This is one of the few cases where elected officials have been doing us proud. The current mayor of Oakland had "we aren't paying a dollar of public money on stadiums" as an applause line in her campaign, and she seems to have stuck to that line through the latest staredown.
My barber was grumbling about the mayor's position on that. He is a Sports Fan and thinks new stadiums are a public good.
I think one difference here is that the voting public remembers when the city was screwed over on the deal that brought the Raiders back.
Yeah, I'm only vaguely aware of that -- and only because my barber brought it up. Right after complaining that the mayor won't put up money for a new stadium, he complained that taxpayers are still paying for the last one.
1 gives me a rare burst of warm feeling for Oakland. It is a truth universally acknowledged that anyone who uses the phrase "my tax dollars" in a sentence is probably a putz, but a stadium is not far below the drug war on "things I don't want my tax dollars spent on."
Oakland used to have a professional baseball team before they moved to Three Rivers.
We're supposed to be talking about central Texas. You guys.
Smearcase, you can come visit your Raiders.
Apparently the Steelers and Penguins used to play in Oakland.
Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood was filmed in Oakland.
Raiders would be a start, but only a start. I note that El Paso/Juarez and Amarillo are both lacking their three well-deserved pro-franchises. And Brownsville is growing. Pirates would fit there.
The alternative is for Texas to expand, with other states voting to become Texas, or even just a vassal state.
Are you excited about this, heebie? Jammies can go to the football game, and you can go shopping at the outlet malls?
I'm amused by this, in part because I assume there is 0 chance of it actually coming to pass. It could conceivably make my commute super shitty.
That's what everybody said about President Trump.
14: Professional football games are almost always on Sunday.
Except when they're on Monday or Thursday.
We're supposed to be talking about central Texas
It's a perfect fit. America's choad receives the shittiest team and fans in the country.
San Marcos is closer to Austin than Santa Clara is to San Francisco. That's the thing about Texas: the distances are so small.
Oakland is 2,500 miles from San Francisco.
Pittsburg is 40 miles from San Francisco.
I can't tell you how pissed I am that Apple makes "Pittsburg" the default on their keyboards. Assholes.
I guess I sort of did tell you. Or at least strongly implied it.
Says the country's sphincter.
I'm not in Houston.
I'd like to see some federal policy that discourages municipalities from funding stadiums. Like "if the city builds your team a stadium, Mr. Owner, we're taxing that money as your income."
BLACK HOLE ARRRGH SCARY SKULL AND CROSSBONES ARRRRGH YOU ARE IN OUR HOUSE DON"T COME INTO OUR HOUSE AND DISRESPECT OUR HOUSE OH SHIT OUR TEAM SUCKS
If Houston is the sphincter and we're the choad, then I guess you're swimming in our sputnik.
The Oakland Raidters: A Commitment to Excresence
There's already raiders in Lubbock.
San Marcos, the Foxborough of Texas.
I'm sad about the Warriors leaving Oakland. I had such a good time watching the "we believe"-era team from $5 seats. Though even in Oakland they're obviously crazy expensive now due to their awesome team.
I'm sad about the Warriors leaving Oakland.
They've got a long way to go to get back to Coney Island.
Will they need an architect for the stadium? I'm familiar with the local codes. It's a lot to do with humidity and wind. Snow loads are barely a consideration, if you can believe it.
My parents can STILL get A's tickets for $5 (senior citizen + Tuesday afternoon + willingness to sit in bleachers). Hooray for no new stadiums ever.
Related only to 35, I saw this documentary last night, which you can stream on Netflix, and it is awesome. The Warriors was, sort of, a true story.*
*not just in the Xenophon sense
On the off chance that I get snowed in with the family this weekend, I stopped at the hipster bar on the way home. Barley wine turns out to be strong.
Makes a bit of sense, I guess. That will allow the games to draw people from both Austin and San Antonio.
Sure is a big investment for a pile of land that only yields activity for 8 Sundays a year.
12: Perhaps, but we built them too nice a stadium to leave.
39: Always a good way to start the weekend.
The specials are Mahi Mahi and some kind of seafood chowder.
Tempting, but I've already progressed to pajamas. I have no desire to go outside tonight.
I believe having pros sports set up as tiered league with promotions and demotions as in most European soccer leagues would help curb some of worst of owner blackmail.
Sure is a big investment for a pile of land that only yields activity for 8 Sundays a year.
Which is why the owners, as responsible business people, do their best to ensure that someone else pays for it. (Not that cities should indulge them, of course.)
The owners create jobs, teo. That's why they deserve their riches.
Someone has to do the permitting for those stadiums, after all.
Every time I see "O.co stadium" I wonder if the sponsor is a link-shortener.
Someone has to do the permitting for those stadiums, after all.
Does this mean heebie joined the board? I lost track.
