Blagojevich should go home. Seriously.

I can't believe Gov. Blagojevich hasn't stepped down. The chances of this whole pay to play episode turning out to be a huge frame job is worse than the chances of me hitting the Powerball this week. Even if he didn't do ANYTHING wrong, I think he should still have resigned. As a governor, your first obligation is to the people you serve and those people shouldn't have to question whether their political leader is a criminal. Clear your name, sue the hell out of everybody who created the coverup, sell your tv movie rights and run for senator yourself.

This is basically how I see it :

(1) Blagojevich tries to get rich by selling a senate seat.

(2) The fuzz catches on and arrests him and he is blasted on every news channel in America, and EVERYBODY knows that a senate seat was possibly being offered for sale.

(3) A few weeks later, he appoints the senate seat to a nutjob named Roland Burris.



If this doesn't wreak of political corruption, I don't know what does. Now that his political ship is sinking, Blagojevich would be even MORE motivated to sell the seat than he was before this all started... it's completely ludicrous to me that he can with a straight face say Roland Burris has "unquestioned loyalty" as if we should just accept that as fact. Check out the videos... then check out the Illinois newspaper articles about Burris. They definitely paint him out to be a religious whack job. I can't see for the life of me why Burris would want to end his 40 year old political legacy with a big black mark... the very fact that he is associating himself at ALL with this scandal puts his integrity into question.

Watch for the line. "This man was once an opponent of mine for Governor." Then Blagojevich sticks his tongue out so far it almost touches his nose. I remember reading something about that in Navarro's body language book, where he says subconsciously sticking your tongue out indicates that you're feeling like you just got away with something.

I think Blagojevich is trying to pull one over on everybody. And it's going to be sick if he gets away with it and this guy Burris actually gets to be one of the most powerful men in the country by having a senate vote. And who's going to stop this? It looks like it has to be the Senate, because it's pretty doubtful the Illinois Supreme Court is going to get in the way.

Watch Necklaces

I've been on a bit of a website development spree this last week. I'm trying to turn all of thousands of domains I own into actual content sites ("mini-sites") so that they'll start building traffic and also so that I'll be able to show "good faith use" in case another company like PokerHost tries to come along and take one of my domains. I've been whipping them out at a rate of about 2-3 a day.

I figured I'd announce one such mini-site, WatchNecklace.com. I picked up the domain name this week and thought it would be good to try to get something up before Christmas. I basically just found a few cool watch necklaces on Amazon and put up some links and descriptions.

It's not too late to order a really cool gift for the special girl in your life. I heard somewhere that giving a girlfriend or boyfriend a watch is a bad sign, because it's like telling them that the relationship is on borrowed time. I'm not sure if that is an old wives-tale or just something a drunk buddy made up. If anyone has any comments on that point, I'd love to hear them.

I hope it's not true, because some of the necklace watches, like the Marc Jacobs designs, are really pretty cool. If you order one by Monday, it'll get to you by Christmas. Check out the site.

Bellagio and PokerHost

The Bellagio Five Diamond tournament series is wrapping up this week. I got pretty lucky in one of the prelims and was able to snap off a win. Felt pretty good... but I was so deep in makeup after this year that the $168k win didn't even get me out. So all I got to walk home with was the bracelet. At least I also will be able to for sure play the $25k WPT Championship in April, as the buyin was taken out of the win.

I was in the race in the main event, but finished a disappointing 58th. Still good enough for a cash (the payout was very flat, paying 100 spots), but not much over the $15k buyin. Honestly, I got lucky to get that far... early on day 2 I had all my chips in the middle preflop with pocket sixes against Justin Bonomo, who had queens. The flop came a six and the turn came another six for quads. I had him covered by only a few hundred chips.

So anyway, I was feeling very sad lastnight but when I woke up today I receive good news in my email. The Pokerhost.net wipo decision came today. Not only did I win, but the WIPO panelist found in favor of my reverse domain name hijacking claim, which hardly ever happens. Unfortunately, the UDRP doesn't actually give any punitive relief to respondents who win on this claim, but it's nice to get anyway. It definitely put me in a better mood and was a nice thing to wakeup to.

If you play your cards right in life, then you can stay alive.

My girlfriend has been showing me a lot of anti-drug PSAs recently on YouTube. Here's one that I thought stood out. I thought it was kind of funny, though, because I have a feeling the kid who made this is going to turn into a poker addict. Cross-addiction ftw*.




* - "ftw" means "for the win" in online poker speak. Michele thought it was something a lot different.