I voiced some disagreement with what seemed to be the notion that government controlled online gambling is a better bet than free market online gambling. After all, reputable online gambling operatons have, in the past, and will continue to thrive with or without government regulation because it’s good business to run an honest game.

So at Uncommon Sense Rich Nikoley explains that by pointing out that the online gambling industry is regulated in the UK, he means to dispel the notion that offshore gambling is largely run by rogue con-men that operate with impunity.

Of course, online gamblers themselves know the score, but they’re not the ones who’ll be supporting this sort of prohibition. It’ll be the church nannies who view gambling as the work of the devil. It’ll be the church nannies who view gambling as the work of the devil.

But Rich puts too much emphasis behind the role of what he calls the church nanny crowd. The argument that gambling is sin - a vice which ruins families - is pure BS and most of the people who make that argument know it. It’s window dressing.

Is there a state in the Union where no form of gambling is allowed? That should be a clear indicator that the Senate cares almost nothing about the vice aspect of online gambling. And they obviously don’t care about protecting consumers from rogues and con-men. If they did care, they would disband themselves and never return to Washington DC. It’s about preserving their own influence, protecting their contributors’ monopolies, and the attempt to keep a significant amount of surveillance on the flow of gambling revenue. That’s difficult to do with online gambling.

Legislators want to be the sole decision makers on who’ll run lucrative gambling operations. They can bestow that privilege on themselves via state run lotteries or they can dole it out to special interests, like Indian tribes and certain selected businesses. Their current preference here is to exclusively license brick and mortar operations. They want the owners of these operations to be beholden to government and it’s easier to apply the carrot and stick to these businesses if they exist in meatspace, within their reach.

It’s not about vice and church nannies. Online gambling makes it hard for lawmakers to get their cut. That’s what “problem gambling” really means to your government.

“Is C-SPAN worthwhile?” asked a contributor to Wendy McElroy’s forum?.

Well, it’s not as messy as waterboarding and it doesn’t leave any marks.

And speaking of worthwhile efforts, Brad Spangler is looking for a few good dungeonmasters to help him “stand before the Balrog”. Kennedy, who identified the madness of sanctioning State torture three years ago, has volunteered to help.

Spangler:

I want to get waterboarded. In order to call attention to this heinous practice and make it the subject of broader public condemnation, I believe it needs to be shown to people. I’m volunteering in order for it to be so shown — online, as a video. These are the sort of dark times that demand a Gandalf to stand before the Balrog and shout “You shall not pass!“. That’s not me, but I can take my best shot at it.

Here’s the plan…

I’m asking for the following volunteers:

1) A lawyer to help us put together all of the appropriate waivers and confirm we can do this without government intervention.
2) A psychiatrist or other trained mental health professional to confirm for all interested parties that I am not acting on any self destructive impulse or urge to do myself harm. I’m not. This is a political statement.
3) A doctor or certified paramedic willing to stand by and administer treatment if it looks like things have gone to far.
4) A videographer to document it.
5) At least one trusted friend willing to help me — by torturing me.

Kennedy:

I volunteer for # 5.

Who says we’re not team players? Who says we’re not willing to get down in the trenches and put our shoulders to the wheel for liberty?

Last May Seth Stein was restrained on a flight by a fellow passenger who claimed to be a New York City police officer.

As he settled down with a book and a ginger ale, the father-of-three was grabbed from behind and held in a head-lock.”This guy just told me his name was Michael Wilk, that he was with the New York Police Department, that I’d been acting suspiciously and should stay calm. I could barely find my voice and couldn’t believe it was happening,” said Mr Stein.

American Airlines offered Stein $2000 to forget the incident, but later withdrew the offer. He could sue the airline, to be sure. However, it looks like Michael Wilk, the phantom passenger who subdued Stein, might be getting difficult to track down.

In a twist to the story, Mr Stein has since discovered that there is only one Michael Wilk on the NYPD’s official register of officers, but the man retired 25 years ago. Officials have told the architect that his assailant may work for another law enforcement agency but have refused to say which one.

It wouldn’t be unfair to reckon by about 50/50 odds that the character who identified himself as Michael Wilk is an air marshal. The Federal Air Marshal Service is, after all, chock full of knotheads. At best, it’s a waste of flesh and, at worst, it’s a menace.

