Often times when people discover that I do political work they are compelled to ask a variation of this question: “Won’t participating in this activity create a political scandal for you at some point?” This question comes up enough that I have a stock answer that usually gets at least a chuckle. It’s that if playing poker, or over imbibing, or anything else I’m doing is the kind of scandal that I would leak to distract from a more significant scandal.

Like most things that are humorous they are based on some kind of reality. So when the political world seems to be alight with more scandals than baseline it’s important to figure out why there are so many scandals at once. This isn’t to say that all of the scandals aren’t important but only to spend time contemplating which issues are mere “bumps in the road” and which scandals could be really damaging. I’ve ranked the scandals based on a scale from “oh shit” to “spin master manageable”.

Spin master manageable: Spying on the AP. From what I’ve read it seems clear that this falls under the damaging but probably not illegal category. It also seems custom made for diverting the attention of the self-absorbed American press from other things. Does anyone really think this is going to swing any votes in a close House or Senate race in 2014? I don’t, so I’m going to mostly ignore it.

Oh shit: The IRS intimidation story. What do you call using non-partisan agencies of the government to attack perceived political opposition during a Presidential election. Remember the 2012 election was supposed to come down to Ohio, the State where the attacks are said to have originated. When I was Chief Strategist at TheTeaParty.net we received one of the questionnaires and referred it to our attorney and I remember writing at the time about how this would impact the groups that weren’t large enough to retain a high-powered Washington law firm. I also remember many people including our own Dan Backer offering their services to groups under fire, free-of-charge.

Not enough information: Benghazi. The things I’ve heard about Benghazi are really disturbing and I’m convinced that this story has only scratched the service of what happened. The people who’ve been tirelessly pushing this story have instructed me to research “Extortion 17″ but I haven’t gotten to it yet, so for now I’ll let the experts be the experts. I think we’ve only just started asking the right questions.

Fast and Furious should be right at the top with these but it’s gone back to being mostly ignored.

They are all a bunch of manipulative crooks, we all know it. Every once in a while someone takes it over the line and are made an example of, let’s hope it’s this whole damn administration.

This is the second post of my new series on poker – you can read the first post –HERE–

Today’s lesson: It’s the missed opportunities that kill you.

I consider myself to be a terrible tournament player. I’ve only won one small tournament, compared to countless early exits. In reality, I typically play well, read other players correctly, and just make a couple bad decisions that end up costing me the tournament. I played in a No Limit Hold’em tournament this week, and I was consciously tracking where my biggest mistakes came in. That’s the only way to improve your game, right?

A little about the tournament: it was a $30 buy-in for 2,000 chips, with an extra $1,000 chips available for $5. The tournament also has a buy back/add-on of $30 for 3,000 additional chips. This gives players an incentive to be aggressive early and try to double up, knowing that if it doesn’t work they can just buy back in. The blinds start at $25/$50 and go up every 15 minutes. After an hour, pretty much everyone at the table is short stacked.

If you miss an opportunity in a cash game, it’s not ideal but also not the end of the world – before long another opportunity will present itself. In a tournament, however, the blinds go up too quickly for you to get many more chances.

In this tournament, I played well early and won 4 or 5 small-to-medium pots. But even with doubling my chips, the blinds were about to increase to a level that meant I had to be more selective of the cards I played. After losing a couple small hands here and there, I found myself needing to make a move. I was out of position, and most of the table had tightened up – they were folding to most early raises. Man, if I got good cards, now would be a good time to make a move.

I looked down to see QJs – a hand that I would rarely push hard in a cash game. I recognized, however, that if I went all-in here (I had 3,000 chips and the blinds were 150/300), I had a good opportunity to steal the pot. And even if I got a caller, I was going to have plenty of opportunities to win the hand (straight/flush against an over pair, pairing one of my cards against two over cards or a middle pair).

I’m not a fan of QJs, though, so I decided to fold it. Four players limped in, creating a good-size pot. The flop came J-5-3, which means I would have had top pair with a pretty decent kicker – a great position to be in at that stage in the tournament. All the money goes in for the remaining players, who turned over AQ, 55, 33, and J10. The turn and river cards come out 2-2, and the player with a set of 5s wins the hand. Now that’s a set-up hand on the flop, and my hand certainly wasn’t good.

