No one could ever accuse CityLife of ageism (we love old farts as much as anyone). Still, we suggest that maybe it’s not such a hot idea to elect as president a guy as timeworn as U.S. Sen. John McCain, who celebrates his 567th birthday on Aug. 29.

First, the “crotchety factor” is gonna be sky high with this dude. Not a good quality in a guy who has immediate access to the button. Second, and most important for this discussion, McCain’s memory seems to be failing him at an increasingly exponential rate these days.

While we can’t say that Alzheimer’s disease is behind McCain’s failure to grasp economics — to be fair, the so-called dismal science was yet to be invented when young McCain was but a lad and the Earth’s crust was still cooling — these holes in his memory are growing wider by the day.

Consider: On a recent appearance on Good Morning America, McCain forgot that there’s no such thing as the Iraq-Pakistan border. See for yourself. At least 1,400 miles separate the two countries.

Also, McCain - in an interview that will air tonight on MSNBC - criticized U.S. Sen. Barack Obama for giving a speech in Berlin. McCain’s money quote:

“I would rather speak at a rally or a political gathering any place outside of the country after I am president of the United States,” McCain said. “But that’s a judgment that Sen. Obama and the American people will make.”

The thing is, McCain forgot about a little rant he gave last month before the Economic Club of Toronto (that’s in Canada). His subject matter? The importance of relations between Canada and the United States of America. McCain’s other money quote:

“There aren’t any electoral votes to be won up here in the middle of a presidential election. But there are many shared interests that require our attention today … “

Oh, you mean issues such as repairing our defiled international reputation among our European allies (’cause, really, nobody gives a fuck what Canadians think)? And making sure our cousins across the pond are still willing to work with us, despite our having elected the massive tool who is President George W. Bush - a common shit kicker who was hell-bent on invading Iraq and avenging his daddy much earlier than he’s ever admitted? You mean those types of interests?

Maybe it’s us, but ever since we tried to call McCain on his bullshit late last month, the public statements from the senior senator from Arizona have been increasingly divorced from reality. Maybe we got to him. Maybe not. Maybe it’s an impending death that’s impairing his faculties (” … place your right hand here, Vice President Romney … “) But fear not, dear readers, when an overly smug Obama begins using the bully pulpit of the presidency to falsely accuse his enemies, CityBlog will be there, all full of piss and vinegar and ready to pounce.

Why are we going to all this trouble to attack a poor, cranky old shit like McCain? Because, according to experts such as those at the Cook Political Report, the Silver State is still a toss-up. And while we’re betting that Obama could very well turn out to be a bust, the political neophyte from Illinois, on his worst day, will still be a helluva lot better than an angry septuagenarian brown shoe (ask your ex-Navy buddies) with memory lapses and a chip on his shoulder the size of Phoenix.

Back in June, CityLife reported on the inauspicious beginning of Gov. Jim Gibbons’s Commission on Minority Affairs. With no funding, no staff and, apparently, no idea what they’re doing, the nine new commission members — who replaced the former do-nothing minority commission empaneled back in 2003 — spent their second meeting June 6 in Las Vegas debating. And debating.

Commissioners, who come from each of Nevada’s largest minority communities (Asian, Hispanic, American Indian, black, together comprising 47.5 percent of the state population, according to 2006 census figures), worried out loud that the general public might never learn of the great work they plan to do, when they eventually hope to study the needs of Nevada’s minorities and how to meet them. Also, they wanted business cards.

Well, no word yet on whether commissioners have scored those coveted business cards, but they finally have a website. The information on the site is pretty sparse (there’s no mention yet of their tentatively scheduled Aug. 8 meeting here in Las Vegas), but hey, it’s a better start than their predecessors, who never compiled demographic data to guide policy makers in helping Nevada’s minorities, who never took on entrenched business and government interests, who never did much of anything.

What with all their ideological posturing these past eight years, you’d think Republicans in the U.S. Senate would stay loyal to their party, and to their president, to the end. Uh, not so when faced with losing elections and their own grip on power, turns out.

Could it be that the GOP leadership on the Hill is loosening control over their minions, to allow those imperiled lawmakers to actually vote FOR their constituencies in a last-ditch, white knuckle attempt to fool voters into thinking that 1. Republicans have the people’s best interests at heart and 2. Aren’t soulless cash whores who vote however corporate interests tell them to?