Indeed, there is little to be admired in the way the Federal Air Marshal Service handles incidents. Their half-smart smoke and mirror spin tactics are contemptable and I find it a tad distressing that their incompentence is so well-tolerated by the media and the public, in general. It’ll be interesting to see how this case pans out.

The protection racket gets a seal of approval over at BitsBlog.

On Monday he offered,

The right to life itself, simply to live, has been upheld to a greater extent than anyone thought possible five years ago this morning… Think back to your thoughts and feelings on the middle of September, 2001. How did you envision your immediate future? Did you even dare to conjecture a long-term future?

I dared, Bithead.

On the morning of 9/11/01, I was a passenger on American Airlines flying from Connecticut to Los Angeles. My travel plans were disrupted at the halfway point, but I was not in the least bit pessimistic about my future on that day or in the weeks that followed. My biggest concern was - and is - that the Government’s reaction to 9-11, and the inevitable hysteria about it, would amplify the State’s invasion into my life. I was right.

Government seeks to disarm me, confiscates my property, and invades my privacy. The Terrorists represent less a threat to me than the DEA, ATF, or FBI. That was so five years ago and it’s doubly so now.

Speaking of the perils of immigration, they are, no doubt, passing around the angel food cake today at V-Dare in celebration of the 419th birthday of The White Doe.

from Peter Brimelow:

I have always been fascinated by the story of Virginia Dare. She was the first English child to be born in the New World, in August 1587, shortly after the founding of what was to become known as “The Lost Colony” on Roanoke Island off the North Carolina coast. It says something about the mettle of those settlers that any pregnant woman would cross the Atlantic, the equivalent of a lunar expedition at that time—and Virginia’s mother Elenor was no less than the daughter of John White, the colony’s governor…

Today, Virginia Dare seems to be vanishing from American education too. But she was a fixture for earlier generations. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt felt free to give a speech commemorating the 350th anniversary of her birth. At one point, I planned to pay homage by bestowing her name on the heroine of a projected fictional concluding chapter in Alien Nation, about the flight of the last white family in Los Angeles. It seemed symmetrical.

I was dissuaded.

But multiculturalists will be happy to know that there is always the possibility that the colonists survived, merging with the local Indians. There are fables that Virginia Dare as a young woman got involved in a love triangle with a warrior and an angry medicine man, who transformed her into a white doe…

So Virginia Dare could be symbolic of the coming racial nirvana that immigration enthusiasts are forced to start fantasizing about when you compel them to look at the statistical consequences of current policy.

Or perhaps not. The actress Heather Locklear (Melrose Place, etc.) is claimed as a prominent Lumbee. But if, through some miracle of genetic recombination, Virginia Dare is reborn in Ms. Locklear’s beautiful face, John White might well have recognized her.

The spectacle of hispanic protests winding through the streets of America has riled the ranks of cultural conservative freedom fighters, it’s given the straight-shooting Liberty Belles a case of the vapors, and it’s even got Kim du Toit laying in the framework for American labor camps.

Addressing the concern that immigrants might get over or under an American Wall constructed at the border, du Toit proposes:

And we catch them doing it, and either repatriate them (first offense), or imprison them in tented labor camps for five years (subsequent offenses). They wanna work here? Fine. Let them do it as convicts, earning $1 per hour.

Du Toit implies that his labor camp solution could be a joke, but it stands to reason that he’s at least half-serious about it in the face of the high stakes game that du Toit, himself, outlines below.

Jokes aside, here’s the thing.

Illegal immigration costs us an untold amount of money each year, in social services, law enforcement and unpaid taxes. That’s just pure currency we’re talking about.

Now add to that the harm done by drug smuggling, terrorist infiltration and increased gang violence.

Ask me again whether the cost of securing our southern border is too much.

Expense, drug crime, terror, and unpaid taxes inflicted on the country as a result of the unauthorized crossings of a line on a map. That’s du Toit’s justification for apprehending and detaining illegal immigrants at gunpoint, but if the consequences of illegal immigration in the form of drug smuggling and unpaid taxes are unacceptable, then why stop at throwing wetbacks into the labor camps when there’s plenty of tent space left for domestic drug dealers and tax evaders, as well? That’s the beauty of your gulag, Kim. It’ll not only keep Club America exclusive, it’ll also re-educate red-blooded American druggies and tax deadbeats.

Posted in Just Plain Dumb, NT Insider Stuff | 4 Comments »