Poker is for Gamblers

When so many Americans started playing poker on television, I thought there is something wrong here; but I could not put my finger on it. There are a lot of fads always going around; the media is always fanning the fires of some outrageous events to sell commercial space on TV and ads in newspapers.

Then suddenly the President was talking about some ominous developments in the economy. There were warnings that something was not right with the economy. Oh, many people had bought houses they could not afford to buy. The Stock Market was dropping in value, companies were going bankrupt. There was talk about the bubble that would burst and the whole country would descend into a depression greater than the 1929-39 depression. We had all been told that there were safeguards in place; that the Great Depression could never occur again, but, lo and behold, it was occurring nevertheless, and this one was going to be a lot worse.

So the President came out and campaigned for a seven hundred billion dollar bailout of the economy to prevent the utter collapse of the economic infrastructure of the US and by and by the rest of the world, as we are told that we are living in a global economy.

Wall Street was rescued, then the banks were rescued; but the bank did not wish to loan out money anymore and the Stock Brokers only took the market up and down to recover their losses. They used their computers to do the buying and selling and ran sophisticated programs that would buy low and sell high. Within one day the stock market went up a trillion dollars and collapsed a trillion dollars. All the insiders balanced out their books with the money the US treasury pumped into the system; it was the investors outside that ended up holding the bag.

So now Obama has been entrusted with a bankrupt economy and he is asked to make speeches, which is something he is good at, and the country is promised that if people would simply go back to work, take on any job and resume buying with whatever money they can scrounge up that the economy will recover.

Essentially, people have to learn to stop gambling with their livelihoods. Poker is a dangerous pastime. It should be embarrassing for a man with family to be sitting at a poker table and for the game to be televised throughout the country. People should not buy things that they cannot afford with borrowed money. Parents should not subject their children to be thrown out into the streets.

Americans need to recall why their founding fathers based American culture on the principles of the Bible. Gambling is a sin.

Jan. 26, 2009

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