November 07, 2012
Around 7:23PM Eastern Standard Time, the musical artist and entrepreneur currently known as Diddy called the election for Obama on Twitter, making it official as mandated in the United States Constitution by ending his Tweet with the word “biaaatch.”
So we”ll have the same president and roughly the same Congress that have served us so well for the past few years.
Having endured more than I can usually stand of cable news, I decide to stroll down into the casino. Vegas is, like always, a feast of overstimulation. It feels like being poked in the eyes and ears with 1,000 needles at once.
To my shock I realize that Vegas isn”t so friendly to budget-minded tourists anymore. A man used to be able to get a sirloin steak for pennies, but now a 20-ounce bottle of Diet Pepsi is over $3 and a 20-ounce cup of coffee set me nearly a five-spot. What happened? Rumor has it that casinos are now trying to bleed money out of their customers every way possible after the local economy fell into the toilet a few years back.
Oh, right”Nevada’s economy. The entrepreneurs who rolled the dice on Nevada seem to have lost badly. The state’s 11.8% official unemployment rate is the nation’s highest, but to be fair, hookers, drug dealers, and mobsters are not counted as “employed.” Nevada’s housing market and bankruptcy rates are also among the nation’s worst. Despite all this, the state went straight into Obama’s back pocket.
There are few things on Earth I find scarier than the blank faces of Vegas gamblers. But undeterred by the corpulent and expressionless zombie slot-machine players, I decide to spend a grand total of $5 on gambling…all of it on slot machines. I fed $5 into the hungry slots, pulled the lever, and received $23.20 back. I decided to stop while I was ahead. Unlike the government, I can”t keep printing money and spending it.
As in gambling, there was at least a bit of mystery this election season about who was going to win, although if you have any basic understanding of math, you”d realize that everyone except the casino owners lose in the end.
Image of Las Vegas courtesy of Shutterstock
