If rainy days and Mondays get you down — and who don’t they get down? — you totally need a dose of Quick Hits right about now. So sit back, relax and enjoy!

• My colleague Jon Ralston says Gov. Jim Gibbons is merely a puppet for Senate Majority Leader Bill Raggio. My colleague Erin Neff, however, just says he’s dumb. Gibbons, that is, not Ralston or Raggio.
  
• U.S. Sen. John McCain says the "transcendent challenge of the 21st century" is fighting "the evil of radical Islamic extremism, which threatens everything we stand for and believe in." Those Republicans, always looking for a war to scare people into voting for them. We guess that’s why snarky bloggers call them the War Party.
  
• Really? Terrorists? That’s the "transcendent challenge of the 21st century"? Not global climate change (which threatens us all)? Not finding new and clean sources of energy? Not eliminating global poverty and disease? Not reaching beyond our planet to explore others in our solar system? But terrorists? McCain is looking smaller and smaller all the time.
  
• Gibbons henchwoman still trying to shoehorn her man into a job as head of the Taxicab Authority. What’s with her, anyway?
  
• Oh, look! Sheldon Adelson has trained his puppy to sit!
• Exxon Mobil posts largest corporate profits ever, $40.6 billion. So why is it we still have Republicans willing to give that company a tax break while at the same time preventing kids from enrolling in the State Health Insurance Program?
  
• Chancellor Jim Rogers seeks treatment for bladder cancer in California. That always irks local docs. Our advice: Leave the man alone to get care where he can afford it, which just happens to be a place with a very good reputation.
  
• U.S. Sen. John Ensign says most Democrats are rich, and the poor Republicans have to scrape together what cash they can to try to get some people elected to office. Look, if you had to get War Party senators elected at a time when everybody hates war, you’d live in a totally isolated state of complete denial, too.
  
• Also, Ensign apparently gets dressed in the dark.
  
• The late state Controller Kathy Augustine had a 300-page file in the U.S. Office of Special Counsel, the agency that investigates allegations of employees paid with or handling federal funds doing political work. We’re guessing, based upon testimony we heard at her impeachment trial, that she’d have been convicted.
  
• The executive director of the Sept. 11 Commission tried to make the White House look less incompetent in the wake of the terrorist attacks, as well as trying to make the case that Iraq and Sept. 11 were linked. Yeah, he talked with Karl Rove.
  
• BONUS UPDATE: Once again, we get totally screwed in Editor & Publisher’s editor of the year contest. What do the Oregonian’s editors have that we don’t have? What’s that? Pulitzers? Oh, sure if you’re going to judge based on that…
  

Mark Feb. 3 as a milestone in the history of the Las Vegas Monorail. It was the day the troubled train lost Geoff Schumacher.

And speaking of Schumacher, he’s also a published author. His latest book, Howard Hughes: Power, Paranoia & Palace Intrigue is set to be unveiled at a book signing and panel discussion at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday at the Nevada State Museum, 700 Twin Lakes Drive at Lorenzi Park. A $3 museum donation gets you in to the reception and discussion, which will feature the likes of Hughes No. 2 man Robert Maheu and associates Peg Crockett, Paul Winn and Gordon Margulis.

Hey, maybe one of those guys can authenticate this copy of Hughes’ will that we happen to have in our possession, that leaves us $50 million in cash?

Seriously, people, if the Review-Journal devotes any more ink to defending its way-wrong pre-caucus poll results, it’s going to have to hire a full-time writer. Call it the "Egg on our Face" beat.

First, the R-J published a story after the caucus saying how, although its polls were off by at least 6 points and as much as 17 points on the front-runners, the poll was really right on after all. (True, the paper did pick the eventual winners, Hillary Clinton and Mitt Romney, but with numbers that were seriously outside the margin of error.)

The R-J explained that, in the caucus, there are second chances to vote if your first choice doesn’t make it, so naturally the numbers will shift when people are asked about their No. 1 pick, but later are forced to go with their No. 2. (Curiously, that explanation didn’t come in a pre-caucus story reporting the poll. No, in that story, R-J pollster Brad Coker said this: "It took a lot of work, but I think I figured it out. I’m pretty comfortable with the way we did it.")

Whoops.

Next, R-J columnist John L. Smith defended the paper in a column. Like the R-J’s earlier story, Smith took a shot at the Reno Gazette-Journal, saying its poll that predicted a Barack Obama win was wrong. Which it was. But seriously, dude, you’re in a big glass house. Put down the slingshot!

And now, R-J Editor Tom Mitchell has gotten into the act, in a Sunday column on the subject saying "several local columnists and bloggers" just don’t understand fancy numbers the way his beloved pollster Brad Coker does.

Gee, who could he be talking about? Certainly not us at Various Things & Stuff. We mentioned the R-J’s lame excuse-making in our post on the subject. "The lady doth protest too much, wethinks!"

"With pollsters, as with journalists, over time the reader will be able to discern who is more trustworthy, honest and accurate. None has a perfect crystal ball," Mitchell wrote, by way of justification. But enough about the R-J’s static circulation in the fastest-growing city in the country.

He goes on to justify the use of polls in the first place, even if they influence public opinion. We’re not huge poll fans, but we can see his point: Newspapers are obligated to find out what people are thinking, and report that information. No harm there. But when a pooch is screwed, the proper response to is explain how and why, which the R-J sort of did, and apologize, which the R-J most definitely did not.

Instead, we got no fewer than three pieces of self-justification. Have we seen the end? Stay tuned!