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Politics is Like Las Vegas... You can take it for 3 days at a time.
Last weekend, my seester surprised me with a trip to Vegas for my 45th birthday. It was fabulous, in that special, Vegas only, glitzie-no-holds-barred way.
But one cannot really go to Vegas without being struck by the sheer volume of money moving through that desert city. Virtually all of the major casino-hotels are expanding. Adding 1,000 rooms or 3,000 rooms, or their own personal themed retail space. Ceasars is roughly twice the size it was the last time I was there.
And new construction is happening everywhere. Bigger, fancier, mega casino hotels are being built as fast as they can tear down the old ones.
About 4 days after I left Vegas, they tore down The Sands Hotel, where Frank, Deano, Sammy, and Joey held court for what seems like forever. They tore down the stage they played on. I can't get over that.
It's like tearing down Carnegie Hall after Judy Garland's last concert there. Unthinkable.
But the American public, and the six rich guys that own most of the strip, demand bigger and better casinos to bring in bigger and better money.
The old style casino with some slot machines and blackjack, a fabulous band, and a good restaurant are just not exciting enough for the ever-increasing American appetite for... I don't know... MORE STUFF.
So much of what used to be amazing about America has been transformed into something gaudy and shallow. And I couldn't help but experience Las Vegas and think that it has a great deal in common with the current political climate in D.C. The greed, the showmanship, the pandering....
What used to be a free-wheeling pioneer sort of spirit has been replaced with all-for-show smoke and mirrors. And if you pull back the red velvet curtain, there's nothing there.
And you know what? That works in Vegas. In Washington, D.C., it leaves one feeling queasy.
So, the question I have to ask is what the hell can I do to bring back the politics of old? Where Republicans and Democrats argued mostly about money. Republicans wanting to keep it all, and Democrats wanting to spend it on the public.
I remember when Republicans didn't lie as a daily exercise. They just didn't see things the same, and there were honest but heated debates. But they were real. They weren't fake. And I came back from Vegas longing for something real. Something un-greedy. Something that mattered.
And I thought about politics, and wondered how do you bring back The Sands Hotel?
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Good analysis! Went to Vegas in 1974 as a student and the downtown still had some character, and saw it disappear over the years to the point where during the last couple years, I was shocked to see that the entire downtown HAD BEEN COVERED OVER AND MADE INTO A MALL!!
The whole northend of the Strip is being torn down - all the old historic casinos. The Thunderbird is gone, the Riviera is like a fading movie star, and wedding chapels are surrounded with barbed wire. A cab driver told us no one cares about history, only money.
The Las Vegas of today is truly owned by just a few people - Steve Wynn, the Trumps, Kerkorian. & it's gaudy, fake and tacky. There are actually alot of people wandering around lost!!
Researching, I find that alot of projects coming up are half-owned by Dubai World, the Government of Dubai, or Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem.
I don't think people in their countries can drink, gamble, carouse, yet alot goes on behind closed doors, and some of the projects in Dubai are built with essentially foreign slave labor. So maybe they are not such strange bedfellows with the Richie Riches of the US after all!
(about to pass over the "Brooklyn Bridge" which is across the street from the "Eiffel Tower," just past "King Arthur's Castle" next to "The Great Pyramid" but still a few blocks to go for "Greece" and "Venice, Italy")
Curious about Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem?
CEO of Dubai Ports
CEO of Tejari.com
CEO of Nakheel Development
CEO of PCFZ Corporation
Former CEO of Jebel Ali Free Zone
Former CEO of Dubai Ports Authority
Jebel Ali Free Zone is made up of 2200 companies from over 100 countries. Dubai Customs has now merged with Jebel Ali Free Zone and Dubai Ports Authority.
Nakheel created The Palm, the world's two largest man-made islands, aka "the 8th Wonder of the World." Also The Gardens Shopping Mall, Jumeirah Islands residential projects, Jumeirah Lake Towers and The World. The World consists of 200 man-made islands positions to form the world map.
