08-10-2008, 04:06 PM
David, you are most correct.
It's all smoke and mirrors.
There once was a thoroughbred racetrack in Rhode Island -- the state of my birth -- that Vinnie Teresa, the first high-profile Mafia stool pigeon who famously testified to the reality of La Cosa Nostra in America, termed the most thoroughly "fixed" track in the country.
Yet each pre-determined race there could be handicapped by honest bettors -- although not by evaluating traditional criteria such as horses' won/lost records, performances on specific track conditions, jockeys' abilities, injuries, etc.
The way you picked a horse at that track was to determine who owned it, the nature of the owner's relationship to the crime family running the operation, who had a favor coming -- that sort of thing.
Like the way we apply deep political analyses to American presidential contests.
Polls and policies are, as Ian Fleming might put it, "of as little account as sparrows' tears."
It's all smoke and mirrors.
There once was a thoroughbred racetrack in Rhode Island -- the state of my birth -- that Vinnie Teresa, the first high-profile Mafia stool pigeon who famously testified to the reality of La Cosa Nostra in America, termed the most thoroughly "fixed" track in the country.
Yet each pre-determined race there could be handicapped by honest bettors -- although not by evaluating traditional criteria such as horses' won/lost records, performances on specific track conditions, jockeys' abilities, injuries, etc.
The way you picked a horse at that track was to determine who owned it, the nature of the owner's relationship to the crime family running the operation, who had a favor coming -- that sort of thing.
Like the way we apply deep political analyses to American presidential contests.
Polls and policies are, as Ian Fleming might put it, "of as little account as sparrows' tears."
Charles Drago
Co-Founder, Deep Politics Forum
If an individual, through either his own volition or events over which he had no control, found himself taking up residence in a country undefined by flags or physical borders, he could be assured of one immediate and abiding consequence: He was on his own, and solitude and loneliness would probably be his companions unto the grave.
-- James Lee Burke, Rain Gods
You can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.
-- Graham Greene
Co-Founder, Deep Politics Forum
If an individual, through either his own volition or events over which he had no control, found himself taking up residence in a country undefined by flags or physical borders, he could be assured of one immediate and abiding consequence: He was on his own, and solitude and loneliness would probably be his companions unto the grave.
-- James Lee Burke, Rain Gods
You can't blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity.
-- Graham Greene