According a recent report issued by a specially neutered appointed government panel, Nevada can still reduce greenhouse gases AND build three heavily polluting coal-fired power plants — if, that is, you brew up some fake mindwormy voodoo science terminology like “reducing greenhouse gas intensity,” which roughly translates into, uh, “increasing greenhouse gases.”

If you want a cartoony shorthand version of why the Gibbons commission’s suggestions will do about as much to reduce global warming as making burnt offerings to Qorloch the Ozone Layer God, check out our illustrated story in this week’s issue.

If you want an impassioned rhetorical disembowelment of this useless study — penned by a Columbia university science prof who recently garnered an award from the state of Nevada, no less — check this out.

Dr. James Hansen, an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Earth Institute, calls the study out on multiple fronts, asking Gibbons to “reject the heart of the committee’s policy proposals as utterly ineffective for achieving the goals that you established for it.” Wham! That’s some science upside da head!

Too bad Las Vegas Review-Journal Publisher (and “Complete Las Vegan”) Sherman Frederick copied and pasted GOP talking points onto his own blog, instead of someone else’s. Because then he could have earned points in the John McCain campaign’s new rewards program. And if he did it often enough he might score good seats at a McCain rally, an autographed book, maybe even a spin around the block aboard the Straight Talk Express. It’s enough to make a right-winger’s fanny tingle with anticipation.

If you want to AstroTurf for fun and prizes, the McCain people will do (almost) all the work for you. They’ve got ready-made talking points (conveniently categorized from “liberal” to “conservative” to “other” (Shi’ite, maybe?), plus a menu of Web pages and blogs from which to choose. A little “Control C” here, a bit of “Control V” there and — Shazam! — you’re an instant Internet commentator, no thinking required.

But don’t put it on your own blog: That’s for serious endeavors, like just plopping down someone else’s entire column to fill space and then giving yourself a hearty pat on the back.

For the tens of millions of Americans who dismiss any political thought that doesn’t spew from a television set or an iPod, the idea that the ruling classes of this country want to turn this nation into a police state seems, well, bat-shit crazy.

But for those of us Americans who’ve lived abroad under despots, man’s inbred desire to dominate and grind down his neighbors is all too real. Living and studying in Moscow (as I did when I was a younger man), I witnessed, daily, both the icy hubris of a militia given free rein by the Politburo to run Soviet cities with iron fists (and boots and clubs and … ) and the pervasive despair (the resigned subjugation, really) that hung on Russians as heavily as did their winter fur coats. If such despotic horrors can evolve in Russia — with its better educated population and democratic traditions stretching back to at least the 13th century — it can happen in the historical anomaly that is the United States. Considering our still-tribal nature, domination is the norm on the Earth, not the exception.

So it was with deep sadness that I bid farewell, in my own, quiet way to famed Russian writer and thinker Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, a former prophet of freedom who died Aug. 3 at the age of 89 of heart failure.

What’s remarkable about Solzhenitsyn is that — despite his not publishing anything of note until he had drifted into middle age as an obscure high school teacher — once he poured out the raging disappointment he felt about what was happening both to him and to his country, his acidic, insightful writing terrified the Soviet ruling classes who had (it turns out) only temporarily achieved their dream of continuous martial law. Solzhenitsyn’s bile gave birth to his inaugural 1962 tome, A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. The book, about a prison camp inmate, was based on Solzhenitsyn’s own years of internal exile for making unflattering comments about Josef Stalin. Since its introduction, the book has shone as both a stinging indictment of political repression and a call to the cerebral, inner resistance to authority that, Solzhenitsyn felt, would sustain Mother Russia until its sons and daughters could one day liberate themselves and their land.

Through the next 50 or so years, Solzhenitsyn kept hammering away at oppression and hypocrisy among all peoples, but he almost always reserved his writing for Soviet leaders. The Gulag Archipelago, published in 1973 — a full three years after he won the Nobel Prize for Literature — is his most famous work and led to his expulsion from the Soviet Union until 1991, when he returned as more of a living monument than a mere hero. Yet that homecoming was tainted by his later support of Vladimir Putin as a man who could restore Mother Russia to its former historical prominence. Younger Russian iconoclasts, who had honed their own poison pens as a result of the sacrifices made by Solzhenitsyn, Andrei Sakharov and the towering Vladimir Visotkski, could only shake their heads in sadness at Solzhenitsyn’s apparent insanity in supporting the former KGB officer (cum president) with a dangerous god complex.