A real test of what’s happening in Washington could come soon as lawmakers take up the oil speculation bill. (Quick aside: Isn’t it tragically comic how little discussion you’ve read in the mainstream media on oil speculation during the past five years? Any of you out there wonder why that is? Any of you wonder why Congress is poised to finally act on speculation, only after you, the people, started waking up to why gasoline costs more than $4 a gallon?)

Also, who wants to bet me that Democrats will also eventually act in this same, reckless fashion once they’ve been in power as long as the Republicans have, long after the media worship of then-President Barack Obama officially crosses over into creepy (if it hasn’t already), long after the same arrogance that afflicted Bush & Co. infects the other side of the aisle - and long after the Democrats’ ideology is shown to be just as vacuous as that of the GOP? Hmmm? Any takers?

(H/t to Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for the art)

Gov. Jim “Gibber the Fibber” Gibbons can scarely open his mouth without a falsehood tumbling out. And, given his incessant succession of mendacities, imbecilic remarks and public indiscretions (not to mention his incurable propensity for scandal), maybe Gibbons Fatigue has finally set in among the mainstream media.

That might explain why Midnight Jim’s espousal of a de facto increase during the one-day not-so-special session of the Lege went unremarked. In reaction to a Nevada Supreme Court ruling from last March, decreeing that comped meals in casinos are ineligible for sales taxes, one of the Gibber’s last-minute proposals for filling the state budget was to amend the law to retroactively legitimize the sales tax. That would have enabled the state to hang onto $150 million (which later turned out to be more like $100 million). And casinos that were abiding by the Supremes’ March ruling would find themselves with a new tax bill to pay (and would correspondingly have less incentive to comp you a free buffet the next time you rack up a bunch of slot-club points).

Within hours, casino lobbyists made their displeasure known and from there it was a swift dance to the killing ground. But we’re promised a second visit to the issue in the ‘09 Lege.

At which point, somebody may finally ask Midnight Jim — if he’s still in office — just how this squares with his endless “I won’t raise your taxes … no new taxes … no new taxes … She’ll raise your taxes … no new taxes … no new taxes” mantra. Since the comped-meals tax will have been defunct for over a year, it ought to be harder to argue that what you’re doing amounts to “closing that loophole.”

Then again, the people who do Gibbons’ thinking for him may have concluded that what Midnight Jim was proposing was so convoluted that nobody would realize that it actually was a new tax (replacing something that had been deemed unconstitutional). Or just maybe they took note of the unpopularity of the casino industry among the public at large and figured that if the Gibber socked it to the gamers with a sneaky little tax boost, few would object.

Now, in view of the privation that is being visited upon many Nevadans and is about to get worse, it doesn’t feel good to know that the state is having to refund 100 million desperately needed bucks. But when you consider that the only accomplishment to which Governor Gasbag can point is that taxes haven’t gone up, you’d think at least one of our daily newspapers, say, might note that if Gibbons didn’t raise taxes back on June 27, it wasn’t for lack of trying.

So, after being elected on the strength of a single promise — and now having broken it — what does Midnight Jim have left in his bag of tricks?

Believe it or not, the U.S. market is pure gravy for the Mamma Mia! film, which is already at No. 1 in England, Australia and several European countries. Even so, the soundtrack album (which dropped on the 8th of July) is expected to enter the Billboard charts at No. 7: Pretty impressive for a CD of ABBA covers by movie stars of, shall we say, exceptionally varied levels of vocal accomplishment.

(Of course, many will find the notion of an all-ABBA musical fronted by AARP-eligible actors terminally uncool; those ranks will not include the curmudgeonly CityLife contributor seen blubbing quietly during Meryl Streep’s no-holds-barred rendition of “The Winner Takes It All.”)

Having given musical values somewhat short shrift in my review of the film, I feel duty-bound to make amends here. That’s a task complicated by the wholly inscrutable decision-making process that resulted in the album you see above. Sad to say, Benny & Bjorn have scored something of an “own-goal” by coming up with an original soundtrack that’s basically three-fourths of a loaf.

The play-to-film-to-CD process has left us with roughly five categories of songs: 1) Those that didn’t make it out of the stage show, period (”Under Attack”, “One of Us”, “Knowing Me, Knowing You”, “Thank You for the Music”); 2) Songs that have been added for the film (”When All Is Said and Done”); 3) Songs that are in the film but not on the album (”Chiquitita”, alternate versions of “Dancing Queen” and the title tune, “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do”, and — heresy of heresies — “Waterloo”); 4) Songs that were cut from the film but are on the album (”The Name of the Game”); 5) Songs that were kept but re-purposed (”Our Last Summer” has been moved forward and made a quartet; “Take a Chance on Me” is moved backward and expanded, to become the formal finale; “Thank You for the Music” is cut from the show but turns up as end-credits music — and as an “Easter egg” on the CD, neither billed nor tracked separately).

