I hope everyone realizes the need for us to reach out to Senate Republicans in order to push the effort that Heller is likely putting forth at this very moment. I assembled tweets to all Republicans in the Senate. My plan is to twuffer (schedule tweets) to every one of these individuals from now until Christmas EVERY SINGLE DAY.

It's pretty sad when even poker players active in the regulation movement believe the opposition rhetoric.

A reversal of the OLC opinion on the Wire Act would have zero bearing on State licensed intranet gaming, as the Wire Act includes a Safe Harbor clause clarifying that it is not applicable when the bet is legal from both where it is made and received.

Obama did not open any doors, he simply reminded the States that the door was still open, it was never closed, even sports betting using the internet is not illegal intrastate (NV is doing it right now) if it is authorized by the State.

This 'plank' is nothing more than a political potshot, but giving Obama credit for opening any doors is just as fallacious as the opposition blaming him for doing so.

If you believe this, you are drinking the kool-aid. The only real argument these guys have is over who gets the money.

Well I'm also from NY and I can remember how PO'd everyone was when Jimmy Carter was President. I think that NYers are pretty close to this level of anger right now.

People are leaving NY in droves, because they can't afford to live here anymore.

I live on Long Island. If you go to the link and click on Long Island you will see what I mean.

http://www.forbes.com/2010/06/04/mig...nties-map.html

Re: Mitt vs Obama...I can only say that I could play online poker before Obama, and I can't now. Sure a couple of Republicans stuck it into the Ports Bill, but then all but one Democrat voted for it.

Black Friday was a product of the Obama DOJ, (at the time posters on this forum were falsely laying blame on Bush/Republican holdouts in the DOJ). BF was of course, based on "The Wire Act," which the Obama DOJ later admitted to have wrongly interpreted.

From 2008 to 2010, the Presidency, the Senate, and the House of Representatives were all controlled by Democrats...did we get online poker? No in plain fact, it has only gotten worse under the Dems.

The investigation(s) for the Black Friday indictments started in 2006-2007.

BF was (apparently not so obviously) based on a wrong interpretation of the IGBA, the Wire Act had nothing to do with it.

A nice find on this issue from our friend Marco at Quadjacks.com:

Boehner: No One Reads GOP Platform



And a nice read from Marco as well:

The Republican Party has officially come out against online gaming, and it has done so quite specifically.

Well you may make that distinction but it appears to have been missed by a multitude of others that have posted about Black Friday, and the Wire Act.

For instance I googled, "Black Friday before wire act clarification in Dec 2011." and found too many pages of association to read.

Nevertheless, I will gladly concede the point if it is your only argument against my post.

I'm also from LI...you don't have to tell me how bad it is .

AMEN

did you vote against bush in 04 because he cut taxes and started 2 wars while running a deficit? I'm sure your strong fiscal values played a negligible role in your decision to vote to keep that administration in power.

your true values are to bow to the republican party, this is clear.

Screamin....I grant you that both parties suck, but Obama's Presidency is only rivaled by Carter's in terms of incompetency. I'll drop this discussion because we agree on most other things and I don't want to get sucked into a political debate.

The Black Friday indictments didn't even include a charge that the Wire Act was violated.

Regardless of what any number of people mistakenly believe, the Wire Act had nothing to do with Black Friday.

Well as your copy of my post illustrates I had conceded the point to Mr. tamiller866

Originally Posted by tamiller866
BF was (apparently not so obviously) based on a wrong interpretation of the IGBA, the Wire Act had nothing to do with it.

If it will make you feel better I will revise the remark in question with this.

Black Friday was a product of the Obama DOJ, (at the time posters on this forum were falsely laying blame on Bush/Republican holdouts in the DOJ). BF was of course, based on "IGBA," which tamiller866 later admitted had been wrongly interpreted by the Obama DOJ.

Plank in GOP platform urges 'prohibition' of Web gaming
I'm telling you guys, we can argue about this and that all we want but the fact of the matter is that we need to do everything in our power to convert 15 or so Republicans in the Senate to our side.

I don't understand these long political diatribes throughout this thread tbh. Interesting discussions? sure. But I'm far more interested in getting us the best chance of a poker bill on the President's desk this December.

Let's work on action steps for getting through to the Republican Senators for these next 16 weeks.

Make my day.

Good plan, let's start by never sending out another 'please legalize internet poker' tweet, as no one, not even a Democrat, is going to support legislation for the reason that it legalizes internet poker.

Tweets that have a chance of being effective are those that might call for legislation that puts the decision over whether or not to allow online gambling back where the Constitution left it: the hands of the State.

The Federal government should be called upon to block unauthorized sites from from accepting US customers, not because gambling is bad (that isn't a judgement for Congress to make) but because the States can't do it, and the law that Congress passed in 2006 has failed to prevent it.

The GOP specifically needs to be asked to Strengthen the UIGEA, because no change of opinion over the Wire Act is ever going to turn casino games into Sporting events or contests, so the law needs to be amended.

