Big Casino Operator (Sands Hotel) Funding Freedom's Watch 's Pro-War Ads!

NJ: Big Money for Pro-War Group Comes from Casino Mogul
By Paul Kiel - September 12, 2007, 1:30 PM

Last month, Freedom's Watch, a conservative group dedicated to urging public support for the Iraq War and the president's surge, began its campaign of TV, radio and Web ads. But the $15 million, five-week blitz was just the beginning to a campaign that's seemingly as open-ended as the Iraq War itself. And that's thanks largely to the financial support of billionaire Sheldon Adelson, reports the National Journal's Peter Stone (not online).

"Sources say that the group has lined up commitments of almost $200 million (from Adelson and others) to finance its operations," he reports, noting that "the group has several A-list donors," but "Adelson by far has the most firepower."

Forbes recently listed Adelson as the sixth richest person in the world, with $26.5 billion in assets. He's made his fortune mainly off of hotel-casinos and owns the Las Vegas Sands company. Stone reports that Adelson doesn't serve on Freedom's Watch's board of directors, but "the group’s chairman is Bill Weidner, president of the Las Vegas Sands."

Also on that board of directors, of course, are Ari Fleischer, and Brad Blakeman, both veterans of the Bush White House (spokesman and scheduler, respectively), who've served as the public faces of the group.


http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/004166.php

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson

Early life and career

Adelson was born in to a Jewish family in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. His family emigrated to the United States from the Russian empire (mother's family from Ukraine, father from Lithuania).<3>. He worked at a young age selling newspapers on local street corners and owned his first business by the time he was twelve. In the years that followed, he worked as a mortgage broker, investment adviser and financial consultant. To this point in his career, Adelson has created and developed to maturity more than 50 different companies, including COMDEX, a tradeshow he developed with his partners for the computer industry and with the goal to get more visitors to his hotels.

In 1988, Adelson and his partners purchased the Sands Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada. the former hangout of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, in order to bring Las Vegas to a new phase of business centricity through the exhibition industry. The following year, Mr Adelson and his partners constructed the Sands Expo and Convention Center, the only privately owned and operated convention center in the United States.

In 1995, Adelson and his partners sold the Interface Group Show Division, including the COMDEX shows, to Softbank Corporation of Japan for a cash price in excess of $860 million. In 1991, while honeymooning in Venice with his wife Miriam (a physician), Adelson gained the inspiration for a mega-resort hotel, and he proceeded with the implosion of the venerable Sands and the construction of the $1.5-billion The Venetian, a Venice-themed resort hotel and casino. The luxurious, all-suite Venetian revolutionized the Las Vegas hotel industry, and has been honored with architectural and other awards naming it as one the finest hotels in the world. In 2003, The Venetian added the 1,013-suite Venezia tower - giving The Venetian 4,049 suites, 18 leading-chef restaurants, a shopping mall with canals, gondolas and singing gondoliers.

Adelson spearheaded a major project to bring the Sands name to the Macao SAR, China, the Chinese gambling city that had been a Portuguese colony until December 20, 1999. The one million-square-foot Sands Macau became the People's Republic of China's first Las Vegas-style casino when it opened in May 2004.

In addition, on May 26, 2006, Adelson's Las Vegas Sands was awarded a hotly contested license to construct a casino resort in Singapore's Marina Bay. The new casino is expected to open in 2009 at a rumored cost of $3.16 billion.

On August 28, 2007, Adelson opened the $2.4 billion Venetian Macao Resort Hotel on Cotai and announced a vision to launch a massive, concentrated resort area he calls the Cotai Strip, after its Las Vegas counterpart. Adelson formally stated his plans to open more hotels under brands such as Four Seasons, Sheraton and St. Regis. Ergo, his Las Vegas Sands (which rand the Sands Macao on the Macau peninsula), plans to invest $12 billion and build 20,000 hotel rooms on the Cotai Strip by 2010.<4>

In 2007, Adelson made an unsuccessful bid to buy controlling interest in the Israeli newspaper Maariv. When this failed, he proceded with parallel plans to publish a free daily newspaper to compete with Israeli, a newspaper he had co-founded in 2006 but had left. <5> The first edition of the new newspaper, Israel HaYom, was published on July 30, 2007.

Since 1991, Adelson is married to Miriam Ochshorn, a physician.

and this guy sounds like he made lots of money pretty fast. Wonder what the connection to Ari Fleisher is and why he's so very interested in the Republicans staying in charge. I haven't heard Dems are into shutting down gambling casinos so there must be more to what he wants or needs or is worried about for him to become a new Mellon-Scaife for the Repugs. Maybe he uses Saudi or Chinese money and doesn't want that connection shut down.

MoveOn is made up of regular, ordinary citizens, not small groups of insanely rich neocons who love war.

Unlike the CITIZENS who support MoveOn, these shadowy groups operate in the background with the assistance of elected officials.

And I'll never stay or gamble at the fucking Venetian again (I've dropped plenty of cash there).