The gambling markets and addiction

As usual, on his show Last Week Tonight, John Oliver nicely explains how these rapidly growing online betting markets like Kalshi and Polymarket (that I have previously discussed here) work and why they are such a menace.

Warnings are being issued that gambling in the US is getting out of control because of the ease with which the new apps can be used to make bets on pretty much anything at any time.

Gambling addiction is spiraling “out of control” in the US, a leading campaigner for stricter guardrails has warned, as experts from around the world are set to gather in Boston to push for more regulation of the industry.

The rapid expansion of online gambling, prediction markets and sports betting platforms, “demands a public health response”, according to Harry Levant, director of gambling policy at the Public Health Advocacy Institute (PHAI), urging policymakers to intervene.

“You regulate the distribution, the speed, the type, the access to the product, because the product is what’s dangerous,” he said, calling for gambling to be treated like alcohol or tobacco. “The problem is the product, not the people,” said Levant. “We have a crisis here.”
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Sports betting has been legalized in 39 states and Washington DC since the landmark 2018 supreme court ruling.
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On both the federal level and in numerous states, legislation has been introduced to regulate online gambling. One of the bills that will be talked about on Friday is the Safe Bet Act, introduced in Congress by Tonko and Blumenthal, which seeks to establish “minimum federal standards” for legal sports betting and seeks to impose limits on marketing, introduce affordability checks and restrictions on apps using artificial intelligence to track players and create bets.

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Who knew I that am surrounded by witches?

Trump has fired the secretary of the navy John Phelan. Phelan’s only qualification for the job seemed to be that he was a rich crony of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein but his replacement Hung Cao, who previously lost two races for Congress in Virginia, while having military experience, is also seriously weird.

Cao’s record, however, is not without controversy. During his 2024 candidacy, for example, USA Today reported that the Republican, a decorated Navy veteran, “made repeated references to becoming disabled after he was ‘blown up’ in combat,” although his military record did not support those claims.
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Complicating matters, shortly after launching his Senate campaign, Cao also expressed concerns about, of all things, witchcraft.

During one 2023 interview, Cao said witches had “taken over” a California city, and he wanted to prevent similar problems in the commonwealth.

“We can’t let it turn like this,” he said during an interview with a Christian pastor. “There’s a place in Monterey, California, called Lovers Point. The original name was Lovers of Christ Point, but now it’s become — they took out the ‘Christ,’ it’s Lovers Point, and it’s really — Monterey is a very dark place now, a lot of witchcraft and the Wiccan community has really taken over. We can’t let that happen to Virginia.”

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Melania springs a surprise

Melania Trump is, to be frank, a boring person. Not that there is anything wrong with that. I myself am a boring person and can recognize my kind. But there is something almost robotic in the way she looks and moves and talks, like an animated mannequin, that makes you think that she is so tightly controlled that she will never do anything spontaneous or unexpected.

So it took observers by surprise when in an extraordinary development yesterday, Melania made a statement to White House reporters where she denied allegations and innuendos linking her to Jeffrey Epstein, and said that these were the products of mean-spirited liars trying to tarnish her good name. She also said that the emails exchanged by her with Ghislaine Maxwell were just casual correspondence. She also issued a plea for Congress to take public testimony from Epstein’s victims, which some of the victims and Democrats on the appropriate committees have seized upon.

The first lady also called on Congress to take sworn testimony in a public hearing from Epstein victims. Several victims did meet with the House oversight committee in a closed session last fall.

“We agree with First Lady Melania Trump’s call for a public hearing with the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein,” said Robert Garcia of California, ranking member of the House committee on oversight. “We encourage Chairman Comer to respond to the First Lady’s request and schedule a public hearing immediately.”

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We should perhaps avoid the TACO taunt

Trump is notorious for talking tough and making threats, taking impetuous actions, and then when he finds that he cannot carry out the threats or gets severe blowback, backtracking. Perhaps the most blatant example of this was with the tariffs which changed from day to day on his whim but he has also done that with things like saying he wants to take over Greenland, a bit of braggadocio that seems to have slipped into the memory hole when Denmark and other European countries presented a united front opposing the move. He does not even talks about it anymore.

As another example, take Trump’s threat to Iran on Saturday that if they did not open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours he would launch attacks on their oil infrastructure. This caused a sharp rise in oil prices and a massive drop in stock prices (one of the few things he cares about) and so he then said that thanks to Iran starting talks with the US, he was postponing the action.

Oil prices, which had been rising after Trump threatened over the weekend to strike Iranian infrastructure unless Iran opened the strait of Hormuz, dropped sharply. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 10% to $101 a barrel. The UK month-ahead gas prices fell 6% to 142p a therm.

The US president said on his social media platform Truth Social that the US and Iran had “very good and productive conversations” over the past two days regarding “a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East”.

He said: “Based on the tenor and tone of these in-depth, detailed, and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout the week, I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plants and energy infrastructure for a five-day period, subject to the success of the ongoing meetings and discussions.”

This caused stock prices to bounce back yesterday. (One thing I do not understand is why investors react to the words of Trump. He is such a liar and so erratic that it would seem pointless to make decisions based on what he says he will do in the future. And yet it appears that many of them do.)
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Tucker Carlson on the Oscars

SNL had Jeremy Culhane play Tucker Carlson giving his take on some of this year’s nominees. I have not seen any of the films but I thought Culhane really nailed the impression of Carlson, from his facial expressions to his rhetorical tics and right down to his weird laugh.

SNL also had a skit that was based on the hospital drama The Pitt except that it was a hospital that was run on RFK Jr’s crackpot ideas.

John Oliver on ICE and DHS

He has started a new season of shows with an examination of ICE and DHS, starting with a summary of the atrocities committed by ICE and the heroic actions of ordinary Minnesotans who came out in their thousands to protest against ICE actions.

The head of the operation Tom Homan has announced that the ICE actions have ended in Minnesota. Since these people are such liars, we’ll have to wait and see if they actually leave.

The MAGA outrage over Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl show

I do not watch the Super Bowl because I don’t care for it. I also never watch the half-time shows either during or after. But since the MAGA world seemed to have lost their collective minds over this year’s half-time show by Bad Bunny, I felt I must watch it and did.

Here’s the full show.

So why the freakout? Because almost the entire show was in Spanish, except for a brief song by Lady Gaga. The MAGA world was deeply offended by the absence of English, seeing that as a deliberate insult aimed at the ‘true Americans’ who are of course white, English-speaking, and Christian, and even seemed to think that Puerto Ricans like Bad Bunny were not Americans. They may have been temporarily mollified by him ending by saying ‘God Bless America’ only to be immediately rocked back on their heels by him then listing the names of all the countries in the Americas. How dare those people of inferior nations think of themselves as Americans!

Jon Stewart had a ton of fun with the freakout and the alternative MAGA show featuring a bunch of nobodies but ends with a strong point, that these people, for all their tough talk and sneering at liberals who talk of safe safe spaces and the need respect the sensibilities of others, are hyper-sensitive weenies who get offended by even the slightest things.