Goodbye and Good Riddance, Las Vegas (Until Saturday)

Horrible smog. Chewed-up desert. Wind storms. Endless vistas of foreclosed stucco boxes. For Sale signs and Payday Loan joints. Crushing unemployment. No water. Rampant crime, prostitution, drug addiction, gambling addiction -- all squirming around the edges of a never-finished vulgar theme park that should be blown up and reassembled in Dubai, where it belongs.

Nevada is the bold new America, 2008's "First In The West" state to hold a caucus -- and the winner of this Democratic caucus will depend on how many casino workers are allowed to caucus   in the casinos .

Las Vegas is an ugly sprawl of bland beige shacks, strip malls, giant neon-bright animated billboards, navel-pierced dull-eyed strippers, brain-damaged bums, and scientifically-designed soul-killing casinos -- you know, just the default U.S. landscape now, thanks to more than 400 Indian Gaming Facilities spread across this crippled country and KB Homes and no jobs and no future and the same dozen chains in every foul exurban parking lot and the vast ugliness and vapid filth of the American people.

This is the ideal place to settle the 2008 Democratic Race. Whoever makes it here, as Sinatra used to sing here about a very different city, "can make it anywhere."

Anyway, I'm leaving now. For two days. And then I'll be back for the Caucusing. And the Victory Rally. And the heartfelt concession of the Losers.