What Will Barack Obama Do About Online Casinos?

Millions of people eagerly viewed the recent American election. Millions of people in millions of countries stayed up late to get the result of this landmark election. Barack Obama and John McCain had worked around the clock. They had debated, they had argued, they had spent countless dollars trying to convince the American people – the Joe plumbers, the hockey moms – to tick their box in the voting booth. After the votes were counted, only one man walked out onto the stage the winner. He was Barack Obama. Many have speculated why Obama finally won. In the end, he promised change and after two terms of George W. Bush, it was what the American public, and the world, wanted. 

Barack Obama promises a different approach to politics and a confident press conference recently suggested he was going to keep to the script that got him elected. He told journalists his actions for his first months as president. Obama set out his aims for economic revival, stimulus packages and troop withdrawal from Iraq. It’s questionable whether many reporters in the group had questions concerning online gaming.  Indeed, the 44th president probably has bigger things on his mind. He is the new representative of the American people after all.

When the issues surrounding the recession, the war and fossil fuels have subsided though, the issue of online gaming will find its way into the Whitehouse. Obama’s call on online casinos will choose the fate of gaming in the US. The most important question left remaining is what will the President decide to do; to allow online casinos to operate in the US, or not?  While the 2006 Safe Port Act prevents online gamers from wagering money on online casinos, there are some positive omens that an Obama presidency may overturn the law introduced by the outgoing president, George W. Bush.

But, there are signs of hope for online gaming players. Comments made in the past from Obama hints he’d study the pros and cons of legalising online casinos across the United States. Asked a question by reporters during his election bid, Obama said that he could see the opportunities a regulated online casino industry could bring.  Although Obama hasn’t declared that he’d reinstate online casinos in the USA, his statement has heartened many players and online operators alike.  Obama’s comments from an appearance in Las Vegas, that online casinos was a good economic factor, gave more joy to online casinos wishing to play in America again.

American players shouldn’t be too eager to log onto their nearest online casino though Obama has told a number of reporters that he’s not the biggest supporter of online casino gaming. When a president, voted into the Whitehouse on a wave of change, talks to a newspaper and explains that online casino gaming can have devastating ethical and social costs, online casino companies hoping to run their casinos in America shouldn’t start buying up domain names. He’s also had a track of anti-casino voting, blocking the increase of the Illinois gaming  arena in 1999.

A lot of online casino companies will be troubled by Barack Obama’s wavering opinion on the issue of internet casinos. Although, a President can often change his mind and there may be a possibility for online casinos in America. A possibility, but don’t start dreaming of chips and cards at the moment.

As an occasional poker player, Obama is known for his calm poker game. As a member of the Senate, Obama often indulged in games of poker. He never bet huge amounts, rarely bluffed, and always kept his hand close to his chest. Could there be any similarities between his playing and presidential methods If you ask Obama about his opinions on online casinos, will he just glance at his cards and smiles?

 Given the scale of Democratic gains in The Senate, Obama should have no problems passing a law to allow internet casinos. Whether he will is another matter altogether.  The regulation of online casinos has been seen to provide a large of tax revenue for other countries; battling against a faltering economy and seeing a strong possibility of recession the USA, will Barack Obama be able to give a good reason for keeping the law on online gaming, purely because of  any possible moral protests he may have? No one really knows until Obama starts his presidency in dark nights of January. Until Inauguration Day, American casinos will have little option but to lie back and pray to the gaming gods for a successful throw of the die.

Conservatives Voting for a Socialist?

You may have come across the latest claims by so called “conservatives” who are calling radio talk shows and writing letters to the editor. They claim, being conservatives, that they are so disgruntled with John McCain being the nominee of the Republican Party that they are going to do something rather bizarre. What is this bizarre thing? Why they are going to vote for a socialist, namely Barack Obama if he is the Democrat nominee, in November.

Yeah, I know. It doesn’t pass the smell test for me either.

This whole scenario reeks of a similar flooding of the airwaves and editorial pages that happened not too many months ago when people supporting Ron Paul for President would call up talk shows, literally flood them really, to try and paint the picture of how there was a groundswell of support for him and his odd ball, screw the rest of the world, anti-helping people obtain their God given liberties, everything that is wrong is somehow our fault rhetoric. He had supposedly an army of online supporters ready to take back the country in his name flooding blogs with all sorts of similar claims.

But despite these claims, Ron Paul fizzled at the polls and even I found that despite seeming large numbers of replies to posts on my blog from his supposed supporters they all mysteriously would come from just a handful of IP addresses and were written with very similar grammar and styles. But all with different names attached. How odd.

This brings me to my point. Apparently the lessons about how to deceive people into believing there is a groundswell of support have been learned by Obama apostles.

Hordes of people claiming to be conservatives who have been converted into Obama-ites claim that they are so frustrated with the liberal John McCain being their lesser of two evils that they see something in Obama to persuade them into joining his camp. This something, we are to believe, causes them to want to vote for someone who is even more liberal than John McCain. They claim it is because they see Obama as being something other than the business as usual, inside the beltway, corrupt politician. They claim that they see him as the agent of “change”. They claim that they respect him as a man of deep faith and that they are drawn to him. They talk about how he is a “unifier”.

So either they are conservatives who are ignorant, and I meet very few who are, or they are Obama operatives trying to keep the talking points alive and well and, like Ron Paul supporters, trying their darnedest to convince the world that there is some groundswell of freedom loving conservatives willing to vote for socialism because of fallacious claims.

Consider that Obama has been part of the political machine in Chicago for years and has had dealings with the corrupt system and its agents there (i.e. Tony Resko) and the claim that he is not a “business as usual” politician falls apart. Expose that his proposals are really just more of the same higher taxes, redistribution of the wealth and class warfare rhetoric that we have had thrown at us for a hundred years and his facade as a change agent cracks. Point out that his church, in which he claims to have sat in the pews for many years, has black supremacist tendencies and that his pastor and spiritual mentor for all these years preaches distaste for people because of the color of their skin, spreads lies about AIDS being created to take out people with darker skin, rails against “middleclassness” yet is going to retire in opulent luxury and you have to wonder how deep his faith really is and in what exactly.

Not a day goes by that I don’t get an email from someone claiming to be a conservative who is enthralled by a Barack Obama presidency. The talking points are always the same and rarely deviate from the standard fare. They focus on his positives, more correctly the perceived positives few as they are, that he claims in speech after speech and ignore his background and how he acts. They claim that Obama is their choice and that he is so well spoken and have fallen under his magical power of hopenosis believing that style takes precedence over actual substance.

But the truth is these people are not conservatives. Conservatives do not throw their principles out the window and vote for someone who is an out and out socialist so hardcore that he would make Karl Marx himself proud.

The correct answer is that if you think McCain is far too liberal and cares far too little for our Constitution, as I do, you don’t vote for McCain. But beyond that you certainly don’t vote for someone that is to the left of him either. If you make any other claim then you are no conservative no matter how much you complain that you really, really are.

What you are is an Obama Kool Aid drinker who embraces liberalism and the idea that socialism, communism, fascism, or whatever left wing ideology you adhere to will save America – Obama’s speeches contain elements of all of them. Just be honest. It really isn’t that hard.

I know your candidate of choice has put on a mask to hide himself. But you could at least be braver than that and take off yours.