The Choate-Weinberg Report

Why Risk Your Life In Las Vegas?

I have never, in my 45 years in this business, found it necessary to take the side of a dead 300-pound pot dealer against a police department until now.

But the killing of Trevon Cole by Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Detective Bryan Yant and Saturday’s finding of “justified” by a coroner’s jury obviously suffering from the after effects of whatever Cole used to sell, ought to wipe Las Vegas off of any tourist’s plans until the Clark County’s fathers get a grip.

Would you visit Somalia to go clubbing?

Would you shoot craps in Afghanistan?

Would you go to Pakistan to see Cirque Du Soleil?

Would you go shopping in Juarez?

If the answer is no to those questions, why would you willingly put yourself under the “protection” of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department when you know that they have been involved in plenty of what we euphemistically refer to as “officer involved” shootings and that no matter how damning the evidence, the shooting is always “justified” by the coroner’s jury?

If the FBI can put four County Commissioners in prison for pretending they are in Chicago, when are they going to look at Metro?

In this case, Yant, who has been involved in two other shootings, one of which was fatal, told the jury that despite physical evidence to the contrary and contradictory statements from nearly everyone else who testified, he fired the fatal shot only after Cole stood up, turned and thrust his hands toward Yant as if he had a gun.

And it should be noted that this was the same officer who filed a false affidavit to get the search warrant which was being executed when he killed Cole.

And we ask tourists to spend time in a city being “protected” by guys like Yant?  Who probably cannot be fired by Sheriff Doug Gillespie for two reasons.  First there’s that pesky union contract and second there’s the fact that Gillespie is a weak-kneed apologist who thinks Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona is a savage beast.

Here’s a piece of Yant’s testimony, asked to explain the contradictory evidence”

“I’m not a forensic scientist,” he said. “I’m not a physicist. I don’t know. That’s what I saw.”

For the record, Cole not only did not have a weapon, Yant didn’t have a flashlight because the one on his AR15 had failed.  Cole is dead and Yant is still “protecting” us.

The fact is that Metro is undermanaged, out of control and a danger to every citizen who lives in, works in or visits the confines of Clark County.

The vast majority of Metro officers are solid citizens.  But there is a group of jack-booted thugs within the department who think that they can get away with anything.  Because, apparently, they can.

Metro has become a favorite of Langly Productions’ COPS show in the past few years.  The wise civil rights attorney might want to subpoena all of the outtakes of the days riding with Metro which never made it on the air.

Maybe they’ll begin to see a pattern.

But in order to get the powers that be in Las Vegas to take this issue seriously, it first has to hit them where it hurts—in tourism numbers.

Frankly, 300-pound pot dealers aren’t sympathetic characters, no matter how outrageous their killings were.

But the next case up, that of West Point alum Erik Scott could seriously become a matter of national interest.

If people get the idea that they can’t be safe in Sin City, they may well choose to do their sinning somewhere else.

Then, maybe, the geniuses who gave us “what happens in Vegas” using hundreds of millions of tax dollars might be forced to pay attention to Metro.

Or maybe we should just change the sign at the South end of the strip to say, “Welcome to fabulous Somalia!”

FRED WEINBERG

It's Time To Tell Harry To Go To Hell

As we head into the last two and a half months of the Angle-Reid campaign, the biggest refrain from Harry’s commercials should just stick in every Nevadan’s craw.

That is, “she’s too extreme”.

TOO EXTREME!

This from a guy willing to devastate the economy of an entire county because, worshiping at the alter of the Nancy Pelosi and Barack Hussein Obama led Far Left, he suddenly decided that coal was a bad way to generate electric power in White Pine County.  Never mind that he had previously endorsed those huge projects and that we are the Saudi Arabia of coal.

This from a guy who is willing to do almost exactly what Maxine Waters is now charged with by strong-arming bankers on behalf of his largest campaign contributor, purportedly to “save” 22,000 jobs (most of which don’t actually exist) while he has done nothing for the real largest employer in the state, small business, except force through a health-care bill which could kill small business.

