You want to talk about common sense? Here you go...

Not a good week for the prediction markets.

Nevada has banned Kalshi and has put a bill on the docket to ban sports prediction markets entirely.  New York is suing Kalshi, because it believes that the prediction markets are using circumvention methods to allow sports gambling in manners and ages to which it is not allowed.

Well, DUH...

To my understanding, the prediction markets are, for example, legal to trade in in the state of California.  A state which rejected all sports gambling by 3-1 and 4-1 margins two years ago when the situation was placed on the ballot in various forms.

And guess which side Donald Trump is on...  Take a fucking guess -- in the face of over 20 such lawsuits now, Trump has come down on the side of the prediction markets.  Markets which have been seen as markedly conservative and large-scale crypto operations.

This is something which should be obvious to anyone with an IQ above that of kumquat.  The sports predictions markets are sports gambling.  Period, end, full fucking stop.  And many of them are done without the safeguards and controls that the states which do legalize it have -- and they also conduct themselves in states in which no such gambling is allowed in any stripe.

It is becoming obvious, with the passing days and weeks, that the expansion of sports gambling (or, many would say, any sports gambling at all) is/was a very bad idea.  The question is:  Can you unwind the situation without killing American sports (pro and college), and, if so, how?

I am still reminded of the fate of KGO in San Francisco.  After various incursions with the law, including it's most prominent host getting nailed for child porn (released in 2014, Bernie Ward is now a sex offender for life -- he apparently IS still alive), KGO was forced to pull the plug on it's news-talk format, and became, briefly, a competitor to all-news KCBS in San Francisco, just up the dial.

That didn't work out too well for them, and, a few months before the ballot initiatives on California sports gambling, KGO was converted to "The Spread", a sports-gambling based national radio station.

KGO no longer exists.  In fact, it has been completely flipped into it's conservative rival, KSFO, and the fascists now broadcast on KGO's former 810 AM.