I have some exciting news to share. PPA is kicking off the PPA Town Hall meeting tour this month. PPA Director of Grassroots and External Affairs Drew Lesofski and I will be traveling to various cities across the country to meet with the poker community, to hear your concerns and answer your questions in person, and to share all that PPA is doing.

The kickoff will be in Tampa, FL, on May 23rd, followed by a Fort Lauderdale, FL town hall on the 24th. We will be joined by poker coach and mindset expert PPA FL State Director Donna Blevins (PokerMindsetAcademy.com). Aside from great discussion, as an added bonus Donna will offer a one-hour complimentary poker training session! So, I hope everyone in the area will join us for a great evening.

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Barack Obama was taking questions from the masses today in 140 characters or less. It really is a rather unique evolution in political communication. It’s not too different from standing on a soapbox back in the day … except here the crowd is millions strong, and – bo has enabled his @replies.

The PPA rallied the troops to make sure that of the millions tens of thousands of people jumping up and raising their hands with a question, at least one that got heard was about online poker:

Don’t forget today at 2PM EDT, President Obama will be hosting a Twitter town hall and answering questions tweeted to him. Please take a moment to use Twitter to submit a question asking the President if he supports licensing and regulating online poker by clicking here. To follow the Town Hall as it happens, please click here.

Let’s make our voices heard. Tweet your question to President Obama now!

Proud to play,
Drew Lesofski
Director, Grassroots and External Affairs

I sent mine in. No answer … but we’ll see if @BarackObama maybe includes @Pokerati in his next #FollowFriday.

UPDATE: Follow this guy, New York Times politics blogger, to see what questions got asked and how they got answered.

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Good op-ed piece by Rich Muny (@TheEngineer2008) that lays out the current poker argument on our issue. Nothing you haven’t heard before, but Muny’s not preaching to the typical choir … he’s addressing conservative small-governmenters and in addition to laying out some legislative history, explains why (spoiler alert:) regulating online poker and gambling ≠ wild, rights-infringing government expansion.

The GOP’s Bad Bet Against Online Poker

You know, I’m obviously not running the poker-political show, though I do try to follow it. And I’m starting to think it’s time to amp-up the aggression on a grass-roots level. Drew Lesofski, the PPA’s director of grassroots and external affairs may not be as visible as the typical spokespeople (Pappas, Frank, D’Amato, Raymer) but he’s effectively rallied the troops — on state and federal levels — and while I’m pretty sure the new tweetforpoker.com has a purpose … bottom line … and this is only me talking here, not the PPA … might it not be time crash a few tea parties?

The message:

Take our goddamn fuckin’ money! And take it now! We want our damn personal freedoms back, and yeah, we expect America to be a better place to engage in a recreational activity legal in 48 states than Malta. We want to pay you, and those who oppose this pursuit don’t have to pay squat. And even though we don’t expect these bogus societal problems to emerge … hey, guess what, if they do, we’ll pay to clean’em up. Cool?

Hey, have you met our new 21-year-old posterboy Joe Cada? Pretty good kid …