BUT – the only player who could have reasonably called an all-in bet from me was the AQ, who I would have beaten and doubled up through. Instead, I folded my cards and missed out on an opportunity that would have put me in a position to make a deep run in the tournament. As the blinds continued to increase, I got more and more desperate. I eventually made my move with a hand much weaker than QJ, at a time when even if I did double up, I would still have been a long shot to win the tournament. I missed my shot, and another opportunity didn’t come my way (see footnote at the bottom of the post).

This is one of the easiest lessons to apply to life, and it’s similar to last week’s: life’s too short to miss opportunities. I can look back at times in my life when I took shots that paid off (for example: moving 3,000 miles on 3 days notice for a job opportunity), but there are probably more shots that didn’t pay off (e.g., asking out the most beautiful woman in the room, or trying out for the college baseball team). The opportunities that haunt me, though, are the ones that I let sail by.

Put another way: fortune favors the bold. That doesn’t mean being reckless, and it doesn’t mean blindly throwing your chips around the table. It means seizing an opportunity when it appears and giving yourself the best chance at success. This was a good lesson for me to learn at the poker table, but also a good reminder for life. You only get so many shots – take one already!

–
For the record, AQ beats QJs nearly 70% of the time – I would have been unhappy to see him turnover the cards pre-flop. And there’s no guarantee that either – let alone both – of the players with low pairs fold. It was entirely possible that I would have lost my entire stack, and there are probably players better than me who would argue that I made the right move by folding there. But this doesn’t change the lesson – you only get so many opportunities in poker tournaments. If you let them slip by, you don’t stand a chance.

Sometimes the ignorance of the established makes you laugh and sometimes it makes you want to cry. Take the recent announcement by the GOP that they have discovered the interwebs and have singled out a Karl Rove affiliated group to head the project. Really the announcement is about “data” and in political nerd speak that means people’s name, address, phone number, and email address.

As if the simple fact that Karl Rove controlled nearly $400 Million in an election against OBAMA and got smoked. Why should we take anything Karl Rove suggests with a grain of salt when it comes to the internet and new data managed with cutting edge technology?

Let’s start with Crossroads Generation. They hired a bunch of young super-achievers, gave them a bunch of money, and told them to go get them irascible youth’s on the “Social Media”. The great thing about social media is that their are easily defined metrics. Let’s start with the Social Media king Facebook and see how they performed there.

Crossroads Generation as of writing has a barely respectable 56,564 “likes” on its Facebook page but the telling number is “talking about”. Right now 29 people are “talking about this”. That’s right 29 people.

Let’s compare that with some other properties that were not built without sugar daddy money.

I like self-promotion so let’s start with my page. Dustin Stockton has 19,679 likes but 30,396 talking about this. I’m adding a few hundred people a day and spending….. $25 a day on advertising. I could come up with an absurd performance percentage but I’m lazy and don’t want to do the math. Yesterday we put up this graphic that was shared more than 20,000 times between the large pages it was posted on.

The Tea Party page run by TheTeaParty.net has 1,697,286 likes and 1,557,431 talking about this. I helped build that page and we grew it without coming anywhere near Crossroads money.

So what’s the takeaway? The GOP plans to “tame the internet” and put all data in the hands of “Turd Blossom” (Rove’s Secret Service Code Name) even though they can’t even figure out Facebook. There are plenty of people effectively using technology on the right, Rove and the establishment are stuck in a direct mail, big TV buy, and robocall mentality while the people they need to win are already figuring out Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram.

If Rove and his associates are running the GOP data, keep my data out of it! The RNC mailers are easily the scummiest I get. They look like fake legal documents and other important things to make you open them. All they do is create rage. Now they want to share that “data” with everyone, great just what we all need more junk mail and pushy phone call solicitations.