Confusing, ain’t it? And why, with only 65 minutes of music on the soundtrack, weren’t at least “Waterloo” and “Chiquitita” accommodated? Seems there originally was to have been a two-CD “deluxe” soundtrack this autumn. But that’s been scrapped and we’re left with this shepherd’s pie. At least one gets to hear the full versions of songs that, in the film, get truncated by director Phyllida Lloyd’s conveyer-belt rush through the story. (I kept thinking “Already?”, as song after song made a premature appearance; one can sincerely say the movie is over too soon, though perhaps not in the best sense of the phrase.) For instance, having expanded “Take a Chance on Me” the movie then proceeds to lop off the latter half of this new, extended version — thereby depriving Christine Baranski of her solo lines and character resolution.

Between that and the CD’s omission of “Chiquitita”, Baranski’s performance — which benefits from being heard and not seen — suffers most. Her rich, Broadway-tested voice threatens to drown out her co-stars in their trios, and her turbo-powered rendition of “Does Your Mother Know?” nearly steals the album. By comparison, Julie Walters is an actress who can sing decently … which still puts her streets ahead of all her male costars, save juvenile lead Dominic Cooper.

Judging from Pierce Brosnan’s herniated tones, somebody should have confiscated his Springsteen collection prior to taping. Anglophone critics have tried to outdo each other in mechanical analogies for the indescribable sounds Brosnan emits (lawnmowers and outboard motors have been nominated). But words comparably fail to do justice to Colin Firth — whose nasal chirping could be mistaken for parody — and Stellan Skarsgård. At least within the context of the film, these gents’ old college try has a certain clunky charm. Preserved on CD, it will hearten aspiring karaoke vocalists everywhere. (”I couldn’t do any worse than that.”)

As in the movie, Amanda Seyfried combines ingenuous charm with a surprisingly assured and sumptuous singing voice. “Thank You for the Music” gets my nod for Least-Ingratiating ABBA song, but when Seyfried sings it to a simple piano accompaniment, what was fatuous humbug becomes touching and sincerely humble. A miracle!

But both the album and the film would fall like a failed soufflé were the central role entrusted to a singing actress one iota less talented or wholeheartedly committed than Meryl Streep. She finds just the right voice for each of her songs, whether it’s the Cabaret Lite attitude-throwing of “Money, Money, Money”, the silky warbling of “Super Trouper”, the title track’s Broadway belting or her full-throatedly operatic, caution-to-the-winds utterance of “The Winner Takes It All” (the CD offers her one-take studio rendition, while the film mixes it with phrases sung “live” as the cameras rolled).

As cathartic as the latter is, “Winner” packs even more of a wallop when heard and seen. It’s nothing less than one of the greatest musical-theatre performances in movie history. And whenever you think she’s giving everything she’s got, Streep reaches deep and gives you even more.

So, for all the reasons the soundtrack gives you to hold out in hope of something more comprehensive, the equation Streep + 8 ABBA songs = Game Over. Not having her interpretations of this rejuvenating music in one’s collection is an unthinkably bleak prospect.

Prep your livers and get ready to celebrate Rob Ruckus’s 38th birthday July 18 at the Icehouse Lounge. This year the local music legend and Vermin bassist presents a new side project he’s subtitled “Las Vegas Punk History 101” and he’s ready to show everyone how things used to be done. The Vegas Dolts is composed of members of ’80s thrashers M.I.A. and Self Abuse: Todd Sampson and Matt Dudenack (who penned Self Abuse’s anthemic “Boredom is the Reason”) will be joined by Steve D. (Subterfuge, Red Exit) and Vermin drummer Turbo.

Expect guest appearances from more hardcore notables including Subterfuge’s Gigli Locatelli, Eric Hill and Chris Moon from Vegas’ very first punk band The Swell, along with Larry Pearson from M.I.A. If that’s not enough for you, So Cal’s Shattered Faith has reformed for its first tour in 20 years while The Vermin will debut a set of songs from its fifth album, Joe’s Shanghai, slated for release at the end of August. And last but not least, New Jersey’s Disaster completes the bill.

Doors at 9 p.m., $5 cover though admission is free before 11 p.m. if you have a tattoo.

