The Nevada Democratic Party has put out a news release announcing that state “…Sen. Dina Titus will join friends, family and supporters tomorrow for a major announcement regarding Congressional District 3.”

We are so excited! What could this be about, we wonder? Let’s read more of the announcement to see if we can get a clue.

“Titus has been considering a run for Congressional District 3, which now has 22,500 more registered Democrats than Republicans and is one of the top targets in the West for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which has put the district in its top-tier ‘Red to Blue’ program,” the release says.

Oh, wow! What a coincidence: Former prosecutor Robert Daskas just this week dropped out of the race for Congress! That’s so funny that Titus had been considering a run, and then Daskas drops out! It’s like, serendipity or something!

Let’s see, what else does the state party say?

“Titus will formally announce her intentions regarding Congressional District 3.”

Really? She’s going to announce her intentions! You know, we don’t want to get too excited or anything, but we think she might actually be announcing a run for Congress! Yes, that’s right: With the field wide open, we think it’s actually possible that Titus is going to tell her supporters that she’s leaving the state Legislature to make a run for Washington, D.C.

We are so excited! We can’t wait until 5:30 p.m. tomorrow at the Henderson Amphitheater Stairs, between City Hall and the Henderson Convention Center, right there at 200 S. Water St. If we’re right, well, let’s just say this will be one hell of a race!

Hey, you know what? It would be totally easy for Henderson Mayor Jim Gibson to come out and endorse Titus for office. He works at Henderson City Hall. And he’s a Democrat. Right? We’ve got to make a note to ourselves to see if he shows up. Oh, c’mon! How could he not?! He’s probably as excited as we are about this whole thing.

We’ll just bet that Congressman Jon Porter is sitting on pins and needles, too. We wonder what he’ll say tomorrow on this subject if Titus does announce? If we had to bet, we’d guess that he’d probably say something, and then totally make a fake Freudian slip and say “Taxes” instead of “Titus” when he’s pronouncing her name! That would be so funny. That’s just a guess mind you. Sometimes, we’re really bad at predicting what’s going to happen in the future.

Can’t wait for tomorrow! Where’s our good tie…?

We set to work today calculating the massive  windfall we were set to receive, assuming the Hillary Clinton-John McCain plan to eliminate the federal gasoline tax for the summer becomes a reality.

Let’s see, the tax is 18.4 cents per gallon currently, times our fuel tank capacity of 17.1 gallons, equals $3.14 per fill-up (assuming we’re “bingo fuel,” as the Navy pilots say), times 12 fill-ups (assuming we fill-up once a week for all three months of summer) totals … $37.76.

Well, holy shit. Call the Four Seasons, we want the best suite in the house, because we just hit the jackpot! And Barack Obama calls the idea a “gimmick.” Sheesh.

Look, we’re not just against this idea because it’s a bad joke in a time when gasoline is approaching (or surpassing) $4 per gallon. (It was $1.46 when President George W. Bush was awarded the presidency in 2000, according to this one bumper sticker we saw.)  We’re not against the idea because neither Clinton nor McCain is saying where we’d make up the gap in the road-building highway fund that would result from their risky scheme. We’re against it because it sends entirely the wrong message.

That message? That taxes – as opposed to oil company price gouging and market manipulations, for example — are responsible for our woes at the pump.

Clearly, they’re not. In fact, taxes are what allow those nice people with the orange cones and heavy equipment to build the roads that we get to drive on for an average price of $3.60 per gallon nationwide. (And, while we’re on the subject, a big thank you to those nice people in Congress who voted to provide the money to widen Interstate 15 on the way into Las Vegas, starting in Primm. We just got back from making a drive to L.A., and that extra lane made the trip home much smoother.)

What Clinton should be talking about are the record profits earned by oil companies, stretching into the billions-with-a-b. How about a “tax holiday” in which the hard-earned cash taxed from people who are bleeding at the pump isn’t simply turned over to oil companies that are raking in record-setting profits? (We assume McCain, as a Republican, favors that under the broad rubric of “free enterprise.” We expect more from Clinton, who finds new ways to disappoint us every single day.)

Meanwhile, Bush is back talking about drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and splitting more atoms for energy. ANWR? Really? That’s like the guy who’s almost out of Coke and is desperately plunging his straw beneath the ice cubes so he can suck up the last little bit of delicious brown liquid instead of realizing his short-lived romance with high fructose corn syrup has come to an end. Time to toss the cup and move on, Mr. President.

In the meantime, isn’t it curious how much Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain seem to agree? On the gas tax, on Obama’s ex-pastor, on the record of foreign affairs necessary to attain the White House, on answering 3 a.m. phone calls….

Curious. Very curious indeed.

So, we hear (via ABC News e-mail news alert) that U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton went on Bill O’Reilly’s show on the Fox News Channel to say that “I think it’s offensive and outrageous,” about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, her opponent Barack Obama’s former pastor.

Just to see if we have this right…

A Democratic candidate for president conducts an “exclusive” interview with a bona fide member of what she once called “the vast right-wing conspiracy,” to say that a pastor who has nothing to do with the race for president made comments outside the presence of her primary opponent that were  “offensive and outrageous,” in the hopes of bloodying up aforementioned primary opponent, against whom she has no possible mathematical chance of winning, one day after that same primary opponent already denounced those remarks? Do we have that right?

This is just getting sad.

