my thoughts on the gm situation and i want to know what you think

i watched a very good discussion last night on cnn about the obama plan for the car companies. the show had people both pro and con and one kind of inbetween and after it was over, rhonda and i talked for hours about what was presented.

you know part of me believes that we are on our way not to economic recovery but to a world wide depression that could make the depression of the 1930's seem tame while at the same time i think that we could pull out of this within a year. i would be interested in reading what any of you think because i just don't know.

back to the car companies, gm in particular. here is my take: i think that any company needing tax payer assistance must be held to some standards. (i will get to the banks and insurance companies later) by that thinking, gm must come up with a viable plan to start on the road to recovery. gm has been making bad decisions for a couple of decades by not concentrating on building cars that americans want. they make superior trucks and suvs and i have bought one, a 1993 gmc Z-71 pickemup truck that was, dollar for dollar, one of the best vehicles i have ever owned but trucks really should be for a very limited market; cars are what most people drive. every year, honda and toyota sold more cars than gm, the japanese cars ran better, looked better, got better gas mileage, lasted longer, were better appointed inside and had higher resale value. did gm (or ford or chryler for that fact) look at what was happening and try to bring cars of equal quality and reliability? hyandia (sp) is another prime example; they started, what? 10, 15 years ago? at first their cars were crap but each year they got better and better and better and now their ratings are sky high. if a south korean company can start from scratch and within two decades become not only viable but a leader then why couldn't gm or chrysler? it is not the unions fault that the powers that be in those companies didn't design and build superior cars. ford on the other hand has increased their small car department and the FIT is doing quite well in europe and probably will here as well. the new mustang is a much better car than the mustang of the 90's.

the car makers of america and all the suppliers and dealers make up about 16% of the american work force and account for a huge percentage of gnp. how can we let them fail? also our national security is tied to the car makers, they provide vehicles for the military as well. how can we let them fail?

BUT on the other hand, if a company makes bad decisions year after year, makes bad products year after year, squanders money year after year HOW CAN THEY NOT FAIL? if you or i had a business that did those things we WOULD GO OUT OF BUSINESS AND GOOD RIDDANCE TO US. right? so how can they not fail? should we, the taxpayers, keep pouring money into companies that will continue a proven bad business plan just because the companies are "too big to fail?"

and why was not the same kind of pressure put on the banks and aig? why do we keep throwing money at them when they have cost us much more than the car companies? why are we willing to have thousands of blue collar workers be put on the bread lines when we coddle the bankers and the wall street fat cats. obama makes the head of gm step down but citibank and boa keep rocking along with the same management as before. why is that gander not as good as that goose?

(personally i think, wagner at gm, did something or said something that brought the hammer down on him. flying to the d.c. meetings in his private jet didn't help his cause at all but i think it was something more and he pushed obama and thought he could get away with it but obama has shown he is willing and able to play really hard ball. besides it was a "shot across the bow" for all chief executives of all the companies looking for tax payer money and you can rest assured that they all took notice)

i have no answers. i have questions. i have worries. i have anger. i have concern for my country. i think the american public better start paying really close attention and start getting more and more information. the power still rests with the people as it always has but the people must realize that and use their power. the power of the vote, the power of the protest, the power of unrest.

i always had a certain amount of regret that i was born when i was, i missed the great events that shaped world history. i was a baby during wwII, too old for vietnam, wasn't here for the civil war or the american revolution or the french revolution or wwI or roman empire etc etc, but, sure as shit, i could be here for the fall of america. bummer. especially since i am old and not really ready for the barricades but if it comes to that, well, count me in. i won't be violent and i won't hurt my fellow man but i bet i could come up with some mischief to perform.

dis and dat and a new tooth

and that is why i didn't bet on louisville. i did bet on the tarheels to cover the 7 against ou and that was all for yesterday. for the tourney, i am ahead. also won again yesterday, but small. 13 out 14 is the streak since i moved to the venetian poker room and i'll take that.

if you come to vegas, go see LOVE at the mirage. best show in vegas. words fail me.

gotta go do stress test for my heart at the v.a. and then off to get my new tooth. glad i am getting it before i go on road. it is right there in front and i look weird. (not that i will look "good" when it is back in but ...)

LATER THIS DAY...

won again today after getting tooth. now i can smile without looking like someone out of DELIVERANCE. "squeal for me, boy, squeal like a pig". sorry.

a thought on a proposal that some congress people put forth about AIG where they were going to write a law and tax those bonuses at 90%. amazing how they could want to write a law just to get some people they DIDN'T LIKE. those men and women who were to get those bonuses did nothing illegal. their bonuses were guaranteed by contracts. regardless of how reprehensible they were, they still did nothing wrong. if congress had gone forth with this idea it would set a precedent where they could do it to anyone that crossed them. as dr. martin luther king said, "an injustice to one is an injustice to all." that is why the KKK will be supported by the ACLU (of which i am a dues paying, card carrying member), not because they agree with them but the rights of citizens apply to ALL citizens. we cannot pick and chose who has the right to free speech or the right of assembly. either we all do or none of us do.

but anyway, rock and roll

and

peace to us all.

