By Michael Mishak

Published Thursday, Jan. 31, 2008 | 12:36 p.m.

Updated Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008 | 2:14 p.m.

While President Bush attends a Republican Party fundraiser at the home of Sheldon Adelson in the gated Summerlin community of Tournament Hills, the 18 reporters and photographers tagging along were shepherded to Adelson’s “party home” in the same neighborhood — a mansion in its own right.

We were funneled in to the house’s great room. The room was spare in its furniture. No ping pong tables, no bean bag chairs, no Foosball. Three large conference tables were set up for us to work at, after we formed a buffet line and passed through the attached kitchen to fill plates with salad, cold cuts, fruit, pastries, coffee and soda. We sit down at the tables, covered by white tablecloths. Overhead are two designer ceiling fans.

This was, well, my first time in Adelson’s party house. Nice place. It was decorated in shades of white, with fine paintings hanging on the walls and a nice view over the pool to the golf course beyond. The room’s carpeting was more plush than what I’m used to. The room’s centerpiece: a gargantuan entertainment center with a big-screen TV (turned to Fox News). Above it, in a scene that resembles what LBJ’s Oval Office looked like in those dark days of Vietnam, there were three smaller TVs. None were on.

We don’t know what kind of fun the president and party donors are having at Adelson’s primary home, down the street, but over here, we’re talking money too. A reporter just hit the jackpot on a Yahtzee machine near the kitchen. It’s paying off in nickels.