Many in the West, with the notable exceptions of Henry Kissinger and the current mastermind behind U.S. Sen. Barack Obama’s presidential run, Zbigniew Brzezinski (who rose to prominence as national security adviser to former president Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981) hailed Solzhenitsyn as the heir apparent to the prophetic Russian literary traditions of a Tolstoy or Chekhov. More so after his 1974 deportation and 18-year residency in Vermont. To those of us who loved him and his writing, “Sasha” was a ridiculously gifted writer who didn’t begin to write until he had nothing left to lose.

As Solzhenitsyn and those close to him used to point out, the reason despotism will never last on the Earth lies in a simple, eternal truth that all tyrants forget: oppressed people truly become free when everything they had, and everything they were, is taken from them. Our current American overlords seem to have already forgotten this universal maxim, if they ever knew it to begin with. This truth gives those of us who write against our own domestic repression the same hope that sustained Sasha during those cold, lonely years in a Soviet prison camp. All men are born to live free. And neither deity nor despot can ever prevail against a truth so powerful.

Woo-hoo! Now’s the time to take care of all these parking tickets you’ve racked up visiting downtown’s arts and/or entertainment districts. Pay your original fine(s) at 417 North 7th Street through Aug. 7 and the city of Las Vegas will waive the late fees. This is an effort to recoup a portion of the nearly $10 million in outstanding parking citations on the books.

The Beatles Revolution Lounge has moved “Live Revolution” to Sundays, beginning Aug. 10 with a lineup featuring Afghan Raiders, Wallpaper, plus special guest DJs Aurajin and M!ke Attack. Residents The Bargain DJ Collective remain and doors still open at 10 p.m. The nightclub will now be closed Tuesdays except for special events. …

The Killers will be among six Silver State dignitaries inducted into the Nevada Entertainer/Artist Hall of Fame 6 :30 p.m. Sept. 18 at UNLV’s Artemus Ham Concert Hall. …

Lon Bronson and his All-Star Band will perform during the first three minutes of NBC’s Last Comic Standing at 8 p.m. Aug. 7. …

Worldfolk’s Roddy Belford is bringing Las Vegas GirlFestival back for another year. The festival for all female performers will run Oct. 24-26. For more information call 353-8178 or e-mail rod_belford@yahoo.com. …

“Plan B Afterhours” has moved from Eden to Scores; festivities start at 2 a.m. Thu.-Sun. …

Monte Carlo/Light Group eatery Brand is the next steakhouse to host a nightlife-oriented happy hour; “Afterwork” takes place 6-10 p.m. every Wednesday. …

Visiting DJs this week include: Australia’s Dirty South Aug. 10 at MGM Grand’s “Wet Republic”; Miami Beach’s Ross One Aug. 10 at Christian Audigier the Nightclub; and L.A. trance/techno vet Christopher Lawrence Aug. 13 at Body English’s “Godskitchen.

As CityLife reported back in March, Nevada’s (mostly) white, middle-class evangelicals are wondering (mostly in earnest) whether God cares about global warming. And whether they should, too.

Yet, if a new study from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies — one of the nation’s premier research and policy institutions, and the only one focusing exclusively on issues important to blacks and other minorities — is right, those pasty soccer moms and dads and rug rats won’t be the most affected by climate change. As with any great tumult, those closest to the bottom of society (i.e., blacks and other minorities) will face the greatest hell once the Earth’s atmosphere red lines.

Lest you dismiss this as some liberal rant, consider: The study finds that blacks and other minorities are twice as likely to live in cities, where a so-called heat-island effect compounds severe temperatures. They’re also less able to afford spiking energy costs, which hampers both their ability to turn up the air conditioning or move to cooler climes. As dwindling energy supplies and rising temperatures continue to push prices higher, those with the least suffer the most.