READ THE NEW ROLLING STONE ARTICLE

MATT TAIBBI (who is a great writer) has an article in the april 2nd issue titled THE BIG TAKEOVER in which he lays out a case that "the global economic crisis isn't about money--it is about POWER. How wall street insiders are using the bailout to stage a revolution." it is fucking scary. he names names and takes us through a step by step explanation of how these bastards are basically taking over the government. (which is merely an extension of the ideas laid out in WEB OF DEBT). read it and weep.

we are so fucked, my friends. however, one of these day, this year, next year or 50 years from now, there will be a worldwide revolution of the people. throughout history, one theme has remained constant, the battle between the people and royalty. the kings always wanted to do no work yet get 98% of the proceeds from work. now the kings and queens have morphed into the international banks and corporations but the battle is the same. as RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE said, CLASS WARFARE--JUST DO IT.

see every time someone brings up class warfare it is shouted down by the powers that be. BUT CLASS WARFARE IS GOING ON RIGHT NOW. the rich have gotten richer and we have gotten poorer. hmmmm. the deck is stacked for the banks and corporations. when they get into a mess, such as right now, we, the people, fools that we are, bail them out. "hey peons, give us your money" "oh, yessir, massa, yessir, we'se gonna bail yer ass out again, oh yessir massa, yessir. whatever you say, massa" you see, to the ultra rich, we are all niggers. just slaves to the machine. the black people know this but haven't been able to convince their white brothers and sisters that THE MAN is not on any one's side except his own.

AS GWB SAID TO A GROUP OF ULTRA RICH SUPPORTERS, "SOME MAY CALL YOU THE HAVE MORES BUT I CALL YOU MY CONSTITUENCY" since he took office in 01, real wages have gone down and the rich have gotten MUCH MORE RICH. check it out.

and obama is playing right into their hands. whether it is on purpose or not, i don't know but, my friends, we are fucked. my hope is that the american people will come out of their self induced stupor and really get mad. i mean REALLY GET MAD. the old I AM MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!!!!" speak up, let us have a peaceful revolution of the people before we have to have a violent one. when there are 30 million homeless in america it will be too late for peaceful means. act now. we have been stupid and greedy and blind and uninformed for way too long. the net allows to contact our fellow citizens, obama showed us that if he does nothing else. "yes we can" shouldn't just apply to his campaign but to us the people; yes, we can make a difference but not by being silent, not by being afraid, not by being blind. open your eyes. then open your mouth.

and a happy saturday to you.


p.s. watched SOUTH PACIFIC on PBS last night as it was performed at CARNEGIE HALL on the GREAT PERFORMANCES series. it was so good. reba mcintyre played nellie furbush. each performer had the script book in their hands, so it wasn't like the original play but it still was an amazing piece of work. from our front room, rhonda and i gave it a standing ovation at the end. check it out.

tonight we go see LOVE. i can hardly wait, it should be great.

seat position

very seldom put up two posts in one day but ....

one of the things you have to be aware of is seat position and by this what i mean is that you want the strong players to your right and weak to your left. today there was a fellow who had over 2k in front of him which is HUGE at a 1-2 table and i moved to another seat so he would be to my right. he liked to push all in and i wanted to be able to trap him. also he raises a lot and that will keep me from playing so-so hands, which is cool.

well, i trapped him on basically my very first hand after moving. i am in bb with 5-7 off suit and there is no raise. flop comes 3-4-6 rainbow. da nutz. i check and everyone checks. fuck. jack of diamonds comes on turn putting two diamonds on board. i bet 15 dollars into pot and everyone folds to big stack who is on button. he goes all in. i call. he had 5-2 for the smaller straight. YES.

ended up about 400 to the good today.

and that doesn't count my winnings on bb yesterday where i had uconn, xavier, missouri, and villenava (sp) on a parlay and uconn by itself. YES!!!!

today i have okla., n.carolina and michigan state. we shall see. probably should have taken louisville to cover but i am not sure about them. hell, unlv beat them.

pssst. afghanistan is not a country. pass it on.

anback to winning ways, making it 9 out of last 10 at the venetian. small win but will take it. so, for 3 days of basically no cards, i still won a minor amount and that is good. minimizing losses and all...

rhonda has put me on face book but it all seems rather silly to me. not to be rude, but why would someone put on the net that "am bored."? "going to store" ?? eating a cookie, wiping their ass etc etc? this is not networking but i don't know quite what to call it. maybe it has some value as far as introducing people to me and my comedy but we haven't figured out how to make it work in that direction. i have no desire to skim through several hundred messages, most of which are trivial in content on any kind of regular basis. oh well, maybe i am missing something. if you know of a way to put it to work...enlighten me.

i have a very close and dear friend who thinks that obama is a demon and is going to bring the country down. i do surely hope they are wrong. i am, however, getting more nervous by the day with not only his appointments but now i see he is going to put even more troops in Afghanistan.

