44 Comments
User's avatar
Robert's avatar

Judd, your the only one that can break down a topic as crazy as this one. Thank You!

Feel bad for the Special OPs soldier but he knew it was wrong. He’ll pay dearly but those in this White House won’t that’s what so terribly wrong!

gail's avatar

Don't you think it will be pardoned? After all he was betting on the team winning (or words to that effect by the pardoner)

Robert's avatar

Actually, I hope so!

gail's avatar

I truly do not. It is a matter of character and ethics. I am disappointed in the way our current culture celebrates cheating.

Jeffrey Hobbs's avatar

As Shakespeare might have said, "all the world's a casino, and all of us merely suckers." This is what end-stage capitalism looks like--people paying dearly to purchase nothing, on the chance that it might lead to something. It's becoming a system of false promises.

A Sarcastic Prophet's avatar

Thank you for the best sentence that explains the era we live in - the capitalocene - people paying dearly to purchase nothing, on the chance that it might lead to something.

Kate's avatar

Rump himself just said last week “the world is a casino, it is what it is.” So yeah…

A Sarcastic Prophet's avatar

The fact that the Queens real estate mob boss sundowning as president uses Pete Rose to explain ‘good’ illegal betting is just one more example of how he lives continually in the 1980s world of his own making. This is what it looks like when a sociopath - an amoral, pathologically lying, malignant narcissist with no impulse control- gets old.

mark's avatar

Everybody is learning to harness the power of the internet, including the bad people. It can make people who prey on others more effective. It can help bullies find people to bully. It can help people who molest children find victims. It can help people who have inside information find suckers to bet with. We need a RICO like law to hold the online platform legally responsible for the online evil they facilitate for money.

Katy Bolger's avatar

The U.S. government is looking more and more like a black market. Maybe they are farming out the corruption to entities like Kalshi and Polymarket but they seem to be rubbing right up against each other.

Magats! These are your people stealing your money. How much longer y'all going to play the Fool?

Mike McCabe's avatar

Not a surprise Trump would defend Pete Rose.

Rose was a fellow dirtbag.

john a's avatar

great ball player though

Katy Bolger's avatar

yeah like Michael Jackson was a great entertainer

Joseph Mangano's avatar

Polymarket and Kalshi are either coping massively or trying to spin a fantastic tale of self-regulation. Van Dyke broke the law in cartoonishly inept ways, and that's how he got caught. This isn't the system working as intended, unless that means a system with virtually no safeguards in place.

john a's avatar

interesting the latest shooter should have made a bet on whether another assassination attempt would occur....then he could fund his whole defense through his winning or taken care of his family.....could you imagine the uproar!!!.....a pre-gofundme account

Katy Bolger's avatar

And no regulations so it just might work.

john a's avatar

i'm not sure why it is difficult to track the winners on these bets...if i go to racetrack or casino and win over 600.00 doesn't the casino have to issue a 1099 and withhold taxes? i have to supply my social security number thus identifying myself. excuse my ignorance i'm not much of a gambler. if i win the lottery i have to pay taxes on that income....it's on the record. insider trading has been going on since the scale was invented and someone figured out a way to put their thumb on it. in order to win 400K you gotta have somebody willing to lose 400K....if cheating is allowed maybe you should avoid companies that allow it. just sayin.

Ian Ogard's avatar

It's good to see Popular Information again. I lost my internet for over a week. What I missed the most was reading my favorite posters like Judd, and their readers' comments.

The ability to make wagers on military operations raises a multitude of national security concerns. Kalshi's use of the indictment against Van Dyke to portray itself as the prediction market with real protections against insider trading is opportunistic, Through the Looking Glass, 1984, up is down kind of stuff. Trump's Pete Rose comparison and his comment that he'd, "...look into it" is more of the same.

I wonder, did anyone make money on a wager having to do with the assassination attempt? Prediction markets have the potential to provide assassins and coconspirators with financial incentives, and pave the road to a Wild West, Mad Max kind of world. Considerations like this, along with the Van Dyke incident, beg for immediate regulatory action.

Stephanie Anne's avatar

Has betting, especially long term, benefited the majority?

Just don’t bet. Easy solution & eventually bye bye Kalshi & Polymarket & maybe even Don Jr its ‘advisor’. What a joke.

Adam's avatar

The house ALWAYS wins!

Diane Brine's avatar

His casinos went bankrupt.

Angie's avatar

This is so commonly repeated to imply that Trump is a bad businessman. I hope that by now people understand that he filed bankruptcy when he could no longer risk being revealed for the massive Russian oligarch money laundering operation. It was unsustainable. On paper, he had no liability when they folded, probably write them off on his taxes and walked away with untold amounts of filthy lucre and so did all of his "friends." This is part of the reason he has so fiercely guarded his tax returns, I think.

Zev Shalev doesn't talk about Trump's casinos in particular but his series called The Greatest Heist extensively documents Trump but more Epstein's financial fuckery. Epstein might have triggered the 2008 financial crisis himself. He at least tipped over the first domino. Zev's work is paywalled but it's worth a one month subscription just to read his analysis. He brings the receipts too.

Adam's avatar
Apr 27Edited

The house still won cause he didn't pay a cent.

Jackras's avatar

As always, reporting on important issues of ongoing grift that seemingly no other outlet can investigate! Thank you for your "grift spotlight" . May it continue to shine brightly!

Adam's avatar

"Feel bad for the Special OPs soldier but he knew it was wrong."

Why feel bad for the buddy-effing loser? He deserves 20 years in Leavenworth, hands down.

This former Marine says lock his rotten ass up!

Steve S.'s avatar

Thank you. Accountability once mattered. What happened to ethical standards and behavior? His choices completely smeared his entire chain of command.

Adam's avatar

Precisely! But alas, accountability appears to be out of fashion. Not for you and not for me. However, too many have forgotten the simple things like "ethical standards and behavior."

Even if we fall short in their application at times, (cause we're human) the framework is in place requiring only the proper mind-set. Integrity is ongoing, not episodic!

Katy Bolger's avatar

Not all heroes wear capes, not all marines are arrow-straight.

Adam's avatar

All too true and has always been.

A. Hofferkamp's avatar

It's ok w/ Trump as long as you're with him & not against him.

Michela A. C.'s avatar

The grift continues. Eventually the polymarket will go bottoms up with all the insider info resulting in huge payouts, and if the t-rumps are involved...well, they bankrupted a casino.

Larry Carr (autocarr)'s avatar

Polymarket claimed this was a validation of the integrity of its platform. Neal Kumar, Polymarket’s Chief Legal Officer, posted on X that Van Dyke’s arrest “proved just how easy it is to find & charge criminal insider trading when markets are onchain.” Kumar said that others who tried to trade on insider information “will be found just like this guy.” … nah, they just found a patsy to fit their narrative… he’s a soldier he’ll understand…