You know what a ton of young people are doing? Their trying to carve out an personally responsible life for themselves by doing business online. For many of us it’s been a tumultuous ride. When the economy tanked and layoffs happened we were low-man on the totem pole. The Democrats are trying to ruin small internet business by making them comply with taxes in every town, city, county, and state they do business in. It’s outrageous and it will kill many small internet start ups before they have an opportunity to bloom! Obama has endorsed this boondoggle and Democrats are lining up behind it including the usual cast of RINO traitors in the Senate.

Is all the talk of attracting youth mean anything at all to the GOP?  Those of us who have had a computer for nearly or all of our lives are making our way through life by using the internet.  How many people of all stripes are helping get through these tough economic times by supplementing their incomes by selling things online? Hint: A lot.

Many of these people are exactly the kind of people we overwhelmingly lost in 2012.  They need a champion.  All it would take to send a message to these people which party is looking out for them is for our politicians to speak out on the issue.

Congressman Jim Birdenstein gets it. You might remember him from being banished by John Boehner for not being squishy enough.

The #InternetSalesTax encourages states to form interstate compacts w/ uniform tax rates.The private sector calls this price-fixing. #tcot

— Jim Bridenstine (@RepJBridenstine) May 1, 2013

OK online retailers could be required to open themselves to tax audits from 49 other states in addition to the IRS. #InternetSalesTax #tcot

— Jim Bridenstine (@RepJBridenstine) May 1, 2013

The #InternetSalesTax encourages states to form interstate compacts w/ uniform tax rates.The private sector calls this price-fixing. #tcot

— Jim Bridenstine (@RepJBridenstine) May 1, 2013

Congressman Massie also joined in although I don’t like to use whatever nonsensical title they assign it, call it what it is which is an Internet Sales Tax!

The Marketplace Fairness Act is essentially an #InternetSalesTax. Real fairness comes from lower taxes and fewer regulations #tcot

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) May 1, 2013

Now I’ve been asking Congressman and so far I’ve been surprised by the lack of response. I figured Darrell Issa would have our back AND he sits on a critical committee regarding this bill. So far nothing but with some help, who knows?

Sorry to bother you, real quick, #InternetSalesTax HR 684, oppose or support?Thanks in advance! @darrellissa

— Dustin Stockton (@DustinStockton) May 1, 2013

Here asking more Republicans about it. We don’t really know these guys so I’m not too shocked they didn’t respond yet.

Sorry to bother you, real quick, #InternetSalesTax HR 684, oppose or support?Thanks in advance! @bachusal06 @farenthold @reptommarino

— Dustin Stockton (@DustinStockton) May 1, 2013

Here is another group. The only guy we know in this camp is Doug Collins and we heavily backed his primary opponent Martha Zoller so I’m REALLY not surprised he hasn’t answered.

Sorry to bother you, real quick, #InternetSalesTax HR 684, oppose or support?Thanks in advance! @repholding @repdougcollins @keithrothfus

— Dustin Stockton (@DustinStockton) May 1, 2013

I’m not nearly as polite to the Democrats, Obama supports it, so they support it. You might remember Hank Johnson. He’s the guy who was worried Guam was going to tip over!

#InternetSalesTax support or oppose?@repcohen @rephankjohnson @suzandelbene @joegarcia @repjeffries @repjohnconyers

— Dustin Stockton (@DustinStockton) May 1, 2013

Here is a link to our comprehensive list of every House Member!

On May 6th the Senate plans to vote on another horrendous piece of legislation championed by Obama with promises of capitulation from unauthentic and misguided members of the Republican Party.

With passage in the Senate all but assured thanks to the likes of Lindsey Graham’s ilk, our opportunity to destroy this job killing legislation rests in the House. The bill I’m referring to is HR 683 which would be accurately titled as the Internet Sales Tax

The problem with this legislation is that it sacrifices tangible and honorable relief to people in the name of “fairness” by forcing all potential businesses to suffer from the same government strong arming that is killing off older businesses.

Reasonable people have argued that it provides an “unfair” market advantage to internet companies over traditional brick and mortar retailers who are forced to operate under the undecipherable government rules and regulations.

Who does this legislation help? Will anyone who didn’t have a job before get a job? Will this protect any business from going out of business to a more efficient and exuberant market competitor?