one of the real problems that we have in dealing with Afghanistan is that the united states keeps on acting as if Afghanistan was a COUNTRY. it is not. it is a collection of war lords and tribes that live in that part of the world. they don't think of themselves as afghans so why should we think of them as such? get out of that hell hole. and for that fact, get out TOTALLY from iraq. yes, it is going to descend into violence as the shiites fight the sunnis, the sunnis fight the shiites, the arabs fight the kurds, the persians fight the arabs and the kurds, the kurds fight the arabs, the shiites, the sunnis, the persians and the turks. AND WE WANT TO STAY IN THE MIDDLE OF THAT? jesus.

want peace? want to eliminate so-called islamic terrorism? GET OUT OF THE MIDDLE EAST! it is the one and only way. there is no other way. duh. we and the british have been fucking around there since world war one. and incidentally, the jews didn't take isreal from the Palestinians, they took it from the british who took it from the Palestinians. duh. our fingerprints are all over the wars and conflicts of the middle east and while the people of that region know this the people of america do not.

want to live in peace?
get out of the middle east.

poker streak comes to an end and what is obama thinking?

all good things come to end and today i lost a grand sum total of 65 dollars. i made a 40 dollar mistake and the rest was just 9-3 followed by 6-2 followed by Q-4 followed by......blinded out basically. that's alright, it happens and when i saw that it just wasn't going to be my day and, on top of that, it was a very dangerous table i got up and left and came home to pick up dog shit. from shit to shit, so to speak.


i am becoming very concerned about some of the nominees that the president has put forth because of their ties to the very companies that got us into this mess. his latest, gary gensler to be chairman of the COMMODITY FUTURES TRADING COMMISSION is a point in fact. he played a central role in blocking regulations for some of the exotic financial instruments used for hedging. also he spent 18 years at GOLDMAN SACHS. hmmmm

BERNIE SANDERS tried to block the nomination pointing out that sanders had worked with phil gramham to except CREDIT DEFAULT SWAPS from regulation. it is those very things that brought down AIG. he also worked to deregulate electric energy swaps which is what our boys at ENRON were doing. what in the fuck is obama thinking?

he keeps putting men into place that were knee deep in the shit. what is he thinking. have we been fooled again? is obama just a spokesperson for the huge financial institutions? i certainly hope not. but facts are facts and crooks are crooks and deregulators are the enemy of the common man and the ally of wall street and all that implies. man oh man. we shall see but my concern is growing.

another win and a quote from jefferson

won again today for the 8th straight session but it was very small. in a way, i played better today than most of the other 7 times because i was card dead for hours at a time and picked off only a few little pots to keep my head above water. you have to recognize when it is just not your day and don't stay when things aren't going well at all. i made some very good lay downs today and almost sprained my wrist from throwing cards away.

oh well, off to watch obama's press conference. i am beginning to have my doubts about the wisdom of his bank bailouts; i would much rather he just nationalize them and concentrate more on jobs but will see what he has to say this evening.

"i fear for my country when i contemplate that god is just"

thomas jefferson.

we, as a country, have piled up some really karma over the last 8 years what with our naked aggression and corporate greed.

just a thought

poker commentary from captain hook.

since i am so tight i hear the criticism that no one will call my raises or big bets because they would know that i have the goods. also, i hear that i can't just wait for aces and kings or big pairs that i have to mix up my game. one other thing i hear is how much people hate jacks (or aces...they say, "i always lose with aces") all three of these are dead wrong. remember something, my fellow good players, we don't win by being better than our opponents, we win by not being as bad as our opponents. we win by outwaiting our opponents. we win by throwing away hands that are beat. we win by maximizing our winnings and minimizing our losses. some cases in point from today's session:

still playing at venetian and the game today was wild and woolly at times with several loose aggressive players who had big stacks. not my favorite kind of game but there i was. first hour i don't play in a single hand and am down 15 bucks or so. i call under the gun with pair of 4's. wild and woolly next to me raises to ten dollars and since everyone at the table knows by now that he could have anything from a pair of aces to 3-7 off suit (for real) he gets 5 callers so i put in the extra 8 dollars to see the flop. flop comes Qc 9d 4d. i check, he bets ten dollars which is raised to 30 dollars and is called by button. i raise to 90 dollars and take down the pot. (eliminate the draws). another hour goes by and i am on little blind with jacks. button raises to 12 dollars and i call as do three other people including one of the loose aggressive players. flop comes Ad Jc 3h. beautiful. i check, loose aggressive bets 20 dollars, button calls and i raise to 75 and loose aggressive goes all in. i call. he had ace king. ba da boom. 45 minutes later from button i raise to 12 with jacks again. four callers and one of them has BIG stack. flop comes Qc, Jc, 4c. hmmmmm. it is checked around to me and i bet 40 dollars and big stack calls while everyone else folds. i am afraid he has flush. turn is the 4 of diamonds. beautiful. he checks. i check. river is a nothing. he bets 50 dollars. i raise to 100. he raises all in. i call. he shows nut flush. thank you. after i won another hand with jacks they started calling me captain hook.

