Most of you will be viewing this site for the first time on the 4th of July (Independence Day here in the good ole U.S. of A) or shortly after. The gameplan was to have viewfromvegas.com up and running by Sunday, July 1, but some things popped up along the way including some problems with setting up the posting forums and the blog formats for Tuley the Journalist and Tuley the Tout (my two alter egos).
   However, the contributing factor that I would like to focus on is tied to the patriotic feelings of this particular day. My nephew Keoni was in town this past week. He’s in the Army and has been based in Germany and is slated to go to Iraq later this month, so Uncle Sam gave him a week leave and he flew back to the states to see family and friends.
   There were times over the course of the past week when a professional such as myself should have been putting his nose to the grindstone to meet the aforementioned deadline, but when it came down to it, I knew it was much more likely that I would regret not spending enough time with Keoni than the relatively insignificant goal of launching a website on a given date. If everything else had gone smoothly, the site might have still been up and running on time, but with other priorities, I wasn’t able/willing to devote all my time to troubleshooting.
   Keoni, who is of Filipino descent and a native of our 50th state Hawaii, is my hero. He wasn’t drafted, he volunteered, and that makes his willingness to serve his country even more special. I enjoyed taking him out for a great dinner at N9NE steakhouse at the Palms and a night of gambling and a trip to a gentlemen’s club. He deserved it. And I told him that this is exactly what he was fighting for, the freedoms we enjoy in America to live our own lives without government interference.
    (Note: OK, that’s overstating the case, as I’m sure to contradict that comment in coming weeks when I get around to railing against the Unlawful Internet Gaming Act and other ways the federal government has limited our rights, but you know what I mean.)
   Las Vegas is the epitome of the American spirit, the live and let live attitude that allows everyone the rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
   In a way, that’s what this site is about. The View from Vegas is not only about what things happen here, but how Vegas views the goings-on in the rest of the country – heck, even in the rest of the world. Most of the time in this blog and elsewhere on this site, I’ll be focusing on sports and sports betting, but as famed sportswriter Red Smith once said so eloquently: “I believe that any sportswriter who thinks the world is no bigger than the outfield fence is not only a bad citizen but also a lousy sportswriter, because he has no sense of proportion."
   I'll try to never to lose sight of that fact.