Sunday, December 17, 2006

It's Called 'Gambling' for a Reason

It is known as "doubling down" in gambling and stock market investing. It is the practice of doubling the money you have investment in a losing position with the hope that the law of averages will eventually work in your favor.
My Pappy took me into a casino. He pointed to the faro table, roulette, craps, and chuck-a-luck. "Son," he said, "this here is what they call 'gambling.' Gambling is for suckers. The odds are always against you; you can never win. As long as you live, stick with poker." ~ Bret Maverick
Doubling down is also the Iraq War strategy currently favored by St. John McCain and President Bush. Their plan is to add an additional 20, 30, 40 thousand troops to the Iraq War - it seems the number is getting bigger with each passing day. The theory is, if we keep pouring more and more bodies into the Iraq conflict, eventually, we just have to win. We just have to.

Doubling down is a sucker play. It was the US strategy in Vietnam and the Soviet strategy in Afganistan. It is what losers do when their ego overwhelms their intelligence.

2 comments:

PoliShifter said...

Doubing down is Bush's way of ensuring that we stay in Iraq until he is out of office.

That is his only concern. He wants to exit stage left much like Johnson did and hope the next President (like Nixon) shoulders much of the blame.

It's also a shell game. You send 40K in and in 6 moths or a year you say "we're pulling out 40K troops."

The public won't remember (so say the edubcated political consultants) that you sent and extra 40K to Iraq. They will only see that we are "drawing down troops" and be content.

I don't think the public falls for this type of bullshit anymore but it won't stop BushCo from trying.

Anonymous said...

I absolutely love gambling and I think that everyone should have the right to gamble from the comfort of their own homes as long as safeguards are in place to protect against underage and problem gambling.