Money Hater

John Travolta’s fucking private jet.

I have a degree in political science, yet I loathe politics. I cannot stand it. Everyone is a liar. Everyone is a thief. Everyone has an agenda. Everyone is for sale. Everyone is corrupt or corruptible. Everyone.

My policy up to this point in my life has been to try to ignore it and go about my business. Lately, however, the combination of having too much free time (thanks to the absurd government shut down of online poker) and the candidacy of Michele Bachmann has pushed me over the edge.

This woman is completely insane, which I will concede in itself is not that big of a deal. There are boatloads of insane people all over this country and world, so she is not special just because she is nuts. What makes her special is that one of the major political parties is poised to nominate her as their candidate for President of the United States.

I do not agree with many of Ms. Bachmann’s views, but that is of secondary concern to me. There are millions of people I do not see eye-to-eye with politically. What is of primary concern to me is that she claims that God speaks to her. Ms. Bachmann got married because God told her to. She moved across the country because God told her to. I am scared to imagine what else she has done or will do because God told her to.

In my opinion if one hears voices, they are crazy. If one does what the voices tell them to, they are dangerous. You never know what that voice is going to say, so how can you want this person in power even if you agree with their politics? If someone I loved politically told me that he or she did what God said I’d immediately find another candidate. Immediately. Yet there Ms. Bachmann sits atop the polls for the Republican nomination.

There has to be someone out there who holds the same political views that she does, but without the “God talks to me” angle, right? Doesn’t there? She has a lot of supporters. Surely one of them holds very similar views, is educated, articulate and devoid of voices echoing in their head. Why can’t the Republicans find that person? What the hell is wrong with us?

“At the last minute before Congress adjourned for the 2006 elections in what politicos call a “midnight drop” Majority Leader Bill Frist inserted the otherwise unpassable “Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act” (UIGEA) clauses into the bigger unrelated Security and Accountability for Every Port (SAFE) Act. The SAFE Act itself was a late “must pass” bill, designed to safeguard ports from terrorist infiltration. This act clearly opposed majority public opinion. In the Zogby International Poll 87% believe online gambling is a personal choice which should not be banned. The Wall Street Journal Poll showed 85% oppose government prohibition of online gambling. The UIGEA became the basis for the massively unpopular government crackdown and domain name seizure of the worlds top three online poker sites dubbed “black Friday” on April 15, 2011.” – Bill Frist’s Wikipedia page

Bin Laden is dead.

I am happy that he is dead, but his death does not make me happy. I have no desire to go out in the streets and celebrate or hi-5 people at the grocery store. I realize that some people do. I don’t.

I would have gladly fired the bullet that killed him and I am happy they finally got him, but I do not feel moved to dance on his grave. Nor would I dance on the grave of a rabid dog that I had to put down, which is basically what bin Laden was. He was an irretrievable, infected, twisted being intent on doing harm and had to be killed, but I do not feel any joy because he is dead.

I feel relief that they finally got him.

I feel hope that his death will bring some closure to those harmed by bin Laden and that it will cripple and maybe even destroy Al Qaeda.

I feel anxious about potential retaliation.

I do not feel joy. This is not a sporting event. The buzzer did not sound signalling the end of the game. The season is not now over. There are still games to be played.

Bin Laden is still responsible for the deaths of thousands of people, and now that we killed him those people are not suddenly alive again. We cannot undo what has been done. We still took very real losses that do not suddenly become immaterial since we won the championship. If we won I’d feel joy, but we did not win. No one won here, although we hopefully cut down significantly on future losses.

It is widely accepted that Bill Frist, former Senator from Tennessee and scourge of the poker world, was the mastermind behind sneaking UIGEA onto the SAFE Port Act in 2006. He would likely never admit it, but his reasons for doing so were selfish and blatantly political.

There was no large public uproar decrying the evils of playing online poker in 2006. Poker’s popularity had already hit its peak, but it was still in the forefront of the public consciousness and enjoyed by millions of Americans.

The great thing about poker was that you either liked it or you really didn’t care. It wasn’t all in your face and everywhere, so it didn’t develop a group of people that hated it because it was in all their face and everywhere. But if you were looking for it, you had no trouble finding it. If you weren’t within driving distance of a casino or card room, there was always a bar that had “Tuesday Free Texas Hold’em Tournament and $2 Tacos” or some other promotion that featured Texas Hold’em. Or there was a guy who knew a guy who had a home game on Friday nights. Or you could play online, for money or for free, at one of over a dozen online poker sites. People who wanted to play played, and those who didn’t want to didn’t. And everyone was getting along just fine.

So why attack online poker? What could be gained by doing so? There was no organized anti-poker uprising that was threatening to bounce pro-poker incumbents from office. If there were such a group it would be hard to blame a politician for feeling he or she needed to attack online poker, but there wasn’t. We had much larger issues to worry about in this country (and still do). If poker was left alone, no one not involved with it would have ever noticed.

Unfortunately for millions of poker players in the US, Bill Frist wanted to be president and decided that by attacking online poker he could score points with the ever growing and ever more horrifying bible-thumping lunatic fringe of the Republican party.

I have always subscribed to the “if you WANT to be the President, you should not be eligible to be the President” ideal, but if Mr. Frist has political ambitions, good for him. That is his right as an American. Lots of people have political ambitions, and having them does not necessarily make one the spawn of Lucifer.

Those ambitions DO make you the fruit of Satan’s seed, however, if you recklessly harm tens of thousands of innocent people in the pursuit of your selfish political goals. That is exactly what Bill Frist did. He put tens of thousands of Americans, who were minding their own business in the privacy of their own homes, squarely in the middle of his political crosshairs and pulled the trigger.

To the millions of recreational players it is merely a nuisance that they cannot play online poker in their homes because of Mr. Frist, but to professionals it is catastrophic. We lost our jobs.
Overnight.
With no notice.
No severance.
Nothing.

One day we had a way to pay our bills and the next day we didn’t. I (like many) had just sent in my estimated quarterly taxes, as they were due just a few days later. Had I known I was going to be out of a job I would have held on to the money and dealt with the IRS fines at the end of the year. (When you have no job and no income, every nickel helps.) But I was not given that option. I was simply told that in spite of the fact that I was not doing anything illegal or harming anyone, I was no longer allowed to play online poker.

If what I was doing was illegal I at least could be arrested and thrown in jail, where I would have food and shelter and not have to worry about being unemployed. But playing online poker is not illegal, so if I want to have room and board provided for me by the state I need to go out and break a few laws.

I found out that I was out of a job via text message when I was on the golf course. I intended to be home and “working” by 6pm, but once I got that text I could not enjoy golf and skipped the back 9. I now didn’t have to hurry home to get to work, but I couldn’t really relax and enjoy myself when I suddenly had no job and no income. The only thing on my mind was, “What do I do now?”

There are now tens of thousands of us with no form of income. We cannot even limp along and collect unemployment while we look for work because we are technically “self-employed” and thus ineligible for unemployment benefits. To make it even more insulting, Frist eventually decided to scrap his presidential plans and didn’t even bother to run. I, just like tens of thousands of Americans, lost my income so that Bill Frist could cater to a fringe constituency that he ultimately never even needed.

This woman from Nevada pretty much sums up how many felt about the tactics used to pass UIGEA. She basically says she will vote for this bill because she has to, but that the addition of UIGEA is terrible.

If you have not already made your feelings known to Mr. Bill Frist about what he did by ramming UIGEA though, please do so here.

And some insight into Mr. Frist himself.