Me, gloating

This just in: I WON THE TOWER OSCAR POOL! That's right, a cool 60 bucks is residing in my threadbare wallet right now. I battled it out with Jay the whole night, but in the end it was my prescient choice of Clint "the Cryptkeeper" Eastwood over Marty "he'll win one when he's dead" Scorcese that put me over the top. I'd like to thank the Academy, but most of all I'd like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, cuz I know he was rooting for me on this one.

The Bee hasn't lost a minute in getting the forces marshalled for a new arena fight. This article is from Sunday: http://sacbee.com/content/news/story/12474289p-13330177c.html Apparently the city, led by Steve Cohn (what? I thought he was on our side with this, after all, he was the one who said the Maloofs must pay a sizable percentage of the building cost, causing them to storm out of the meeting), is going to get involved and public financing is on the table again. Here's a quote from billionaire playboy Maloof,
"Maloof reiterated last week that his family wants to keep the team in Sacramento, but needs a new arena.

"Look at Arco Arena. It's antiquated; the roof leaks. Where can you play if you can't play at Arco? I think eventually the NBA is going to say that you can't play in that venue anymore," he said.

Ah yes, the mysterious roof-that-leaks-yet-can't-be-fixed. And that's nice how he blames it on the NBA. He's not the one pushing for a new arena, it's the NBA!

Here's another choice quote:

"Polls have consistently shown that the public has major problems with the public financing of an arena, with numbers approaching 80 percent opposition," said Jeff Raimundo, a political consultant who represented the North Natomas landowners group.
At the same time, most people involved in the arena debate said there's no chance the Kings will plunk down upward of $300 million themselves, especially when they could move to a free or nearly free facility elsewhere.
"What they're asking for is pretty consistent with what's condoned by the NBA," Thurtle said. "It's what NBA teams get."

Translation: It doesn't matter if the public is dead set against it, this is the way it's always been done (not true by the way, this is only the way it's been done since the 80"s), so this is the way it has to be done now.

And, the award for most misleading statement goes to Joe Maloof, with this whopper:

"We haven't made money with the Kings," he said. "I think we've made a dedicated effort to invest in our product."

Yeah, you may not have made any money yet, but you haven't sold the team yet, and it's already probably worth about three times more than it was when you bought it. Plus, you're probably lying about not making any money in the first place.