McCain and Team Have Many Ties to Gambling Industry

NY TImes ^ | 9/27/08 | Jo Becker

[pissant]

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.

A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party’s evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain.

The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain’s campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world’s second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain’s affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress.

As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to

[inkfarmer]

Roll with it. They are running out of things to write about.

[vetvetdoug]

It sometimes takes a gambler to get things done. Didn't a Democrat gamble with nuclear annihilation with the Russians to get the missiles out of Cuba? With a gambler one cannot discern if its a bluff or the real thing, it keeps the other side off guard. The NYT is like 99% of the MSM, in Obama’s pocket. If McCain were a tube sucking Democrat, the NYT would call the instincts of a gambler an asset.

[7thOF7th]

The glaring point from this should be that McCain gambles with his own money and the Democrats gambled and lost with ours!

[Darren McCarty]

I’ll place $100 that Pinch’s circulation drops again.

[editor-surveyor]

Bluffing is a minor component of poker. The most important component of poker is awareness of the changes in the odds, card by card.

Non poker players that see it in movies or on TV get the impression that bluffing is far more important than it is, because that is the only element of the game that can be made dramatic, and thus is the only one that is seen.

Obama is not a poker player; he is what is commonly known as a ‘fish.’

[CT-Freeper]

I like Foxwoods - it's my second-favorite casino in Connecticut, after Mohegan Sun.