Party Poker Blog

Thanks to PokerWolf for this.

Howard Shaffer of Harvard Medical School discusses whether more availability of gambling in the United States will increase the rate of pathological gamblers.

TGIF.

One of my duties here at work is to do weekly 'Digital Fireside Chats' where a colleague and I educate both account and creative folks on the inner workings of the internet, specifically around marketing.

And so a friend sent me over this fine video of the SEO rapper. I'm thinking we should have him come in and give a talk.

Enjoy.

I went around our office yesterday asking coworkers to name one, just one, Tupac song.

Very entertaining, and several times, impromptu songs broke out.

I have two live fantasy baseball drafts this upcoming weekend.
I'm fucked, it's true.

Three quick 'media and the election' links for now.

From Salon: Rum, Romanism and James Carville

Wall Street Journal: The Prisoner Returns

NPR: White House 2008: Who Can Win?

Where does this little midget come from?

And what the hell is she/he saying here. Joaquin? Anyone?

I present: La Pequeña Hillary Clinton



--

Translation from Joaquin:

A mi marido ya lo perdone...I forgave my husband

Vote for me...

I'm a small Hillary Clinton

I know, I know.

But I enjoyed this NY Times op-ed from David Brooks:

---

Hillary Clinton may not realize it yet, but she’s just endured one of the worst weeks of her campaign.


First, Barack Obama weathered the Rev. Jeremiah Wright affair without serious damage to his nomination prospects. Obama still holds a tiny lead among Democrats nationally in the Gallup tracking poll, just as he did before this whole affair blew up.

Second, Obama’s lawyers successfully prevented re-votes in Florida and Michigan. That means it would be virtually impossible for Clinton to take a lead in either elected delegates or total primary votes.

Third, as Noam Scheiber of The New Republic has reported, most superdelegates have accepted Nancy Pelosi’s judgment that the winner of the elected delegates should get the nomination. Instead of lining up behind Clinton, they’re drifting away. Her lead among them has shrunk by about 60 in the past month, according to Avi Zenilman of Politico.com.

In short, Hillary Clinton’s presidential prospects continue to dim. The door is closing. Night is coming. The end, however, is not near.

Last week, an important Clinton adviser told Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen (also of Politico) that Clinton had no more than a 10 percent chance of getting the nomination. Now, she’s probably down to a 5 percent chance.

Five percent.

Let’s take a look at what she’s going to put her party through for the sake of that 5 percent chance: The Democratic Party is probably going to have to endure another three months of daily sniping. For another three months, we’ll have the Carvilles likening the Obamaites to Judas and former generals accusing Clintonites of McCarthyism. For three months, we’ll have the daily round of résumé padding and sulfurous conference calls. We’ll have campaign aides blurting “blue dress” and only-because-he’s-black references as they let slip their private contempt.

For three more months (maybe more!) the campaign will proceed along in its Verdun-like pattern. There will be a steady rifle fire of character assassination from the underlings, interrupted by the occasional firestorm of artillery when the contest touches upon race, gender or patriotism. The policy debates between the two have been long exhausted, so the only way to get the public really engaged is by poking some raw national wound.

For the sake of that 5 percent, this will be the sourest spring. About a fifth of Clinton and Obama supporters now say they wouldn’t vote for the other candidate in the general election. Meanwhile, on the other side, voters get an unobstructed view of the Republican nominee. John McCain’s approval ratings have soared 11 points. He is now viewed positively by 67 percent of Americans. A month ago, McCain was losing to Obama among independents by double digits in a general election matchup. Now McCain has a lead among this group.

For three more months, Clinton is likely to hurt Obama even more against McCain, without hurting him against herself. And all this is happening so she can preserve that 5 percent chance.

When you step back and think about it, she is amazing. She possesses the audacity of hopelessness.

Why does she go on like this? Does Clinton privately believe that Obama is so incompetent that only she can deliver the policies they both support? Is she simply selfish, and willing to put her party through agony for the sake of her slender chance? Are leading Democrats so narcissistic that they would create bitter stagnation even if they were granted one-party rule?

The better answer is that Clinton’s long rear-guard action is the logical extension of her relentlessly political life.

For nearly 20 years, she has been encased in the apparatus of political celebrity. Look at her schedule as first lady and ever since. Think of the thousands of staged events, the tens of thousands of times she has pretended to be delighted to see someone she doesn’t know, the hundreds of thousands times she has recited empty clichés and exhortatory banalities, the millions of photos she has posed for in which she is supposed to appear empathetic or tough, the billions of politically opportune half-truths that have bounced around her head.

No wonder the Clinton campaign feels impersonal. It’s like a machine for the production of politics. It plows ahead from event to event following its own iron logic. The only question is whether Clinton herself can step outside the apparatus long enough to turn it off and withdraw voluntarily or whether she will force the rest of her party to intervene and jam the gears.

If she does the former, she would surprise everybody with a display of self-sacrifice. Her campaign would cruise along at a lower register until North Carolina, then use that as an occasion to withdraw. If she does not, she would soldier on doggedly, taking down as many allies as necessary.

CBS News:

Anyone remember CardSquad, part of Weblogs, Inc?

More Bloggers Raising Money. Here Come The Politics. And Here Comes My Rant.

Oh the humanity.

Let me know if you have any ideas, per the above.

Happy Easter.

The Argosy poker room has been rocking lately. The bad beat jackpot was hit Thursday evening. My buddy, Barry, won the tournament that night, and GMoney continued his winning ways at the NL tables. Good times all around.

I had planned on a session or two this weekend, but alas, had to settle for late-night, drunken blogger games. More good times.

So allow me to quickly throw up some links for your reading pleasure.

BoyGenius has a fine tale of playing Meat Bingo.

Moving quickly to politics, even though I am quickly slipping back into the deep pool of cynicism, where I normally reside, here's a fine piece: Story behind the story: The Clinton myth from Politico.

Here's a Letterman Top Ten List, featuring the cast, of why you should watch the new season of Battlestar Galactica.



I'm still wondering wtf after reading Glenn Greenwald in Salon this morning. Is this really a treatise for Easter? I'm confused. One of Instapundit's favorite bloggers speaks on race

Newsweek just stuck up their cover story on Obama entitled:
When Barry Became Barack
It didn't happen overnight. But in college, the young Barry took to being called by his formal name. What this evolution tells us about him.

OK, one last link. And thankfully, not political. From the Wall Street Journal: How Three Nobodies Built Basketball's Most Powerful News Site

That's all for now. I'm going to celebrate Easter by going to see Stephen Malkmus in concert tonight.