Steff Posted July 11, 2006 Share Posted July 11, 2006 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - July 11, 2006 The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a Republican-written bill to limit Internet gambling by making it illegal for banks and credit card companies to make payments to online gaming sites. Internet gambling generates some $12 billion annually worldwide, with half coming from American gamblers. It remained unclear whether the U.S. Senate would approve similar legislation in the dwindling number of work days left before the November election. http://today.reuters.com/stocks/Quo...GENT.XML&rpc=66 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chisoxrd5 Posted July 11, 2006 Share Posted July 11, 2006 Home of the free!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
redandwhite Posted July 11, 2006 Share Posted July 11, 2006 Thats ridiculous.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DonkeyKongerko Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 Well the Canadian Paypal, Neteller will let you do it. This just creates new opportunities for offshore middlemen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LowerCaseRepublican Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 QUOTE(Chisoxrd5 @ Jul 11, 2006 -> 04:50 PM) Home of the free!!! And the home of the..... moralists who impose their "I don't like X social choice so nobody gets to do it" mentality on the rest of us. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brian Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 How's that situation with the missles in Korea being handled? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NUKE_CLEVELAND Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 QUOTE(LowerCaseRepublican @ Jul 11, 2006 -> 07:52 PM) And the home of the..... moralists who impose their "I don't like X social choice so nobody gets to do it" mentality on the rest of us. I totally agree with you here. Why is it legal to gamble in Vegas or Atlantic City and in selected other areas but not online? Either you have it totally legal or totally illegal. The insanely archaic gaming laws in this country are really silly IMHO. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YASNY Posted July 12, 2006 Share Posted July 12, 2006 This won't pass the senate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr_genius Posted July 13, 2006 Share Posted July 13, 2006 QUOTE(Brian @ Jul 11, 2006 -> 08:31 PM) How's that situation with the missles in Korea being handled? who cares! people are GAMBLING online! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balta1701 Posted July 13, 2006 Share Posted July 13, 2006 QUOTE(Brian @ Jul 11, 2006 -> 06:31 PM) How's that situation with the missles in Korea being handled? It's being dealt with in the same manner as people betting on horse races online. (Horse racing having better lobbyists than general internet gambling. Including, until a few months ago, some dude named Jack.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AbeFroman Posted July 13, 2006 Share Posted July 13, 2006 Devout White Sox fan Richard Roeper (who is truly an excellent columnist independent of his baseball allegiance) has a great article on this from yesterday's Sun-Times: http://www.suntimes.com/output/roeper/cst-nws-roep12.html If you're an underdog candidate for public office and you're looking for an issue that might catapult you into contention, two words: Online gambling. Take a stance against legislation banning Internet wagering, and you'll gain the support of scads of potential voters who love to bet on sporting events or play poker or blackjack on their home computers. On Tuesday the House voted in favor of a bill designed to end online gambling in the United States. The legislation, now bound for the Senate, would make it illegal for American gamblers to use their credit cards to make wagers with online sites. The bill's sponsors say it will aid our impressionable youth, who have those darn computers. "Never before has it been so easy to lose so much money so quickly at such a young age," said Rep. Jim Leach (R-Iowa). In that case, why not ban online wagering on horse racing as well? The Internet gambling numbers are indeed staggering. According to a Los Angeles Times report, there are at least 2,500 gambling sites, with worldwide revenue of $12 billion a year -- $4 billion to $6 billion of it coming from the U.S. But the sites are offshore -- so none of that money stays home. "There are hundreds and hundreds of these illegal, unregulated, untaxed offshore sites that are sucking billions of dollars out of the country," said Rep. Robert W. Goodlatte (R-Va.), one of the sponsors of the bill, in the L.A. Times article. "This is really the worst form of gambling that you can have -- all the ills that come from gambling without any of the regulations." Actually, the worst form of gambling you can have involves a vigorish that multiplies every week and a guy named Mookie who shows up at your door with a Louisville Slugger, but the vast majority of gambling doesn't involve such a dramatic scenario. What Goodlatte is really saying is there's a big online gambling pie out there, and our government missed the boat and thus didn't get its slice. Gambling is a heavy favorite You can argue all you want about the ethics and morals of gambling. I'm sure conservative agenda-setter and slots junkie Bill Bennett has a different view from the politicians leading the charge against online wagering. What you can't argue is that this nation and individual states have hypocritical policies about gambling. Bet on the horses! Go to the boats and try blackjack and the slots! Lose your money on sucker games such as Lotto or Keno! As long as we're getting our cut, we'll sell unrealistic dreams on billboards and in TV ads. But if you want to play online poker --which requires skill and strategy as well as luck -- you're entering the Devil's Playground. We have to save you from yourself. What a bunch of nonsense. It would be virtually impossible to put a stop to online gambling. If you rounded up every man, woman and teenager who has played a hand on Party Poker or made a wager on Bodog, you'd have to build a holding tank the size of North Dakota. But as long as the issue is in play, it's something a maverick politician might want to embrace. If you say you're defending the right of every adult to go for the inside straight or to take a hit on 16 for real money, you'll pick up votes from people who haven't been to the polls in years, if ever. A pirate's treasure Speaking of staggering numbers, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" set the record for the highest-grossing opening weekend of all time. Sort of. The list of the top 30 biggest opening films ever, which includes such timeless classics as "Ice Age: the Meltdown," "Rush Hour 2" and "The Day After Tomorrow," doesn't contain a single film released prior to 1997. That's because tickets, like everything else in life, are way more expensive than they used to be. According to Box Office Mojo, the average ticket price in 2006 is $6.40. In 1990, it was $4.23. In 1980, it was $2.69. In 1956, it was 50 cents. You can't easily compare the opening weekends for "Pirates" and "Spider-Man 2" with "The Ten Commandments" and "Star Wars." For one thing, in generations past, there wasn't such a fascination with box office, and opening numbers weren't reported. Also, movies didn't open on 7,000 or 8,000 screens back in the day. "The Godfather" played in just six theaters when it was released. Even "Titanic" was in some 2,700 theaters, far fewer than the 4,100 theaters for "Pirates 2." By any measure, the "Pirates" sequel is a monster hit -- but not an all-time champ. It will rank among the highest-grossing films of all time -- if you don't make adjustments for inflation. If you do, it won't touch the totals for movies such as "Gone With the Wind" and "The Sound of Music." Today's simple media math is deeply flawed. The movies credited with breaking box office records are NOT the movies that drew the largest number of actual human beings to theaters. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
EvilMonkey Posted July 15, 2006 Share Posted July 15, 2006 If this passes, how long until they outlaw using credit cards to purchase guns? Or tobacco? Or booze? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LowerCaseRepublican Posted July 15, 2006 Share Posted July 15, 2006 QUOTE(EvilMonkey @ Jul 14, 2006 -> 11:36 PM) If this passes, how long until they outlaw using credit cards to purchase guns? Or tobacco? Or booze? Gotta love the "party of small government". This is so f***ing ridiculous that they're getting so much unchecked power. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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