Tag Archives: government

Poker is Offline in the US Again

My name is Brian, and I was a online poker addict for awhile there. Especially during the college years when the poker boom was just taking off. Thankfully the government helped me kick the online habit in 2006 when they ruled to shut down poker sites that used money laundering type violations. Not that I didn’t play at the home games or the occasional trip the the Indian Casinos, but it became a once in awhile kind of thing compared to playing poker while watching a baseball or basketball game. The sites were back up and running within a year or so, and I was never really clear on why. Either way, I was back playing at a reduced rate. Over the past few years my playing has tailed off a lot to almost non-existent for months at a time (probably for the better). Maybe I got over it because of the skill of some of the online players that I was playing with. I just couldn’t handle seeing some of the most ridiculous hands winning more than pocket aces. Those beats always leave a bad taste in your mouth, especially when it happens over and over and over. Plus, I just don’t have as much time to waste as I used to.

This weekend, online poker went on hold once again for US players, but the lawsuit coming up will have a much different effect on the online gambling world. Mainly, we will once and for all have some set laws in place. If the lawmakers decide that poker is not a skill game, which if you play online enough, you will believe there’s more luck than skill, then poker will forever be banished online in the US. If they find it’s a skill game, we end up with a new way to generate some tax revenue. As of now, there’s no concrete way for the government to tax this billion dollar business. That being said, I don’t think the government really cares about the legality of online poker, just whether they can line their pockets with the addiction that many like myself threw themselves at.


The Government Needs to Move On….

I’ve tried to avoid watching/paying attention to any of the Bonds perjury case, but low and behold we are subjected to updates regularly on ESPN, so there’s no way to avoid noticing what’s going on with it. I don’t think it really matters what the outcome of the trial is. If he’s convicted eight years after his testimony for what he said he didn’t knowingly do, will that really send a message to the MLB or current players? Proving he was a liar in court and trying to make him the poster boy for the steroid era earns a big, whoopitte-de-do-da since there were so many guys taking PED’s. Many fans are still calling Henry Aaron the home run king whether it was the PED’s or the difference in the way the two men carried themselves. We all know Barry isn’t exactly the perfect human or really that nice of a guy in general, but does the ruling in this trial make any kind of difference? I think we can all agree Barry took some type of PED’s (outside a Giants fan or two), and if he didn’t take steroids, then Jimmer is an All-American defender. If Bonds ends up in jail, would I argue? Doubtful. If he gets off with nothing happening, I can see myself caring to the extent of a serious exhale and shoulder shrug combo. I think the public court of opinion is all that matters to him or baseball fans.His legacy amongst baseball fans and HOF voters is more important than the outcome of this trial, which makes me feel that this is a giant waste of time and money for our court system.

This guy doesn't believe Barry would take PED's!

While watching an update yesterday on how the jury selection was going I couldn’t help but think of an article I read in Rolling Stone Magazine a week or two ago on the financial collapse a few short years ago. The article was talking about the executives for AIG, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, JP Morgan Chase, etc., and how nobody went to jail! I’m far from an expert on what happened during that collapse, but I know that those executives that were pulling in billions of dollars out of their companies for themselves, set our economy back as much as the tsunami/earthquake will in Japan, yet one person (Bernie Madoff) is the only one that went to jail. Here’s the article if you’re interested, it’s a pretty solid idiots guide for the financial collapse for people like myself that didn’t quite understand everything that went down. The executives paid minimal fines for these egregious crimes, and the government bailed them out in the end. How is that justice!?! It’s not, and there never really will be as long as those execs have the money to hand over to people deciding their fate. For some reason instead of the government spending the time and effort to chase down the guys that ruined our economy four years ago, they’ve spent the past eight years forming what sounds like a very beatable perjury case against one of baseball’s most hated super stars. Really boggles the mind…

Bonds may have lied to a grand jury, but you could argue that nearly every other player lied as well in their testimonies, yet they still go after Bonds because nobody likes him. I don’t condone lying in federal court, but it feels like there’s about a million other things they should be worrying about. I’m guessing they  hate the guy like much of America does, so they are trying to prove some lame point. Maybe that’s why they seem care about Clemens as well, because he’s a big name that is a jackass. The Clemens case seems a little more solid than the one against Bonds, after he keeps changing his statements, so why not drop the weak case and carry on with the solid one if your trying to make some kind of example out of a baseball superstar. I guess the theme for this post is caring or not caring in this instance. Why should anyone care as much as the government does about whether Bonds lied or not. Why do we care more about Bonds putting a needle in his ass more than we care about executives tearing apart the country’s economy? Probably because our country as a whole reminds me of a functioning addict.