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.