It surely ain't stopped the dogs.
Posted on 07/24/2010 4:36:01 AM PDT by lbryce
Under the liberty and freedom section of the new GOP website America Speaking Out, more Americans voted to legalize Internet poker than weighed in on any other issue. That should come as no surprise. When President-elect Barack Obama solicited ideas on his new website, www.change.gov, legalizing Internet poker was one of the two top issues.
It would be easy to dismiss this as a coincidence or as a manufactured grass-roots campaign, but there is more to this story. There are plenty of issues that face the American people and plenty of big trade groups to push those issues.
But it takes real passion to get people to take valuable time out of their day to log onto these websites, give up a portion of their privacy and cast their vote for an issue. So it is extraordinary that making Internet poker legal consistently ranks as a top issue for the American people.
It is fashionable these days for politicians to ask for voters’ input about what they want from their government. When will it become fashionable for these politicians to actually listen to the voters?
The fact that America has not already regulated Internet poker but has actually tried to prohibit it by deputizing U.S. banks to play the morality police is bizarre. Proponents of the law say that it helps deter kids from playing poker in their bedrooms. But there is little evidence to suggest that this law has deterred kids from playing poker.
So Al's got a new gig, but with the same old fervor in which he wants to serve the "interests" of the people, give them what they want. His rationale on why he's come out of the woodwork on such an urgent, high priority issue,legalization of poker (because "the people want it") is made even more ludicrous by the fact that Congress is considering several bills that could change all this, (wait it gets worse) spearheaded by none other than what he has irrefutably proven himself to be uniquely qualified for as our country's greatest fiduciary arbiter, moral authority, none other than Rep Farney Brank of Mass. (Vice is Always Nice) in his great fervor to get America back on the road of redemption, recovery.
Al must really be desperate when he begins quoting the Founding Fathers as means to giving his holy crusade to make playing poker a God-given right of every American the moral impetus he needs to cash in big.
Either the data is phony or it isn’t.
It could be real. I do recall the Romans offered not only bread, but circuses. There are all kinds of stupid things that people probably ought never to think about doing, but are not banned and legal businesses make profits off of them. I doubt very much that it is poker, but rather poking, that seriously occupies Bawney Fwank’s attention.
My father playing poker with six friends every Wednesday week night hardly led me or my brother into a sordid Las Vegas life. As a matter of fact, they were church bowling league friends.
It’s the prohibitionists who should realize they are attempting the absurdly impossible for no good reason.
It surely ain't stopped the dogs.
Yes, agreed, But they sat around the living room table, which is sitll very much legal. The poker prohbition is in regards to online poker-playing, “the house”, sequestered away on some off-shore secret enclave... America does not
suffer any dearth of gambling, avocation choices. and thereisno doubt that the opposution to online poker playing has made the difference to many in a way that will never be known.
The only problem the politicians have with internet poker is finding a way to tax it.
Particularly when they already have effective ways of collecting tax on the other forms of gambling that compete with poker on the computer.
You admit the derriere where you’re pulling this from with your “never be known.” It’s easy enough to study any matter with objectivity should the desire be there. Start by looking for inaccuracies in the message rather than looking at personal animosity towards the messenger.
I came from a family of gamblers and I’ve never had any interest in it. I “bet” I’ve bought less than a dozen scratch off tickets in my life.
That said, I don’t see any reason I should stand in the way of someone else wasting their money.
That's how he rolls. His soul is for sale to the highest bidder, a typical pol and attorney. Is now and always will be a dirtbag....
You missed my point: If the politicians can keep us arguing over online poker, they can destroy America unopposed.
What’s most depressing is that “more Americans voted to legalize Internet poker than weighed in on any other issue... legalizing Internet poker was one of the two top issues.”
With a citizenry like this, can America hope to defeat her enemies within?
Bingo!
When I was a lad growing up in the Northeast (50 years ago) I asked my dad why was bookmaking on “the numbers”, sports wagering and horse race betting illegal. My dad’s comment: when the government figures a way to tax it or derive some form of profit from it, it will be legal.
Today we have Lotto, off track betting (albeit even the state figured out how to lose money on it in NY) and sports betting in some jurisdictions. The older I get, the smarter my father looks, ever day.
The fact that America has not already regulated Internet poker but has actually tried to prohibit it by deputizing U.S. banks to play the morality police is bizarre.
No kidding. I fist noticed that two months ago from my Chase Bank Statement (In effect);
No money will be transfered by Chase Bank to Internet Gambling Websites.I was like ... WTF are they talking about?
Either way, an argument from ignorance.
My father was a semi-professional gambler, IOWs, he had a regular job too. I am the only one in my family of 5 who gambles at all and that’s just once or twice a year.
When internet gambling wasn’t illegal, I did it once, lost and didn’t do it again. People with gambling problems will find outlets for their addiction whether it is the lottery, sports, on the golf course or in some secluded backroom. Making it illegal just makes them do it with more discretion.
Wouldn’t you — wouldn’t any presumably honest person who feels a need to grind an ax or pontificate on the matter — want to know if the data report is true, falsified, skewed, or biased? I hardly go a day here without seeing somebody calling to “freep” a poll and this is supposedly the good, honest guys calling for that. Stuffing the ballot box at change.gov would be absurdly easy.
I think I’d want to draw the line where credit cards are involved, requiring cold cash to be ponied up. Or let the credit card company choose the policy, and if it gets burned by choosing stupidly and letting people run up debts they can never repay, that’s their funeral. It doesn’t have to be the funeral for the freedom of choice in America.
No, I don’t agree with your statement that your’re argument was enirely from ignorance. I’m sure genetics is equally to blame.
No, I don’t agree with your statement that your argument was entirely the result of ignorance. I’m sure genetics, inbreeding is equally to blame.
I’m saying you are the ignorant one, showing ill breeding, etc.
Your resort to ad hominem simply underlines the fact that you do not seek to critique the message but the messenger as a lazy proxy for it.
FWIW there is a large difference between playing poker with a bunch of friends and playing internet poker where the dealer can deal from the bottom of the deck and nobody can see it happen. Also when you gamble among friends, you pretty much know how deep the pockets are of your opponents and you can watch their faces to see if they are bluffing. Online poker gives the player none of those advantages.
Additionally Internet gambling takes money out of local economies and allows it to be drained into foreign accounts. When gambling is local, such as a local poker club, the money stays in the communities and win or lose the flow of money from one pocket to another helps the local economy. Internet gambling takes money from the local economy and moves it to China or wherever else these vipers run their operations.
Personally, I favor local control over gambling issues. But I don't see how you can achieve that over the internet. The only way to regulate gambling over the internet is to prohibit it altogether.
There are entire poker leagues, I am told, that start with the internet (the ultimate poker face, I suppose) and end up with a personal final match in some exotic place. They get sponsored by beer companies and the like.
If someone is idiotic enough to gamble at a hidden virtual house that cheats, well it seems to me that masochism can only go so far before he looks for an honest house. If there was a way of certifying virtual houses, that would pretty much eliminate the problem.
So even you recognize that there is a danger and a need for some kind of regulation.
But alas, the last people we want to regulate anything is the federal government.
To do something or not do something. That is the question.
Internet Poker is rigged! Play at your own risk.
I bet on the horses one time in my life and lost. That killed any interest I had in ever betting on horses again.
I gambled in Vegas one time during my Navy years and broke even. Did not get much of a thrill out of it, either.
I have play-gambled at Yahoo, and it’s interesting for a while, but I soon tire of it.
All that being said, if people want to gamble, that’s their lookout.
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