He is also
CEO of Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport
Member of World Exporting Processing Zones Association
Associated Member of French Business Council
Global Leader for Tomorrow by World Economic Forum
Recipient of Gulf Business Aware
Al Majalla Business Pesonality
Regular participant at the World Economic Forum (Davos, Switzerland)
Member of the Board of Emirates International Forum
Member of the Board of Dubai Chamber of Commerce
Chairman of Jebel Ali Properties.
When not working he is passionate about the outdoors and his interests include endurance racing and deep-sea diving.
(All easily discovered by Googling him)
I wanted to see if the Sultan was pictured with any of the Bush family - he's close with Neil Bush, George's brother who lives a charmed life.
"When you're Neil Bush, rich people from all over the world are eager to invest money in your businesses, even though your businesses have a history of crashing and burning in spectacular fashion.
When you're Neil Bush, you'll be sitting in a hotel room in Thailand or Hong Kong, minding your own business, when suddenly there's a knock at the door. You answer it and a comely woman strolls in and has sex with you."
Huh? That's from an article in the Washington Post.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A35297-2003Dec27?language=printer
Neil has Secret Service escort.
The sexual escapades resulted in a nasty divorce.
He signed with Grace Semiconductor of China. All he had to do was go to meetings. For this he was paid $2 million in stock over 5 years plus $10,000 for every meeting. He had no background in semiconductors and admitted it.
He gets $60,000 per year from Crest Investment in Texas for "miscellaneous consulting services." This mostly consists in answering phones when others there are busy.
The article goes on:
"Ah, it's nice to be Neil Bush, who seems to be living the lifestyle immortalized in those famous Dire Straits lyrics: "Money for nothin' and chicks for free."
As well, the characterize him as the "embarrassing relative," in a long tradition:
There was Sam Houston Johnson, who used to get drunk and start blabbing to the press until his brother, Lyndon, sicced the Secret Service on him.
And Donald Nixon, who dreamed of founding a fast-food chain called Nixonburgers and who accepted, but never repaid, a $200,000 loan from billionaire Howard Hughes. His brother, Dick, had the Secret Service tap his phone.
And Billy Carter, who drank prodigious quantities of beer, authored a book called "Redneck Power" and took $200,000 from the government of Libya.
And Roger Clinton, a party animal who spent a year in prison for cocaine dealing and who later appeared in a movie called "Pumpkinhead II" playing a pol called Mayor Bubba.
But Neil Bush has surpassed them all. Bush has done something that no other American has ever accomplished: He has become the embarrassing relative of not one but two presidents."
('80s and '90s - shady deals with Silverado Savings and Loan)
(recently - paternity rumors, defamation and voodoo allegations)
Neil did not return calls, too involved with Ignite!, his educational software company. (He is dyslexic but somehow made it through college, in international economics, whereupon he took up with "The Donald Trump of Denver" and paid himself $66,000/year but they never found a drop of oil). He did think of running for Congress as well as Governor, so three brothers would be governors of 3 states.
Then he started a methane exploration company and paid himself $160,000/year, but not a drop of methane was ever found and a rich friend of his father's hired him for $60,000 at a media company, essentially for doing nothing.
After his dad left the White House, James Baker and Neil Bush were supposed to get contracts from the Kuwaiti government but he wasn't too good at it. In 2000 he made $1.3 million though, $642,500 for introducing an Asian investor to owners of an American high-tech company.
From the article:
"During his travels, he met with several Arab princes and enjoyed a private dinner with Jiang Zemin, then China's president, who serenaded Bush with a military song."
He has $23 million for his software company, with his parents investing and businessmen from Taiwan, Japan, Kuwait, British Virgin Islands and United Arab Emirates. (This is all public record) The company now has a Mexican partner, so was able to lay off half of its employees by outsourcing their jobs.
From the article:
Kevin Phillips, historian and author of the forthcoming book "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush," sees Neil Bush as a man who has made a career of cashing in on his famous name.
His reading program is supposed to make learning fun for "hunter-warrior" kids who don't like reading. It's used in 120 Texas school districts. It's supposed to work pretty good but dumbs down history. It shows the Seminole wars as a cartoon football game. The Constitution is taught in a rap song.
