The Swamp

The Sybian wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 2:12 pm

sancarlos wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 1:11 pm

DaveInSeattle wrote: ↑Mon Jan 28, 2019 5:14 pm Not sure why he's talking about Schultz' role in the Sonics sale/theft. Its all out in the open...just find the 'SonicsGate' movie on youtube.

You live in Seattle, so you know all about it. Most people in the rest of the country know little about it.

And the few outside Seattle that know, don't care. You probably have more people that praise him for bringing the team to OKC than care that he took the Sonics out of Seattle. Aside from having the coolest uniforms, the Sonics were largely a forgotten franchise except for a couple of years with Kemp, McDaniel and Olden Polynice.

Gah....this must be troll bait.

First off, he didn't 'bring' the Sonics to OKC. He sold them after failing to get the city to pony up money to revamp Key Arena (again). After saying that owning the Sonics were a 'community trust'. And then saying that Clay Bennett had 'no intention' of moving the team.

And forgotten franchise? C'mon...

Schultz knew Bennett was going to move the team. He didn't care.

But Syb's point is correct. Almost no one outside of Seattle really cares at this point, just like no one outside of Baltimore cares about the Colts moving to Indy, etc., etc.

EnochRoot wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 2:36 pm

The Sybian wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 2:12 pm

sancarlos wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 1:11 pm

DaveInSeattle wrote: ↑Mon Jan 28, 2019 5:14 pm Not sure why he's talking about Schultz' role in the Sonics sale/theft. Its all out in the open...just find the 'SonicsGate' movie on youtube.

You live in Seattle, so you know all about it. Most people in the rest of the country know little about it.

And the few outside Seattle that know, don't care. You probably have more people that praise him for bringing the team to OKC than care that he took the Sonics out of Seattle. Aside from having the coolest uniforms, the Sonics were largely a forgotten franchise except for a couple of years with Kemp, McDaniel and Olden Polynice.

You dare to rip the X Man?!

You know what happens when you rip the X Man? Ask Wes Matthews how well that worked out for him.



And how can you forget about Dale Ellis...Jack Sikma...Downtown Freddy Brown...Lenny Wilkens...Gary Fucking Payton...Ray Allen...Kevin Durant!!!

Gabbard's campaign staff all quitting on her. I didn't figure her campaign to make it to February 2020, but might not even make it to February 2019.

Not to totally sidetrack, but I would have assumed Payton was "Mr. Sonic" or whatever you'd call a franchise's most recognizable player.

brian wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 6:27 pm But Syb's point is correct. Almost no one outside of Seattle really cares at this point, just like no one outside of Baltimore cares about the Colts moving to Indy, etc., etc.

If Robert Irsay (if he was still alive) started making noises about running for President, the howling coming out of Baltimore would be deafening.

And what about the Superest Sonic ever...

Jim Fucking McIlvane.

Put that in your French vanilla soy latte and drink it.

DaveInSeattle wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 6:31 pm And how can you forget about Dale Ellis...Jack Sikma...Downtown Freddy Brown...Lenny Wilkens...Gary Fucking Payton...Ray Allen...Kevin Durant!!!

So, I girl I dated in the 80s told me that she had slept with Tom Chambers (while he was with the Sonics) a month before she met me. So, I figure he deserves to be on your list of great Sonics... because he and I have something in common!

Johnnie wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 6:46 pm And what about the Superest Sonic ever...

Jim Fucking McIlvane.

Put that in your French vanilla soy latte and drink it.

Steve Scheffler! The Chef!

DaveInSeattle wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 7:07 pm

Johnnie wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 6:46 pm And what about the Superest Sonic ever...

Jim Fucking McIlvane.

Put that in your French vanilla soy latte and drink it.

Steve Scheffler! The Chef!

That is Purdue great Steve Scheffler!

DaveInSeattle wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 6:46 pm

brian wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 6:27 pm But Syb's point is correct. Almost no one outside of Seattle really cares at this point, just like no one outside of Baltimore cares about the Colts moving to Indy, etc., etc.

If Robert Irsay (if he was still alive) started making noises about running for President, the howling coming out of Baltimore would be deafening.

Howls of laughter perhaps.

DSafetyGuy wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 4:31 pm
Steve? Don't come yet.

Xavier McDaniel gets mentioned, and it takes seven posts to make the Singles joke? The Swamp has been slipping.

sancarlos wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 7:05 pmSo, I girl I dated in the 80s told me that she had slept with Tom Chambers (while he was with the Sonics) a month before she met me. So, I figure he deserves to be on your list of great Sonics... because he and I have something in common!

