{"id":7741,"date":"2011-10-18T12:46:50","date_gmt":"2011-10-18T20:46:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/?p=7741"},"modified":"2020-10-28T04:10:51","modified_gmt":"2020-10-28T12:10:51","slug":"strangest-gambling-scandal-ever","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/strangest-gambling-scandal-ever\/","title":{"rendered":"Strangest gambling scandal ever?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Politics and gambling have literally gone to the dogs<\/a> in West Virginia<\/strong>. A certain Harry Marshall Rae<\/strong> has pleaded ‘not guilty’ to attempted extortion of Gov.-elect Earl Ray Tomblin<\/strong> (D). At issue is an alleged $50,000 demand — placed on Tomblin’s Web site — or else “embarrassing video involving the greyhound racing industry” would be released. Now, unless that videotape showed Tomblin having carnal knowledge of a quadriped, I fail to see how it could be “embarrassing.” The degrading nature of the sport is not exactly breaking news, alas, and it’s well known that the Tomblin family owes its livelihood to the exploitation of dogs — on the public dime, no less<\/a>. Also-ran Bill Maloney<\/strong> (R), it should be noted, waged an operatic campaign of high-pitched<\/a>, anti-gambling hysteria<\/a>, so he’s no prize either … although those TV spots are good for a few laughs.<\/p>\n

The financial-investigation bloodhounds have already been snapping at Tomblin’s rear and, had the content of Rae’s alleged video footage been substantive, it would have been in the public interest to release it. But Rae missed whatever chance he allegedly had and now looks like he had a date with the Big Kennel, the one where he<\/em> gets the opportunity to be somebody’s bitch.<\/p>\n

Cry Wolf<\/strong>. When anti-gambling, anti-tribal Rep. Frank Wolf<\/strong> (R-VA) calls former Jack Abramoff<\/strong> bagman Grover Norquist<\/strong> a terrorist financier, which dog does one have in this fight<\/a>? Of course, the crazier Wolf sounds, fewer people will listen to him when he tries to derail legalization of Internet<\/strong> poker, so there’s something to gained from this dog-on-dog action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Politics and gambling have literally gone to the dogs in West Virginia. A certain Harry Marshall Rae has pleaded ‘not guilty’ to attempted extortion of Gov.-elect Earl Ray Tomblin (D). At issue is an alleged $50,000 demand — placed on … 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":[98,28,37,33,111,87,139],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741"}],"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=7741"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24999,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7741\/revisions\/24999"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}