It was 55 delegates from 12 states
Took one hot Philadelphia summer to create
A perfect document for their imperfect times
Franklin, Madison, Washington -- a lot of the cats
Who used to be in the Continental Congress way back.
Click on the link and learn about the paternity suit and voodoo.
Thanks for the analysis...
I just went to Vegas last month (and won a small fortune there), and yes, the construction frenzy is amazing.
Unlike elsewhere, there is no preservation effort whatsoever, of older, historical Vegas.
And Vegas keeps getting more expensive. I still remember the days when one could stay in Vegas for $20/night, now it's more like $300. Blackjack minimum is $15 to $25 depending on where I am, whereas it was $5 just a few years ago.
I have a feeling that the masses may not be able to afford a weekend in Vegas anymore, in the near future. But who in this great capitalist economy cares about the socialist masses, anyway? (For now though, the I-15 to Los Angeles is still jammed every weekend.)
Did I miss something? What do the Sultan and Neil Bush have to do with the blog post? Or did those comments really belong on the Open Thread and just got misplaced?
Dwahzon
You have to understand my mind .. it goes .. Las Vegas .. Vic talks about how they tore down the Sands and the old nostalgic places .. as I've noticed when there .. and she mentions that just a few people own everything .. as I've noticed.
I start to wonder who owns what. I find out that most of the big planned new projects are at least 50% underwritten by Dubai big shots .. specifically one certain Sultan. I wonder about the Sultan .. I figure out he's the same guy building The Palms and The World, which I've read alot about.
I wonder about connections with the Bush family .. since they were gung ho about Dubai Ports and all. I find out Neil .. I wonder about Neil .. it's all connected.
It was not intended for the Open Thread but maybe my mental associations were not apparent .. sometimes they aren't even to me .. hence the little dots like a Jr. High School Girl.
My final association is with zombies .. as I have spent the afternoon with them .. but that will definitely go into another thread or mostly on another site.
Sorry to confuse you .. I didn't mean to but glad you inquired!!
No Brains For Oil!! ;)
The ruling class=big bucks. really big assetts. but no loyalty to the constitution or to humanity....
Vic,
Great thread post. I've never been to L.V. nor have I ever wanted to go. Now, I know I've missed nothing.
But while you were experiencing L.V.'s merry-go-round for the rich, and seeing the similarity in it to D.C., I was with a group experiencing something that reminding me of D.C.
Medieval Times.
Yep. We went to Medieval Times a place with a staged dinner production with kings and queens and wenches and serfs... and of course the staged fights and feasts. It definitely reminded me of DC because that is the way our country is becoming--those of the haves and the have-nots, the rich and the poor, the bejeweled and the hungry. Also, the cloyingly fake phoniness is a common thread between the two, too.
So while we could chuckle and smirk at the activities at medieval times because we had a few extra dollars to spare for something so theatrical, at least a few of us there were too aware of real intersections of themes: traitors to the king, torture, death, rich and the paupers, etc.
Dwahzon,
NMP clearly laid out the peanut trail showing the connections between Vic's posts and each of the comments above.
From post One
Post two--continues the theme.
Post three contains the link to the Sultan and L.V. which is also connected to the theme from the picture above.
And before nmp even posted the article about Neil Bush she laid out the link to the original thread header with this comment.
So all one had to do to understand why each of those comments were on topic was to actually read all of her original comments and follow the trail left along the way.
Isn't that the whole purpose and design of a blog anyways? Each thread topic leads to comments which lead to other ideas and generate more conversation or more in-depth thinking about the original topic? Most of what nmp had posted were unknown by me and maybe by others here too. So not only did she follow the criteria in blog posting, she also followed dwahzon-blog-etiquette too.
Thanks nmp for laying it out.
Sparrow, I missed one evidently key sentence.
"Researching, I find that a lot of projects coming up are half-owned by Dubai World, the Government of Dubai, or Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem."
You have to grant that without it, the rest seems unconnected to the post.
So thanks for the very detailed outline which nmp had already laid out.