Cranky old area one-percenter lashes out, bored world looks the other way

The housing crisis, according to your president...

"...is a painful burden for middle-class families.  And it’s also a drag on our economy.  When a home loses its value, a family loses a big chunk of their wealth.  Paying off mortgage debt means that consumers are spending less and businesses are making less and jobs are harder to come by.  And as long as this goes on, our recovery can’t take off as quickly as it would after a normal recession.

Yes.

"So the question is not whether or not we do something about it..."

Alas, the question evidently is whether the latest spoon-in-a-flood program announed by Obama in Las Vegas will do very little to address the structural economic problem that Obama at least seems to grasp, or whether it will do nothing at all.

Debt jubilee, anyone?

Meantime, while both political parties continue to say things that mean nothing to just about everyone, let's move on to a smallish but semi-related item. To commemorate your president's visit to Las Vegas, Neil Cavuto of Fox News dialed up friend of the program, casino magnate and former interesting person Steve Wynn. Upon receiving his prompt from the host, Wynn dutifully squealed about big government and "class warfare" and otherwise told America to get off his lawn. Yes, nothing new there.

But then Wynn's customary tirade took a somewhat unexpected turn:

"I supported a Democratic Congresswoman named Shelley Berkley. I called her during Obamacare. I said, 'Shelly, what are you doing? How do you do this? This is killing unions and all of us supplying health care to our employees.' She said to me, quote, this is not hearsay — Shelly said to me — and she is running for the Senate — ‘Steve, I know it's terrible. My husband's a doctor, and he hates it, too. If I don't vote for it, she will punish me,' she being Nancy Pelosi.

"I said 'Shelly, every politician that's ever sold out their constituency, has had a lame, terrible rationalization like the one you just gave me. Don't ever call me again.'"

Agreed. That totally sounds like something a painfully centrist politician like Berkley would say to an egomaniacal tycoon like Wynn. For the record, Berkley denies that's how it went down.

But does this mean Shelly really can never call Steve ever again and these crazy mixed up kids will be estranged forever after? Perhaps someone somewhere cares.

A deeply hurt Wynn also told Cavuto that "my friend Harry Reid hung up on me the other day for the first time in 40 years." If true, this would easily constitute the single most praiseworthy act Reid has committed in recent memory. Alas, Wynn's probably reading too much into it: That's how Reid ends all his phone calls. Always the charmer, Harry is.

As most Gleaner readers will remember, time was when official Las Vegas and its mainstream media was torn. On one side were those who contended Wynn was a staggering genius. Others disputed that characterization, instead favoring the theory that the great man was in fact a god. Everything and anything Wynn said, maybe especially when he publicly detoured into politics, would have been all over the papers.

Yet a quick glean (and if I missed it lemme know) of area news organization websites indicates that Wynn's rant on Berkley is thus far thoroughly unmentioned by the entire Las Vegas mainstream media.

Your Gleaner, who is just as prone to the occasional foray into meta-pondering as the next operator of an obscure website, suggests that the local media ignoring Wynn is in itself far more interesting and revelant to the community than Wynn's over-the-top blather. In a good way.

Unfortunately, now that the local press safely waved b'bye to Air Force One for now and had time to catch it's collective breath, there's a chance the Wynn-Berkley kerfuffle will be all over the local news in the next day or two, in which case, you know, never mind.

Comments

[Goldy]

So are you saying if I start hating Obama, I can lose my old lady and get a new one, my stock price will reach record levels, I will be fabulously wealthy, my family will be fabulously wealthy for generations, and I get to be on Fox?

I will gladly try to "take my country back" if you trade Neil Cavuto for Courtney Friel. Cavuto has thick ankles.

[ColinFromLasVegas]

"Yet a quick glean (and if I missed it lemme know) of area news organization websites indicates that Wynn's rant on Berkley is thus far thoroughly unmentioned by the entire Las Vegas mainstream media."

I think it would be safe to say the reason why mainstream media here in Las Vegas has never made mention of this is for four reasons (or combinations thereof):

(1) They don't care;

(2) It didn't happen;

(3) They chose to ignore it because Steve Wynn has a long history of constantly pounding out an ultra right wingnut agenda; and/or

(4) They are holding back. In hopes that Steve Wynn would go elsewhere in his tirades. Maybe double down on throwing out there that President Obama is a Kenyan socialist and still needs to produce a valid birth certificate or something.

I say it's probably number (2).

One thing for sure is that Fox PORNO (Political Organization-Republican News Only) News ALWAYS calls Steve Wynn about anything that happens in Las Vegas. Because they know he won't disappoint their fanatical viewers and throw red meat out there to amp up the Obama Derangement Syndrome to the max.

I've seen him talk on one show a year or so back where he went into a tirade so bad that his surgically altered face almost fell off, and the news commentator interrupted; basically told him nicely to shut the hell up and let someone else talk to take a slap at President Obama.

I still say that the new Occupy Las Vegas movement should have set up in the lot across the street from Wynn/Encore where the old Frontier was. Not only because it was centrally located and conveniently on the Strip, but because it would have thrown Steve Wynn into a hyper ballistic meltdown of pure utter rage. Because he not only worries about his casinos, but all the surrounding areas must be aesthetically pleasing to the eye too.

If all else fails, I predict Steve Wynn has a chance as a Fox PORNO News contributor though. Hell, that piece of shit Sanford got hired, Steve Wynn has a chance. With that hiring, they have definitely confirmed they set their sights and expectations very, very low.

[dave404]

I don't/won't set foot in either an Adelson nor a Wynn property. Period.