Merry Xmas

How to play Merry Xmas

The Commerce Department has jurisdiction over the USPTO, meaning Lutnick is the boss of the USPTO Director John Squires. Squires, who became 60th director of the USPTO a year ago, has been publicly effusive in his praise of Lutnick.

More relevant to DraftKings is the fact that under his leadership, the patent office has moved to significantly limit access to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) – the very board to which the gaming company is appealing in an effort to have the Cantor patent annulled.

Both Squires and his predecessor, Coke Morgan Stewart, made it harder for filers to get in front of the PTAB, typically citing patent ages or court rulings.

About Merry Xmas

Because he relied on props, sported a wild look, and established a dominant Las Vegas presence, he fit perfectly into the “anti-showbiz” persona cultivated by both arbiters of Gen-X cool. Across the 1990s and early 2000s, “Carrot Top” became universal shorthand for lazy, cringeworthy comedy.

Nothing could have been further from the truth.

In the late 2000s, we wrote a humor column for the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Titled “Fear and Loafing,” it involved sampling odd jobs around town. One we wanted to try out was working as a personal assistant to a Vegas celebrity.

About Merry Xmas

While Station has remained steadfast in its opposition to Culinary, the union has made gains elsewhere in recent years. The entire Las Vegas Strip is now unionised, and Culinary used city-wide strikes as leverage in late 2023 and early 2024 to gain new multi-year labour agreements with the city’s major operators, including Wynn, Caesars and MGM.

Other than Station, Las Vegas Sands had been the other largest non-union holdout in Las Vegas for many years. But when the Venetian-Palazzo was sold to Apollo Global Management in 2021, the firm had no issues with Culinary and ratified the property’s first-ever deal with the union in 2024.

The animosity between the sides has become political over the years. Station is owned and operated by the Fertitta family, who have been prominent Republican donors for many years. Culinary is a largely Democratic organisation that typically supports and endorses left-leaning candidates.