Poker Politics: Obama's a Card Tosser and D'Amato's a Poker Lobbyist

Waking up from our orgy of orgies in Las Vegas on Saturday morning, we came across an interesting article in the London Telegraph that detailed, for the lack of a better word, Barack Obama's background as a poker player, with anecdotes from past acquaintenances about his playing style. Apparently the 45-year-old presidential candidate was a regular in a weekly poker game when he was a young state politician in Illinois.

"He had the stone face," Senator Terry Links told the Telegraph. "He didn't stay in hands if he didn't think he had a chance of winning."

"Barack wasn't one of those foolish gamblers who just thought all of a sudden that card in the middle was going to show up mysteriously. He's as competitive in politics as he is in poker. It's not like he's going to go into something without a course of action mapped out."

Ah, the forced poker metaphor, gotta love it.

While we think Obama is articulate well-spoken clean debonaire an interesting candidate and will likely expose Hillary Clinton during the primaries as the despicable, power hungry hussy in pant suits she is, to put it lightly, we have to say that the Illinois Senator is way too liberal for our tastes, especially in the tax and spend department, and more poignantly, his first name sounds too much like Iraq, his last name too much like Osama, and his middle name too much like Hussein, because it is Hussein, for our liking, even if he is a poker player.

While we don't expect Obama to be vocal on the state of online poker in the U.S., another politician apparently is. On the same day we came across the London Telegraph article, among other things, PokerHelper.com, a site we don't know from Adam but discovered via BillRini.com, broke the story that former Republican Senator Al D'Amato "will soon be announced as the chief lobbyist and main spokesman for the online poker lobby" and will be working closely with the Poker Players Alliance.

The notably brash New Yorker is a longtime poker player who lost his seat to Senator Charles Schumer in 1999 after calling Chuckie a "putz-head," which translates to "penis-head" in Yiddish, which is an apt way of describing the obnoxious Schumer, although we'd use dickhead since we're not Yiddish.

Whether the controversial D'Amato being a voice for poker will be a good thing or not is yet to seen, but it may be good for the PPA to pair the pit bull ex-Senator with perhaps a more diplomatic politician/lobbyist on the other side of the aisle to show a balanced consensus on the issue of online poker.

Comments

[Torgny Jansson]

When I first visited the US in the 60's I was amazed by the atmosphere of freedom, respect for others and the concern for people from a foreign nation. When I read this article I can understand that you say that he is too liberal for you. But to dismiss a person beqause he has a non-Western name. Do you really hate arabs in USA today? USA was born by the idea that everyone should be able to worship God as he pleases, and be treated by his deeds, not by his religion or race. If USA today is jumping off the bandwagon of freedom and respect for all nations, races and creeds it makes me very sorry.

Sincerely

Torgny Jansson
Sweden