Earlier this year, Zia Records released a 20-track compilation called You Heard Us Back When, which featured bands from Las Vegas, Phoenix and Tucson (the three cities with Zia outposts). Locals such as The Clydesdale and Big Friendly Corporation nabbed a spot on the comp and subsequently were signed by Interscope Records to multimillion-dollar contracts.

OK. That didn’t happen — that is, the signing and the million-dollar contract part. It’s hard to say how those bands benefited from their inclusion on the CD, but You Heard Us… did sell out and that means a lot of people now knew those bands’ music.

So, enterprising and exposure-hungry local musicians, it would behoove you to submit in person an original song for Volume 2 (no later than August 31). Not only will you have the ears of music fans here and in Arizona, should you win a spot on the comp, but you’ll have the heart of a Good Samaritan, as some of the album’s proceeds will go to non-profits pushing for music education in school.

And for you non-musicians who just want to sample some Southwestern flavors, the disc is likely to come out in October.

For information, visit www.ziarecords.com.

Across the valley today, politically and economically aware Las Vegans are celebrating. No, they’re not marking the 63rd anniversary of the explosion of our first experimental atomic bomb in the deserts around Alamogordo, N.M. And no, they’re not congratulating former U.S. Attorney General Dick Thornburgh on both his 76th birthday and his willingness to attack his fellow Republicans for the rash of politically motivated prosecutions in the Department of Justice.

Instead, some of them are celebrating July 16 as Cost of Government Day, or the day of the year when we’ve finally earned enough to pay for the wasteful federal, state and local tax burdens placed on us by our government and corporate masters. For years, the nonpartisan Citizens Against Government Waste has cheered this annual emancipation - although they do warn that rising federal spending has pushed Cost of Government Day deeper into the calendar each year. Last year, it was held on July 12. In 2000, Cost of Government Day fell on June 30. These guys at CAGW have a point.

Some might ask what do we Nevadans have to bitch about — at least concerning state tax burdens. We don’t pay state income taxes here, after all. And the state and local taxes we do pay, such as sales tax, property tax and various business taxes, can’t be honestly called a burden, since we take great pride in funding our public and social services at near-Third World levels.

Turn your fire on Washington, some say for your ever-lengthening indentured servitude. Under President George W. Bush, the government has already spent $2.2 trillion so far this federal fiscal year, which end Sept. 30. His spending plans for fiscal 2009? You don’t want to know. (OK, you probably do, so go here.)

Coupled with the tax breaks for the rich that he ushered in years ago (tax breaks which U.S. Sen. John McCain now wants to make permanent - in shades of John Kerry, McCain says he voted against them before he voted for them), the $17.2 billion in federal pork spending (of which our men - and woman - in Washington are responsible for $449.6 million) and the national housing meltdown which administration and Wall Street regulators knowingly allowed, Bush & Co. have left our economy in tatters. As a result of this administration’s efforts, our economy is less stable than a Strip sex crime victim, left addled and sweating on the side of the road while the in-crowd party rolls on through the night.

So, go ahead, Las Vegas! Celebrate Cost of Government Day by going out to the mall and buying yourselves something special. That is, if you can still afford the gas to drive there.

I’m so gonna miss Circus Circus when (face it) it’s eventually imploded in a cloud of pink particulate clown blood matter or, um, whatever holds it together (carnie sorcery? dwarven magicks?). Not only is Circus² a place where the great unwashed like me can find good values, but it also answers the lingering sociological question of what it would be like if Ringling Bros. operated Venezuela’s prisons.

So there I found myself Saturday night (for reasons still unclear to me), paddling through the casino amid frothy breakers of barking humanity, a veritable mosh pit brought to you by Marlboro Lights. I didn’t realize at the time that I was, in fact, having fun!!!! After I got home and teabagged my corpus in a kiddie pool filled with Lysol, I made a list of what I like most about Circus Circus.

1. It’s one of the few resorts where you can valet-park your flip flops.

2. Its Adventuredome isn’t really a dome. But does it matter? No. Because the only shape a clown cares about is the shape of a child’s laughter.

3. The Steakhouse, which served me an incredible porterhouse so rare and tender it was like drinking a live cow.

4. Have you ever heard an infant with smoker’s cough? I can only compare it to the first time I saw a pony.

5. But this says it all right here:

6. Finally, after Circus Circus is gone, the only casinos we’ll have that are operated by clowns will be the Venetian, the Wynn Las Vegas and all Harrah’s and MGM Mirage properties.

