House advantage

Click image for full Mike Smith/Las Vegas Sun cartoon.


Also available here.

No business like show business

Any man who took a casino into bankruptcy has some 'splainin' to do:

In a piece of good news for Mr. Trump, a new poll showed a majority of likely voters agreeing with the statement, “Donald Trump being sworn in as President would be a great last scene in a Planet of the Apes remake.”

Or Idiocracy.

Honestly, isn't it obvious to everyone that America has thrown an even bigger nutty than a John Bircher's previously impotent dream of a wet dream?

Pride's not power

... but this man has professional pride.

Click image for full Bruce Plante/Tulsa World cartoon.

Exceptional executives

And I mean exceptional in the sense that used to be a euphemism (and may still be) for the hardest special ed cases.

Donald Trump can't make money from gambling. Either that, or someone's skimming. I guess he is exceptional enough to have his own TV show alongside so many other blowhard, self-important jerks (Glenn Beck, anyone? How about Chris Matthews?).

In the category of that explains a lot:

[Las Vegas economic woes] led to a 10% decline in gaming revenues for Las Vegas casinos in 2008. (This year might not be much better either, especially if big banks receiving TARP money stop flying loan officers to Las Vegas for "annual recognition events.")

No wonder they all wanted in on the high-risk securitized mortgage market! Owww. (Atrios would add, "The stupid, it burns.")

Update: "You know the economy is bad when you can't count on gambling and hookers." --David Letterman

Not what you know

Seriously, how can Jim Nance not know that the call of illegal forward pass (which, frankly, I didn't see) on the final play of the Pittsburgh-San Diego game ends the play? Nance makes his living doing this. You'd think they might trouble himself to learn the rules of the game he's announcing. What about the confused head linesman? The refs aren't full-time, but they make good money.

We live in an age when knowledge is not highly valued. Entertainment is better. The truck will feed Nance the rest.

The truth is of course that the review at the end was about one thing: sports betting. Did Pittsburgh cover the spread? Without the freak and now nullified TD, no.

Update: I'm sorry I was an asshole with this. I've since heard that the play is supposed to go forward. Even if I had been right, I was massively uncharitable about something that is clearly a source of much doubt and confusion, so I apologize to Jim Nance and the refs, regardless.

Humility is a virtue to be reminded of every now and then.

Poker vs. craps

Time tells us that McCain rolls dice and Obama counts cards. This alone should be enough to decide between them.

McCain, like Bill Bennett, is a high roller in a game that the house always wins in the long run because it's entirely devoid of any element of skill. Like all casino games, it's fixed in favor of the house. McCain gets the thrill of throwing Cindy's money away, and if it's bad publicity he wants a private room to do it in, the heck with the camaraderie.

Obama plays a game of skill in dealing with chance, watches his cards carefully, and doesn't bluff much. He also plays at a much more responsible expense level that could never be characterized as high-rolling.

So, America, here's your choice: a rich thrill-seeking dummy who believes in his own luck or a smart, careful, analytical relationship-building winner.

Update: There's a brief conversation on DailyKos about this post.

Can we just call it gambling?

Seriously, how many industry-coined euphemisms do we need before we start plastering corporate logos on everything?

Oh.

The Boston Globe is signalling its hunger for casino advertising.

Me and Deval

I go way back with Deval Patrick. Well, back to the campaign anyway. I was impressed the first time I met him, and he rapidly got better as a campaigner. So I became a town coordinator (i.e. flunky) in his campaign, and we dramatically reversed the numbers that Mitt Romney had put up against Shannon O'Brien in 2002.

Nov. 7, 2006, was probably the headiest day I've experienced in American politics. Electoral politics, anyway - there was August 8, 1974.

Still, I knew that Gov. Patrick would never be as thrilling as candidate Patrick. Vision never translates to governance completely. As a grizzled old political veteran, I could deal with that, but I knew some of the new people in Patrick's campaign would have to learn the hard way to be happy with half a loaf. So, I switched to the digest form of the coordinators' email list, and I mostly stopped reading even that.

Now Deval has proposed a casino plan, and many of his biggest fans are devastated. I'm not thrilled, but I'm also not up in arms.

Casinos are bad public policy, but a majority of the people seem to want them. Hell, the Lottery is bad public policy, and it's wicked populah.

Deval has tried to make a case that casinos can be good policy. I don't believe it. Gambling:

• Acts like a regressive tax - only the lower end of the economic spectrum gambles the rent money
• Encourages something-for-nothing thinking in citizens and business people (legitimate or not) alike
• Creates service jobs with a pretty low wage ceiling
• Creates nothing tangible

People like it anyway, and there are limits to how far I want to go against that.

Luke warm enough? Can we just keep calling it gambling? Gaming is something you do over the net from your mom's basement.