another example: i raise to ten with ace king of diamonds. flop comes Ac Ts 6s. an asian woman bets 40 dollars right into me and i fold. why? because i was beat and i had no spades. she is called in one place. she had tens and 6's and lost to a spade flush on river.

poker and plans

i am running really good at poker and i am doing so by being super tight. i have had people tell me that since i am so tight that people will not call me when i raise or bet because of my table image. WRONG! for instance, i had been at the table for several hours and was up big when this hand happened....i raise to 17 with aces and am called in two places. flop comes Q, 5, 7 rainbow. they check and i bet 50 dollars and am called by one guy. next card is a 2. he checks and i bet 75 dollars and he goes all in with his last 100. i call. he has QJ and i take the pot. earlier in the day i had raised with jacks and spiked a jack on the flop against two opponents but the board was dangerous. Tc, Jh Kh. ace queen or 9-Q and they have a straight and, of course there is the heart draw. I bet 60 dollars into a 50 dollar pot and get called in both places. hmmmm. turn is 7c putting two flush plus another straight. they check, i bet 75 dollars and both call. well, shit. river is perfect, the 2 of clubs, they check and so do i and they were both on a draw.

the great advantage of 1-2 no limit hold-em is the quality of your opponents which is poor. like i have said before, i am not out to make tens of thousands of dollars per month; i am out to make a grand or so every month. i am not trying to win a lot of hands; i looking to win a couple of real big hands. slow and easy and super tight will do the trick at low limit no limit.

on to another subject; the more i read about the people and companies that got us into this position the more i realize that it is many people and many companies and they all seem to be inter-related. larry summers in the clinton administration lead the way to deregulate. gaithner (sp) is right in there with him. citibank, goldman sachs, aig, bank of america. peas in a fucking pod. we have foxes guarding the hen house. we are so fucked.

all of us better batten down the hatches and start making some plans of what to do if everything does go to shit which it very well may. i have poker and a small ss check and rhonda can always do individual taxes, that is assuming that somebody still has a job. also, i know how to hustle by buying some little thing that i can sell and double or triple my money on it; whether it be peace buttons or pool cues that double as a walking stick (hey heather). we also have a very low mortgage payment that we should always be able to cover. and if all else fails, i have a brother in law up in nebraska who has a small farm that grows enough food for several families and he also is a hunter and has always brought home fresh game. he has told rhonda and me that if it all goes down, we are to scoot on up there and we will ride it out together. so we have plans, a, b, c and d.

fear and loathing in america brothers and sisters. fear and loathing.

what did they call with?

another mistake that 1-2 players make is that they don't ask themselves "what did he call with?" if you fail to do that, you can walk into some real problems.

i raised with aces to 18 dollars which was a big raise for the table i was on and am called by two people. flop comes Q, 9, 3 rainbow. it is checked to me and i bet 50 dollars and one guy, who i know to be fairly loose, calls. there is now aprx. 150 in the pot. turn is a K. he checks. now, what did he call with? ten jack? he has a straight. Q,K? two pair. AQ, i am golden. QJ? could still be good but he picked up draw. i check.

river is another King. he debates and checks. cool. if he had QK he would have bet since i checked the turn, same if he had straight because he would be afraid that i wouldn't bet. i bet 100 dollars and he calls with AQ. thank you. my check on the turn got me an extra hundred. (and let me know what he had by how he played the river.)

i am on button with pair of 4's. flop comes 9-4-2 rainbow. three people plus bb in pot. bb checks, next player bets 10 dollars, player to my right calls, i raise to 20 dollars. bb folds, first bettor folds and other guy calls. turn is Q. he bets 50 dollars into me. now, he either has two pair or a set of 9's or 2's. (would have raised with queens) i think he has Q-9 so i call. river is a blank and he fires 100 dollars into pot. i call. he turns over Q-9. thank you.

nothing of real importance in those two examples just telling you how it thought it through.

ENOUGH ALREADY!

AIG'S CEO edward m. liddy was on tv earlier today spewing forth his lies and justifications about the bonuses but no senator brought up mr. liddy's background and just how deep he personally was in this whole thing.

he was A DIRECTOR OF GOLDMAN SACHS and was paid 685,770 dollars in 2007 and would have been brought in for questioning if g.s. hadn't gone belly up. liddy even headed their AUDIT COMMITTEE during the 5 years before he resigned to take over AIG in 2008. as for his salary sacrifice, not to worry, in 05 when he as still ceo of allstate insurance he received 26.7 MILLION dollars in compensation.

in other words this creep should have been very aware of underwriting practices at aig since he had been paid millions by another insurance company. between aig and goldman sachs he oversaw the collapse of the american financial sector and there he is being referred to as "sir" instead of "motherfucker" which may be what the "m" in his name stands for.

all these guys seem to be in cohoots with each other. chris dodd was chairman of the committee that should have been overseeing the financial sector but there he is acting all sanctimonious.

what does it take to get the american people stirred up enough to DEMAND some rolling of heads? i am not advocating violence (but i would understand it) but i am advocating some civil unrest until we see some actual and factual and effectual actions, not words, coming out of washington.

