Legislators in Florida are occupying different sides of the planet when it comes to crafting a new casino compact with the Seminole Tribe. At the risk of being accused of giving the store away, the state Senate favors granting full Class III gambling to the Seminoles, in return for $400 million a year. The lower house, meanwhile, would roll the tribe back to slots-only parity with southern Florida parimutuels and charge tribes $100 million ... for games they're to which already entitled under federal law. In the unlikely event the Seminoles assent to Plan B, it will probably get a constitutional body-slam in court.

The upper house's proposal is also more "george" for private-sector casinos, as the Miami-Dade and Broward county parimutuels would get limited table games and all parimutuels statewide would be allowed Class II gambling. The stingier House bill is the Line of Death for anti-gambling forces, who'd prefer to cut off a $100 million-plus nose to spite their collective face. Even if it prevails, it's too late to do more than protract the agony of existing non-tribal casinos in Florida. This war is over and the Seminoles have won.

Oh, and revocation of the existing compact would deprive the state not just of money of hard-to-get (if limited) judicial purview over disputes that occur on tribal land. These sorts of exemptions to tribal sovereignty are rare as hen's teeth, so solons might want to ponder whether it's something they're willing to forfeit for the sake of striking a pious stance.

Slumdog customer relations: What do you do when one of your players wins big at the tables? Beat the living crap out of him, of course. Let's see if this innovative form of customer-relationship marketing catches on ... not!

Unclear on the concept: "Good news No. 3: As of January 2009, Las Vegas’ hotel room inventory was 140,729, and this number is expected to increase by 9.9% to 155,562 by the end of 2009. In comparison, Orlando, Florida has 111,700 hotel rooms and San Francisco a little over 33,300."

Uh, this guy obviously wasn't CC'd on the memo that an onrush of new hotel rooms at a time when visitation is in decline is not "good news."

(Quoth Andrew Zarnett of Deutsche Bank, "We view a CityCenter postponement as a net positive for the overall Strip demand and supply dynamics, which is currently lopsided towards oversupply.")

Taking a page from Red China, lawmakers in New Jersey propose "stopping payments to state prisoners who make license plates and do other work." I hold no brief for convicted felons but, the last time I checked, slave labor was illegal in this great land of ours.