Perhaps Sharron Angle has said a few things that the hard left cannot live with.

But it is not extreme to recognize that Social Security is almost to the point where it will be paying out more than it will be taking in.

It is not extreme to point out that churches exist to provide help to people who need that help and that government should not be a God.

Actually, measured against the most recent polling of the citizens of Nevada, Angle is not only not extreme, she’s downright mainstream.  Besides, as Barry Goldwater once said, “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice.”

I don’t know about “extreme” but let me point out a few things that Harry Reid is.

He’s a bigot who gets a pass from the mainstream media.  If Mitch McConnell had said that Barack Obama didn’t have a negro dialect unless he wanted to, he would have been drummed out of the Senate.

He’s a hypocrite who gets a pass from the mainstream media.  He introduced the Immigration Stabilization Act of 1993 (S.1351) which sought to change the 14th Amendment to eliminate “anchor babies” but today is all for immigration amnesty so, when this is brought up, he calls it the biggest mistake of his career.  In the immortal words of Dana Carvy’s Church Lady, “how convenient.”

He’s not a resident of Nevada.  He lives in a million dollar condominium at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington DC which begs a big question:  How does a man who has been in the Senate for 24 years, in the House before that and the head of the Gaming Commission before that afford a million dollar out-of-state condo?

Every Reid land deal the Nevada media has ever dug up has been as sleazy as the stuff which put four Clark County Commissioners in prison in recent years.

But, so far, he’s Teflon Harry.

Some months back, we predicted that Harry would, indeed, extort the $25-million he could extort from his backers and run the filthiest campaign ever in this state.

He has not let us down.

Used to be that Harry actually represented Nevada.

He was a little seedy, but at least he knew who sent him to Washington and why.

That stopped when he became the Democratic leader in the Senate.

It was as if he told all of us to go to hell in 2004.

Now it’s time to say the same thing to him.

FRED WEINBERG

What Protects Us From A Rogue Saudi F15?

The news this week brought a deal to the forefront which would have the Boeing Aircraft Corporation selling 84 advanced F-15 Strike Eagles to our “friends” in Saudi Arabia for about $30-Billion.

Now the Obama administration hastened to point out that these Strike Eagles won’t have some of the long range capabilities the ones at Nellis Air Force Base routinely carry such as stand-off weapons, but if you were to look at a map of the Middle East you would immediately see that long range isn’t really a necessity if, say, a rogue Saudi pilot decided he wanted to hit Tel Aviv.

And any F-15 is still an air superiority fighter which is a dangerous machine.

I know it is impolitic to point this out, but 18 of the 19 hijackers in the 9-11 plot including Mohammad Atta came from Saudi Arabia.

Assuming they are really our “friends” how much control do they really have of their crazy people—which appear to constitute a fair part of their population.

The argument, of course, is that if we don’t sell them the fighters than the Russians will sell them the Sukhoi Su-35.

That may well be true, but the U.S. Air Force knows plenty about the Su-35 and has plenty of plans and tactics for defeating it in battle, many of which were developed in the skies of Nevada at Nellis.

Also, how does the Obama administration keep U.S. policy which is that Israel is supposed to have a military edge in the region?

Are we going to sell the Israelis the F22?

More likely, the answer is that Barack Hussein Obama has no intention of keeping the balance of military power in the region that this nation has been committed to for many years.

All of which makes me look at the broader question of technology transfer to people who are “friends” which can loosely be defined as those who are expedient friends today.

We spend billions on pure research to create innovations that can be used both in war and peace.

What’s in it for us to ship weapons systems to nations who may well turn on us tomorrow?  This isn’t a political question as much as it’s a common sense issue.  Do you really want to have to defend the Pentagon or the White House (or the Wynn Hotel for that matter) against a rogue Saudi F-15 Strike Eagle some day soon?

Tell me it can never happen.