According to recent news reports, surveys have shown 81 percent of black Americans think the government should act strongly to mitigate the effects of climate change. Although some among white evangelicals (read: the Southern Baptists) have begun to take these global threat seriously, they’re not speaking out to the degree that their brothers and sisters of color are. For example, one of South Carolina’s largest coalitions recently spoke out on global warming, seeing as how minorities will be most affected when things heat up beyond repair.

Still, Nevada’s white evangelicals continue to either: 1. Deny the science that explains climate change; 2. Wonder how they can give parishioners real tools to curb global warming; or 3. See all this talk as a sign of the end times (a historical mistake of gargantuan proportions on the part of Christians, since the original Greek and Hebrew “holy” texts refer to the end of an astrological age, the age of Pisces, instead of actual Armageddon).

Folks, this reluctance to act — preferring endless jawboning to real action — hampers Nevada in so many ways. From a wariness of constructing a rational tax base to continued endurance of inefficiency and malfeasance across all local and state governmental agencies. There have been times in American history (the American Revolution, pre-Civil War, the Civil Rights Movement) when many Christians embodied both the better angels of our nature and national drill sergeants, who kicked our asses into action. Can Christianity again rise to this challenge, or are the atheists correct when they say it’s just one more cult that should be tossed into the dustbin of history?

Hi. You probably don’t remember me talking about the state economic crisis last week because you were too engrossed in accurately squirting your tiny ration of mustard onto your shoeleather sandwich while simultaneously fending off an attack of unemployed rapacious outland mutoids. Well, I’m actually glad you weren’t listening, because now the news that things are only gonna get powerfully worse will only depress you half as much as if, say, you absolutely, positively weren’t able to resist the urge to CLICK HERE or HERE).

Basically, the story in the International Herald Tribune today says the subprime crisis was just the tip of the terrorberg, and that the next wave of home foreclosures won’t be due to those thousand species of zany mortgages dreamed up by lenders and their very hot crack pipes. Nope. Nudged by high unemployment, the next big wave will see banks foreclosing on your typical all-American prime mortgage held by sane people with good credit as the subprime crisis levels out.

Read this snip while I make tea by crying on fistfuls of crumpled “Payment Past Due” notices:

Defaults are likely to accelerate because many homeowners’ monthly payments are rising rapidly. The higher bills come as home prices continue to decline and banks are tightening their lending standards, making it harder for people to refinance loans or sell their homes. Of particular concern are alt-A loans, many of which were made to people with good credit scores without proof of their income or assets.

This can’t spell good things for the economy of Nevada, whose state bird is now a pair of bloody hands hammering in futile rage at a “For Sale” sign jammed into the eye of the American Dream. So, the next time you read one of those R-J stories in which Marty McAnalyst the Real Estate Boosterhead says an uptick is just around the corner, you know, big-ass grain of salt and all that.

I didn’t think much of the sectional shifts recently employed by the Review-Journal, a cost-cutting move initiated last week in lieu of pink slips — until today. As some of you may know, the Monday and Tuesday versions of the Living section have been substituted for a lone entertainment-oriented page in, of all places, the Nevada section. The compilation of largely wire stories has been, so far, reflective of mainstream pop culture — if a little random, too. And perhaps no single inclusion has been more arbitrary than today’s AP feature on Spiritualized, whose primary member, Jason Pierce, nearly died of pneumonia during the making of its just-released album, Songs in A&E.

Why is this weird? Spiritualized is a British alternative rock group that, despite its roots in traditional American music, is about as far from the mainstream as any other act you could imagine being written up in the R-J (music writer Jason Bracelin’s interest in local and underground hardcore/metal acts — which usually only get ink in the Living section — aside). The act, most “known” for its 1998 epic, Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space, has never hit local radio stations nor performed in town; I’d be hard-pressed to find many local musicians and scenesters familiar with it. So, with any number of commercial acts and celebrities making headlines for all sorts of reasons, it’s peculiar the R-J editors went with the Spiritualized story, especially in a high-traffic section of the paper.

At any rate, I’m not complaining. It’s good to see they went with a good story as opposed to a cheap headline.