No, this bill is being supported by companies like Amazon not in the interest of “fairness” but in the interest of destroying the environment that made their success possible thereby cementing their place at the top of the online retail world in codified law.

To the small business owners who think that by bringing the same burdens to online competitors, I’d ask that you consider the circumstance you find yourself in. The world has already changed, the internet is the future, and if you don’t want to see the steady decline we’ve seen it’s critical that you start to compete in the new environment in which is going to succeed regardless of your participation. If you allow this code to go through you are blocking yourself out of this future market by monopolizing participation in the hands of the people who are politically well connected, right now.

This week I am going to ask you to kill this bad piece of political bull crap and I’ve got a new tool that I want to try out.

If you’re like me you are sick of sending emails only to receive a ridiculous form letter, if you’re lucky enough to get a response at all. You’re sick of calling the capitol switchboard only to deal with a petulant intern who has no pull in voting decisions. You’re not sick of doing these things because they aren’t worthwhile endeavors, you’re sick of feeling like no one is listening.

Twitter is a new platform that nearly every member of Congress is participating in. We have compiled a list that includes every member of Congress, their twitter handle, their party affiliation, and a link to their wikipedia page. Frankly if a member of Congress isn’t capable of answering questions from the people affected by their laws on a platform as user-friendly as Twitter, they don’t deserve to be in office.

We are committed to using a variety of sticks and carrots to steadily increase the number of interactions between members and their constituents including on new communication tools like Twitter, Wikipedia and Reddit.

So here is what I will be asking people to do this week. I’ll be asking that they go through the list (they are organized alphabetically by state), read the wikipedia article on their member, and then tweet at them (hopefully opposing the Internet Sales Tax). It is critical that we include the hashtag #InternetSalesTax in the tweets so that we can accurately measure how well members respond to the people who pay their salaries.

The unintended consequences of an Internet Sales Tax

Our tax code is broken. The only people who will disagree with that statement are those who personally profit from the broken system. While our government seems completely incapable of producing a positive vision to escape the multitude of current problems, their imagination knows no bounds when it comes to creative ways to create new taxes.

As far as taxes go, the sales tax seems to be one of the least intrusive and equitable. It’s far superior to the income tax, which demands government intrusion into every aspect of your life that involves the almighty dollar (read: everything).

The argument being made for the Internet Sales Tax is that it fixes an unfair market advantage for internet sales over brick and mortar retailers. It’s true that this is their best argument, and, if taken without context, it may even be a winning argument. But the reason it’s moving so quickly isn’t to fix an injustice, it’s to create a host of new ones that raise the barrier to entry to potential competitors of established players who have big bucks to spend protecting their market share.

To some it might appear counter intuitive that a company that would be saddled with burdensome new tax compliance issues would be supporting this legislation. Companies like Amazon understand that the burden is actually a competitive advantage because they are large enough to lobby for special exceptions and can afford compliance.

It’s the same way Dodd-Frank “punished” the major banks with cryptic regulations that do nothing more than greatly reduce the opportunity for competing banks and investment firms from starting up and growing.

During election time all we hear the politicians talk about are “jobs.” If we want jobs, we need startups, and the internet is booming with creative startups because the government has remained largely out of it. It gives people the opportunity to bypass previous hurdles and the establishment is feeling its grasp on control slipping.

Imagine the compliance burden of collecting, organizing, and reporting with every city, county, and state that collects a sales tax? A company like Amazon can hire a team of lawyers, but for the stay-at-home mom who sells crafts, it is a dream killer.

This is a terrible idea that will only make it more difficult for a nation struggling to get on its feet to unleash the creative innovations of the coming generations.

This bill is moving blazing fast through the Senate. Marco Rubio through his twitter account commented on the speed by saying: “This #internettax bill is a really big mistake. Really shocked at how fast it is moving in Senate. #tcot.”

#tcot is twitter shorthand for “Top Conservatives on Twitter.”

So it looks like the best opportunity to kill this thing is in the House. To do that we need to reach out to the committee set to vote on the bill. The bill number is H.R. 684, and it is assigned to the Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform, Commercial and Antitrust Law.