Ah, so they're just a link-shortenee.
52: That's not a job, it's a calling. In the sense that you don't get paid.
I think if you are on the planning board, you should get a cut of the stadium revenue. Seems fair, no?
Anyone caught in the snowpocalypse? Looking out my window this morning, it's more impressive than I was expecting. I had assumed that the news was over hyping the "MASSIVE STORM OMG!!" like they usually do.
In overhyping, one local newscaster was describing it, and said, "We might even have some flakes here by next Wednesday or Thursday!"
Sadly, we are doing a dry month. It just seems wrong to shovel so much snow without beer.
I never understood why January was the dry month if you were going to do a dry month. You drink a bunch in December because you're with your family celebrating and then you stop drinking in January when you're with your family without even the promise of presents to distract them?
Sure is a big investment for a pile of land that only yields activity for 8 Sundays a year.
If they stopped putting two teams on at a time, they could double their use.
66:scoring would go through the roof ! Genius!!
Don't ask me, Moby: I'm just a captive of Big Midsection
I hear the secret there is a low fat diet high in plant-based foods.
So, beer or wine, then.dammit.
No, just about any alcohol except fermented mare's milk and, arguably, mead.
Well, distilled beverages are like the grandfoodren of plants.so I wanted to be truer to the spirit of the thing.
No snow here either, beyond the dregs of the half inch we got a few days ago. I wish we would have a blizzard, because somehow then I could better justify my extreme procrastination. (My boyfriend wanted to know how many words I've written in unfogged comments, and how close they'd come to dissertation length.)
I wish we would have a blizzard, because somehow then I could better justify my extreme procrastination.
We definitely have blizzard, does that mean I"m justified in procrastinating working on my grant? Cool.
74
Yep! No one can expect you to grant write through several feet of snow.
I've long sort of thought if the growth that took place north of Austin (Plugerfille, Cedar Park, whatever those places are called) had taken place south of it, Austin/SA would already be considered The Second Metroplex. Which seems like it's about to happen anyway...
Oh, is this the snow thread? Over 2 feet here right now, but (a) wind gusts are less than anticipated, a mere 35 mph rather than the 50+ projected, which means that (b) we haven't lost power, at least yet. Yay!
Sampling of the internet seems to show that the country at large has convinced itself that we're really fussing overly much ... which yields the best candidate so far for this region's naming of the weather event: 'Snojoke.
Peter Pan coming in to a group of boys singing "Smells like teen spirit" is a bit jarring.
We are not entirely sure how much here. Several inches since this morning when we had 14"+.
Pre-promotion Captain Hook fights for freedom with Peter Pan.
This one has more women in tube tops than the other versions I've seen.
Pan. It's not bad for a family movie.
Kind of over done on the special effects and Hugh Jackmaning.
Ah, well, I could only let so many tube tops pass.
I hope you have a big enough yard that you can make thousands on game days by charging $50/car for parking. I think that's the main industry of Foxborough.
||
Thoughts, not new, on reading Ernest Mandel Late Capitalism
(Obama admin just approved massive arms sale to Saudi Arabia, mostly fighter planes)
As USA is to Saudi Arabia, colonialism imperialism, say a source of surplus profits, and thereby supports SA in its authoritarian and religious backwardness...
...metropole and periphery...
...Chicago is to Peoria, and NYC and LA are to Texas. In other words, the liberal and Democratic blue areas of the country create and sustain the Republican conservative red areas of the country. You can frankly measure who is exploiting who by the relative levels of egalitarianism, gini, democracy, educational attainment etc. Again, of course, like the Royal family in Saudi Arabia, there will be locals in colonized areas (Dallas, Houston) that will be bribed to serve the metropole.
Combined and uneven development, underdevelopment, capital and social destruction are internal to countries as well as external.
|>
We definitely have blizzard, does that mean I"m justified in procrastinating working on my grant? Cool.
...had we lived, we should have a grant application to deliver whose innovative approaches, cross-disciplinary approach and relevance to the wider community would have stirred the heart of every Englishman. These rough drafts and our dead bodies must tell the tale, but surely, surely, a great rich country like ours will see that our graduate students are properly provided for.
Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, Blue States, Red States
In this whole system development and underdevelopment reciprocally determine each other, for while the quest for surplus-profits constitutes the prime motive power behind the mechanisms of growth, surplus-profit can only be achieved at the expense of less productive countries, regions and branches of production. Hence development takes place only in juxtaposition with underdevelopment; it perpetuates the latter and itself develops thanks to this perpetuation.
In addition, the Leila Ahmed book made me somewhat more understanding of the Egyptian woman moving from miniskirt to hageb, becoming in some ways "conservative" and pious in explicit response to Sadat approaching the US and Saudi Arabia, as a personal response to imperialism.