When my colleague Jon Ralston compared Gov. Jim Gibbons to former President Richard Nixon recently, he made a fairly good circumstantial case. But today, Gibbons has provided the smoking gun. The guy looks clinically paranoid.

First, in a very friendly radio interview with Bill Manders of KOH-AM 780, Gibbons cited Tom DeLay and Tom Daschle as a defense for his wife’s employment with a defense contractor he was working to help get contracts. (Both DeLay, who is under indictment on money laundering charges, and Daschle, who lost a bid for re-election, are no longer in Congress. But when they were, their wives had jobs that posed potential conflicts.)

We’re pretty sure if you’re citing Tom DeLay as a defense, you’ve done something wrong. It’s like saying you treated your ex-wife no worse than O.J. Simpson treated his. But we are simply media jackals on the trail of a false story meant to embarrass Gibbons! Or so the governor says, later in that interview. (Credit to Ralston’s FLASH newsletter for the transcription, which is also found here.)

"The media has made a sport of going after me. I am willing to endure it," Gibbons said. "I really, really don’t care about the media anymore. … It’s sad because first of all they are the communicator with a lot of people. If they can’t get their story right, if they want to perpetuate misinformation, if they want to make up stuff, I am not going to deal with them. I am not going to engage them because they have their own agenda and that is to slow my progress. I say enough is enough."

Wow. That’s a lot of bull for a single paragraph. Gibbons can really pack it in, huh? Let us ask a gentle question with all due respect, governor: What, precisely, has the media "made up" about you? Is there not an FBI investigation into your dealings with eTreppid Technologies? Did you not take an unreported cruise paid for by Warren Trepp, for which you paid only a portion of the cost? Did your wife not work for Sierra Pacific Nevada Corp. while you were working to help get that company a federal defense contract? Have you not hired Jack Abramoff’s old lawyer to defend you on these charges? Is that all not true? Of course it is.

And let us ask another question: If the media did make things up, and were found out, would not the media have no credibility whatsoever going forward? Yet it’s the governor who finds himself with a credibility gap, not the media.

But that’s because … we’re a bunch of VC/Iraqi Republican Guard scum trying to shoot down Gibbons’ Truth Plane! Check it:

"Bill, let me tell you something — I’ve been through two wars, and this is nothing. I’ve been shot at by people with real bullets. … If they think they are getting to me, they have another thing coming. … I’m not going to let the media — I’m not going to let the print media especially — dictate how I run the state of Nevada," Gibbons told Manders.

Once again, Gibbons plagiarizes … from Mayor Oscar Goodman, who said the same thing when he was under ethics charges at the city of Las Vegas (and from which he was ultimately acquitted). And when Goodman used that line, he really sold it. Gibbons? Not so much. But nice playing of the war card, anyway.

So what’s the meaning of all this? Glad you asked, since Gibbons has an answer: "They [the media] think they are going to drive me out of office and I got news for them … it ain’t gonna happen."

Ouch, baby. When Gibbons goes gangsta, you know things are about to get really weird.

And sure enough, they did, later in the day, when Gibbons accused the Democratic Party of paying the Wall Street Journal to break negative stories about him. In an interview with the Reno Gazette-Journal, Gibbons (actually) floated the idea that the newspaper dubbed "Adventures in Capitalism" is conspiring with the Democrats to get rid of him. (Thanks to fellow media jackal/conspirator Ralston for the handy tip!)

"I have heard that the Democrats paid to have these Wall Street Journal articles written," Gibbons said. "When I met this guy [Wall Street Journal reporter John R. Wilke] he was brought to Elko by the Dina Titus campaign and that is where I met him. So I don’t know what his agenda is, but there is nothing there with any of these allegations." (Titus denies any connection to Wilke in the Gazette-Journal story.)

Um, we’ve got nothing for that. Suddenly, this has turned more serious, from a goofy governor who rants about how he dislikes the media (fairly common) to a guy who actually believes the Democratic Party and a major national newspaper are conspiring to get him (pretty rare). It’s narcissism (like Gibbons is so important he must be taken out!) combined with paranoia, wrapped up in a pathetic, nutty shell, held together by the nougat of delusion.

Suddenly, we think somebody better get the governor some help. Maybe his staff can jump in?

"We believe that there is a significant effort on behalf of the Democratic Party to aggressively attack my boss’ legislative agenda and provided further distraction, not allow us to move forward leading the state," said Gibbons press secretary Melissa Subbotin. "As far as the Wall Street Journal story goes, we don’t know. We don’t know who is providing it but we do hear rumors just like you do."

Right then. No help there. And sure, we’ve all heard rumors. We heard a rumor that a guy got drugged and woke up in a bathtub full of ice missing a kidney. But we don’t go out and tell people that. That would be crazy talk.

Well, even though we are the evil media (and thus obviously in the firm grip of the Democrats) let us try to help anyway, using that ancient philosophical tool known as Occam’s Razor, which holds that the simplest explanation that fits all the facts is usually the correct one:

Ahem. Here goes:

It’s GIBBONS! It’s GIBBONS, you morons! He is the one who helped get contracts for eTreppid and Sierra Pacific Nevada! He is the one who took unreported travel! He is the one who helped Sierra Pacific Nevada at the same time that his wife was being paid by them as a "consultant"! There’s no goddamn conspiracy between anybody! It’s all 100 percent, totally, completely the fault of just one person: JIM GIBBONS!

Glad we got that off our chest.

We hope that clears things up. But, just on the off chance that this is one of those surprise X-Files-type endings where it turns out the nutty governor was right all along, could somebody from the Democratic Party call us? We totally are looking to buy a new car, and it would be super sweet to get some of that Attack Gibbons and His Earth-Threatening Legislative Agenda cash, you know? We might be able to upgrade to a Mercedes Benz! Hey, anybody know what that dude Wilke drives?