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6 Stateline News Sunday, July 27, 2008
THE WAY WE SEE IT
An excellent
adventure
B arack
Obama’s current standing in the
presidential race — he holds an 8 percentage-point
lead in the latest
Washington Post-ABC News poll — is easy to
understand when you watch the fawning media
coverage of the candidate’s recent globe-trotting.
Obama, who has less foreign policy experience
than the average foreign-exchange student,
sought to burnish his
thin credentials with a
trip this past week to the
Middle East and to
Europe. He was accompanied
by a phalanx of
adoring reporters and
news anchors, who
chronicled — unwitting-
YOUR VIEWS
Our view
■ Media magic
recasts Obama
as superior
statesman.
ly, of course — the painful awkwardness of an
elite liberal trundling among the unwashed fighting
men and women of the American military.
Glad-handing American troops in Iraq, Obama,
though at least photogenic, looked comically similar
to 1988 Democrat presidential nominee
Michael Dukakis, who weebled and wobbled atop
a tank in a laughable effort to project commander-in-chief
gravitas.
Republican John McCain, meanwhile, challenged
Obama to concede that the Iraq troop
surge, for which the Democrat expressed no
hope, audacious or otherwise last year, has been
a rousing success. Obama, predictably, waffled,
even as he stood on ground that would have been
ceded to terrorists had his retreat-and-defeat
strategy for troop withdrawal been implemented
instead of the surge.
And yet the myth of Obama as a qualified presidential
candidate stubbornly persists, thanks
largely to an elite media in full swoon over the
gossamer shimmer of a young, camera-ready liberal.
And what of McCain, whose cranky common
sense used to earn high praise among the chattering
class? He is now so far under the media
bus that he couldn’t get the New York Times to
publish his column about the Iraq war, even
though Obama was allowed to hold forth on the
same page just days earlier. So much for the
maverick’s fourth-estate constituency.
Such events underscore the challenge facing
McCain, who seems flummoxed by the serial
platitudes of Obama and the complicity of malleable
reporters.
It may not be fair, but it’s entirely predictable.
The Favre reality
To the editor:
I know it’s freaking people out that Brett Favre
probably won't be lining up behind center this season
(Outlook, July 20 Stateline News). Fear not. Bart
Starr played 15 years and knew when it was time to
go. Favre has played 17, so the last two could be considered
a bonus.
If Favre can’t deal psychologically with leaving the
game, the best place to play might be with the
Edmonton Eskimos. Edmonton’s uniforms look the
same as Green Bay’s. I know it sounds cold and heartless,
but we’re going to have to look to the future
sometime. The new quarterback is going to need playing
time to work the kinks out, and keeping Favre
another year just delays the inevitable. It could be
ugly, but people are going to have to face reality.
I’m thinking about trying out, since I was a pretty
good kick returner in high school. I’m 24 years
younger than John McCain, and I think I can still
bring it if the money is right. I’m going to retain Jerry
McGuire as my agent.
D.J. Duffy
Delavan
OUTLOOK
States on a gambling binge
“America is on a gambling binge. The
more available and accessible it
becomes, the more gambling is acceptable
to people.”
Tom Grey, executive director of the
National Coalition Against Legalized
Gambling, made that statement during
March 2006. Grey’s next line was the
following:
“But shouldn’t government be encouraging
people to save their money,
instead of encouraging them to gamble?”
Even if you believe the answer to
Grey’s question is yes, the stark reality
is just the opposite. Government is
expanding gaming options, even searching
for creative ways to separate gamblers
from their money.
Stateline.org reports, “States are
more addicted to gambling revenue
than ever as the lure of easy, new
money for schools, tax relief and public
services has led to an explosion of statesanctioned
casinos, slot machines at
racetracks and lottery games.
“Twenty-five years ago, gambling was
legal in only three states. Now, every
state except Utah and Hawaii rely on
gambling to generate revenues to help
avoid raising taxes.”
Wisconsin is right there with other
states, enabling gambling that rivals
Las Vegas and promoting games with
clever marketing in radio and TV ads.
The heavy concentration of games has
evolved, despite the fact Wisconsin voters
took a firm stand against the proliferation
of gambling.
The Wisconsin Legislative Reference
Bureau wrote a report during May 2000
entitled, “The Evolution of Legalized
Gambling in Wisconsin.” The report
details the 1993 statewide vote that
asked voters whether Wisconsin had
enough gambling.
Gov. Tommy Thompson called a spe-
cial legislative session in June 1992 to
consider amending the constitution to
permanently exclude casino-style gambling
from inclusion in the state lottery.
The following question was presented to
the voters:
“Gambling expansion prohibited.
Shall article IV of the constitution be
revised to clarify that all forms of gambling
are prohibited except bingo, raffles,
pari-mutuel on-track betting and
the current state-run lottery and to
assure that the state will not conduct
prohibited forms of gambling as part of
the state-run lottery?”
In, 1993, the amendment passed by a
vote of 623,987-435,180. As things now
stand, state-operated or private casinostyle
gaming in Wisconsin would
require constitutional change.
The results of the advisory referenda,
which also appeared on the ballot, indicated
the voters’ preference for maintaining
the status quo regarding gambling.
Despite the results, Gov. Doyle has
signed gaming compacts with tribes
that have resulted in an explosion of
gambling never foreseen. After Louis
Butler replaced Diane Sykes on the
state Supreme Court, the court made a
ruling that essentially OK’d the expanded
gaming negotiated in the compacts.