Youthful screamo group This Romantic Tragedy releases its debut CD Like Drama, Like Karma at 6 p.m. July 18 at Jillian’s. Tickets are $10 for this all-ages show; the lineup includes Amarionette, The Material, Save The Hero and Veona. … David Banner performs live to celebrate his record release July 18 at Rain’s “Music is the Currency.” …

After a two month hiatus, “Less Than Zero” ‘80s night returns to The Palm’s Ghostbar July 17. … In visiting DJ news: L.A.’s deep house tastemaker Marques Wyatt helms “Late Night Empire” July 19 at Tabu; Bad Boy Bill brings bangin’ Chicago house to “Daylife Sundays” July 20 at Wet Republic; on July 22 acclaimed hip-hop producer DJ Premier commands the room at Blush; and Sebastian Ledger and Phynn play June 23 at Body English’s “Godskitchen.”

News and Notes is compiled by “Poizen” Ivy Hover. Send items of lurid self-promotion and shameless gossip to ihover@lvcitylife.com.

Reader Monika Roer writes in response to us panning the idea of siting gigantic, possibly frightening paintbrushes downtown in order to scream “WE’RE ARTISTIC! WE’RE ARTISTIC!” to drown out our deep insecurities about being a real city:

Why another Oppenheim ? The one at UNLV is not very famous. Knowing Las Vegas, there must be some behind the scenes connection we do not know of. And paintbrushes? How creative!!!? But I am not surprised.

In the twenty years I live here I have seen a lot of repetition, not much creativity. The casinos basically all look the same . How many variations of Italy can one build? Not that any of them captures the essence of Italy, but of course that is not their purpose. For that kind of money, you would think some real creativity could be bought??

How many variations of Cirque du Soleil can the Strip offer before people get really bored? I stopped seeing the Canadian shows when I made the mistake to shell out over 200 Dollar for Ka right after it opened and was not awed at all, nor was my visiting guest I was trying to impress.
I always wonder who makes these decisions, like for example the Monorail which shows you nothing of the Strip, or the Fremont street experience which killed the charm of downtown, not to mention that disaster called Neonopolis?

The Forum shops were great and unique when they opened. But how many shopping centers does a tourist attraction require, before it becomes a huge bore?

I used to work in International tourism and I have visited every single tourist attraction in the U.S. The worst thing about all these attractions is that they are nearly all run by the same hotel and fast food chains, shopping mall developers and souvenir manufacturers. Instead of giving people an unique feel, the experience becomes alike. Everybody tries to be the same instead of being different. It is like that old joke about the American tourist in Europe staying everywhere in a Hilton. “It is Thursday, it must be Paris.” Why travel if everything is like at home?
After that rant I come back to the downtown art district. I would have preferred to see a row of martini glasses to paintbrushes. Or a row of fun sculptures of strippers, showgirls and prostitutes.

When I think about it, I really like the idea of martini glasses. The glasses could spill over with mayors, show girls, tourists, prostitutes, gamblers, dealers, monorails , corrupt politicians, billionaires, homeless people , drug dealers, smut peddlers, brides and brigegrooms, strippers, Britney Spears and Paris Hiltons, throw in a little bit of history like Elvis , Howard Hughes , Bugsy Siegel and Sandy Murphy and you got Vegas. …..
Just give me the commission and I promise that my artwork will make headlines all over the world.

Editor’s note: The flashlight sculpture at UNLV was created by Claes Oldenburg, not Dennis Oppenheim.

When a newspaper runs a “sting” operation on a legislator whose website is open for campaign donations (as the Las Vegas Review-Journal did to Assemblyman Bob Beers, as reported in the June 28 issue [registration req’d.]), that’s one thing. When R-J crony and professional sorehead George Harris does the same thing on the same day and the R-J obligingly reports it, it looks a bit like coincidence — but not very much.

Beers (R-Henderson), after all, is the conservative legislator — given an 80 percent rating by unofficial GOP talking head Chuck Muth — whose constitutents include a number of Wynn Resorts dealers. When Steve Wynn confiscated those dealers’ tips and redistributed them to pit bosses, Beers went to bat for his constituents. And when neither the courts, the state’s labor commissioner nor Wynn himself would lend a sympathetic ear, Beers urged the dealers to avail themselves of the only recourse left to them: unionization.

To the R-J, whose editorial board sings off of Harris’ hymnal daily, the second-worst thing in the world is taxation (if Jesus Christ abjured them to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, they’d tell Him to render it where the sun shineth not). The worst, the vilest abomination of all, is anything that smacks remotely of organized labor. Ergo, Assemblyman Beers is an apostate who apparently must be smote down. Harris just happens to have issued a fatwa on Beers and is slurping Beers’ primary opponent, Jonathan Ozark, who just happens to have been the recipient of a 2006 R-J endorsement.

