Is This Really A Good Idea?

Since we are being relentlessly urged by about a billion ads every day to BET ON SPORTS-it's fun-it's easy-everyone is doing it--perhaps we should take a deep breath and ask ourselves,

"Is this really a good idea?"

Because, and let's be brutally honest here, many (if not most) Americans are mathematically illiterate.

If you don't believe me, watch someone try to make change without an electronic aid of some kind. It's very entertaining. 

Things like probability theory, vigorish, odds formats, etc. are way beyond most people.

But even more important, in the long run, the house always ends up winning. That's why casinos have huge chandeliers, and dancing waters, free drinks, and Britney Spears appearing nightly in the Main Room. And you don't.

Regarding a casino's relationship with its customers, I'm reminded of a line from a W.C. Fields' movie. During a card game Fields is asked "Is this a game of chance?" He responds, "Not the way I play it, no." 

(By the way, it takes a real fucking idiot to bankrupt a casino. They are designed to make money, after all. Guess who bankrupted a couple of casinos? Yeah. Lil Donnie Trump. Probably too busy laundering some Russian's money to pay attention.)

Of course, now you don't even have to leave the comfort of your home to lose.  Forget the free drinks and dancing waters. Forget Britney Spears. Just pick up your cell phone and start placing bets!

You may win once. You may even win twice. But eventually you will lose. And lose. And lose again.*

I think they better add a couple of phone lines at Gamblers Anonymous.

To continually encourage people to get mixed up in this borders on madness.

And to use wealthy celebrities, who can afford to lose large sums, to encourage we commoners to get mixed up in this borders on the criminal.

But, what the hell? It's a free country and like they say, "a fool and his money will soon be parted". 

Even while seated in his Lazy Boy, with an energy drink in one hand, and a bowl of chips nearby.

*Sure, there are "professional" gamblers. They make a living at it. They study everything, every angle. It's their job, after all. But they lose, too, sometimes. And there are just a few of them in a nation of nearly 400 million people. You like those odds?

You Decide!!!!!

So I get this flyer in the mail the other day from a group that calls itself Keeping the Promise.

It reads, in part: YOU DECIDE A Glendale casino means gambling everywhere...including near your family

Apparently, if I don't do something, there will be casinos all over the place, including in my neighborhood!!!!

Yikes!

I mean YIKES!!!

What the people who sent me this flyer want me to do is contact my nitwit US Senators, Johnny Mc and Flakey Jr., and tell them to stop the Glendale casino that the Tohono O'odham tribe is planning on building.

Otherwise....cue ominous music....dum dum dummmm!

Repeat after me, Native American tribes are recognized as sovereign nations. And their rights to build casinos on tribal land have been upheld by the courts.

Personally, I don't give a rat's ass whether or not this particular tribe builds a casino on their land near Glendale, or anywhere else for that matter. Nobody makes you gamble. Plus think of all the cheap shrimp cocktails, prime rib specials, and classic rock concerts! Besides, if there's any criminal element involved, certainly we can trust Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Tom Horne and the rest of our crack law enforcement crew to root them out. Yes, I am being sarcastic again. It's a character flaw, I know. But there it is.

How the flyer makes the jump from one more Indian casino to "casinos in neighborhoods and near schools" and "bars and restaurants offering gaming" is beyond even my hyperbolic imagination.

I guess it's the same kind of wishful thinking that takes a centrist Democratic President from Hawaii and makes him into a wild eyed, Muslim Kenyan Socialist hell bent on destroying "our" way of life.

Yawn.

The most interesting aspect of this is why anyone in a position of power in Glendale would object to a 365 day a year business enterprise drawing folks to that poor benighted place. It is beyond me. After all, they rolled over like submissive puppies for a 8-10 game days a year football emporium that will ultimately cost well over a billion dollars of tax payer money. And a 50 day a year hockey arena that costs the city 15 million dollars a year in fees--in addition to the bond debt costs of building it. Oh, and don't forget the Camelback Ranch spring training facility. You know what they say, a hundred million here, a hundred million there, and pretty soon we're talking about real money. Real money which the City of Glendale doesn't have. Like the 3 million bucks they've already dropped trying to fight this casino.

Go figure.

You Can't Win If You Don't Play!

We are constantly bombarded with important news about our favorite celebrities. And yet there is only so much storage capacity in our tiny little minds. Something's got to give. As a result, we are forced to delete non-essential information to make room for Kardashian updates.

So it makes sense that by now most people don't remember that a lot of the money from the sale of Arizona State Lottery tickets is supposed to go to education.

At least that's the way it was sold to us. "Yes, this is state sponsored gambling, and yes it will probably tempt the less well off to spend money they can't afford to lose on lottery tickets, and yes the odds of winning are approximately the same whether you buy a ticket or don't buy a ticket--BUT look at all the money that will go to education! And besides, people like to gamble, blah, blah, blah..."

Of course, "supposed to go to" and "does go to" are two entirely different things.

Turns out that all of those millions have been sucked up in the state's general fund all of these years so that our wonderful legislature, which has a cumulative IQ of about 78, can do whatever they want with it.

And what they want to do is not give that money to education.

Can't afford to. Sorry. Have to plug all those holes in the budget caused by constantly cutting taxes. Because as we all know, the only way to create a strong economy, full of good jobs, is to cut taxes. Right? Right!