In July 2006 I wrote, “Thanks to the
ruling, the state’s largest gambling
operation, the Potawatomi Bingo Casino
in Milwaukee, will now advance with
plans to triple its floor space, currently
at 70,000 square feet. That will give the
facility 210,000 square feet, more floor
space than any casino in all of Las
Vegas. The MGM Grand Hotel is the
largest casino in Las Vegas at 171,500
square feet.
“The Potawatomi also plan to double
the number of slot machines from 1,500
to 3,000. That would rival the MGM
Grand’s 3,700 slot machines, and the
expanded Potawatomi facility would
have more slots than any other casino
in Las Vegas — Wynn (2,500), Venetian
(2,500), Bellagio (2,433), Mandalay Bay
(2,400), Mirage (2,294), Circus Circus
(2,255), Excalibur (2,250), Caesars
Palace (2,100), and the Palms, Luxor
and New York New York hotels, (2,000).”
As predicted, last month the
Potawatomi Bingo Casino advertised
the grand opening of its expansion, now
featuring 3,100 slot machines.
The director of the Wisconsin Lottery
now wishes games could be offered
online. This follows a national trend of
states searching for new ways to expand
gambling opportunities, from “racinos,”
slots at racetracks to state-owned casino
resorts.
Is there no end to what states might
do to recruit more gamblers? Probably
not.
The Denver Post reports the Colorado
Lottery is now selling coffee-flavored
scratch-and-sniff scratch-off lottery tickets,
with chocolate- and flower-flavored
scents coming soon. A spokeswoman for
the Colorado Lottery, Erika Gonzalez
says, “We could even have a Corona
with lime.”
Obama follows an erratic course
It looks as though the reason Barack
Obama is reluctant to have multiple
debates with John McCain is because
he’s having too much fun debating himself.
(OK, that was a cheap shot; so
what? Some days, you pass up the
cheap shot, you don’t get any shot at
all.)
The thing is, he has so “refined” his
positions on a number of issues lately
that they resemble political gummy
bears, all chewy and sweet.
For example:
He announced his administration
(if any) would support faith-based initiatives
by private religious groups,
saying that the social problems facing
the country are too great and complex
to be solved by government action
alone. Separation of church and state
anyone?
The faith-based initiative, remember,
was the lure that George Bush used to
get evangelical voters into his boat.
Could Mr. Obama be trolling the same
waters?
When the Supreme Court, by a 5-4
vote, knocked down a law that called
for the execution of rapists of children,
Obama spoke out against the ruling.
Aren’t real liberals supposed to be
against the death penalty? Period?
Cruel and inhumane punishment, the
chance of murdering an innocent person,
that sort of thing? Apparently,
Obama felt that child rape was an issue
he had to come out against, and he didn’t
care how many votes it cost him.
But when the Supreme Court said
that the District of Columbia’s ban on
handguns was unconstitutional, Obama
SEN. EN.
M ARY LAZICH AZICH
GUEST COLUMN
DONALD ONALD KAUL AUL
MINUTEMAN MEDIA
agreed with it. He said that while he
believes in the government’s right to
regulate handguns, he also believes in
the right of individuals to own them.
He didn’t straddle the issue, he surrounded
it.
He supported a bill establishing
electronic surveillance rules for the government’s
eavesdropping program, even
though it granted immunity to telecommunications
companies that conducted
warrantless wiretaps in the past.
He said that the bill was no prize,
but it was a big improvement on last
year’s bill. Besides, there’s a war on.
And finally, he said he might
reassess his timetable for the withdrawal
of our troops from Iraq after
he’d gone there and talked to our military
commanders. The granola liberals
of the anti-war left squealed loudest at
this, hearing in it the echoes of John
McCain’s endless-war strategy.
No, he said, he remains committed to
ending the war, and he reiterated his
previously stated position that “we had
to be as careful getting out as we were
careless getting in.”
This might have turned out to be a
bigger deal but for the fact that Iraq’s
leaders, our allies, are refusing to sign
a treaty with the United States unless
it contains a firm commitment for the
Contact Wisconsin state Sen. Mary
Lazich, R-New Berlin, at
Sen.Lazich@legis.wisconsin.gov,
www.senatorlazich.com, Senator Mary
Lazich, State Capitol, P.O. Box 7882
Madison, WI 53707 or (800) 334-1442.
timely withdrawal of American troops.
They also indicated that they didn’t
want any American bases left behind,
either.
Excuse me, but doesn’t this put the
government of Iraq slightly to the left
of Obama on the issue? And way, way
to the left of McCain, who talks of keeping
troops there forever or 100 years,
whichever comes first. (Yeah, I know,
he’d only keep them there if they
weren’t needed, but still.)
But you know what? None of that socalled
flip-flopping matters much to me.
I may be less than enthusiastic about
some of those positions but they all
seem reasonable to me, something
about which we can agree to disagree.
Religious organizations have a history
and an expertise in helping people in
dire straits, and if the government can
give them a little boost, it’s money well
spent.
I’m also against capital punishment,
but if you’re going to kill anyone, child
rapists are a good place to start. The
D.C. gun law is a joke, ineffective and
unenforceable. Besides, what’s so wrong
with a politician changing his mind?
John McCain used to be against Bush’s
tax cuts, now he’s for them. He’s
allowed a second opinion. For the past
seven years, we have had a president
who never changed his mind about anything.
How’s that working out for you?
Donald Kaul retired as Washington
columnist for the Des Moines Register.
E-mail him at donald.kaul2@verizon.net
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