Who dares to peer into the complicated moral machinery of U.S. John Ensign’s expertly coiffed heart? The senator has said he won’t return $28,000 in donations from indicted Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska. His rationale for keeping his claws on the dough? Ensign’s spokesman shrugs all gee-whizlike and tells the Review-Journal the money’s “already spent.” While other Republicans are washing their hands by shunting their icky Stevens money to charities, Ensign stands on the principle of pragmatism.

But wait … is that wubbly, jangly harp music I hear signaling a flashback to, oh, about July 3, 2006, when the Review-Journal reported Ensign gave to charity about $8,700 — the equivalent of a buncha dirty Jack Abramoff-tinged money the senator had received and had been “already spent”? Why yes, it is ….

Snip:

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., says he made a charitable contribution last year equaling the amount he received from a former Bush administration official recently convicted of lying about his ties to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

David Safavian, who was convicted June 20 on four of five counts of deceiving federal officials and obstructing justice, contributed $4,372 to Ensign from May 1997 to November 1999, according to the Federal Election Commission.

Safavian’s wife, Jennifer, also gave $300 to Ensign in March 1998.

Ensign spokesman Jack Finn said the senator made a contribution of $8,648.50 to the Nevada Patriot Fund last Oct. 1.

Ensign’s contribution equaled donations he received from the Safavians and some from Abramoff, Finn said.

The Nevada Patriot Fund provides financial assistance to families of U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Ensign’s contribution came less than a month after he said he did not intend to return the Safavian donations because the money already had been spent.

“I never would have taken the money if I had known what I know now,” Ensign said. “We take money from a lot of different people, and I don’t know the background of all of them. You just try to keep your own integrity intact.”

Note the initial diss and the similar “already been spent” justification.

‘Scuse me while I ratchet up the egg timer counting down Ensign’s imminent flip-flop …

Sigh … seems like it was only yesterday that Gov. Jim Gibbons was a hearty skeptic of global warming. “What is this … globe you speak of?” he would say, using the forked end of his scepter to spear another jalapeno popper from the snack bucket sitting at the foot of his throne.

OK, he never said that, but he was certainly leery of this whole global warming hoax-theory-hypothewhatevz when he told a group of scientists and industry hacks in 2007 to study the issue in Nevada and recommend ways to curb greenhouse gas emissions. Being in a drought-prone unforgiving desolation-wracked merciless desert and all, you know, it seemed like a good idea.

The report finally came out this week. And what does this yearlong smartypants huddle have to offer? Not solutions, that’s fersher. Something more like Solutions Lite Now With 20 Percent More Bland Noncommitment.

Sure, it proposes a few heartwarmers such as a clean-fuel bus fleet and incentives for developers and consumers of biodiesel fuel and more energy-efficient building codes. But they really miss the mark when they, oh, say nada about the three proposed coal-fired power plants that will add substantially to the Silver State’s pollution portfolio; and they don’t even attempt to set actual goals for greenhouse gas reductions like five other Western states did (Gibbons, obviously thinking there was some Nevada-shaped swath of magical sky-diaper that absorbed our state’s haze, declined to join the pact). Instead, the committee lobs out some softball about limiting the “intensity” of greenhouse emissions — basically advocating killing Da Erf more slowly. (You can check out the public comments, some damning, some praising, here.)

So, if you were hoping for some visionary document that sees sun-rich Nevada leading the march into a cleaner, greener tomorrow … uh, well, that’s clearly a flash-forward hallucination of your greenhouse gas-fevered mind as you desperately shake the last few drops of Mulroy Xtreme Berry Sizzle Powerade from your robot canteen into your sand-gritted mouth in the year 2127.

Reader Amie Romney writes in response to our Gold Butte piece:

It seems like there is always misinformation floating around whenever people talk about conservation for public lands like that in the “Tarnished Treasure” article. Gene Houston’s comment about shutting off public access to conserved areas is ridiculous. One of the main reasons for protecting these areas is so that the public can enjoy them in the same natural state they are currently and for future generations. Red Rock Canyon is a designated National Conservation Area and wilderness and to say there is a lack of public access would send any Nevadan laughing.

