Harrah's Entertainment's eviction of the Las Vegas Review-Journal from its properties (where it sells 25 copies per casino per day, by its own estimates) isn't payback, per the R-J's insinuation (sez Harrah's). Nor is it trying to save a few grand, company spokesman Gary Thompson (late of the vanquished rival Sun) adds.

No, hardly anybody wants to read it, he says. I can't blame them, but if I'm in (say) New York, I buy a copy of the Times to see what's going on. Ditto Los Angeles. The soon-to-be Caesars Entertainment might want to keep that 'When in Rome' consumer philosophy in mind.

Local opthamologist, dazzled by dollar signs floating before his eyes, wants to buy up two disgraced endoscopy clinics and put the Desai Gang back to work. By golly, if there's anything that'll restore public confidence in having things stuck up our collective bum, it's putting an eye doctor in charge -- and a politically connected one, at that.

Why run a train to Las Vegas from the greater Los Angeles area, when you can just go from Anaheim to Victorville instead? So reasons rarely heard-from Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), who turns out to be a sock puppet for a local political fixer who's inexplicably pushing this "Train to Nowhere" concept.

Local publisher, faced with a staff that's pathetically undersized for a major metropolitan area, devises a solution -- make them file three times as often! 

Yeah, that'll really help. [/snerk] Now, the R-J business desk has developed a reputation, in recent years, of being slow off the mark, but the answer would be to change the culture over there, not to simply speed up the drumbeat (even if those charmless Bonanza Road offices bear a suspicious resemblance to the galleys in Ben-Hur). Oh, and maybe do things like have more than one political reporter for the entire state of Nevada! Crikey.

Wait: What am I thinking? I mean, it's only a matter of time before every aspect of every city in America is covered from offices in Bombay. At least the R-J is giving its staffers a chance to know what it's like to work in the Third World ... oops, I mean 'the exciting and expanding global economy.'

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