Right?
I mean, I know making us feel that way is a strategy, but anyway I do fucking feel that way. Ugh!
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(And of course, it’s not just crazy, it’s also frightening, cruel and downright murderous, in more ways every goddamn day.)
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Will the party finally listen? Every time Robert Reich brings the receipts about past efforts to get Democrats to change direction, it makes me consider how frustrated he must be…
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Ro Khanna is more often wrong than right… he might be a democrat, but he’s clearly in the pocket of big tech.
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Dedication? Is that supposed to say “deduction?” Also, I haven’t looked into the issue much, but the widespread legalization and promotion of sports betting in this country is going to result in an absolute disaster in a few years, with an explosion in gambling addiction. If GA were a private corporation instead of a non-profit, I’d suggest investing heavily in it right now. Not that this Republican plan will fix that, but I don’t hate it.
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Did Musk ask/tell him to back him up on that argument?
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So good to see him complaining about the truly important problems of the moment.
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No idea, but Khanna represents Silicon Valley and I don’t find him hard enough on the tech oligarchy… There is plenty of evidence that online gambling is incredibly hurtful, especially to the poor and vulnerable. John Oliver did a show on it a few months ago…
He’s also on board with that whole “abundance agenda” bullshit, which is nothing more than warmed over supply-side economics, but with an attempt to make it “more progressive”…
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Many years ago I had a roommate who I’d call a well recovered addict, and he claimed to have tried all of the available highs, but he said none of them even came close to sports betting, the feeling of losing, then some out of nowhere event changes everything, or vice versa… nothing like it.
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If gambling losses are significant enough to affect your taxes when deducted, you just might have a gambling problem.
Don’t these predatory online gaming companies love to claim that it’s just a form of entertainment, anyway? People don’t get to deduct the money they spend on video games or Disney World vacations.
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Addiction is weird. It’s kind of hard to fully understand exactly how it all works. I’m a recovering alcohol and opiate addict. But gambling just never flipped any of the same switches for me. I’ve played slots a few times, and I just don’t get the attraction. It’s completely random and literally rigged to favor the casino, so while you might win big in the short term, in the long term, the house always wins. Always. And the game itself I don’t find interesting at all. It’s about as fun as flipping a coin to me, even with the bells and whistles. Sports betting is the same, to me, as is day trading on the stock market, for that matter. It’s all completely random and rigged to favor the house. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t like to gamble. I love poker. But there, it’s the game itself I find fun. So . . . it just doesn’t flip those chemical triggers in my brain that cause addiction. I love poker, but I also haven’t played in a couple of years. I’ll probably hit the casino after the bar exam at the end of this month, just to celebrate being done. And then I probably won’t play again for a year or two. And that doesn’t make me better than gambling addicts. It just shows that addiction is a weird thing, and it’s hard to predict who can get addicted to what. But we do know some people will get addicted to gambling, and we’ve made it super easy for those people to feed that addiction. You can literally do it on your phone right now.
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Oh no doubt, there’s no one model of addiction, like there’s no simple classification for any number of human traits.
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I never really got into gambling either. I think it was Alex Trebek who once said he doesn’t feel any great joy when winning $100, but gets really mad when he loses $100. I’m pretty much the same way. When I’m in a casino, I might drop like $20 on slots or video poker or something just for fun, but win or lose I’m pretty much done after that.
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It’s easier to destroy than create… but not THAT much easier. I really hope if we survive this and fascism falls, we have something far, far better than the Democratic party to replace it.
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