Harris’ coy ploy of making a donation so that he could then file an Ethics Commission complaint is not unlike me burglarizing my apartment so I can put in an insurance claim. (Cheap S.O.B. that he apparently is, Harris only “donated” $10, then whined about not getting his money back. Just tell me where to send the check, George, and I’ll reimburse you myself.)

Don’t blame reporter Ed Vogel, who was performing his Fourth Estate duty: Making sure that lawmakers are upholding the very laws they make.

And I don’t think this was some Steve Wynn put-up job, either: If it were, it would be a smooth move, not a Keystone Kops caper.

Harris, however, has very little degree of separation from Stephens Media, of which the R-J is but one tentacle (and City Life another). When the racist rantings of Ken Ward got too hot for the R-J to handle, Ward’s pensées found a new home at Liberty Watch, the vanity publication of one George Harris. And, during the May 2005-May 2007 period, I can personally attest that Liberty Watch was regularly and aggressively distributed at Stephens’ satellite office, near McCarran Airport — a courtesy that was not extended to any, say, Greenspun Media publication that I can recall.

No one of which proves a conspiracy. But there’s every appearance of a too-cozy Harris/R-J relationship and you’ve got to wonder if either would go to the same lengths if the lapsed legislator in question were their anti-tax, anti-union darling, Sen. Bob Beers. Color me skeptical.–David McKee

If you’re as annoyed as you should be by Amazon’s insipid “You might also like…” suggestions when it comes to your music preferences, check this out. Online in its current form since 2007, Pandora.com is a streaming music site that makes use of the Music Genome Project, an 8-year-old effort to distill “hundreds of musical attributes or ‘genes’ into a very large Music Genome.”

Basically, a bunch of musicians and music lovers got together and brainstormed a massive list of these attributes — things like “Acoustic Sonority,” “Backbeat Hand Claps,” “Gritty Vocal Style,” and “Subtle Use of Lo-Fi Samples” — and assigned them to individual tracks from thousands of artists to make a searchable, frighteningly intuitive database.

You type in an artist or song title, and Pandora quickly generates a playlist that can go in some unintuitive directions. I just now entered the Beatles’ “Twist and Shout,” Pandora thought about it, then kicked off the party with “Rock and Roll All Nite” by Kiss. Get it? For the reasonably open-minded, it looks like this algorithm has a sky-high “Ahhh, I never thought about that!” factor. Fun, fun, fun, and a great solution to the pain associated with needing to hear some good tunage, yet being sick to death of one’s own stagnant tastes and sputtering imagination.

Investigative reporters don’t come any more talented than Seymour Hersh. His ground-breaking, hard-hitting pieces have clarified the reporting in a host of American newspapers and journals, from his uncovering of the My Lai Massacre in 1969 to his in-depth coverage of Abu Ghraib in 2004.

Since 2005, Hersh has repeatedly written about the Bush administration’s covert preparations for an eventual war with Iran, including revelations that American troops have repeatedly been on the ground there in recent years.

Hersh’s latest piece in The New Yorker, published earlier this week, fleshes out further the best-laid bellicose plans of Bush & Co. to create a situation in which war with Tehran would be inevitable. The revelations in the piece further illustrate how a host of covert, so-called black ops missions in the Middle East have left American uniformed generals with the fear that our own military might be losing control of the situation.

White House talking heads have taken great pains in recent years to deny many of Hersh’s assertions, which are always based on interviews with sterling sources inside America’s war machine. His latest piece is further evidence that you can rarely trust the geopolitical coverage you read in the mainstream media.

Housing crisis! State budget in flames! Education funding slashed! An oblivious, text-obsessed governor! Must be nice to be the Southern Nevada Water Authority, and live in a placid realm of monied abstraction.

Yes, while the rest of are eating cheese sandwiches and wincing with every squeeze of the gas pump, the water authority is rolling in le dough. Check out this week’s Knappster for the full scoop. Why, they’re so cloyed by their vast piles of slutty gold, they’re being forced to entertain themselves by spending it on things like cubicle etiquette consultants and seminars on — there’s no other way to put this, so I’ll snip straight from the consultant’s newsletter — “living in a green building.”

Dunno about you, but our mother always taught us that a blind grab for rural water, endangering countless species and gambling with environmental catastrophe is bad etiquette.