1 percenters fucking 99 percenters.

according to government figures, 1 percenters' share of america's total income is the highest it has been since 1929, and their tax rates are the lowest they have faced in two decades. through bonuses, many 1 percenters will profit from the 23 trillion dollar bailout largesse the treasury department now says could be headed to financial firms. most of them benefit from irs decisions to reduce millionaire audits and collect zero taxes from the majority of major corporations.

but what really makes the ultra-wealthy so fortunate, what truly separates this moment from a run of the mill gilded age, is the unprecedented protection the 1 percenters have bought for themselves on the most pressing issues.

to review: with 22,000 americans dying each year because they lack health insurance, congress is considering universal health care legislation financed by a surcharge on income above $280,000- that is, a levy almost exclusively on 1 percenters. this surtax would graze just 5 percent of small businesses and would recoup only part of the $700 billion the 1 percenters received from the bush tax cuts. in fact, it is so miniscule, those making $1 million annually would pay just $9,000 more in taxes every year or said another way, 9/10ths of their 12 month haul.

nonetheless, the 1 percenters have deployed an army to destroy the initiative.

the foot soldiers are the land rover liberals. these democratic lawmakers secure their lefty labels by wearing pink ribbon lapel pins and supporting good causes like abortion rights. however, being affluent and/or from affluent districts, they routinely drive their luxury cars over middle-class economic interests. hence, this week's letter from boulder's dot com tycoon rep. jared polis and other so called liberals calling for the surtax's death.

echoing that demand are the corrupt cowboys--those like sen. max baucus, of montana, who come from the heartland's culturally conservative and economically impoverished locales. these cavalrymen in both parties quietly build insurmountable campaign war chests as the biggest corporate fundraisers in congress. at the same time, they publicly preen as jes' folks, make twangy references to "voters back home" and now promise to kill the health-care surtax because they say that is what their communities want.

that fantastical fairy tale, of course, couldn't exist without the millionaire media- the elite journalists and opinionmongers who represent corporate media conglomerates and or are themselves extremely wealthy. ignoring all the data about inequality, they legitimize the assertions of the 1 percenters' first two battalions, while actually claiming america's fat cats are unfairly persecuted.

most brazenly, nbc's meredith vieira asks president obama why the surtax is intent on "PUNISHING THE RICH"?


for his part, obama has responded with characteristic coolness-and a powerful counter-strike, "no, it is not punishing the rich," he said, "if i can afford to do a little bit more so that a whole bunch of families out there have a little more security, when i already have security, that is being part of a community.

from the coloradoan and written by david sirota.

politics, police, professor, perspective and poker

3 of the BILL HICKS CHRONICLES are now in the can and one of them will be posted on utube soon with links on my web site and on face book.

as soon as obama made the "stupid" remark about the professor and the cops i knew he had stepped into some shit. he cannot, under any circumstances, be seen as the BLACK president and he came across that way by those ill conceived statements. he is now trying to make ammends and probably will but the republicans will play the race card over and over and in these times with so many important things on his plate obama cannot afford these kind of distractions.

on the surface of it, the cops were doing the right thing. they had a call from a neighbor that two black men were breaking into a house. the "black" in the statement was not racial it was descriptive. apparently the professor took umbrage at someone accusing him of being a burglar and refused, at first, to show i.d. well, what did he expect the cops to do?

not every time a black person is stopped or questioned by the police is racism involved. to the contrary, i would say that the majority of the time there is a good reason on the cops part for the incident whatever it was. and i say this as a strong supported of civil rights for all and have stood on that side of the fence all my life but a crime is a crime and a criminal is a criminal regardless of race. the police have a very, very dangerous job and they are, for the most part, good men and women (of all races...one of the cops in mass. was black) of good character and good intentions. are there rotten apples in the cops cart? of course. are there black (or brown) people stopped just for racism? of course. but some long haired white kids are stopped because of a "profile" as well. perfection is really hard to come by and, as far as i know, no one person nor one race is perfect.

i hope that obama will make an apology for his remarks, not just to say that he could have said it better but an out and out apology. we shall see.

on the poker front: one of the reasons i like mandalay bay is their "high hand bonuses" where they pay extra money for 4 of a kind or better with both hole cards playing and 20 dollars in the pot to qualify. yesterday, rhonda and i were playing there and we were at a short table of 5 when i said that i was not going to play where my money, so to speak, was 40% of the total so i went and got some coffee and cigarette. finally someone else sat down and i came back. even though i would have the blind in two hands i went ahead and posted my 3 dollars (fair is fair) and took my seat. i look down and there is a pair of tens, so i raise to 10 dollars and am called by one person. flop comes ten, ten, jack. FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS thank you very much.