(thanks to yvonne c. for sending me the information on edward motherfucker liddy.)

it's the congress, stupid.

$807,500 for nevada fair housing foreclosure effort
$507,000 access to healthcare network for uninsured
523,000 to fight hepatitis c
$ 1 million to assist the university of nevada health sciences nursing program
856,000 to school system to school district to prevent dropout
856,000 to another school district for same thing
800,000 for university of nevada reno for agricultural related programs
269,000 to help carson city battle erosion
300,000 to city of fernley for law enforcement equipment
235,000 to nevada dept. of agriculture for weed control
4.78 million for truckee meadows flood control project
2.5 million for truckee canal reconstruction
3 million for water treatment at lake tahoe
18 million for rural nevada water infrastructure and water quality projects
money to study wildlife habitat in central nevada lakes and to restore the lahonthon cutthroat trout population
608,000 to help wells recover from earthquake
150,000 to restore a church
475,000 for the virginia and truckee railroad
190,000 for amargosa valley community center
300,000 for wastewater treatment in goldfield
190,000 for community center in elko
285,000 truckee meadows community college low income student recruitment
1.5 million for interpretive center in elko
24,000 to help poor schoolchildren in lincoln county
381,000 for nevada cancer institute to fund hope coach mammovans

how many jobs do these projects create? and the ones that are created, how long will they last?

while each of these is commendable in a way, they are not what we need. WE NEED SOME FUCKING GOOD PAYING LONG LASTING JOBS!!! jesusfuckingchrist. without jobs for the unemployed all other things are just farting in the wind.

this is just a partial list and god only knows what is in the "stimulus bill" for other states. i know that obama has said that these PORK projects only make up 1% of the overall bill but i don't believe him. i believe that the congress in general and the demos in particular are loading this up with enough pork to choke us all. obama promised no more pork but he has gone back on his word.

i told all of you why i was voting for obama and i also told you that i would bitch and moan if he didn't live up to his promises. well, i am beginning to bitch and moan.

the treasury secretary, gaither (sp), sounds like he has no clue as to what he is doing.

congress must be reigned in. the democrats, now that they control congress, are acting like children in the candy store and showing no restraint at all. fuck.

write your congressperson and DEMAND no more pork and DEMAND that it is jobs, jobs, jobs, jobs that get the money.

NAMES AND PHOTOS WOULD DO THE TRICK

the president is taking a lot of heat for the AIG fiasco bonuses and the wolves are howling but most people don't understand the bind he (we) is (are) in. these bonuses were contracted last year and are legally binding. now, since we, the taxpayer, have a stake in the company and we don't pay the bonuses then there will be lawsuits which they will win.

i have an idea though that would keep us from paying these outrageous bonuses to people who got us in the mess in the first place: publish their names, their addresses and their photos in the national press and on the internet. then let us see if these greedy motherfuckers still want to take that money. already, aig hq is under armed guard because the people are more than a little upset over this and it is hard to blame them.

it has a good chance of getting really ugly here in america and fear and loathing is sweeping the land. the barricades are being erected and the pitchforks are being sharpened. somewhere, some old lady is stitching names into a blanket. those names are going to be checked and heads will roll. (re: tale of two cities)

in the nit tonight, take kentucky and give the 7 over unlv.

nationalize the banks and do away with the federal reserve. the f.r. is a PRIVATE bank that LOANS our money to US. now is the time for real change. it may get a little bloody but as thomas jefferson said, "the tree of liberty must watered with blood of patriots and tyrants."

oh well, i am old and have lived through the golden age of america, the richest times in the richest land the world has ever seen. my children and grandchildren will not have it nearly as good as i did.

top of the morning to you.

a little dose of epictetus

what a relief it is to feel good again. i don't do "sick" with any kind of aplomb and am, in fact, a real woosy when i am feeling bad. but i am back, feeling my oats, full of piss and vinager so let's rock on.

the purpose of the exorcise in poker is twofold: minimize your losses and maximize your winnings. with that in mind, here is what i believe to be the best way to play those dueces that we have talked about: remember sets are very, very powerful hands and can be huge winners because they are hidden.

preflop. call the two dollars and then call the small raise. (there is another way right here but very dangerous and that is to raise big when it gets back around and that way either take the money right then and there or eliminate weak speculative hands. if you are called however, you are in horrible position and would have to make all in bet on flop when you spike the 2)

flop: you are first to act and it is a dangerous drawing board with both straight and flush possiblities. CHECK AND CALL

turn. now there is a flush and straight possibility on board. check and call any bet up to 25 dollars because pot odds are so good at this point, if board pairs on river you will take down big pot more than likely. if it is bet big, fold.

river. was another heart incidently so folding is easy. if board pairs or miracle 2 shows up, you should bet it straight out big.


this way of playing it keeps your exposure small and your possible gain big. you can abandon ship easily enough when scare cards come up and then someone bets big.

aggression is a winning tactic, obviously, but there are times you must temper aggression with a little common sense. i am always looking to trap; i want the hand that i know will win not the one i hope will win.


so that's it for the 2's.