Here are the members of that committee:

AL-06 Spencer Bachus @BachusAL06 R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_Bachus

TX-27 Farenthold @farenthold R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_Farenthold

CA-49 Darrell Issa @DarrellIssa R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darrell_Issa

PA-10 Tom Marino @RepTomMarino R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Marino

NC-13 George Holding @RepHolding R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Holding

GA-09 Doug Collins @RepDougCollins R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Collins_%28politician%29

PA-12 Keith Rothfus @KeithRothfus R http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Rothfus

TN-09 Steve Cohen @RepCohen D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Cohen

GA-04 Hank Johnson @RepHankJohnson D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hank_Johnson

WA-01 Suzan DelBene @SuzanDelBene D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzan_DelBene

FL-26 Joe Garcia @JoeGarcia D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Garcia

NY-08 Hakeem Jeffries @RepJeffries D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hakeem_Jeffries

MI-13 John Conyers @repjohnconyers D http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Conyers,_Jr.

So right out of the gate we need to engage the Chairman Spencer Bachus and Darrell Issa who has been a valuable ally on issues like Fast and Furious and Benghazi. Please take just a minute and tweet at @BachusAL06 and @DarrellIssa and tell them how you feel about this bill.

I’m floating an idea about burning the UN Flag. My greatest frustration is the black listing that many great arguments that are constantly avoided by the establishment, including the media. The Day of Resistance rallies on 2/23 where so polite, respectful, and peaceful that the national media mostly chose to ignore us. It wasn’t interesting enough to them but the local media coverage was almost universally fair. So the question really is, if we burn the UN Flag or threaten to burn the UN Flag will the national media pay attention to us and can we appropriate that action into something positive.

Burning the UN Flag is only worth doing only if we can be sure that the media will pay attention to it, in a way that allows us to discuss “sustainability” programs that exist in nearly every American community. It’s compromising our ability to educate our kids in a way that challenges them to explore as much of reality as they possibly can. To me that is a tragedy and the enemies agenda is coming from the UN. That’s a fight we need to have.

The UN is not a completely terrible idea but it can’t be a law issuing body. I had it wrong when I cited UN proclamations as justification for the Iraq war and now that I’ve learned about C-Scope, CommonCore, and the sustainability initiatives the more I see the need to uproot these dangerous ideas and dispel the UN influence from our laws. It needs to happen at the local level. Your mayor, your city council, sheriffs, and other elected officials have a responsibility to respond to your questions or they cannot be trusted and must be defeated.

The establishment media isn’t going down without a fight. They are awfully powerful but they are misguided. While the talking class drones on about a Presidential Election the people are peacefully revolting against the practices of this government by taking over OUR government at every level.

They haven’t realized that it’s time to break up the monolithic presidential campaign apparatus and prepare for a midterm campaign. Don’t worry we’re on top of it.

We need to let people know that there are still heroes in our political system. We need LOTS of heroes and we need them to share what they are working on.

If you’re doing something cool I’m going to do my very best to connect you with people who could use guidance to do what you’re doing and then do my very best to fund it. If necessary I will take all the wealth I have accumulated and use it to connect as many people as possible to voices who might inspire them towards action. This means a lot of different voices with varying intensity.

I’m concerned about the imagery. If we burn it near a government building it will make us look like the Anarchist hippies like Occupy Wall Street and if we do it at a campground or something, the imagery looks like a Klan meeting. In neither instance is that a comparison we want to draw. I’m willing to do it because I think the media will talk about it, although I’d really just prefer someone talk to us. I can’t tell you what to do so if you want to go burn a UN flag all I can say is make sure you show proper respect for fire and courtesy and let’s make sure we get the timing right.

We need the media to be slow enough that we won’t get pushed out of the news cycle. I read an interesting comment somewhere that we could bury it, or tie it to a helium balloon and float it into space, or other fun ideas. I know burning the flag isn’t the best visual but we should keep using the imagery online and if it comes down to it, we’ll find a way to do it to maximum value.

There are a lot of great people who have been leading grassroots fights for years. It’s time they get an audience that bypasses the establishment media….. because America!

