First in an indefinite series of irresponsible hypotheticals.

We don’t know how the family drama currently afflicting the first family of Nevada is going to turn out. Our interest in the subject is entirely political, however. And in that vein, here’s something of a scary thought. See if you follow our logic.

First lady Dawn Gibbons is known to have had a heavy hand in staff appointments in her husband’s administration. It was she, for example, who insisted that Mike Dayton be appointed chief of staff, despite the ignominious way he left Jim Gibbons’s congressional office.

It was also Dawn Gibbons who insisted her husband appoint Diane Cornwall to the deputy chief of staff position, from which she was later elevated to chief operating officer of the state. (It was in that role that she blabbed to the Reno Gazette-Journal about the “family meeting” at which the future of the Gibbons marriage was to be discussed.)

And we know that it was Dawn Gibbons who specifically prevented Jim Gibbons’s campaign manager, Robert Uithoven, from getting the chief of staff job.

Unlike Dayton and Cornwall, Uithoven has a reputation for effectiveness, loyalty, knowledge of the political process and its players. He’s been hired most recently by Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson to help qualify two room-tax-diverting initiatives for the November ballot.

But if the governor and his wife divorce, he’d presumably be free to reject her staffing choices once she’s out of the picture. In fact, he may be inclined to reject her staffing choices.

And since Dayton and Cornwall haven’t exactly steered the administration away from trouble, he’d have no reason of his own to keep them around.

Which means he’d be free to hire whomever he likes for his chief of staff job, including, for example, Uithoven.

And that means the Gibbons administration, for the first time since the clock struck midnight on Jan. 1, 2007, would have something it has sorely lacked until now: Competence.

Why do we get the feeling that Democrats around Nevada are suddenly embracing the sanctity of marriage as never before?

After all the bad news we’ve been reading, from school shootings to tainted clinics to deadly ricin in our extended stay hotels, a nice helping of Quick Hits is just the thing you need to relax.

• “The media demonized the [Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints] religion as if it were some sort of cult.” — Mormon Gov. Jim Gibbons. You know, governor, we have a bumper sticker on our bulletin board here at the office that reads, “Religions are just cults with more members.” So, there you go.
• Oh, some fun with numbers: Democrats have exactly 25,234 more total voters than Republicans, as of January 2008. (We hear it’s higher now, but what the heck.) Gibbons defeated Democrat Dina Titus in the 2006 governor’s race by 23,319 votes. No wonder he’s concerned.
• UPDATE: The Democrats have 34,605 more voters than Republicans, according to a memo posted on the blog of my colleague Jon Ralston.
• Unfun with numbers: The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost $3 trillion, according to Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. That’s trillion, with a “T,” expressed in Arabic figures thus: $3,000,000,000,000.
• “People like Joe Stiglitz lack the courage to consider the cost of doing nothing and the cost of failure. One can’t even begin to put a price tag on the cost to this nation of the attacks of 9/11.” — White House spokesman Tony Fratto. Even if you consider that the justified war in Afghanistan alone is but a small part of the $3 trillion, and had it been done right we may not be in the bloody quagmire we’re in now, we still must point out that Iraq didn’t have a goddamn thing to do with 9/11, you lying sons of bitches, and no matter how many times you try to conflate the two, it won’t work!
  
• More unfun with numbers: The Army’s Criminal Investigation Command has 91 open investigations into contract fraud in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait. Ah, but we probably don’t have the courage to calculate the cost of not allowing companies like Halliburton and Blackwater to run amok with taxpayer dollars.
• When the Health District of Southern Nevada, the Nevada Board of Medical Examiners, the attorney general, the district attorney and all others balked, Mayor Oscar Goodman and the city of Las Vegas acted, suspending the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada’s business license, effectively closing the tainted clinic. There’s no doubt that action gave the county political cover today to close several other affiliated clinics. Say what you will, but the populist mayor did the right thing, and he did it quickly.
• Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain, er, initiatives. (Psst! It’s Sheldon Adelson!)

Remember back in 2004, when Republican uber-consultant Sig Rogich was running ads, urging voters to “Keep Our Doctors in Nevada”? Today we can think of at least one doctor we wish had been run out of town by the Rogich boogeyman of that cycle: trial lawyers engorged on huge medical malpractice verdicts.

It turns out Dr. Dipak Desai gave $25,000 to the “Keep Our Doctors in Nevada” movement. And that’s ironic, since it looks like trial lawyers are going to devour him like hungry piranhas scarfing a cow.

