Just when I was ready to get behind Tropicana Entertainment CEO Scott Butera's quest to reclaim the company's eponymous Atlantic City casino, he goes off his meds, so to speak. He blustered that "Our creditors, our employees and our neighbors in Atlantic City cannot afford to have this marquee Atlantic City property purchased at a severely depressed price."

I'm sure the creditors are hopping mad about the sale price but I sorely doubt that the employees are losing any sleep over it. Most are probably happy to have the continuing uncertainty about the Trop's future heading toward a resolution. As for the "significant investments" that Butera is saying he'll make, that's bold talk from a company that's in Chapter 11 and doesn't have any high-yield properties. Or, to quote one of my Mom's favorite queries, "Using what for money?"

It's unclear upon what Butera's stated valuation of $950 million for the Trop is based. Unless perhaps he's going by the high-end bid made by a shadowy group of New York investors. That offer was a non-starter, predicated as it was on the buyers being approved sight unseen. Butera can say $700 million (of which only $450 million is in cash) is not "acceptable" until he's blue in the face, but that doesn't make the Trop inherently worth more. The market will tell him what it's worth and right now the market isn't feeling any too generous.

In Butera's defense, if Trump Marina -- with a hotel-room base 29% of the Trop's, a third of the convention space, 53% the number of slot machines and 44% the number of table games -- went for $316 million, one can see where Butera's $950 million figure might have justification. But the Marina sold before the credit market cratered. Which means that re-selling the Trop at some more seller-friendly juncture means an interregnum of indeterminate length.

Besides, as the Las Vegas Sun's Jeff Simpson pointed out during yesterday's "Vegas Gang" taping, no matter how much Butera tries to talk around it, TropEnt is still a wholly owned subsidiary of Columbia Sussex, a company whose name is mud in Atlantic City. New Jersey regulators aren't going to sign off on any deal that might allow William J. Yung III to sneak back into the Trop through a side door, metaphorically speaking.

Taking a chill pill. With the imposition of Atlantic City's smoking ban less than two weeks away, Mayor Scott Evans is amenable to a delay. Matters wouldn't have reached this juncture had the city council not felt goaded into levying a total ban by the casinos' snail-like compliance with the previous 75% cutback on smoking areas.

However, there's nothing like a recession to refocus one's priorities. Council members face an unenviable choice on this one, caught as they'll be between het-up constituents who have breathed as much secondhand smoke as they care to and the prospect of further casino-revenue declines -- and higher unemployment.