A terrible Honeymoon in Vegas for Kasich

Reposted from Plunderbund


Well, the reviews are in for Gov.Kasich's headliner role in a reprisal of the movie Honeymoon in Vegas. Not good!

Headliner?   Kneeliner  is a better fit for his groveling performance to impress  Sheldon Adelson, the Midas-like figure whose riches are based on casinos. Adelson spends hundreds of millions promoting politicians who would be expected to protect his gambling empire.  Of late he's in a huge campaign to block on-line gambling that he fears would nibble at his casinos.

Allow me to quote New York Times columnist David Firestone, who wrote:

"It's hard to imagine a political spectacle more loathesome than the parade of Republican presidential candidates who spent the last few days bowing and scraping before the mighty bank  account of the casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.   One by one, they stood at a microphone in Mr. Adelson's Venetian hotel in Las Vegas and spoke to the Republican Jewish Coalition (also a  wholly owned subsidiary of Mr. Adelson), hoping to sound sufficiently Pro-Israel and pro-interventionist and philo-Semitic to win a portion of Mr. Adelson's billions for their campaigns.

"Gov. John Kasich of Ohio made an unusually bold venture into foreign policy by calling for greater  sanctions on Iran and Russia, and by announcing that the United States should not pressure Israel into the peace process (Wild applause)  "Hey, listen, Sheldon, thanks for inviting me," he said.  "God bless you for what you do."

Two points:  There is no evidence that Kasich has ever been a foreign policy expert.  Nor that God is at all interested in blessing billionaire casino owners.

Kaisch's  shameless pandering even exceeded  that of Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin who humbly told his audience that he puts a menorah candle next to his Christmas tree.

Unfortunately, in what was clearly an eager  foray to build goodwill and a new bank account for his  presidential run after his own presumed reelecton in November, Kasich brought no honor to his office by relinquishing his soul, nor to the people of Ohio. Funny how we have long suspected that he was that kind of guy.

Maybe it wasn't Honeymoon in Vegas after all, but another Vegas movie:  Indecent Proposal.

Kasich seeking pure gold in Adelson's Wheel of Fortune...

Should we be surprised that Gov.Kasich  earned the coveted Sheldon Adelson White Guy  Mr.Congeniality Award at the Republican Jewish Coalition's spring conference in Las Vegas?  That became a slam-dunk as the governor daringly referred several times to the mega-casino owner - for God's sake one of the  richest men in the world - on a chummy first-name basis. Unless you are a car salesman, you don't get much friendlier than that.

Nosy reporters, of course,  wanted to know whether the governor was running for president by trying to suck up as much cash as he could in Las Vegas from Adelson's Wheel  of Fortune. Kasich, always as coy as a squirrel  darting to the new batch of sunflower seeds in he driveway, denied any interest in the presidency.

Rather,   he wanted to assure his host and most conservative  audience  that he shared their commitment to a better, lower taxed, world..

How? Saw this quote in the Plain Dealer:

"All the things we believe in?  They work."

Not Bartlett quality.  Not even up to the standards of George W. Bush's compassionate conservatism.  But to his appreciative host that Forbes reports makes $32 milion a day, it wasn't that hard to crack the code. What's more, Vegas is a long way from Steubenville.

About the governors avowed disinterest in higher office:  The Washington Post has claimed the field of assigning Pinocchios to political utterances that fare badly  against fact.

Rather than piggyback the Post's colorful version of lies, I will  create my own tag and assign several Cyranos to Ohio's non-presidential candidate candidate. Clip and save.

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Kasich sees Adelson during visiting hours

Well, the pilgrimage has resumed to the knees of Sheldon Adelson, the impossibly wealthy  Las Vegas casino baron.  It has been reported that even Ohio Gov. John Kasich, hoping for a fast $$$ launch of  his reelection campaign, visited Adelson recently so that everybody on Kasich's side will soon be on a first-name basis with  everyone in the Adelson family.

For political practitioners, it hasn't gone unnoticed that Adelson dropped $150  million into  Mitt Romney's collection plate and millions more to Republican candidates that included another loser, Newt Gingrich.   But when you're worth many billions and are that generous, who's counting anyway?

So far, Adelson's beneficiaries haven't been that fortunate on Election Day.  He may have to reserve some good fortune for his own  challenge by the Feds who are looking into his casino enterprises in Asia.  Undeterred, Adelson  is said to be prepared to unload another $100 million on 2014 midterm House and Senate candidates who could do him some good.  Just one more way for Adelson to shoot craps these days after a bad night at the table.

The anti-Obama crowd: poor post-election losers

If we've learned anything in the post-election days, it's that Republicans are poor losers.  Mitt Romney accuses the president of bribing voters.   John McCain pathetically  fumes that  there is a cover-up  in the investigation of Benghazi, and the worst incompetence  he has ever-ever  seen,  another botched Watergate.    A gun shop owner in Arizona says he will not do business with anybody who voted for Obama.  A Republican county party treasurer  in Texas refers to the Obama voters as "maggots". A Tea Partyer,  he is readying his friends to secede from the Union.  Bill O'Reilly sours that Obama won because people want, of all things, "stuff". We know who he's talking about, don't we?

About the secessionists:  They, too, are soreheads.  Tens of thousands across the land with nothing better to do with their time have signed petitions to secede.  Can whole states self-deport from America?
Quacks like Sean Hannity seem to be enjoying the secessionist uprising.  They're his people. This is the gift that will keep on giving for Fox News.  It's their Obama-caused Pompeii.

Their only problem is that Obama's victory shocked the hell out of Mitt's army, which had planned a major motorcade to his campaign headquarters on election night, a huge fireworks display and good ol' boys  conviviality for the 40 or so  wealthy friends - Donald Trump and that spooky billionaire Sheldon Adelson among them with overflowing piggy banks -- who flew into Boston in their private jets.

That's the awful news.  The good news is that Obama did, in fact, win,  because if he had lost,  Mitt and the Tea Partyers and the miscellaneous billionaires  would have been much more insufferable.



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Adelson tells all, or at least some of it

When you're one of the richest  guys in America, you don't have to be asked twice to share your views with the Wall Street Journal.  As a record contributor to Republican candidates against
President Obama,  here we have multi-multi-billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson  stepping up to explain why he's a former Democrat who has staunchly supported the Republican team.

You may recall that it was Newt Gingrich, alas, the lone GOP candidate to promise that he would build  a permanent base on the moon, who got a political life preserver stuffed with $20 million from Adelson before  Newt, for all of his dreamy chutzpah,  landed on the dark side of the lunar landscape.  That was when Adelson switched his allegiance to Romney, with the explanation that he didn't leave the Democratic Party but rather, it left him.  Nice try, for a guy whose fortunes are amply inflated by his investments in Macau, his Chinese  Mecca for high rollers. (I keep waiting for a poor crossroads preacher to buck the uber wealthy class and stand up to  say that  Obama is a nice guy.)

Adelson,  a devoted advocate of Israel, said he doesn't trust Obama to defend that nation  and doesn't mind saying so. . On domestic matters,  he is not thrilled with unions, either,  and is said to own the only non-union casino in Vegas.   On that score, when he says he no longer shares Democrats' values, I'd say good for them.