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.

The Sacramento Bee reports the move comes as the governor strives to deal with a $15.2 billion deficit in a budget that’s one month overdue. An executive order that Schwarzenegger will sign next week will reduce the salaries of more than 200,000 government workers to the federal minimum wage of $6.55 per hour.

Apparently, California has budget reserves to continue to pay employees through September; after that, if no new budget is passed, the state will be forced to the equivalent of getting cash advances on its credit cards.

Here in Nevada, no state workers have been laid off nor has pay been reduced for anyone despite budget cuts and accounting maneuvers that total about $1.2 billion. Worker layoffs have been mentioned if deeper cuts are required; universities have indicated that faculty contracts won’t be renewed next year; and the Clark County School District is holding some positions open in case budget cuts are needed. But the Legislature last month rejected a plan advanced by Republicans to take back a 4 percent cost-of-living adjustment for state workers and teachers.

Nobody tell state Sen. Bob Beers or conservative activist Chuck Muth or the Review-Journal editorial page about this, however. They’d all love to see Nevada’s government employees making minimum wage.

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)

It was a good job for Dayton, probably even better than he could have expected after being ousted from then-Congressman Jim Gibbons’s office under a cloud of financial impropriety. And what an ironic turn of events it was in 2006 that Dayton would join Gibbons’s gubernatorial office as chief of staff, when the man who had replaced Dayton back in Washington D.C. and guided Gibbons to victory in what should have been a much tougher race, Robert Uithoven, was thrown to the wolves.

But now things are back to normal. Uithoven is advising Gibbons informally, and Dayton was finally tossed from the Sinking Ship Gibbons under cover of news about the one-day budget-cutting special session last month.  It was simply reported at the time that Dayton was to rejoin the private sector, signaling that perhaps Cornwall had finally won their long-fought power struggle. (After all, she got to stay in state government!)

Where did Dayton end up? Thanks to the “Inside Business” column in the Review-Journal, we now know: Back where he started, at McDonald Carano Wilson! Dayton will be vice president of government affairs, i.e. a lobbyist.

Wait. A lobbyist?! A refugee from the serially incompetent Gibbons administration is going to be hired to persuade lawmakers to do things? That seems very, very odd.

You may laugh, but lobbyists need credibility. In Carson City, among the corps of lobbyists, a word is a bond. Any perceived mendacity prevents you from making deals, and thus compromises your effectiveness. And did we mention that Dayton helped to helm the Gibbons administration, that was literally born in a lie? Or that Dayton personally fibbed fibbed to a Review-Journal columnist?

Frankly, we’re surprised. McDonald Carano Wilson is a respectable firm, home to a state senator (Terry Care, Democrat of Las Vegas) and a former United States attorney improperly fired by the politicized Bush administration in a scandal that’s still being investigated by Congress (Daniel Bogden). Plus, the firm already has a big-name lobbyist, ex-Clark County and University Medical Center advocate Dan Musgrove.

We just don’t get it. Why re-hire Dayton, after all that’s happened, in a position requiring trust and competence?