Desai, of course, is the top doctor at the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada, which allegedly malpracticed its way into the history books by re-using vials of medicine and possibly exposing thousands to hepatitis and HIV, resulting in the largest notification of potentially exposed patients in U.S. history. Yay, for Nevada. We’re No. 1!

Why? Well, the center’s doctors wanted to save a few bucks on medicine. Or at least that’s what was revealed in an investigation by the Southern Nevada Health District. (Major kudos are due to the district, by the way, for exposing this scandalous situation. Those are tax dollars spent on bureaucracy that many people outside the Review-Journal editorial page are happy to have paid.)

Perhaps realizing that the world now believes he put profits over people’s lives, Desai did what anybody would do: He hired R&R Advertising, the powerhouse firm run by one-time Rogich pal Billy Vassiliadis. (The pair are on the outs these days, as Rogich shills for Las Vegas Sands Chairman Sheldon Adelson, who wants to grab tax money from the Las Vegas Visitors and Convention Authority that is currently used, in part, to pay R&R.)

R&R pulled out the crisis communication playbook, and immediately implemented Chapter One: Apologize, and do it big. Hence, the full-page ad in Sunday’s Review-Journal.

Only somebody forgot to read the fine print. You know, the part about “apologize.” And we think his name starts with “doctor.”

“First, I want to express my deepest sympathy to all our patients and their families for the fear and uncertainty that naturally arises from this situation,” Desai wrote. “The trust we have spent years building in this community has been challenged by the discovery that some of our patients may have been exposed to blood-borne diseases at our facility.”

Oh, dear yes, it is a dreadful situation, isn’t it? Awful bit of business, wouldn’t you agree?

The thing is this: It was allegedly the policies dictated by Desai and his fellow physicians that directly caused patients to be exposed to blood-borne diseases! The Health District “discovered” that Desai and his fellow doctors were doing things that wouldn’t be tolerated in the Third World, much less Las Vegas! And so far, Desai hasn’t taken responsibility for jack shit, which is also what may have been found on the instruments used in … well, perhaps that’s another post for another day.

The letter does indicate that the Endoscopy Center is paying for testing, which is, quite literally, the least it can do.

“I want to thank the Southern Nevada Health District for bringing this issue to our attention and for its help in resolving it,” Desai continued. Yes, they were so helpful, the way a police officer who tells you a taillight is out is helpful, or the Starbuck’s barista who gives you that extra shot of vanilla is helpful. Only you don’t get HIV from taillights.

“At the same time and without making excuses, I think it’s important for the public to know that the chances of contracting an infection at our center from 2004 through June 2007 were extremely low. Of the six cases reported, it appears one exposure took place in July 2007 and five on September 21, 2007. Regardless, if you were a patient at our facility, I encourage you to get tested,” he added.

You know how you can tell somebody is about to make excuses? He says he’s not going to make excuses. Even one accidental exposure to a life-threatening disease is too much, much less an easily foreseeable exposure based on intentionally shoddy practices designed to save money.

We understand why Desai didn’t really apologize in his letter: He’s afraid of the trial lawyers he once tried so hard to contain. Already, at least three law firms have TV ads up asking patients of the facility to contact them, and at least one lawsuit has already been filed. If the story that’s been reported thus far is true, it looks like Desai is in deep legal trouble.

And now that we think of it, when it comes to alleged malpractice of the open and gross variety, that’s exactly how the system is supposed to work. Release the hungry piranhas!

It’s finally happened, people. He Who Shall Not Be Named has reached the fake-apology stage in his shame spiral.

In case you don’t know, He Who Shall Not Be Named is the current (as of this writing) chairman of the Clark County Democratic Party. We’ve heard from a highly placed Democratic operative that he loves nothing in the world more than seeing his name in print, and we simply will not enable.

After screwing up the Clark County Democratic Party’s convention in ways that Republicans could only dream about, He Who Shall Not Be Named immediately embarked upon the shame spiral.

Stage One: Denial. “It’s all good,” he said as the convention fell apart around him.

Stage Two: Continued Denial. “There’s nothing negative. It’s all positive,” he said in the days following the convention, as more and more people called for his resignation and wondered if he was, in fact, the most incompetent man to ever walk the earth, short of, say, President George W. Bush.

