Is waxing and buffing the Pinnacle Entertainment limo a prerequisite for scoring an interview with its CEO? This small masterpiece of selective omission is more interesting for what it elides than what it says. The article parrots Dan Lee as saying Pinnacle believes "not to start building something without the money to finish."

That's an excellent precept but it would resound with greater authority had Pinnacle not gotten bogged down in Atlantic City by failing to practice what it preaches. It bought Carl Icahn's old Sands, razed it, cleared the land ... then found it couldn't raise the capital to build the megaresort Lee had envisioned. By that point, Pinnacle had exercised such a heavy hand in its attempts to acquire more acreage -- at prices it intended to dictate to the market -- that the project's subsequent collapse didn't even inspire much regret along the Boardwalk. Now Pinnacle's got money tied up in Atlantic City it could be using to go trophy hunting along the Strip.

Also, it's not a good sign that Pinnacle's half-billion-dollar Lumiere Place is finishing a very distant second in the company's portfolio, doing only 57% the revenue of L'Auberge du Lac, down in Lake Charles, La. True, L'Auberge owns a near-stranglehold on its market, while Lumiere Place has several competitors. But the latter has scarcely made a dent in rival operations by Harrah's Entertainment and Ameristar Casinos. Nor, despite being smack-dab in the middle of the St. Louis waterfront, has it pulled significant amounts of business away from Casino Queen, across the river in Illinois.

Pinnacle has overspent and overcommitted itself -- and don't forget it nearly followed Columbia Sussex over the precipice in the feverish bidding for Aztar Corp. To Lee's considerable credit (no pun intended): A) corporate debt is below $1 billion; B) Pinnacle completely outfoxed Harrah's in their Lake Charles-for-Biloxi property swap; C) that Houston-fed market is rich enough to carry Pinnacle for the time being, and D) a clever if anti-competitive ballot initiative (for which Ameristar's Troy Stremming gets most of the credit) will entrench Pinnacle's Missouri position.

As 2009's gaming group goes, Pinnacle is faring better than all but a few. But it's made its share of MGM Mirage-like mistakes, just on a smaller, more-affordable scale. Pinnacle wasn't the only irrationally exuberant casino company during the 2005-07 boom but let's not go paint it as a paragon of restraint, either.

Deep within the septic tank that is the Las Vegas Review-Journal's online-comments section one finds the (very) occasional fact. In the case of the gaping void left at the Tropicana Las Vegas by the peremptory closure of Folies Bergere, longtime Vegas observer Phil Hevener had the following scoop: "One of the issues at the Trop was that the owners decided to leave the matter of a show for the new operator (Alex Yemenidjian) since show creators and hotel builders alike are having trouble finding money these days."

Not only does that have the ring of plausibility but when Hevener's got a tip, chances are you can take it to the bank. As for CEO Scott Butera and his underwhelming LV Trop administration, do you ever get the feeling they're just making it up as they go along?