Loathing Las Vegas?

"When times are tough, you tighten your belts," President Obama said Tuesday in a town hall meeting in Nashua, N.H. "You don't go buying a boat when you can barely pay your mortgage," He was doing well up to that point but he just had to keep going. "You don't blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you're trying to save for college. You prioritize. You make tough choices."

I think it's pretty obvious to anyone that he was merely using Vegas as a synonym for gambling and gambling with money needed for necessities isn't very smart. But it's not the first time this President has called out Las Vegas by name as an example of reckless spending. In February of last year he remarked that companies that received federal funds from the bailouts should not use the money to go to Vegas or the Superbowl. So now every elected official with ties to Las Vegas are up in arms.

Senator Harry Reid (D)-Nevada wrote in statement that he headlined "Reid to Obama: Lay off Las Vegas. The President needs to lay off Las Vegas and stop making it the poster child for where people shouldn’t be spending their money, Reid said. "I would much rather tourists and business travelers spend their money in Las Vegas than spend it overseas."

“Enough is enough!” Democratic Congresswoman Shelley Berkley fumed. “President Obama needs to stop picking on Las Vegas and he needs to let Americans decide for themselves how and where to spend their hard-earned vacation dollars.”

Las Vegas mayor Oscar Goodman took the cake I thought with his remarks to the press. “He has a real psychological hang up about the entertainment capitol of the world. An apology won’t be acceptable this time, I don’t know where his vendetta comes from but we’re not going to let him make his bones by lambasting Las Vegas" He closed his statements with, “He didn’t learn his lesson the first time, but when he hurt our economy by his ill conceived rhetoric, we didn’t think it would happen again, but now that it has I want to assure you, when he comes I’ll do everything I can to give him the boot back to Washington and to visit his failures back there."

“I gotta tell you this, everybody says I shouldn’t say it, but I gotta tell you the way it is. This president is a real slow learner.”

What does he mean "An apology won't be acceptable this time."? What else can the President do except explain and apologize that his remarks weren't meant to denigrate Las Vegas itself but only to point out how priorities have to set when there isn't enough money to do all the things one might like to do. Las Vegas and Nevada has been hit hard by the recession in the last two years as people are doing exactly what the President is talking about and prioritizing as their disposable income for leisure shrinks. Does he really think Obama needs psychological help and want a pound of flesh? Whatever he wants from the President over and above the apology, it's pretty clear Obama won't be getting a key to the city anytime soon.

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