The governor of Nevada is still sore at President Obama for making some passing remark a few months ago about how people tend to spend a lot of money in Las Vegas. For this terrible sin, Obama will be punished by Jim Gibbons' absence at the airport when he lands in town today.
It is probably for the best that Obama not associate himself too closely with the first-term governor, who allegedly assaulted a waitress before his wife left him, claiming he was having an affair with a podiatrist's wife, and the Feds decided to investigate various allegations of crookery and he basically quit showing up for work at some point last year.
Gibbons, who thus pretty much wrote the book on good etiquette, was mortally offended when President Obama said, referring to companies receiving bailout money, that, "You can't get corporate jets, you can't go take a trip to Las Vegas or go down to the Super Bowl on the taxpayer's dime." The nerve!
So now Gibbons is standing up Obama at the airport, where he's due to arrive for a fundraiser for Harry Reid.
Reid, of course, is the Senate Majority Leader and another widely loathed Nevada politician. He's so unpopular that even with Obama's draw he can't sell out the 4,000-seat event at Caesars Palace (or at least, he couldn't as of yesterday afternoon). In sum, most every elected official in the state loathe one another, and Jim Gibbons just sits around quietly seething at President Obama for pointing out that businesses used to spend a lot of money in the gambling capital of America.
Gambling enthusiast Sara K. Smith writes for NBC and Wonkette.
