{"id":949,"date":"2008-02-12T15:04:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-12T23:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/blogs\/dmckee\/index.cfm\/2008\/2\/12\/Big-Love"},"modified":"2021-03-01T13:20:42","modified_gmt":"2021-03-01T21:20:42","slug":"big-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/big-love\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Love"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Why does <b>Mike Huckabee<\/b> hate America? That&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lasvegassun.com\/news\/2008\/feb\/12\/romneys-twisted-world\">one question posed<\/a> in the ongoing fallout from <b>Mitt Romney<\/b>&#8216;s bizarre equation between continuing his presidential campaign and abetting &#8220;surrender to terror&#8221;? Dangerous stuff, that democracy. It makes people <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lvrj.com\/business\/15538677.html\">vote for casinos<\/a> and other things of which Mitt wouldn&#8217;t approve. (Neither would Huckabee, I might add.)<\/p>\n<p>Huckabee, to his credit, is <a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2008\/02\/12\/politics\/washingtonpost\/main3820378.shtml\" class=\"broken_link\">hanging tough<\/a> and offering GOP voters a choice, not an echo. OK, it&#8217;s arguably a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=D08Dq_iNMRk\">crazy choice<\/a>, replete with scary buddies. But we&#8217;re Americans. We like having choices.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s lost in this, by the way, is the <b>overweening narcissism<\/b> of Romney&#8217;s remark. It&#8217;s not that we have to put aside our differences; no, it&#8217;s noble Mitt presenting himself as sacrificial victim &#8212; cynically hoping to ring up some chits for 2012 as the man who put the good of the country ahead of his own personal ambitions. When he&#8217;s actually acting in furtherance of those ambitions: <i>&#8220;All right, so it&#8217;s not in the cards for me this year. What can I do to position myself as the Chosen One four years down the road? By jingo(ism), I think I&#8217;ve got it!&#8217;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>At least Mitt can use the next four years to brush up on his speaking style. Dear Lord, the man is <i>boring<\/i>! Were he the GOP nominee, let alone elected, sales of Sominex would crater. Forget Ambien: Just tune C-SPAN to a Romney speech and it&#8217;s lights out, brother.<\/p>\n<p><b>Y<\/b><b>ung&#8217;s embrace (slightly) rebuffed<\/b>. Kentucky Gov. <b>Steve Beshear<\/b> (D) is scrambling to put distance between himself and the $1 million-plus that Columbia Sussex CEO <b>William Yung III<\/b> spent <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chron.com\/disp\/story.mpl\/ap\/fn\/5534886.html\">in furtherance of Beshear&#8217;s gubernatorial ambitions<\/a>. Beshear is denying that Yung has an &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/www.kypost.com\/news\/local\/story.aspx?content_id=79544DB3-A39C-4896-84E4-312D598ACB5A&amp;gsa=true\" class=\"broken_link\">inside track<\/a>&#8221; on a Bluegrass State casino. That doesn&#8217;t change the fact that Yung received face time with Beshear&#8217;s casino task force while\u00a0<b>Las Vegas Sands<\/b> got the door slammed in its face. (Turns out Yung got <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kentucky.com\/263\/story\/315595.html\" class=\"broken_link\">two face-to-face meetings<\/a> with Beshear, as well.)<\/p>\n<p>Beshear&#8217;s proposal would offer a preferential tax rate for Kentucky-based companies, a sweetheart provision that ought to be challenged in court. As for Beshear&#8217;s eventual legislative sock puppet, er, <i>sponsor<\/i>, Democratic pajandrums say he &#8220;hasn&#8217;t tee-totally been determined yet.&#8221; Nice to know that sobriety is part of their decision-making process.<\/p>\n<p><b>Baton Rouge bulletin.<\/b> Yung&#8217;s <b>Columbia Sussex<\/b> will swap its <i>Belle of Baton Rouge<\/i> and <i>Amelia Belle<\/i> riverboats, <a href=\"http:\/\/money.cnn.com\/news\/newsfeeds\/articles\/apwire\/460c8cd7df1fbaf51e75e4b538a8133b.htm\" class=\"broken_link\">moving the larger Amelia-based vessel<\/a> (which not so long ago served the New Orleans market) to Baton Rouge and vice versa. Despite rumblings that either Columbia Sussex or <b>Penn National<\/b> might cut and run if <b>Pinnacle Entertainment<\/b> got voted into the Baton Rouge market, it looks as though Columbia Sussex, for one, is dropping anchor and preparing to repel boarders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why does Mike Huckabee hate America? That&#8217;s one question posed in the ongoing fallout from Mitt Romney&#8216;s bizarre equation between continuing his presidential campaign and abetting &#8220;surrender to terror&#8221;? Dangerous stuff, that democracy. It makes people vote for casinos and &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/big-love\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949"}],"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=949"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29333,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/949\/revisions\/29333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lasvegasadvisor.com\/stiffs-and-georges\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}