heads up

the road does something to my head
vampire poems
and odes to the dead

i saw psycho killer eating a burger
at jack in the box
he had a head in a box
everybody knew
but said nothing
he might have room for two

while i am not happy with a lot of things that president obama has done so far (and some of his plans for the future) but i still feel that his head and heart are in the right place. i saw a poll today that his support on job creation is falling and i can, in a way, understand that, however he has been in office for all of SEVEN MONTHS and things move very slowly in washington. as he said, it took years for us to get into this mess and it will take quite some time to get us out of it.

my biggest complaint so far is that the "work" he has envisioned leaves no lasting monuments to it. no hoover dam, no tva, no grand scheme to rally the people around. i have said it before but...what he should do, in my opinion, is build a series of desalination plants along the pacific and gulf coasts. then we build water pipe lines to california, nevada, lake mead, arizona, new mexico, utah and idaho and in the gulf we build pipe lines going up to the midwest, kansas, oklahoma, nebraska, iowa, etc. we would then be in a position of not being dependent on the whims of nature. we would always have water and thus we would always have crops. it would open so many places to agriculture that we could see a whole new wave of small farmers. droughts would not be the disaster there are now and we would be more secure. plus, our food exports could triple without in any way decreasing the supply for the homefront. ah but i dream of big things but we have a government of little minds.

oh well, life goes on. rock and roll.

back in vegas and glad to be here

back from a very long, very tiring trip to the northeast. providence and atlantic city (where, as a comic once said, it is halloween every day). providence is a pretty little town with lots of history and the club was in a slot casino out of town. thousands upon thousands of people were there putting their hard earned money into slots whose payouts are much, much lower than l.v. or a.c. slots are testament to americans inability to understand math. they are not good here but in indian or state casinos they are just short of highway robbery. blah. will not be going back to providence and may not be going back to atlantic city; it is too long a flight and too much hassle for me now. i don't want to work any more than 20 gigs next year and 11 of those will be in texas so there will have to be clubs cut from my schedule. san francisco, sacramento, indy, louisville, hilton head, lexington, sarasota will also make the cut leaving only a couple of other weeks to be filled. i have picked up some new clubs in oklahoma, kansas and arkansas and i will do a couple of them next year so that may be all. i will, of course, be working here in vegas multiple weeks so you can always see me here.

i will say that the new jersey turnpike between philly and nyc is one of the best roads in the world. what a piece of work that is! at times there are 16 lanes and the rest of the time 14. beats anything i have seen in this country.

both of the acts with me in a.c. were just great, eric o'shay and joe mulligan. it was a fabulous show!

gotta go, glad to be back, stay tuned for poker and politics and pontificating.

Ron and the oldest of his 8 grandchildren...Paris.

my beautiful wife rhonda smiling at me.

One wall in the living room at the Shock Household when house was being remodeled...you can see the dust from the drywall...these masks are Memories of New Orleans and days gone by and great times had by one and all...

The Shock Girls and Dad

another poker story, liz..just to bug you

in reference to my post, "you want them to make that call" when i flopped three kings with ace kicker and lost to a king/ten offsuit when they filled on river. the very next day i lost when i raised with kings and caught one on flop and lost to runner runner flush. the reason i bring this up is that yesterday i was down about 80 dollars in a 1-2 game and changed seats and took the big blind immediately. it is called by two people prior to the button who raises to 18 dollars. I look down and see my favorite hand, ACES both black. i take the bet up to 45 dollars and only the button calls. the flop is Kc, Kh, Qc. I check and he checks. At this point i figure he has AK because he was fairly short stacked and probably would have come back over the top with kings or queens. the turn is the Jc, I check and he goes all in for his last 100 dollars or so which is about what i have and I call figuring that any club, any ace or any ten (the club ten would give me a royal) would win and lo and behold, a club comes and i win the pot and from there i can't seem to lose for the rest of the evening and carry a couple of racks of reds to the cashier later on. moral of story: what goes around, comes around. another moral; you better bet 'em out when you can...if he had gone all in on the flop i would have thrown them away.

(hey liz, it is another poker story)

anyway, tomorrow i head back east for the weekend in providence rhode island and then atlantic city, tropicana. since my traveling computer is on blink, probably won't post any until i get back a week from this coming monday. but then again, you never know.

i cannot recommend the article in rolling stone about goldman sachs highly enough. read it!!!

love dem 3's; part two

while calling with small pairs in early position is not something i would recommend as a regular habit, the make-up of the table has to be taken into consideration. if you have a loose passive type of table with little or no raising going on then you can speculate with these giant killers. the day of the four threes, i went back to play that evening after a nap and dinner. lo and behold, i had the right kind of table and there were those 3's again in early position so i call the two dollars. this time i didn't flop 4 of them but did flop a full house! 3-8-8. lordy lordy.
got paid off on that one by someone who had tens but did not raise with them. there is a moral here.

off to see my friend TODD PAUL who has his room at HOOTERS CASINO. todd is a great act, combining comedy, magic and an unicycle. you know, just like my act.

today at the tables i lost 49 dollars and realized that i was not playing my A game so i came home. there is a moral there as well; if you are not playing correctly or if you feel bad or are sick or are tired DON'T PLAY. the game goes on forever, it will be there when you can be your best so go home, take a nap or come back another day.