"in theory it is easy to convince an ignorant person: in actual life, men not only object to offer themselves to be convinced, but hate the man who has convinced them. whereas Socrates used to say that we should never lead a life not subjected to examination"

Epictetus


that quote has nothing to do with the 2's other than it has something to do with everything.

dis and dat on a sunday night

dr john and the neville brothers were beyond words!

scotty, i got to hear aaron neville sing AMAZING GRACE and he sang the verses we couldn't come up with. unfuckingbelievable. it was great!

over the past three years of this blog i have said over and over we need to get our ass out of the middle east. we meddle, we sign agreements with isreal that are not in our best interests but theirs, we give money to egypt and take money from the saudis, we do the biddings of the kuwaitis, we invade iraq, we threaten iran, we invade afghanastan, piss off pakistan, bomb by proxie the syrians, abandon the kurds and invest in dubai. we are so incredibly stupid and arrogant. we don't read history and get our information from 30 second sound bites.

so just some thought from other bloggers, much more knowledgeable than i, throughout history.....



Now it is not good the the Christian's health to hustle
the Aryan brown,

For the Christian riles, and Ayran smiles and
he weareth the Christian down;

And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name
of the late deceased,

And the epitaph drear; "A fool lies here who tried
to hustle the east."

---Rudyard Kipling, "the naulahka"


"You have eyes but you do not see
And you have ears but not hear."

Jesus H. Christ



"how many times can a man be robbed--on the same street, by the same people---before they call him a rube?"

Hunter S. Thompson


"there's a sucker born every minute."

P.T. Barnum

beware the cure

not only am i not getting better, i seem to be getting worse and i think it is from the medicine i am taking. how this came down was the dentist who did the surgery gave me an antibiotic but then after taking it for a week i end up with a fever of 102 so i go to the v.a. and my doctor there gives me AVELOX, a much more powerful antibiotic, and then the real fun begins: oh my fever goes down after a couple of days but my left hand cramps up so much that it is unusable, my right leg cramps up, my right arm cramps up, my lips break out in blisters, sweat pours off me at night and when i wake up the bed is drenched. i then read the warnings about the drug and all of these things are side effects and can be very serious. each one of them with the exception of the blistering lips (which is highly unattractive, i might add) comes with the warning "see your doctor immediately". fucking great, the v.a. is closed on weekends and i am not going to some emergency room where there are people stacked up to the ceiling and get charged several thousand dollars to be told, "see your doctor for another prescription." so what i am doing is not taking any more of this until i talk to dr. leon on monday. it has been 24 hours since i last took a pill and guess what?, hand is okay, leg is okay, blisters are gone, arm is okay. think i should take another pill? guess not.

besides all of that, unless i am on my death bed tonight, i am going to see DR.JOHN AND THE NEVILLE BROTHERS at the hilton where i have 4th row center tickets. this is the very first time they have ever toured together and should be a tremendous show. i saw the neville brothers in new orleans last year at jazz fest which was the first time they had played in new orleans since katrina and, as i told you then, it was a spiritual experience and brought tears to the eyes of all who were there. arron neville's voice is a national treasure and if you have never heard these guys....DO SO! dr. john also is something special. i do hope he does WALK ON GILDED SPLINTERS because it is the most unusual version of that song ever recorded. and what a show man he is. if i am still alive tomorrow i will tell you about the concert.

i know that almost everyone who reads this is someone who reads, i can tell by your comments, and i want to tell you again to read WEB OF DEBT which is so incredibly relevant to what is going on that it is scary. same with SHOCK DOCTRINE. it is the banks who have done this to us and there is a cure but it is radical. read these books. educate yourself and then pass it on. it is we the people who have to turn things around, we cannot count on politicians to do it. obama, as sincere as he is, is tied to the old ways and unless we speak up and demand some fundamental changes in our money policies the current situation will reoccur over and over and over again as it as done for the past century.

oh well, back to basketball and fruit juices.

peace to us all

random thoughts from my sick bed

you won't ever see a better basketball game than syracuse and uconn last night. big east bb allows contact to go uncalled that would be felonies in some states. no a league for the faint of heart. gamblers had to be living and dying.

i have been sick as dog for past week hence the absense of blog but if a sports fan is going to be under the weather this was a good week to do so.

just when is this stimulus money going to create a job? it has proped up banks and insurance companies and credit card companies and has created a hog heaven of pork but so far as i know not a single dollar has gotten to the people who need it. and congress did grant themselves a new pay raise. cocksuckers.

no wait, some of the finest people i know are cocksuckers so let's just call them insensitive pigs.

next week the ncaa's kick off and unlv will not be there; they went out with a whimper. we failed to live up to our hype. oh well, wait till next year.

