I have several Google Gmail accounts, not because I think it’s cool but necessity forces it to be that way.  One of those Gmail accounts is PokerWorks. I have checked through all of my account options, looked at everything I can think of to look at, and I admit to being stymied by the fact that I have to occasionally log in to my Gmail account if I want to check it on the Internet even though I have the ‘remember me’box checked.   I use Thunderbird as my e-mail client and it checks my Gmail accounts but every now and then I go in to the account online to see if anything is trapped in the trash or spam filters that I should be getting.

Well there is nothing trapped today but there is a gigantic flood that won’t slow down.  First I had to login again, I find this to be irritating because I have 9000 passwords stored in an Excel file and I can’t remember five of them which sends me back to the file which has a password on it too.

After I logged in today I began receiving about 2000 spam messages an hour, and the torrent hasn’t slowed down.  Very few of them are getting through to my regular inbox on Thunderbird, but they are definitely jamming the spam box on the Gmail account online.

What would’ve happened in the span of a few hours that would cause some mysterious glitch or change – or some evil Gmail fairy happened by – and make this happen? I have the Gmail page open in my browser, and occasionally I go back to look at it, if anything has slipped into my inbox that is spam I immediately mark it as spam and send it to the spam folder.  I have gone back and checked my settings, looked at everything I can find on the page to see why I’m getting 9 million spam a day now, and I have no clue.  Perhaps one of you Internet web Houdinis will figure it out for me and leave me a comment.

*****

PokerWorks has an article on the index page tonight that seriously raises my blood pressure and makes me wonder what the hell the United States is going to become as a country and how much control they will try to take over the people, removing our freedoms from us, telling us what we can and can’t do with our spare time and our hard-earned dough, and taking us to court to confiscate our property.

To say I’m flippin fried would be an understatement.

I can’t remember sending out a plea to the government to protect me from the big bad internet.  If I wanted someone/something to control my life and choices, it sure wouldn’t be an impartial body of Net Nannies that think I’m not wise enough or knowledgeable enough to manage me.

At times the movie Magnum Force pops into my thoughts.  It’s a viscious movie about vigilante cops – starring Clint Eastwood – and the movie is older than dirt but the concept behind it is extremely frightening…total control.  As in, “if things don’t go the way we think they should, we kill you.”  Where does that takes us?  Nowhere.

That’s where I fear our government is taking us with the internet gambling bullshit – nowhere. Wasted revenue that could be gleaned from legalizing it and taxing it, Wasted tax $ trying to control it,  wasted effort because people are going to gamble anyway, kind of like the spam that keeps flooding the inbox, a useless battle with no end in sight.