Jeff, that's not what took out the steam of the WSOP. Funs as it has been, people just can't play it anymore. They are dealing with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. A few members of the New Gilded Class built by the Bushies and their friends might have the money and time to throw away their investments into silly high-risk games.
But most Americans are coming to realize that high-stakes poker is like the Social Security privatization scam promoted by the corporate Republicans, a "game" benefiting only a teensy tiny number of fat cats. And that doesn't attract a big teevee audience.
Anyways, good luck at the tables. Always enjoy your columns.

Big Sky's comment is true on too many levels. I work for a nonpartisan organization, and we take that mandate seriously. But what I saw over and over again in this election season is people who said they could no longer support the Republican Party because it had abandoned the civil-libertarian ethic that had once attracted them.
Instead, it had become the party of a powerful bloc that sought (and still seeks) to disenfranchise, indeed criminalize, those who live outside the margins of a society grounded in some "Leave It To Beaver" vision of American society.
I know my GOP friends, and they are many, will push to re-invent a party to bring its public policies in line with America, instead of Phyllis Schafley, an obviously intelligent but deeply conflicted woman who published her first book in 1963 - yet still holds the party elite in her hand. I mean, this is, like, an entirely new century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phyllis_Sch...

Kenny Guinn served two terms and has been our most popular Republican governor of the modern era, and probably second only to the late, great Mike O'Callahan among governors overall.
Like O'Callahan, Guinn had the fortitude and courage to recognize that Nevada had to take steps to address chronic underfunding of essential services, education and other pressing needs.
We need more public servants like him - in the Governor's Mansion and the Legislature.

Wait, wouldn't 4.3 million visitors be UP from 3.9 million in July '07? Maybe I'm just reading this wrong.

MGM is a power to be reckoned with in political and financial circles locally and nationally, but even the Titans of Industry couldn't overcome the fact that building thousands of homes at the California state line would be terrible, sprawling growth.
The thousands of commuters would contribute to air pollution while simultaneously destroying land specifically set aside for the preservation of threatened wildlife.
Cancelling the project is one more indication that we must rethink the design fundamentals of dumb, energy-wasteful ex-urbs.
Satellite communities miles from urban centers waste land, energy and air quality.
No amount of offshore drilling or tax breaks for the petrochemical industry can overcome the fact that oil and its products will become ever more expensive; long commutes didn't make sense three years ago, and they really, really don't make sense today. Such misguided development efforts are particularly silly when you look around Las Vegas' urban center and see huge tracts of land begging for infill development.