if san diego state gets in and his a high enough seed to not be playing one of the top three or four in their bracket in the first game they will be a good bet, they are good athletic team that is peaking at the right time. you heard it here first.

too tired, too sick, too medicated to write anything of consequence, not that i ever do, so this is just to let you know i am still around

flop and turn for the ages

i started out the day at MGM but after about an hour of just being card dead and down about 30 bucks i decide to go check out the venetian poker room and so off i went and am glad i did. first of all, the room is just GREAT, big room, big tables, comfy chairs, food service to your table and dollar an hour comps. i have been at table for about ten minutes and in first position i find a pair of jacks and raise to ten dollars and five people call. and lordy, lordy, how sweet it was, flop comes JACK, JACK, ACE! gotta love that. i of course check as does everyone else and then, my friends, the miracle card comes...another ace. the guy with ace king thought he had a hand.......lol.

all told today i won 520 dollars in about 3 hours and came on home.

more stories and the end of the poker quiz/lesson/example tomorrow (i hope)

peace to us all.

mistakes in poker and politics

since i play at the 1-2 tables, i am playing with players who are not real good on the whole and i see them make many mistakes, the biggest two are not raising big enough with big pairs and then after the flop not betting enough to run people off hands. yesterday, i was in the big blind and 5 people call and then the button raises to 7$. i look down and i have the 4s-7s, obviously not a very good hand but i know that everyone else is going to call so i put in the extra 5 dollars. sure enough, the other 5 call so now 7x7 or 49 in the pot. flop comes Jc, 5s, 6s. i bet ten dollars into the pot to represent the jack and everyone folds except the button who raises me to 20 dollars; i call. the turn is the 3h. i check and now he wants to bet big and bets 30 dollars. i raise to 60 dollars and he then compounds his mistake (s) by going all in and i am now 200 dollars richer. he had kings. had he raise to 15-20$ preflop as he should with that many people in before him i would, of course, mucked that piece of cheese and he would have won the pot. plus, if he had bet huge on the flop i would have had to drop my cards but he priced me in and it cost him his stack. you gotta remember what grandma said....always raise big with big pairs....grandma didn't fuck around and neither should you.

today, i played for a little over 4 hours and won 152 dollars and was in maybe ten hands not counting blinds all day. i just refused to get involved with less than premium cards and just waited those people out and paid off on the few hands i won.

i will go back to the case of the dueces tomorrow and maybe another shoot-em up story.

sure hope that stimulus money gets into the economy quickly before everybody is unemployed. i agree with paul krugman that the only problem with what obama has done is that it is not big enough. we gotta fix things (bridges, roads, levies,) and build things, (schools, high speed rail, desalination plants) because just giving the money to banks to loan isn't going to work. we've tried that and all they did was go buy other banks and still refuse to loan our money back to us. (it is a good thing for the bankers and stockbrokers and politicians who got us into this mess that we don't live in france of the 17 hundreds because we would have those motherfuckers up against the wall or on the chopping block....not that i would do that but, truth be known, i probably wouldn't stop others from doing it) jobs is what we need. manufacturing is what we need. not only do we have to fix the immediate problem we have to face the fact that we don't make enough here anymore. true wealth of a nation is in WHAT THEY MAKE, tangible goods not intangible services.

oh well, our greed and stupidity got us into this and hopefully the nation as a whole will learn some very vaulable lessons from this disaster. number one of which is never elect another republican to the presidencey. check out when unemployment was the highest over the last 50 years, see how it was ALWAYS the republicans who got us into these messes. nixon, reagan, bush and bush all brought us recessions. we are slow learners.

poker, robbers, shooters and always keep your cool

at this point i have to get more specific because the action heats up. (this happened at the mgm and it was a buddy of mine who had the 2's and he was sitting right next to me and i had folded and he showed me his cards preflop. after the hand we discussed at great length.....

he bet 30 dollars into the pot and was called by the maniac and the button. pot is now pretty big.

the next card was the 8h. now what? do you back off or do you bet and if so, how much?


speaking of buddies, one of mine got robbed at gun point the other night and it reminded me of something that happened in the 60's......

it is late night in oklahoma city and i was running a book office at the time and on that night i had gone to see a boxing match downtown and afterwards i had to go to the bus station to pick up supplies that had been sent to me. (back in those days, shipping by greyhound was the fastest and most economical way to get boxes of whatever sent from a to b) i go in and pick up two boxes weighing maybe 15 pounds each and go to leave. the bus station sits on a corner and my car is parked right across the street if i were to go to my right it is right there. as i am leaving with my hands obviously full, i notice two rather scruffy looking young black guys get up and follow me out. downtown is deserted at this time of night and i am a little skeptical of the action so instead of turning right to go to car, i go straight across the street and they follow, maybe ten yards behind me. i then take a right and cross the street and they follow. now so far it could be just a coincidence but then i take a right again so i am going back the way i came but just across the street. they follow. now i know something is amiss. i get to my car and throw the boxes on my trunk and spin around with my right fist cocked, i am going to punch the first guy before they can jump me. however, as i turn i find myself facing a snub nosed .38! (lesson: don't bring a fist to a gun fight) i freeze in mid punch and the guy with the gun says, "be cool." i say, "i am the coolest motherfucker you have ever seen." he says, "give me your money" and i reach very slowly to my wallet and hand it to him. inside is about ten dollars. he says, "fuck! you are more broke than we are." i say, "look, keep the money, give me back my wallet and i.d. and i will get in my car and go about my business and will not call the cops" he says, "promise?" i say, "absofuckinglutely." and that is what we did.