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 7:39 pm

DSafetyGuy wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 4:31 pm
Steve? Don't come yet.

Xavier McDaniel gets mentioned, and it takes seven posts to make the Singles joke? The Swamp has been slipping.

Uh...I made a Singles reference directly under Syb's post.

EnochRoot wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 8:02 pm

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 7:39 pm

DSafetyGuy wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 4:31 pm
Steve? Don't come yet.

Xavier McDaniel gets mentioned, and it takes seven posts to make the Singles joke? The Swamp has been slipping.

Uh...I made a Singles reference directly under Syb's post.

Also featuring the late great Wayne Cody.

DaveInSeattle wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 8:06 pm

EnochRoot wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 8:02 pm

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 7:39 pm

DSafetyGuy wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 4:31 pm
Steve? Don't come yet.

Xavier McDaniel gets mentioned, and it takes seven posts to make the Singles joke? The Swamp has been slipping.

Uh...I made a Singles reference directly under Syb's post.

Also featuring the late great Wayne Cody.

mister d wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 7:55 pm

sancarlos wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 7:05 pmSo, I girl I dated in the 80s told me that she had slept with Tom Chambers (while he was with the Sonics) a month before she met me. So, I figure he deserves to be on your list of great Sonics... because he and I have something in common!

Well, that's cute, but I don't get it. Do you think your wife's boyfriend before you dunked on you if he slept with her?

DaveInSeattle wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 6:46 pm

brian wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 6:27 pm But Syb's point is correct. Almost no one outside of Seattle really cares at this point, just like no one outside of Baltimore cares about the Colts moving to Indy, etc., etc.

If Robert Irsay (if he was still alive) started making noises about running for President, the howling coming out of Baltimore would be deafening.

I grant Seattle the right to freak out, I just misread your post as saying you can't believe the rest of the country isn't pissed that Schultz fucked over Sonics fans.

Mister D wrote:Not to totally sidetrack, but I would have assumed Payton was "Mr. Sonic" or whatever you'd call a franchise's most recognizable player.

Yeah, he was absolutely the third guy I thought of, but Olden Polynice fit my narrative better.

EnochRoot wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 8:02 pm

L-Jam3 wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 7:39 pm

DSafetyGuy wrote: ↑Tue Jan 29, 2019 4:31 pm
Steve? Don't come yet.

Xavier McDaniel gets mentioned, and it takes seven posts to make the Singles joke? The Swamp has been slipping.

Uh...I made a Singles reference directly under Syb's post.

Which is why I quoted yours.

Did Harris already walk back her Medicare for All stipulations? I'm reading conflicting stories.

Johnnie wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 11:28 am Did Harris already walk back her Medicare for All stipulations? I'm reading conflicting stories.

I think it's a matter of semantics. She's walking back the part about getting rid of private health insurance, but the issue is that even if M4A were implemented some private health insurance would still have to continue to exist, similar to how there is currently supplemental insurance to Medicare for people who choose to buy it.

So refreshing to see a Dem candidate having to revise all their old platforms, be it years or hours later, in order to properly fit into their appointed front-runner role.

mister d wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 12:36 pm So refreshing to see a Dem candidate having to revise all their old platforms, be it years or hours later, in order to properly fit into their appointed front-runner role.

I don't think that is a revision, but a clarification. Supplemental private insurance was always a part of the Medicare for All plan, just like it exists in most countries with socialized healthcare. No reason to limit people who want to spend more for coverage that is better than Medicare for All.

The Sybian wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 12:45 pm

mister d wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 12:36 pm So refreshing to see a Dem candidate having to revise all their old platforms, be it years or hours later, in order to properly fit into their appointed front-runner role.

I don't think that is a revision, but a clarification. Supplemental private insurance was always a part of the Medicare for All plan, just like it exists in most countries with socialized healthcare. No reason to limit people who want to spend more for coverage that is better than Medicare for All.

Yeah, that's something people don't know about Canada is that most people get supplemental coverage through work. Dental, mental health (or "wellness"), upgraded rooms etc.

No impact on emergency coverage though.

And this is tangental to the thread, but I was amazed to learn that you guys pay out of pocket for ambulance services. Is this true everywhere?

Just another part of the billing for me. We don't have to swipe a card once we get in the ambulance or anything.