As we are writing this, both our “friends” the Saudis and our “friends” the Pakistanis are flying F-15 and F-16 aircraft we sold them in Operation Green Flag at Nellis Air Force Base.

What protects the Wynn Hotel from a rogue Saudi pilot who wants to make a point?

What protects the strip from a Taliban sleeper flying a Pakistan F-16?

Tell me that an American soldier would never shoot 13 innocent people at Ft. Hood.

Tell me that General Electric would never do business with Iran while that country was arming insurgents in Iraq who were killing American soldier.  They brought a whole new meaning to “we bring good things to life”.

Does Boeing need $30-billion so badly that the sale might someday put our cities in harm’s way.

Are we so blind to the track record of these people that we’re willing to give them anything so that they’ll say we’re their friends?

Barack Hussein Obama may think that if we’re nicer to the part of the world which wants us dead they’ll leave us alone but the rest of us know better.

It’s better to be feared than loved.

Like Will Rogers once said, diplomacy is the art of saying nice doggie while you find a rock.

FRED WEINBERG

Reid Either An Idiot Or A Waterboy

The results are in and it appears that, at best, Harry Reid is an idiot and, at worst, he’s doing the bidding of his masters.

If you’ll remember, some months back, Harry went to work twisting the arms of bankers who were on the edge of forcing MGM/Mirage (now MGM Resorts) into bankruptcy because it had run out of money in the construction of City Center.

City Center is the kind of idea you get when you’ve had too much to drink and you have too much money available.

“I have an idea,” says a nameless (and probably intoxicated)  MGM Executive.  “Let’s take the land we own where the Boardwalk is and make it like, uh, Manhattan.  Yeah, that’s the ticket.  Let’s Manhattanize the strip!.  We’ll sell a lot of condos to pay for it and it’ll be just like, oh, Park Avenue.  That’s it.”

I don’t know how drunk that MGM Executive was, but it turned into the largest construction project in Nevada.  So big, that MGM had to partner with an Arab Sheik, the ruler of Dubai, who was building his own dream with slave labor, because they needed another five or so billion (with a b) dollars.

So, last year, with the partners fighting amongst themselves, the shutdown of the project just days away and with it a Chapter 11 filing of MGM, Harry goes to work.

By his own admission, he “called every banker” he knew and strong-armed them to keep lending.

So the project got finished.  And it’s a little bit like the war in Afghanistan.  It depends on your definition of success.

Here’s an indicator.  The results are in for the second quarter of 2010 and MGM lost $883-million, much of which can be attributed to City Center.

Turns out those “jobs” Harry brags about saving are mostly non existent. The construction jobs went away and MGM sharply downsized not only its City Center work force but the workforce at its other properties as well.

But Harry strong-armed those bankers.

That’s what a United State Senator is supposed to do, right?

Actually, people have gone to prison for less. (Maxine Waters is facing an ethics investigation for asking regulators to help a bank her husband had a relationship with.)

But when Harry’s  opponent, Sharron Angle, pointed out that this is not what Senators do, Harry put up a television commercial saying that she wouldn’t save jobs.

Harry’s a moron.

He actually thinks that we don’t know he’s in the pockets of people who probably don’t deserve to stay in business.  In fact, were there a forced change in the ownership and management of MGM, it might actually benefit Las Vegas.

His actions in the case of MGM had nothing to do with jobs.

It was all about taking care of his major campaign donors.

The biggest employer in Nevada is NOT MGM.

It is small business.

Small business employs 93 per cent of Nevada and Harry has given nothing but the back of his hand to small business.

He’s gone out of his way, in fact, to make it more costly to be in business and create jobs.

That’s because Harry, and his patron saint, Barack Hussein Obama, do have something in common.

Neither one of them has ever held a job, much less run a business.

That’s why they think that it’s OK to strong-arm bankers to lend more money to company which lost almost a BILLION dollars in one quarter of one year.

What the hell, it’s not their money

FRED WEINBERG