Consider this a personal confession of a miserably errant soul, but — aside from the way it’s tragically chewing up the lives of workers at the rate of one every three months or so — I had always been sort of looking to CityCemetery CityCenter as a sort of bellwether o’ hope in these cruddy economic times. Something in the way its progress just kept humming along, something in how the building just kept slickly accreting like some polished alien crystal while other Strip properties stumbled and the surrounding creamy suburbs succumbed to a gnarly pox of “For Sale” signs.

Uh, well, scratch that misplaced block of faith; now The Hungering Obelisk is starting to hiccup too.

Would some beneficent, civic-minded soul out there please explain to a newly transplanted reporter exactly why Nevada Republican lawmakers despise property taxes so? What is, precisely, their aversion to lawful assessments on real property?

First, we chuckled when Associated Press reporter Sandra Chereb broke the story of how the nation’s worst governor (aka Jim Gibbons) may have used the power of his office and a fellow political hack to lean on a lowly county assessor, scoring nearly $5,000 in tax breaks on a vacant rural parcel he owns in Elko County (apparently, that’s in Nevada).

Next, we belly laughed when the guv’s spokeswhores/apologists produced canceled checks made out to Gibbons which, in just five months’ time, exceed the annual income the governor’s “agricultural” parcel is required by state law to earn to ensure the tax break kicks in. (Note to Team Gibbons: If you’re going to insult Nevada taxpayers by lying to cover up your latest scandal, you might want to think through — I mean, really think through — your cover story. You’ll find timelines to be of particular concern here.)

Today, comes word that future former U.S. Rep. Dean Heller, R-Carson City — who will have his ass handed to him by Congressional District 2 challenger and former state Democratic Party chief Jill Derby — has incurred penalties and fees for late property tax payments a whopping 13 times on a Carson City house he bought in 2007.

According to the Associated Press report:

“The fees and penalties, totaling $887, include four imposed since word of late property tax payments circulated during Heller’s successful 2006 campaign. The last late payment penalty was in March, one of three for the 2007-08 tax year, Assessor Dave Dawley confirmed.

“A spokesman for Heller declined to comment on the late tax payments on his Plantation Drive property, which is on the west side of Carson City, and the resulting penalties and fees.”

A spokeshole refused to comment, huh? No surprise there. What is surprising, however, is that Derby’s people haven’t been lighting up the phones and the InterWebs with news of this dude’s latest gaffe. Derby should know that nothing in Nevada politics is a given. Given the fact that she lost to Heller last time by a little more than 12,000 votes — and that since November 2006 the number of registered Republicans in the district has shrunk from 48,346 to 28,433 — Derby has a much better shot this time at removing this political cancer from our collective municipal backside. Don’t tell us she’s asleep at the wheel before ever assuming office!

Anybody over there in Derby’s office at work today … or what? Is it feedin’ time at the Flying Flapjack Ranch?

Wasted Space ramps up its Tuesday live music offerings Aug. 5 with Icelandic ghetto-glam rockers Steed Lord, up-and-coming local electro-duo Afghan Raiders, plus DJs M!ke Attack and Mestizosix9. Doors at 10 p.m., $10 cover, must be 21. …

Congrats to Faarsheed are in order. The local DJ will open for San Fran DJ Behrouz Aug. 2 at Hollywood’s “Avaland” party at Avalon, arguably the most popular and best progressive house party in the country. …

DJs Lalka and Andy spin at 6 p.m. every Friday during the Downtown Cocktail Room’s happy hour. The house duo will then cruise over to the Aruba’s Thunderbird Lounge at 10 p.m. Aug. 1 for the N.O.I.S.E. Project’s dual-room First Friday afterparty which also features live performances by The Black Jetts, Deucebot, Vi Vacious and the drum circle. Admission is free ($5 donations are appreciated), but you must be 21. …

Speaking of First Friday afterparties, “Soulkitchen” DJ/promoter Edgar Reyes has another go at Brass’s patio with an event co-headlined with KUNV-FM 91.5’s Five Eight. … DJ Jack LaFleur is having his CD release party Aug. 3 at Body English. … Endo, of L.A.’s Turntable Addicts, joins John Doe’s funky soul dance party “The Get Back” Aug. 1 at Beauty Bar. In further visiting DJ news: Serge Devant beats the heat Aug. 3 during MGM’s “Wet Republic.”