{"id":3779,"date":"2010-06-09T11:54:55","date_gmt":"2010-06-09T19:54:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=3779"},"modified":"2020-03-12T08:02:55","modified_gmt":"2020-03-12T16:02:55","slug":"complete-disaster-at-marina-bay-sands","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/complete-disaster-at-marina-bay-sands\/","title":{"rendered":"“Complete disaster” at Marina Bay Sands"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"That’s what litigants allege about the premiere convention at Las Vegas Sands<\/strong>‘ $5.5 billion Singapore<\/strong> behemoth. In its countersuit to Sands’ opening broadside, the Inter-Pacific Bar Association<\/strong> essentially accuses Station of promising a five-star experience and delivering a Walmart<\/strong> one (imagine having to huddle under an umbrella at the check-in desk), then extracting payment by coercive means.<\/p>\n

Sands President Michael A. Leven<\/strong> responded with his usual cloud of pomposity, saying the lawyers were suing because<\/em> they’re lawyers and that’s what lawyers do. (As he put it, “we did have a convention of lawyers to start out with, so we knew we were going to have some kind of conversation<\/em>.\u201d) Perhaps he could work this into new Marina Bay Sands<\/strong> marketing pitch: “Enjoy your stay or else!”<\/p>\n

Seeking a level playing field<\/strong>, creditors of Station Casinos<\/strong> are taking their beef with Station’s reorganization plan<\/a> to U.S. District Court<\/strong>. (Bankruptcy court Judge Gregg Zive<\/strong> has ruled for Station right down the line.) I can’t say as I blame them as Zive’s priority, articulated in basically choosing Station as its own “stalking horse” bidder, is to minimize projected\/imagined job losses and economic harm. Those consequences, he clearly fears, would inevitably follow subdivision of the Station empire. If things keep going this way, unsecured creditors haven’t got a prayer.<\/p>\n

Woman has sex with slot machine<\/strong>. I hope they inoculated the one-armed bandit post-coitus<\/a>. Given today’s Vegas party scene, you don’t know where that woman’s been.<\/p>\n

If, as I’ve heard suggested<\/strong>, the R-J<\/em>‘s fatuous fatwa<\/em> against the Internet<\/strong> is another publicity stunt for its “increasingly excitable publisher<\/a>,” it seems to be working. (The anti-kitty-blog jihad<\/em> seems to have backfired, though.) More importantly, the Los Angeles Times<\/em> follows the money all the way back to Stephens Media<\/strong> HQ in Little Rock<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

As I suspected, Righthaven LLC<\/strong> is a Stephens-funded front to which Stephens is selling its own content and then vacuuming up a portion of whatever proceeds are netted. That explains why Sherman Frederick<\/strong> was practically begging for other papers to hire Righthaven in a posting on his blog (which isn’t worth linking to even if Righthaven weren’t likely to go all Salman Rushdie<\/strong> on your ass.)<\/p>\n

One anonymous LAT<\/em> reader puts it in perspective:<\/p>\n

Upon reading this story I leapt over to the Cat Blog<\/strong> (<\/em>allegrawong.com) to take a look. It seems that this Cat Blog is written, ostensibly, by cats (perhaps with some human assistance). So, in a metaphorical sense the <\/em>Las Vegas Review-Journal is using its vast legal resources to sue a bunch of indigent house cats. What’s worse, the <\/em>Review-Journal is suing them for doing the modern equivalent of school-children cutting up the morning newspaper and making a civics class news-of-the-day collage (or in this case kitty litter)<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That’s what litigants allege about the premiere convention at Las Vegas Sands‘ $5.5 billion Singapore behemoth. In its countersuit to Sands’ opening broadside, the Inter-Pacific Bar Association essentially accuses Station of promising a five-star experience and delivering a Walmart one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[98,28,14,99,12,108,57,8,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3779"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26360,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3779\/revisions\/26360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}