Traffic at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas (c) Russell Johnson

When will it end? Why as our salaries shrink, our expectations dwindle, our house values plummet, our IRAs squeal like piggies being led to slaughter, does that supersize-me oasis of bare buns, aged sirloin and greedy motives called Las Vegas keep on getting bigger. Last week the strip got its latest boob job called the Palazzo, a 1.9 billion hotel implant that would dwarf the crumbling palaces on the Grand Canal and make a Doge weep. Outside of Las Vegas, what else could 1.3 billion get you? According to the UN, you could immunize every child in the world against deadly disease for 1.3 billion a year. But then, what happens in Bangladesh stays in Bangladesh...Las Vegas is a different reality.

Ron Paul Country: Mongolia in California
by Russell Johnson  

California is, for the most part, Mongolia. Erase the coasts and the canals that suck water from the north to feed Big Asparagus and whiten the teeth of Valley Girls, it would be as desolate as the steppes of Central Asia. Driving through the high desert between Bakersfield and Las Vegas I note two landmarks: a graveyard for embalmed airliners, in permanent holding pattern at Mohave airport, and a shrine for Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul. Paul is what is known as a Libertarian, a sect of American politics that wavers between admirably cranky conservatism and loco-weed lunacy: just right for the build-a-wall, save-the-republic denizens of this landscape of coyotes, cactus and bullet-riddled road signs.