When we were researching our recent piece that concludes Gov. Jim Gibbons is unsuited to be the state’s chief executive, we reached out to MGM Mirage Chairman J. Terrence Lanni for comment. Lanni, you’ll recall, was and is a big supporter of the governor, even though his industry is getting royally screwed in part as a result of Gibbons’s “no tax” philosophy.

Alas, Lanni never called us back.

But that doesn’t mean he’s shy. He did an interview with our colleague Jon Ralston on Tuesday’s Face to Face on Las Vegas ONE, and answered some of the same questions that we would have posed to him, had he bothered to return our call. They include:

1. Why did you choose to support only Gibbons during the 2006 governor’s race, and encourage your vendors to support Gibbons as well?
2. Although you clearly disagree with Gibbons’s central “no tax” pledge, you supported him anyway. Why?
3. Since the election, Gibbons has shown himself in myriad ways to be unsuited to the job of governor. Yet, you have said you continue to support him. Why?

Lanni answered some of those questions for Ralston, who has posted a partial transcript of the interview here. It’s mostly focused on Lanni’s critique of the Nevada State Education Association’s initiative petition to amend the state constitution to raise the top tier of the gambling tax from 6.75 percent to 9.75 percent. Let’s take a look at some of Lanni’s answers and analyze them, shall we?

I supported Jim Gibbons. I continue to support him. I don’t agree with everything Jim believes in. I think a pledge of no new taxes is a major mistake. We saw a former president do that, and it certainly had an effect on his re-election campaign.

I don’t agree with the governor on this particular pledge. I’m hopeful that through the processes, that he will actually find a way to change that.

Actually, the former president’s problem wasn’t making the pledge; it was going back on the pledge. And if you think Gibbons doesn’t fear the same fate as George H.W. Bush, you’re not properly appreciating the governor’s fragile psyche. And that’s why, in our humble opinion, Lanni isn’t being “hopeful” when he says Gibbons might change “through the processes,” he’s being delusional.

I think it’s very easy when you take a poll and you ask people, ‘Who should we tax?’ It’s always going to be tax someone else, just don’t tax me. Generally, there’s a view in this state and it has been, and will continue for a long period of time. I think we’re very proud of the fact there’s no personal income tax. Many businesses are very proud of the fact there’s no business tax.

Others have to participate. Last time I looked, bankers, automobile dealers, have sent kids to school. Shouldn’t they be paying for part of this process? Part of education is everyone’s responsibility.

We couldn’t agree with Lanni more here. Sadly, however, Gibbons — the man Lanni exclusively supported for governor — does not agree. He’s against taxes, against broadening the tax base, against imposing a business tax and against getting “others” to participate. You know who might have favored that? Dina Titus, the woman who ran against Gibbons, who Lanni totally shut out in terms of fundraising. Short sighted? Inexplicable? Indeed.

What does this do to help education? I see the test scores. You see them. 79 percent of kids in the eighth grade in pre-algebra failed in Clark County. It gets worse when they get into high school. 90 percent of them failed Algebra 1. What are they doing? More money does not get more education.

Perhaps not, but how does cutting education budgets help? You know what happens when you have to do more with less? You do less with less. And while we’re not blaming Lanni (after all, he wants to increase budgets via a business tax) he still bears some responsibility, since he helped put Gibbons in office.

I’m not governor, so I can’t particularly change that. I’ve said before. I’ve said on this show, in an earlier segment right now, is that the view is I believe (in) working with the governor and the governor may see this as a reasonable alternative.

I believe he is a decent human being. I think he does care about where Nevada stands. He ran on a no-taxes pledge. I was sorry that he did that. He has many supporters who believe in it. I’m sure some of his polls show the best way to be re-elected is to stay with that, because there is a very strong prevalence in this state for no taxes.

I wouldn’t write off the possibility in the legislative session where a veto could be overwritten. I can see that happening. I’ve seen comments by Senator Raggio that he believes there needs to be other things on the table to talk about. I’m just not a negative thinker. I think the glass is always half full.

Well, if you’re sorry that he ran on a no-tax pledge, why in the hell did you support him?! No matter what else Gibbons believes, this one thing should have been a neon warning sign to Lanni and other Strip executives that trouble lay ahead. Doesn’t the chairman realize that the teachers union, frustrated by years of inaction in the legislature on salaries, saw they would get nowhere during the Gibbons years? That his election as governor may have represented the final straw that triggered the union’s initiative?

So why support him? The only possible answer is this: The industry wanted to buy some insurance that a sympathetic ear would inhabit the Governor’s Mansion (whoops!) and figured Titus was not that person.

As for Gibbons being a decent human being, well, let’s just say we could produce some contrary witnesses and leave it at that, shall we?

…

Suffice to say we agree with Lanni 100 percent that the tax base needs to be broadened, that businesses other than casinos need to be asked to contribute their fair share to the state’s tax needs and that taxation-by-initiative is a bad thing that can produce all manner of unintended consequences. And props to him for saying all that publicly, even to unfriendly audiences like the slippery weasels of the Nevada Development Authority.

But we also think Lanni miscalculated big time when it came to the politics of 2006, and that if the teachers gambling tax ballot question passes, he’ll have himself to blame, in large part. We’ve said it before and it bears repeating: If we were MGM Mirage shareholders in the wake of a newly passed gambling tax, we would not be happy with management’s political calls.