxes, improve the state’s education system and keep our streets and communities free from dangerous sex offenders."

Indeed? Well, it seems to us that holding the line on taxes precludes Gibbons from improving education, but that’s just us. Besides, according to pollster Brad Coker, "This is not policy driven. This is all about what you think of Jim Gibbons personally."

Really? So how is there not a category named "horribly, unspeakably, atrociously, almost indescribably mega-shitty"? Oh, right. The R-J is a family paper.

» Speaking of Gibbons, we got an insight into the governor’s psyche in the Las Vegas Sun on Sunday. Asked if he thought people might want him to reconsider his anti-tax pledge (you know, in light of this thing we call "reality,") he replied, "I don’t know who those people are. But they aren’t the people who elected me."

So, as far as Gibbons is concerned, if he gives up his anti-tax pledge, he gives up his base. And if he gives up his base, he gives up everything, since nobody else much likes the way he’s handling things. That means Gibbons will never give up on his anti-tax pledge.

Welcome to Vetotown, Legislature. Population: 63. (Yuck it up, anti-taxers. Wait until the Legislature returns with its one-way, all-expenses paid trip to Overrideville!)

» Speaking of R-J polls, we’re sad to see our man U.S. Sen. Joe Biden garner only 2 percent. Even worse, Republican U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback is bogarting his three-state Iraq solution, which we hope is the only thing Brownback and Biden agree on. Maybe U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton (37 percent, baby!) will consider Biden for the job he truly deserves, secretary of state?

By the way, these very early, snapshot-in-time numbers on an election that won’t be held for 18 months ran in the valuable real estate of the Sunday R-J, crowding out space for news like, oh, we don’t know, "Everybody Hates Gibbons"?

» John L. Smith blows the lid off the whole UMC-advertising budget, and doesn’t spare his corporate overlords (who just happen to be our corporate overlords, too). It’s impossible to argue with Smith’s contention that a public hospital millions in the red shouldn’t be spending cash on TV and print ads.

Even worse, however, was the four-page advertising supplement that ran in the R-J, complete with the newspaper’s own headline and body copy fonts! Why, it looked like a package of good news that had been prepared by the newspaper itself, which we know would never happen, since the R-J only writes about the bad things that happen to UMC! Clearly, there was some collusion, unless UMC just loves that Olympian.

Look down, people. That bright yellow line you’re standing just on top of is called an "ethical boundary."

» Speaking of ethical boundaries, can somebody over at the Sun pretty please tell Editor Brian Greenspun that it’s just not right to editorialize in favor of your business partners? Sure, he disclosed that developer Michael Saltman is his business partner. And sure, Midtown UNLV is a great project. But it’s just unseemly. We’d never do that, say use our blog to plug our television show (Political Insiders on KTNV-TV Channel 13, which airs at 11:30 p.m. Saturday and 5 p.m. Sunday. Catch it!)

» Oh, the symmetry! U.S. Rep. Dean Heller played in the governor’s mansion as a child, and now he thinks it nothing short of birthright that he play there again, as an adult. How "Return to Pooh Corner"! Now, if only he had as much clout as the non-voting delegates!

» U.S. Sen. John Ensign, assigned political duties that nobody else wanted, wherein athletic skill is not a factor in success, is blowing big time, R-J reports. Senator, we’ve seen Chuck Shumer Schumer at news conferences. We’ve seen him on The Colbert Report. Caught him once on Real Time with Bill Maher. Senator, you’re no Chuck Shumer Schumer.

UPDATE: Although we did misspell the New York senator’s name, we’d like to be on record saying that Ensign is also no Chuck Shumer of Muncie, Ind. That guy is cool. We assume.

We have to admit that we sometimes don’t make it all the way through Review-Journal Editor Thomas Mitchell’s Sunday column. We like what he has to say about open meetings and open records well enough. And we like when he gets bored and decides to go after his opposite number at the Las Vegas Sun, Brian Greenspun. (Greenspun always fires back like a kitty playing with a ball of yarn — so cute!)

But there are other times when he pontificates about how the government is out of control, taxes are too high, the private sector is so much better and public employees are money-grubbing incompetents. That, we confess, sends us looking for the comics instead. Sunday was one of those days, but we made our coffee extra strong, and persevered through Mitchell’s work anyway. (By the way, what is up with this one tablespoon per six ounces of water thing? Do they want us drinking liquid crack? Seriously, that stuff was STRONG!)

Anyway, the first part of Mitchell’s column had to do with the differences between an R-J editorial and a Sun editorial, which ran in the respective newspapers on Thursday. The Sun’s take — basically that the state should approve the fees and taxes to fund a budget that adequately pays for things like roads and schools — was not the R-J’s take. Instead, the conservatives on Bonanza Road pointed to the fact that the current budget is larger by far than the last two-year budget, and that’s enough. A reduction in the rate of growth is not a cut, they say.

(Although Mitchell quoted the opening line of the Sun’s piece, he failed to quote this paragraph, which pretty much sums up the unanswered key point against the R-J’s argument: "Conservatives may point to the budget’s increase, but what they will fail to note is that the state budget, for the past few decades at least, has never been adequate to provide enough of the essential services that Nevadans need. It should be painfully obvious that our schools, highways, public hospitals, courts, police, mental health facilities and child welfare programs have all suffered because of a lack of funding." Oh, it is obvious, Sun. To everybody but the R-J, that is.)

Anyway, the part that really caught our eye — besides when Mitchell called the Sun a bunch of socialists — was this: "As though you did not already know, it is now obvious which newspaper is on your side against those set on solving the woes of the world even if it takes the last dime of your money, and which sees you as a docile host for the parasitic bureaucrats."

That’s right, people. The R-J is on your side.

Or is it?

If the R-J were really on your side, wouldn’t it do something other than tell you what you want to hear, instead of tell you the truth? Taxes in this state don’t even come close to "the last dime of your money." In fact, that’s probably why many of you moved here: The low-tax environment, right?

The R-J should be telling you a hard truth: The fastest-growing state in the nation (now second-fastest) simply cannot afford to pay for the huge demand for services without an increase in income — read, taxes and fees. We can’t build roads or schools fast enough, we can’t hire cops and firefighters fast enough and we can’t build jail cells or hospital beds soon enough to keep up. And that’s partly true because of the R-J, which has fought taxes tooth and nail over the years.

It reminds us of the 1995 movie The American President, in which President Andrew Shepherd (Michael Douglas) has finally had enough of the sniveling Republican U.S. Sen. Bob Rumson (Richard Dreyfuss). Shepherd takes to the podium in the White House press room and delivers a stirring if somewhat unrealistic speech, which includes this line: "Whatever your particular problem is, I promise you, Bob Rumson is not the least bit interested in solving it. He’s interested in two things, and two things only: Making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it."

Tom Mitchell, thy name is Bob Rumson!

Mitchell wants you to fear your government, not realize that you and all your neighbors are your government. He wants you to hate the "parasitic bureaucracy," not realize that he’s talking about the cop who goes to work every day knowing he might not come home at night, or the nurse who is gearing up to help save your life if you get in a car crash. He wants you to resent public employees for their salaries, not consider that most of them work very hard for that money, and are underpaid. (Clark County public school teachers, anyone?) And most of all, Mitchell wants you to think that a policy that continually starves the government is one that’s "on your side," never stopping to think that waiting in traffic, overcrowded schools with too few books, not enough cops to answer calls and flooded streets in rainstorms are all the result of his own newspaper’s anti-tax advocacy.

The R-J is on your side? With friends like that, you don’t need enemies.