{"id":291084,"date":"2018-12-31T06:04:05","date_gmt":"2018-12-30T20:04:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=291084"},"modified":"2018-12-31T06:04:05","modified_gmt":"2018-12-30T20:04:05","slug":"winter-solstice-in-las-vegas-sins-stay-there","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/winter-solstice-in-las-vegas-sins-stay-there\/","title":{"rendered":"Winter Solstice in Las Vegas: Sins Stay There"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>\u201cLet us love winter for it is the genius of spring.\u201d Pietro Aretino<\/em><\/p>\n<p>December in the city of Las Vegas in the northern Mojave<br \/>\nthe Bellagio\u2019s famous flower display advertises Coke bears<br \/>\nup and down the strip folks drink soft drinks, booze, coffee<br \/>\ngiving all the Xmas displays and decorations stops and stares<br \/>\noutside temperatures range from forty to sixty degrees F<br \/>\nat night the waxing winter moon shines high up in the sky<br \/>\nwailing cop cars and ambulances enough to make you deaf \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<br \/>\ncasinos patrons knowing nothing of math make one more try<br \/>\nbeneath flood channel bridges homeless get off the street<br \/>\ncowboys buck broncs and ride bulls at the National Rodeo<br \/>\nsugar plum fairies and mice dance in the Nutcracker Suite<br \/>\nmoney flows across tables and into slots in every casino<br \/>\nnow the daylight hours begin to lengthen and daily increase<br \/>\nthe world\u2019s tilting axis brings warmth and hopefully peace.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Washington, D.C. Winter Wails as 45 Assails<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>\u201cnew pangs of mortal fear our minds assail\u201d &#8211; John Dryden<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In this Washington winter of my dystopic discontent I tried<br \/>\nusing every distraction that popped into my befuddled mind<br \/>\nany insult to which my distorted view of America applied<br \/>\ndefamation, denigration of others, temper tantrums unkind<br \/>\nmy base reads my twaddling tweets coming out in the dark<br \/>\nrepeated on cable TV shows and in national newspapers<br \/>\ntheir messages full of glaring distortions, angry and stark<br \/>\nstereotype immigrants as drug dealers, murderers, rapers<br \/>\neven my own bluster and blabbing I often don\u2019t understand<br \/>\ndisingenuous dangerous dreck, off the cuff cabalist souse<br \/>\nI have distorted the office of the Presidency across the land<br \/>\nand bring shame disgrace and denial into the White House<br \/>\nGod bless the United States of America but I shut the door<br \/>\nand place myself and personal business at my central core.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cLet us love winter for it is the genius of spring.\u201d Pietro Aretino December in&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":291085,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291084","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291084","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291084"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291084\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/291085"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291084"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291084"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291084"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}