McCain’s Gambling Problem - And Ours

This is an interesting and enlightening post about McCain's personal propensity for gambling that should give all of us pause before electing this man to run the country.

McCain’s Gambling Problem — And Ours

It’s already getting its fair share of play, but the enormous NY Times take out on McCain and the gambling industry is must reading for any voter, leaning any which way.

Most of the article is a meticulous, and to my eye devastating account of McCain’s deep-inside-Washington maneouverings on behalf of favored friends and allies in the gambling world. While the article is meticulous in avoiding charges that Senator McCain violated laws, its account is a powerful, blow-by-blow description of the practical corruption and DC business-as-usual life of a powerful Senator.

But while I’m sure that this story of the corrupted false messiah will get its share of play, the article touches on — but does not delve into — what is to me much the more important issue.

There are hints. Here is the lede paragraph to the piece:

Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings.

An aside here: Mathematically literate readers will wince at the phrase “a hot craps table.” The notion of a hot table is nonsense: in Wikipedia’s version, “since there is no correlation between die rolls, there is no possible long-term winning strategy in craps.” Rather, the odds in craps are set to ensure that the house always wins over time — and rather modest increments of time at that.

Read the whole post over at The Inverse Square Blog. If even part of this post is accurate, McCain should be brought up on ethics charges and sent to jail for accepting bribes. At the very least, do we want a man who is fond of high risk gambling to be running the country?

Tags: John McCain, Gambling Problem, And Ours, Politics, ethics, The Inverse Square Blog