Obama: Trashing Las Vegas?

last updated 8 January 2015

For the second time in a year, President Obama raised the hackles of Nevada politicians by suggesting that spending money in Las Vegas is a bad idea. A year ago, he warned taxpayer-bailed-out companies against holding lavish meetings in Sin City; on Tuesday, in a speech about federal belt-tightening, Obama told a group of New Hampshire high school students not to "blow a bunch of cash in Vegas when you're trying to save for college." Is Obama treating recession-ravaged Las Vegas unfairly? (Watch Obama's comments about Las Vegas)

Obama was right: I understand that Las Vegans "need your dumb spending, irresponsibility, and drunken" revels to survive, says Ravi Somaiya in Gawker. But the only correct response to this absurd controversy is to point out the obvious: the "complainers are stupid."