Originally Posted by
BCR
Not that Haley cares about the random opinion of someone on the internet such as myself, but I was having a bad day yesterday and this was overly harsh. I don't find much about this particular series enlightening, but probably because I read poker legislation every day and just always assumed all of it. I also don't necessarily disagree with the PPA getting in bed with all sorts in an attempt to try and further the cause.
The personally disliked comment just stems from all the infighting regarding the UB story. It feels petty to be perfectly honest, and an impediment to getting the full story out. I wish those who are insiders from the company would pick one person, preferably Haley, and we could get this book before I have to read it on a retirement cruise in 2030.
I do think Haley is clearly the most qualified person to write the story, and I will buy her book when it comes out, because I believe it will be factual. Of the others involved, I doubt I'd buy their book. I think she's factual almost to a fault. Sound trade-craft, but painstakingly slow.
Anyways, not that it matters as I'm nobody in the poker world, but after rereading, I thought it warranted an apology.
Actually, I care about a lot of opinions in the world; I'll give anyone a listen until they prove to me they're not worth listening to. If I could have my druthers, I'd like to be loved while still being free to express all my opinions, but I've learned the hard way the world just doesn't work that way. If I'm going to write the tough stories, I'm going to take a lot of flak for them.
Your opinion hurt because it had some elements of truth in it; I would very much agree that I can be cranky and hard to get along with at times, but I'm going to stand my ground in some of these reporting skirmishes that have occurred. Regarding the book, the drive has tapered a bit, once I realized that there's no longer anything I can do to put the people behind the cheating in prison. Pretty much all the cheaters are known now, anyway. Regarding the delays, sometimes stuff happens. It's been complicated by some health problems both for me and my elderly, not-well parents; my mom fell and broke a hip just a couple of days ago, after a major heart attack just before the holidays, and let's just say life can change one's ideal hopes and plans.
Thank you for your apology and don't worry about it. Taking heat comes with the territory, and if I'm going to be critical of a sacred cow such as the PPA, they're going to take some pretty solid shots at me.
Which reminds me....
Muny's post as it appears now (#34 in the thread in NVG at 2+2) is just slightly different from first typed. It now reads, "No....she insisted that he respond on the PokerFraudAlert forum." For a few minutes, it read like this: "No....she insisted that he respond on the PokerFraudAlert forum. LOL." Muny has green-mod status there, and it seems he can edit stuff without the little "Edit" line showing. I was embarrassed for him for typing that. The "LOL" seemed to denigrate Druff and the PFA forum, the same forum which he'd just found worthy enough of showing up to talk on for three hours.
Mason Malmuth has also chimed in some weirdness, claiming I made up a lie in an earlier post about Malmuth. (And Malmuth and I don't get along, so there's
another one, BCR.) Problem is, I very clearly remember the circumstances behind the story as Caldwell told it to me -- and heck, maybe John exaggerated something -- but he told me Malmuth went apeshit exactly as I relayed in that earlier tale. The funny thing is that it was Druff and DonkDown that Malmuth was told to me to have gone apeshit about, and I'm sure Druff remembers the circumstances.
Druff can probably chime in with some other stories from the past, particularly the PokerNews DonkDown era, fiasco that it was. I can't think there was anyone in poker more offended than Malmuth was when Druff was selected to appear on the "60 Minutes" show on the UB scandal, and Malmuth made all sorts of comments about how Druff and Donkdown were a disgrace to the industry and whatnot. This led to Malmuth and Sklansky being the target of a lot of pretty sophomorish hijinks over at DD, one of which was the creation of which was the creation of a large piece of "art" (using the term very loosely), featuring PhotoShopped heads of Malmuth and Sklansky and nudity and Nazi symbols and all kinds of nasty crap. This was also not long after the Brandi Hawbaker suicide, a story involving Sklansky in a very bad way, and there were just tons of bad feelings flowing all over the place.
The Nazi Malmuth/Sklansky thing was rude; I wouldn't even attempt to defend it. Worse, there was no way that Micon would ever have taken that image down from his "uncensored" forum once he knew it had pushed Malmuth's hot button. And to the very best of my recollection, that's when I was told that Malmuth went nuts in contacting people at PokerNews to try to have that image removed or the site taken down or whatever, because he was pissed. Did someone tell me a fib? Maybe, but I believe it happened pretty much the way it was told to me.
Moving on. Pappas has claimed over there in that speech that he never talked about SunFirst with Shurtleff and Swallow. Yet we have this e-mail from the same timeframe as the meet. It's a little chopped up because that's exactly how I received it, but how can Pappas claim they didn't talk about it at all, yet someone says an "opinion might backfire"? For heaven's sake...:
April 1, 2010
From: Marc Zwillinger Marc@zwillgen.com
To john@theppa.org
Cc: Jeff Ifrah
This was second message on one to Jeremy Johnson at jeremyjohnson@iworks.com
April 2, 2010
…. Discussion opinion on poker process … AG and deputy warned an opinion might backfire “because the public nature of the opinion might cause members of the legislature to demand a change in the law to make it more clar that poker was illegal" … points out church is opposed to poker. ..
more include to try something less than formal opinion, like nonprosecution letter or statement. … suggest amicus brief … We also discuss how such a brief might be portrayed as consistent with Utah’s view of federalism …
It's possible that this isn't actually the e-mail itself, and it could be shorthand notes on an e-mail, but yet the headers are there, and it's clear they were talking about SunFirst. What Pappas claimed earlier today just does not jive with the above. Maybe Zwilliger or Ifrah did the talking on that topic instead of Pappas himself, but that's a ridiculous parsing of the topics being discussed if so. There weren't two meets, either; they were there with Pappas.
Two other things worth revisiting. I wish I'd been able to find that tax report thing that says $50,000 in player contributions, $5.1 million in other donations. So, greater than 99% corporate funding? Match that against Muny's quote earlier here at PFA:
“PPA is not in the tank for anyone. That being said, Druff said no one can start an effective poker group without outside donations, so it seems to be we have the best of both worlds — a subsidized advocacy effort and a player organization that is not in the tank for anyone but the players.”
Right.
Druff moved this thread over here from the one in the Flying Stupidity forum, perhaps because he thinks it's more shady than stupid. I'm not sure it's not just raging, ridiculous stupidity, all funded by the same folks who brought you... Full Tilt. Think of the stupidity it took to crash that billion-dollar money train, and this could fit the same scale.
But, really? Utah? Really?? The PPA, these lobbyists who are supposed to have a great feel for the political landscape? They went to the Attorney General of Utah and essentially told him they were running an online-poker processing operation in one of the most conservative, anti-gambling states in the US?? And they thought this was a good idea, and that a career politician like Mark Shurtleff would somehow fail to cover his own ass and instead give them the legal opinion they wanted? They believed Shurtleff wouldn't look into it, perhaps by calling some friends at the DOJ to get their take on the processing, and find out what else might be going on?
No, that's raging, billowing stupidity. To me it's so stupid that I have a hard time believing it could be anything else. And that's my personal takeaway from the series that I wrote.