Good Riddance, Ernie!!!
I sure had a good time at the victory celebration last night. Worked hard on this one.
What’s the big deal about casinos in Kentucky?
They make the gun-totin’ Confederate flag flyin’ baby Jesus cry.
In the run up to TN getting the lottery, there was a massive campaign to block it. Officially, it was ran by Jebus freaks, in reality, they were funded by states like KY that already had the lottery. Not saying KY’s ex-govenator was on the take mind you, but I wouldn’t rule it out.
Really. Really?
Wow. I mean, I’ve always thought of Texas as a pretty conservative, right wing, Jeebus-loving state (hell, we have dry counties here!), and we’ve got the lottery (and horse and dog tracks) all over the damn place. Kentucky must be on a whole other level that I can scarcely imagine. :eek: 
None, really. It was just a case of the Ernie Fletcher campaign pathetically stumbling around in the dark, grasping for any issue it thought it could get some mileage out of.
Maybe it would have worked better if they had claimed that casinos turned you gay.
I went to vote yesterday, and all I could think of was “Ernie, yer goin’ DOWN!!!” What’s really interesting is that all of the state races were around a 60/40 split. I just hope that Steve Beshear is better than Ernie (and Paul Patton and John Y. Brown).
Casinos in KY: They’re afraid that the horses will be too busy dropping coins into the slots to race. Not that Caesers Palace in Indiana (across the river from the Rubber Town part of Louisville) has had much impact on Churchill Downs…
Vlad/Igor
I searched for a while today but I could not find the quote. But, a few months ago, Mr Lee was chiding Conway about his youth and inexperience. Conway’s reply was, “Stan, the 70s called and it wants its mustache back.”
I don’t remember that one, but I know that Lee said he’d been in government for twenty years, which is how long it would take Jack Conway to grow a mustache, and later on Conway said, “I’m not going to get into a mustache-growing contest with Stan Lee.”
Stache or no, Lee is one scary sumbitch. It should worry the hell out of us that 40% of our population voted for him.
Regarding casinos: one of Beshear’s campaign platforms was to bring casino gambling to the state (or, more correctly, to allow the state to vote on the issue). Fletcher, who was open to the idea a while back and who has taken cash aplenty from the casino lobby in the past, decided this was his best chance at a wedge issue, so from the primaries until about a month ago he had a one-note campaign. It’s sad when the incumbent bases his whole campaign on one of his opponent’s ideas, but with Fletcher’s record it was the only choice he had.
Fletcher also stepped in a pile when he released a series of commercials in which he visited an unnamed town that had built a casino and showed the devastating effect. Except that people figured out it was the Hollywood Casino in Aurora, IL and pointed out that the casino has been great for Aurora. The local officials he had met with in Aurora were also pretty pissed off to find that the point of the trip was to trash them. The commercials were abandoned pretty quickly.
It’s been interesting, if nothing else.
RE: Gambling in Kentucky.
We’ve had gambling on horse racing since at least the 1880s (and more likely the 1780s).
We’ve had the lottery since the 1980s.
Gambling is gambling, ain’t it? Or does god love pari-mutual wagering and hate the slots?
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – our economic salvation in Kentucky would be to allow legalized sports books.
Excelsior!
I might have voted that way myself. I love casinos.