Stage Three: Anger and deflected blame. “And that [the failed convention] was all caused by the campaigns. How dare they? How dare they?!” he said on local TV, referring to the organizations of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

So now we’ve reached Stage Four, the Fake Apology stage. According to an e-mail obtained by us at Various Things & Stuff (after somebody forwarded it to us), He Who Shall Not Be Named is saying sorry. Sort of.

Let’s take a look at the text. (Our comments are in italics.)

First of all I want to personally apologize for what happened on Saturday February 23. I will do a better job on the next go round. I apologize for not having the vision and not mobilizing the resources to successfully complete a job of that magnitude.

Unfortunately, the chairman DID have the vision to mobilize the resources for the convention. The party knew full well — and for months — that at least 7,000 people were expected to be delegates in Clark County, and that the room at Bally’s reserved for the convention held but 5,000. This bit of incompetence has never been satisfactorily explained. Do read on.

…

I do want everyone to know some of the facts about our convention. We had over two hundred volunteers, including fifty registration stations with two volunteers working at each station. Registration was open Friday February 22 from 4:00 until approximately 10:00 PM, and on Saturday from 8:00 AM until Noon. The total number of delegates and alternates elected at the January 19th Caucus was just over 7000. The total number of delegates, alternates, and guests registered as of noon Saturday was approximately 6974.

Bally’s Event Center with chairs could seat 5000; without chairs it could hold 7500 plus. The room was too small and again for that I apologize.

The most basic question remains: If they knew AT LEAST 7,000 were coming, why book a room (with chairs) that could not possibly accommodate the crowd? That was a prescription for disaster. Besides, we saw the room, and there’s no way 7,000 people could have been crammed into it, without arousing the ire of Bally’s or the fire department.

According to Bally’s Security at one time there approximately 12,500 attendees in the hotel that were either in the Event Center or in line. During Saturday morning Interstate 15 was almost shut down. It took some attendees 45 minutes or more to exit I-15, and thousands could not find parking spaces. A fair estimate of the total number of Democrats who tried to attend the convention is probably between 20,000 and 25,000. Both campaigns did auto and personal calls to all their supporters who attended the January 19th Caucus and encouraged them to come to Bally’s in hopes of becoming an alternate if they were not elected as delegates. I understand why they did that. We just could not handle the response, and again I apologize.

At last we come to it: This is but the APPEARANCE of an apology! In fact, He Who Shall Not Be Named is STILL blaming the campaigns for the problems that it was his job to foresee and overcome. Why, if those dastardly campaigns had not tried to mobilize their supporters, this would not have happened!

(By the way, the reason they mobilized supporters was to ensure they were not robbed of delegates in a corrupt process. Why would they fear that? Because He Who Shall Not Be Named vocally supported a lawsuit aimed at keeping people from voting in at-large precinct caucuses! And let’s all remember that He Who Shall Not Be Named oversaw a very similar screwup at the county party’s Jefferson-Jackson dinner in November.)

Almost 25,000 Democrats showing support for their candidate must be counted as a positive sign of the energy and commitment permeating our Party. Truly the next person in the White House will be a Democrat!

Indeed. But will Clark County Democrats be part of that process? It’s conceivable that delegates from Nevada’s most populous county could not be seated at the state convention if problems persist. The Democratic National Committee has already taken note of He Who Shall Not Be Named’s open and gross incompetence, and asked the state party to simply “fix it.”

For the past two days, I have met with the heads of each campaign, our State Chair and our [state] Executive Director Travis Brock to develop a plan to get this job done right. Lastly, I want to thank each of you, who have offered your help and continued participation. It is greatly appreciated.

Well, that should clear everything up! We wonder, did those meetings include the COUNTY party’s Executive Director Peggy Maze Johnson? You know, the woman who was specifically ordered to stay out of planning for the county convention by the buddy and handpicked chairman of the disastrous event? We only ask as we didn’t see her name on this little list. 

Well, there you have it, people. All that’s left in the shame spiral is Stage Five: Resignation, in which the SIQ (oh, sorry, that’s Screwup in Question) realizes that he’s become a liability to the organization he’s ostensibly trying to help, and finally quits. This stage sees a remarkable transformation in thinking, in which the SIQ decides its best to put the interests of the movement over the man. That’s why we don’t think we’ll ever see Stage Five.

There is, however, Stage Six: Impeachment and Out-of-Town-on-a-Rail-Running.

