Word: gambler
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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This time, by golly, no one would call George Bush timid. Quite the contrary, the President made a rare appearance as Bush the riverboat gambler. By sending a high-level delegation to Beijing to confer with Chinese authorities who only six months earlier had ordered the massacre of pro-democracy demonstrators near Tiananmen Square, Bush knew he would stir up a hurricane of outraged protest. And for what? The slender chance that China would respond with concessions that could begin to melt the ice in U.S. relations with the world's most populous nation...
Billy Markham is a talking blues about a failed songwriter who decides the devil could not possibly be any worse than the music publishers and producers who have thwarted his career. A gambler, boozer, womanizer and general hellion, Markham tosses away eternity in exchange for a single, futile roll of the dice, then squanders what reprieves are offered in unrepentant revelry. He nonetheless stumps Satan twice, escaping the first time and settling down the second time into a perverse sort of domestic bliss. Markham's good-ole-boy world view is distasteful: women are treated as property, and both defeats...
...beauty of the loan system, from the point of view of the auctioneer, is twofold. It inflates prices whether the borrower wins the painting or not: like a gambler with chips on house credit, he will bid it up. Prefinancing by the auction house artificially creates a floor, whereas a dealer who states a price sets a ceiling. And then, if the borrower defaults, the lender gets back the painting, writes off the unpaid part of the loan against tax, and can resell the work at its new inflated price...
...regular rooms occupied, Bally's Grand Casino Hotel one evening assigned her to a suite with a Jacuzzi and a TV hidden in a marble plinth. Unhappily, the upgrade did not result in a night of rest. Explains Painton: "The man in the next room was a lucky gambler who celebrated his big win by singing reggae tunes at the top of his voice." That's Atlantic City...
...efficiency. One of the pleasures of this near perfect piece of reportage is the sense that both writer and subject waste little motion. Fighting the clock, the calendar and the fiscal year, Bauer needs more than his seed cap. A mechanic's lid, a diplomat's Homburg and a gambler's eyeshade would come in handy...