I paid $900 out of pocket for a one mile ambulance ride when I had my second seizure. Good times.

brian wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 12:55 pm I paid $900 out of pocket for a one mile ambulance ride when I had my second seizure. Good times.

When I had my heart attack, my wife drove me the one mile to the ER (and I walked up to the counter). Stories like this make me glad she did that, rather than calling for an ambulance.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-foxc ... SKCN1PO0FV

Reply All did a really fascinating story on this recently. This company is shady as fuck and the fact that Walker, Trump and the literal Village Idiot local politicians couldn't see through Foxconn's scam says all you really need to know about everything.

In a nutshell, this company goes to countries where it wants to expand its reach and offers up astronomical future investment. They say they're going to build a massive factory and technology park that will employ tens of thousands of people and pump in millions in future investment. The catch is that in order to get Foxconn to build, they extract MASSIVE tax subsidies from whatever govt entity will play. And THEN, once their hooks are set in real good, they simply scale back all of their plans to a more reasonable size factory. In the case of WI, it's now not even clear they're going to even build a factory at all.

It's really a great example of corporate greed being rewarded by (mostly) Republican politicians. The upside on this one is that at least in WI, this is going to really put a huge dent in the GOP's "we're good for blue collar workers" fucking bullshit.

Nonlinear FC wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 2:14 pm https://www.reuters.com/article/us-foxc ... SKCN1PO0FV

Replay All did a really fascinating story on this recently. This company is shady as fuck and the fact that Walker, Trump and the literal Village Idiot local politicians couldn't see through Foxconn's scam says all you really need to know about everything.

In a nutshell, this company goes to countries where it wants to expand its reach and offers up astronomical future investment. They say they're going to build a massive factory and technology park that will employ tens of thousands of people and pump in millions in future investment. The catch is that in order to get Foxconn to build, they extract MASSIVE tax subsidies from whatever govt entity will play. And THEN, once their hooks are set in real good, they simply scale back all of their plans to a more reasonable size factory. In the case of WI, it's now not even clear they're going to even build a factory at all.

It's really a great example of corporate greed being rewarded by (mostly) Republican politicians. The upside on this one is that at least in WI, this is going to really put a huge dent in the GOP's "we're good for blue collar workers" fucking bullshit.

It was an excellent podcast.

And as much as the town leader was a complete asshole, I understood his excitement that something so huge would be coming to his town.

And that must be part of Foxconn's M.O. - con the small timers, the politicians who lack the brains and the savvy to do ANY research. But once it got to the State level, for God's sake, there should have been red flags flying all over the place.

And poor Mount Pleasant didn't even get a monorail out of the deal.

What if those officials didn't really care if Foxconn (great name) ever followed through?

Per Pruitt, you kind of have to listen to the episode. The Village President (or whatever they called him that wasn't explicitly Mayor) was genuinely sucked into the idea that this was going to be a boon for the city/county. He was frustratingly naive, especially wrt to what kind of jobs would be coming. (A resident pretty astutely pointed this out to him at monthly meetings which eventually turned into a very nasty public exchange that the Mayor-esque dude later apologized for.)

But, again, per Pruitt and now you... It is beyond belief that Walker and his staff didn't have the wherewithal to do BASIC Google research to find the 100s of articles that existed prior to them coming to America about their scamming ways. They've done this exact same thing in Brazil, Vietnam, etc etc. They promise massive investment in exchange for massive tax breaks. Once they've suckered someone into doing that, they walk back most of their original promises.

Put it this way, as mentioned on that podcast, the Amazon HQ tax giveaways were something like 2x or 3x "typical" tax deals. This one was more like 10x. The amount of investment per promised worker was astronomical, and that was before they scaled this thing back from 13,000 to closer to 1,000.

They are now going to meet with the new Dem governor because they aren't hitting hiring milestones which means they aren't getting their full tax breaks. If it looks too good to be true...

BTW, sorry to have put this in this thread. Meant to put in the Trump thread and got distracted.

Trump (and presumably Walker) look REALLY bad on this and it's going to be used by Dems in that state in 2020... BIGLY.

Nonlinear FC wrote: ↑Wed Jan 30, 2019 3:07 pm BTW, sorry to have put this in this thread. Meant to put in the Trump thread and got distracted.

Trump (and presumably Walker) look REALLY bad on this and it's going to be used by Dems in that state in 2020... BIGLY.