Dr. Dipak Desai is a politically juiced medical professional, former member of the state medical board and a member of Gov. Jim Gibbons’ transition team. He’s also the majority owner and boss of the Endoscopy Center of Southern Nevada, which was shut down Feb. 29 after health officials discovered that up to 40,000 people who were treated at the clinic from March 2004 to Jan. 11 of this year may have been exposed to hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV.

How did it happen? Through an egregious breach of medical protocol in which vials of single-dose medicine were routinely re-used, turning the center into a horrific disease factory as tainted blood was passed from dirty syringes to clean vials and into other clean syringes — reportedly at the express request of a budget-minded Desai.

Desai’s literal blood money will be cold comfort to him now as his medical empire and reputation are picked apart by personal injury lawyers who are already lining up at the smell of lucre. Until then, Desai can bide his time in the vein-scorching eternal waiting room of 666!

It began with flavored vodka, followed by flavored rum and tequila; USA Today now gives us the rundown on the latest beverage trends coming down the pipe and, well, they kinda suck. Lime is the spring twist, Miller Chill will be joined by Coors-owned Blue Moon Spring Ale and Bud Light Lime.

Not enough new options for you? Keep your eyes peeled for Budweiser & Clamato Chelada (mmmm, tomato AND clam juice!) and Dr. Dre’s sparkling vodka.

So you don’t drink?
Catch a buzz anyway with 7-11’s new Slurpuccino coffee Slurpee!

But it doesn’t really matter when we’ll barely be able to pay our municipal water bills, right?

It’s bad enough that Big Oil has our nation hooked on earth-killing terror juice, but the coterie of multinational conglomerates doesn’t even pay its fair share in taxes. That may soon change, however. The House of Representatives got some collective sack Feb. 27 and voted to nix $18 billion in tax breaks for the five biggest domestic oil producers and put that money instead toward renewable energy sources. The House bill also extends tax credits for producers of renewable energy such as geothermal, wind and solar.

Naturally, the barons of the black stuff are whining that the closure of their corporate welfare loophole will result in higher gas prices — like that hasn’t happened already — and that it’s unfairly punitive. Geez. One suspects if they were left to their own devices, the world’s energy producers would keep sucking oil until the day our cars started farting dust.

Of Nevada’s congressional delegation, only U.S. Rep. Shelley Berkley voted for canceling the tax breaks, while Reps. Jon Porter and Dean Heller voted to keep the economic crutch in place. The bill’s prospects in the Senate are about as clear as Humvee exhaust, but Berkley garners a 777 for standing up to Big Oil.

Reader Jamie Huston writes:

Irony abounds at CityLife. In “Psst, Mormons… it’s not about you,” Hugh Jackson first scoffs at the idea that people didn’t support Mitt Romney because he’s a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, then launches an assault on Mitt Romney because he’s LDS. Jackson even made a reluctant reference to the polls that showed many people wouldn’t vote for Romney because of his religion, though he tried to warp the wording and play it down.

Jackson says Romney’s lack of support was because he’s a “flip-flopper.” Jackson spews this slur seven times, but he doesn’t cite proof, nor does he mention the conservative consensus that emerged in support of Romney, from Ann Coulter to National Review. Wouldn’t they know if he was a hypocrite?

But Jackson couldn’t resist the temptation to make some bigoted attacks himself. In his disdain for religion, he pooh-poohs “any grouping of human beings convinced that a magic invisible god … has revealed to them, and only them, the one superior truth.” Actually, Latter-day Saints may be the only group that claims to have literal truth, and says they can back it up with a tangible artifact that establishes its veracity: The Book of Mormon.

Jackson clearly hasn’t done any homework here (try www.MormonEvidence.com for some eye-openers), and proves it by coughing up accusations that are intellectually akin to “9/11 was an inside job” conspiracies. If he’d said these kinds of things about any racial minority, rather than a religious one, CityLife would be releasing its hounds. Where’s the outrage when Mormons are the target of persecution?Oh wait, I forgot … Jackson says it’s not important. Talk about hypocrisy.

Trust us, if this weren’t Bill O’Reilly, we wouldn’t bother, but:

So Bill O’Reilly calls 50 Cent a pinhead for thinking someone might assassinate U.S. Sen. Barack Obama. Seems like something Bill would say.

But read this from the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram.

Now, watch Fiddy’s rebuttal.

He — and millions of Americans who grew up like him — feel the same way about potential assassination. After all, the black community has endured it before.