We shouldn't be calling on Senators, especially GOP Senators, to legalize internet poker, it's not and never was Federally illegal.

We should be calling on them to centralize regulation of internet poker, because poker is an American game and Americans should be able to compete with each other with the same level of consumer protection regardless of which State they live in, so long as they live in a State where playing online poker is permitted.

GOP Senators are off the poker concern. Sorry, folks.

I'm not following. If this is true and the Obama DOJ wire act ruling was meaningless, then why did Nevada move to legalize intrastate poker immediately after that ruling? Delaware has gone full blown legalization.

The FED govt would not do A THING if the states weren't moving to legalize the "crack cocaine" of online gambling. Now that some states are moving towards full online gaming maybe the republicans will step in and "protect" us from it with a carve out for poker...

The sequence was just the opposite, immediately after Nevada moved ahead with passing it's intranet regulations, the administration released it's opinion on the Wire Act which it had written months earlier in answer to a loaded question from Reid/Kyl.

Most gambling scholars (I. Nelson Rose, e.g.) assume that the reason the opinion was released (Reid/Kyl had asked that it not be released if the opinion was anything other than intrastate gambling would violate the Wire Act) was to 'give' online gambling to the States - inspire more States to move forward.

Right after Illinois (Obama's State) announced a proposal to become an international hub for online gambling, Obama again released an opinion (in response the the PPA 'We the People' petition) that online gambling was a State issue, so again a read between the lines would indicate that the goal was to promote that legislation.

So my read is that the administration was trying to block the Kyl/Reid effort to centralize online poker regulation in Nevada, since once the 'genie is out of the bottle' (as one recent LVS article put it), Congress would be unable to (Constitutionally) construct legislation that would put it back in.

Now it's my turn not to follow... as I said above, my belief is that Obama's goal was not to inspire Congress to act, but rather to inspire State's to grab it (online poker) before Reid (AGA) would be able to put a bill on his desk asking him to sign it (online poker) over to NV.

Conversely of course, the States movement has put a fire under Reid et al, so I guess we can thank Obama for that, but it's clear (to me at least) that the fire he intended to spark was at the State level.

The GOP has tried to use the Wire Act opinion to suggest to their constituents that the only reason States are able to move forward with gambling on the internet is because of Obama's refusal to enforce the laws on the books, but horseracing is clearly withing the scope of the Wire Act (it was actually the target of the Wire Act, sports betting over the phone wasn't yet an concern) and horseracing has been using the internet for years without violating the Wire Act because as long as it's authorized in both the State where the bet is made and the State where it is received, the bet falls under the Safe Harbor provision.

AGAIN: The investigation(s) that lead to "Black Friday" started in 2006-2007.

I posted this before, you conveniently chose to ignore it.

"IGBA" has been around for DECADES, so it has been "wrongly interpreted" by prosecutors/administrations for DECADES.

You can stop now.

Thanks.

you seem to love talking politics for someone who doesn't want to get into a political debate. (republicans have stonewalled everything the senate has tried to get done since January 2009, and people like you voting obstructionist soldiers into the congress are part of the problem)

P.S. please don't take a political argument with me personally. I love arguments, probably due to my love of both conflict and disagreeing with people. I argue with my best friends all the time, and just this week I screamed at a barista and caused a scene in front of a Starbucks full of strangers.

Derailtards gonna derail.

Please stay on the topic (poker legislation).

They haven't done a very good job stonewalling. Obamacare passed. Funds were used to bailout GM. An $800 billion stimulus package passed. Dodd-Frank passed.

As a general group, Democrats are certainly better for poker. I don't think anyone disputes that. However, its pretty hard to argue for most Democrats in general, if you're vision is for America to be an entrepreneurial growth country. Its not so much people like Anteye (or myself) are Republican, its that they aren't Democrats. People see the lasting negative effects that LBJ, Jimmy Carter, and now Obama have had. America can recover from Gerald Ford and Bush. Its hard to undo the Department of Education, the Great Society Programs, creating a precedent for bailouts with Chrysler, and now paving the way for socialized medicine. The solution the President proposed for dealing with the student loan bubble is to just forgive the trillion dollars (and rapidly growing) outstanding debts after 20 years. That idea is mortifying for anyone with anyone respect for sound economics.

Even for poker players, voting Democrat is not obvious.

This illogical line of thinking is what makes people (erroneously) think that the whole voting system is rigged against 3rd party candidates.

It's not.

If everyone sits around and says, "Oh man, I can't vote for that guy I like because it will help the guy I hate the most," and a MAJORITY thinks like that (obviously those in power HOPE we think like that), then WE as voters are the ones that are not giving our own selves other competent choices.

But, if people would just vote for whom they think is the best candidate (again, something those in power discourage in a subtle but effective manner), people like Ron Paul all of the sudden have a chance.

I stopped counting the number of people I've heard say they'd vote for Paul over Obama if it "were just those two," but are voting for Romney instead. And, to my discredit, I stopped saying anything to these types of people realizing that perhaps it's just something that can't be deprogrammed.