Eh, it won't move the needle. Look at what happened with the Carrier factory Indiana. When Carrier threatened to move jobs to Mexico, Trump claimed a huge victory in saving 1,000 jobs or so, while giving $10 million in tax breaks. Almost immediately after the tax breaks went into effect, Carrier moved a majority of those saved jobs to Mexico and laid off hundreds of workers. Trump's followers give a ton of weight to him saving the jobs, then shrug their shoulders when Carrier fucks over the employees. Same thing with his unbelievably terrific negotiations with North Korea. Trump single-handedly saved the world by giving concessions to North Korea for the reiteration of an old promise to stop their nuclear program that they never kept. Within weeks, it became apparent North Korea never took any steps to stop their nukes program, yet The Base (hey, that's the English translation of Al Qaeda!) still proclaim Trump had a huge victory in negotiating with North Korea.

I think the local guys take the hit on this, because when the jobs don't come, he is still there, but no Believers outside the immediate area will know or care. They believe Trump is great for business, and only register things that confirm their beliefs. Even if they happen to hear about the reality later, they will cry "fake news" and refuse to believe it. This is Trump's MO. Declare victory over something he hasn't done yet, take the praise, then never actually do the thing he took credit for, because why bother, he already got the praise!

As is often the case, I'm not ever worried about or referring to the 25-30 percent that will never be swayed. There has been a lot of movement (in the wrong direction for Trump) of independents... Those are the people I'm talking about. As noted up-thread, Dems lost WI in 2016 by a very slim margin.

This kind of thing will stick, particularly with the blue collar workers that voted Obama-->Trump.

Wisconsin was one of the few states where Dems underperformed relative to the rest of the country in the mid-terms as well (despite taking back the WI GOV). If this moves the needle even a couple or three points away from Trump that's brutal for him. He has almost no path to winning the election without winning one of WI, MI or PA and the latter two look especially bad for him as of now.

I lost the plot on where we were discussing Schultz. Just want to put this somewhere:

https://www.salon.com/2019/01/31/what-h ... HMmGdaVO_M

For the folks that think the Sonics story isn't national or all that important:

1) Millions of people that follow the NBA are very aware of what he did. Do you guys think anyone would remember the Irsay name (outside of the towns where they owned teams) if not for that shady shit?

2) It doesn't really matter. Read that article and you'll see the pattern of an ultra-rich asshole that does whatever he wants, regardless of the public sentiment, let alone the public good.

Do you know how easy it is going to be to rip that guy to shreds if he keeps this up? He's already fucked and the game hasn't even started.

Other than people outside those cities, it wouldn't be a determining factor for why to not vote for someone. I think that's the argument here. I would guess if it ever got far enough to where he's an actual long-term candidate, his part in the SuperSonics move will be brought up exactly 0 times by the national media. As it should be, speaking as a fan of a team who was ripped from his city.

And that's before you accept the notion that anyone on the left who hates Trump is going to for even a second seriously contemplate wasting their vote on some milquetoast centrist. The kinds of people who would or will vote for Schultz are ones who would never vote for anyone with a "D" next to their name on the ballot and their needs/concerns should be completely irrelevant to the rest of us.

Really? You don't think its relevant to voters that a guy would sell out his home town because the politicians and citizens stood up to outrageous tax subsidy demands to pay for his bullshit arena? A ton of people are getting wise to the fact that these rich fuckers are bilking cities and getting very little (if anything) in return. It shows a pattern exhibited by the very rich. It should absolutely be brought up to show how he treated what he considers to be his home town.

A rapidly growing number of Americans are sick of rich people being lionized and treated like royalty. You built a global brand. Good for you. You also don't do shit for charity and you are absolutely fine fucking over "your city" when it's citizens won't pay for upgrading an arena that you could've done out of pocket and barely dented your 3-4 billion dollar personal wealth stash.

Just fuck this guy. At least a guy like Gates is pouring millions and millions into charity that is having an impact. Same with the Buffets. There are lots of very rich people that are ok with the idea that we should address economic inequalities. Not enough, of course, but they are also increasingly realizing that this isn't sustainable. It's all the talk at Davos this week.

The millenials and the ones coming up after them are sick of this bullshit. They are going to constitute something like 35 percent of the electorate in 2020.

Shit like this isn't sustainable. Schultz is the new poster boy for entitled rich fuck smug prickdom.

None of that, all of which I agree with, has anything to do with my assertion that no one in the national media will bring up him selling the SuperSonics as a negative.