the lesson here is threefold: be aware of your surroundings and be willing to change tactics is the situation changes are the first two and the third one is always keep your cool.

and that story reminds me of the times i have been shot at and maybe next post i will tell one or two of those. yeah, yeah, i know; everyone of you have been shot at multiple times...... lol.

peace to us all.

rock and roll.

enjoy today, tomorrow could be worse.

for those of you who are still in game. raise was called by everyone so pot now contains 7x7 or 49 dollars.

flop is Jh, 7h, 2c. your hand contains two red dueces.

you are first to act.

bad tooth and poker problem part II

for any of you who were planning on seeing me this week up in northern california at a couple of casinos...i aint gonna be dere. yesterday i had to go to the dentist because one of my teeth had abscessed and it was full of infection. tooth was pulled...not a lot of fun but it was the aftermath which was horrible. the infection was so severe that it "ate" the (the word that i can't spell but is the pain killer that a doctor shoots into your mouth) and thus the nerves were exposed. let me tell you, you don't want that! i screamed in pain. i cried. i moaned. i screamed some more. rhonda, poor thing, was going crazy with worry; she had taken off work and here she is with screaming husband. we get me home and i gobble down some pain pills and finally get to sleep. it was a long day.

now for poker puzzle from previous post: (all except one, decided to call) well, 6 people call and then the button raises but only to 7 dollars or 5 dollars more each. bb calls but lb throws away and now it is back to you.

politics and poker

aig wants (and will get)more money and so do some (dare i say, foolish) banks. i have a problem with bailing out companies that are bad shape because they made bad decisions. while i have socialistic ideals and believe in my heart of hearts that a nation's worth or greatness lies not in the power of their military but how they treat their citizens, i have enough free enterprise in my personal system that failure should not be rewarded. aig is in the situation that they created. like i have said before, i called the housing collapse waaaaay before it happened and if i, drug addled, poker playing stand-up comic with no college education could read that writing on the wall then how come these "masters of the universe" could not? did they know that if they failed then someone would come along and bail their sorry asses out? same with the banks. why not, if we are giving out money, support those banks who did not play the fools game of derivatives and shaky loans to shaky people? let them continue to prosper and give them more capital to work with since they seem to know what they are doing?

i can understand the rationale behind the support for the car companies in as they employ so many people and we, the people, will get benefits from them recovering whereas what is the benefit to the american people if aig makes a comeback? they are an insurance company, there are LOTS of insurance companies. and we all know just what fair minded people insurance executives are. (speaking of which, according to tv commercials we all ought to change our car insurance to x, y or z because each and every one of them has the lowest rates.....could it be that they are lying? nah? not an insurance company)

"getting out of iraq" does NOT mean leaving 50,000 troops there. that is not getting out. that is reducing forces. and there is a huge difference.

my wife, rhonda, says that we should not be nitpicking right now because that just plays into the republicans game but i say that life and death on foreign soil is not nitpicking. while i agree with 90% of what president obama has done so far, i cannot in good conscience support leaving american boys and girls in iraq for any reason. yes, i know that violence is going to break out and that there will be blood letting on all sides, shiites, sunnis and kurds but let us not shed another drop of american blood there. we broke it and we can't fix it. so let us get the fuck out. a new strong man will come out of the chaos and establish a new dictatorship there. so be it. once that happens we can establish some kind of relief fund for them with strings attached of course and help who ever it is to right that particular ship of state.

as far as the republicans go they are committing political suicide right in front of our eyes. bobby jindal in louisiana is a joke and so is samford in south carolina. they have NO ideas, NO plans, NO proposals other than give tax cuts to the rich. man. and to hear rush Limburger cheese (they both smell) say that he wants obama to FAIL is beyond my comprehension. for obama to fail the country fails. unemployment reaches TENS OF MILLIONS OF PEOPLE. that is what he wants? talk about unpatriotic. if they had an alternate plan that would be one thing...but they don't.

oh well, tomorrow we go back to poker blogs for a while ... i have some interesting hands to discuss.

matter of fact here is one now but with a twist. i am only going to give you the hand as it came out and you write me and tell me what you would have done. once we get enough people to comment on preflop we will then go to flop and start the process over again.

you are in first position at a table that usually gets lots of callers but few raises preflop but can get really hairy from there on out with one certified maniac who has lots of money in front of him but i have already seen him bluff off several hundred dollars in the short time i have been there. there are others who are loose and will gamble but he is the only maniac.

first question on this problem: you have a pair of 2's. what do you do? fold, call or raise?