5th of july.

well, a belated happy birthday, america, where, for all its faults, it still is the best place to be. one day, i hope, america will live up to its ideals, where talent and integrity count more than money, where contributions to mankind are looked upon with more favor than contributions to the sporting field. where a mother teresa would get a bigger funeral and farewell than a michael jackson. (not that mj didn't contribute to the world, he did, he wrote some wonderful music and revolutionized the idea of music videos...but you know what i mean.) where financial shenanigans are punished with the same severity as, say, armed robbery. (the motherfuckers of goldman sachs and aig stole their money with a pencil not a gun but they have ruined more lives than all the armed robbers of the last ten decades) a country that has its military only for the purpose of defending our own country and not defending the interests of, say for instance, the oil companies. where we become more like switzerland and less like imperial rome. oh well, one can always hope and dream.

great opinion piece in today's LAS VEGAS SUN by THOMAS FRIEDMAN about how, in olden days, john dillinger didn't steal nearly what the bankers stole and neither did bernie madoff.

on the poker front, today i flopped 4 threes and had two people betting and raising into me. it was a nice pot.

another good opinion piece in the sun by paul krugman who says that obama needs to get off his ass and put more money into job creation.

the republicans must be spinning after s. palin's latest stunt. she resigned to follow a higher path. i think sarah may be high anyway. just think she could have been vice president of the united states. another scary thought: john edwards could have been president.

you want them to make that call.

at mandalay bay, i dropped about 170 into a really good game and rebought for another hundred. worked my stack back up to within 30-40 dollars of even when this hand occurred: i am in big blind and it has been straddled to 4 dollars and there are 6 callers plus the original straddler and the two blinds, small blind folds and i look down at Ah, Kh. there is 31 dollars in the pot so i raise to 24 dollars and get one caller. flop comes Kd Kc 7c. i go all in and am called. we turn over our hands and he shows ks Th. great!!! fucking river is, you guessed it, a ten. man.

on the other hand, my philosophy on this is: I WANT HIM TO MAKE THAT CALL. I JUST DON'T WANT HIM TO HIT HIS 3 OUTER. but i am never upset over a deal like this, if people didn't make those foolish calls then i would never make any money. you can't get mad over something like this, you just say, "nice hand, sir" and move on. in this case however, i pulled out my gun and shot the motherfucker.

smashing assholes, how sweet it is.

i go to the venetian to play but the list is so long that it will be hours before i get in (they are having a tournament and most of the tables were for that) so i go over to mandalay bay where i get into a rock-em, sock-em game with two maniacs and several bad players who are calling station. one of the maniacs has about 900 in front of him which is not bad for a 300 dollar buy-in game and is the time of guy who will raise with anything and push hard with draws; dangerous but potentially profitable. after about a half an hour it is obvious that the guy is an asshole as well. shitty attitude, saying snide remarks to other players, smirking when he wins and bitching if he gets beat. ah, but lo and behold, eventually his wild ways catch up with him and he busts out and on the hand he busts with he has to put in pretty much his last 390 dollars into the pot, he counts out 385 dollars in three stacks and then pushes them over into the pot. dealer says, "you are 5 dollars short." he says that he isn't and makes the dealer restack everything, lay out the bets, etc and the dealers says, "you are still 5 dollars short." he still wants to argue but finally throws in the last five dollars with cuss words to go along. he leaves but we haven't seen the last of him. he goes and gets another 300 and sits back down about an hour later. i get all of that when i flop the nut straight and i sucker him into an all-in bet. it was sweet.

latest issue of rolling stone has scathing article on goldman sachs and how they have been scamming the system for over a hundred years. what motherfuckers these guys are and how they are so entrenched in our government especially in the treasury department. REQUIRED READING FOR THOSE WHO WONDER HOW WE GOT IN THIS MESS. a couple of years ago, i said in this blog that someone once told me the following: "the stock market moves on lies, rumors and bullshit and the only people who make money in the long run were those with insider information." he was the guy who got me to buy travelodge at 8.5 one day and see it go to 12 and 7/8ths the next. he knew of a tender offer that was coming. 50% profit overnight. and goldman sachs apparently does this on a daily basis. cool, huh?

oh well, gotta go. see ya at the tables or in some smokey nightclub on down the line.