For an activist like me yesterday was like the Super Bowl. Led mostly by four guys the national debate just shifted to an incredibly important issue. They put on a show. Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and Marco Rubio took control of the Senate and demanded that Americans immediately get an answer to a simple question. Can the government kill Americans, on American soil, without due process? It was inspiring to watch as guys the Tea Party movement simultaneously exposed many of the lies on the left and take the fight directly to Obama on serious constitutional issues.

It was amazing to me that Senator Wyden was the only to Democrat who joined in the festivities in a meaningful way. Harry Reid made a pitiful plea to close the filibuster so that our poor overworked Senators could go home that was met with an incredulous rebuke from Senator Paul.

Here is what the American people saw when they tuned in yesterday. They saw four smart, well spoken, and even pop-culture fluent leaders explain how ridiculous something in government was in an entertaining and yet serious way. They saw what the Republican Party could be if the Tea Party had won more elections and the establishment had won less. Someone who should probably should have been there but wasn’t was Joe Miller. I’ve never been able to wrap my head around the idea that after losing the primary and failing to get her name on the ballot, Lisa Murkowski was able to win the general election as a write-in candidate. I’ve gotten to know Joe Miller over the years and the guy I know would have made an impressive addition to yesterday’s dream team. I don’t know whether or not he is planning on running, I assume he is considering it because it’s awfully tough to get elected as a Democrat in Alaska.

The Alaskan people are certainly fired up about the 2nd Amendment infringements. This is a race I believe that Joe is prepared to win and so I look forward to supporting his efforts and you should too. For now I suggest signing up for his newsletters, they are excellent. In his newsletter I learned the real Benghazi story long before the national media and administration were forced to amend their stories. Joe is a real patriot and a really impressive dude, I know he would have been there from the beginning yesterday and he would have been on point.

If we’re going to move past the establishment and reassert our natural rights we need some Democrats to reinforce us on efforts like this. I’ve been doing something I don’t recommend which is reading comment sections on lefty sites. I’m seeing a lot of frustrated people who are quickly growing disenchanted with the schemes that the government is selling. The deeper I’ve infiltrated politics the more distance I’ve seen from what both parties tell people and what they actually do and the more similarities I see in regular people of all political self-identifications.

A whole lot was missing yesterday and I hope the American people will continue to join Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, and Marco Rubio and the rest of the voices of sanity and force the administration to state unequivocally that the government does not have the right to kill American citizens on American soil without either due process or them posing an imminent threat.

I know what’s coming. Their next move is to marginalize us. They will call us racists, sexists, killers, murderers, and even terrorists. Despite the fact that when we met for our Day of Resistance not one person was hurt or one citation issued they will treat us far worse they than treated Occupy with it’s many violent problems. We aren’t the violent ones but we will not tolerate violations of our natural rights.

They will drag anyone who poses a threat to them through the mud. They will defame our leaders and poison our debate with nasty rumors and wild accusations. They will engage in law-fare where they try to keep you so busy fighting the courts that you have no time to fight them. Their focus is always division and the way to fight that is to make sure that our focus is on UNITY.

It’s a whole new political world, let’s go win.

Yesterday Rand Paul took unilateral control of the Senate and you know what he spent his time talking about? Drones and due process. Did you know that Obama and Holder think they have the right to kill Americans, on American soil, without consulting anyone? Yesterday the anti-establishment coalition in the Senate exposed that.

Now there are a lot of bitter voices out there. For the next few days they are going to be saying things like

“Where were all these guys defending our rights when Bush started the drone program” and “this is just people being paranoid.”

Ask yourself this question. Are you more interested in participating in this kind of petty bickering and tireless cat calling or would you rather participate in making our country a place where the government can’t arbitrarily change the definition of what our natural rights are?

A lot of people have been trying to warn you that something stinks with the government.

Think about the trillions we spent to “improve our infrastructure”, where is that money?

Think of the all the money we spent to “fix” the housing market, how is your neighborhood doing after the trillions spent?

Think of your privacy and ask whether you want the government building databases with all your medical and personal data?

Think of what you can be arrested for and then consider that the government now openly admits that they don’t arrest bankers.

If you’re more than just a hack you might want to pay attention to what people like Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and Mike Lee are trying to tell you.