Long Time No Rant

Ah the end of the year is nigh and I realize that though I have had many thoughts in the last month I have yet to commit anything to paper; or in this case, bytes. Though there have been many Rant worthy events in the last few weeks I just haven’t had the time or the motivation to add my thoughts to the mass jumble of opinion out there. So now I present to you a Rantdumb sampling of disjointed opinions on a variety of topics.

I did some volunteer work the other day collecting canned goods for Latrell Sprewell’s family. Like Eddie George said in Jerry McGuire, “People don’t understand what kind of problems $54 million comes with.” Latrell must be getting negotiating advice from Patrick Ewing. At least now when he chokes we’ll know the reason.

DC has baseball! Now they don’t. Now they do. No, wrong, they don’t. This sucks, I want a local team and since I’m not moving before this summer it has to be in DC. Sure, I think stadiums should be built with private money. Stadium funds should come from people who choose to support baseball, like advertisers, ticket buyers and the like. The reality is that MLB has a monopoly and they hold all the cards. No stadium, no team. I can’t stand the people who get all outraged that a stadium would cost $600M and think that the money should go to schools instead. Hey morons, the money would come from a new tax on businesses most likely to profit from bringing a team to DC. The taxes would be on hotels, tickets, rental cars, concessions and rent that the team pays to use the venue. This means that most of it would be paid for by baseball fans and people from out of town. Fans should be paying for it and who gives a fuck about out of towners? If I can get some Okie to subsidize my baseball team so much the better. Besides, Baseball only takes up 81 days per year, the rest of the time the city could rent it out for other events. You can’t do these things in order to raise money for schools! You can’t tax Okies and bars for school money. School money comes from taxing income on private citizens, if you taxed businesses also you’d be taxing the same people twice for the same thing and it would be a disincentive to go into business in DC. On the other hand you can tax business by something that will help business. What they screechers don’t understand, or choose to ignore, is that the increased taxes will not be levied against individuals. The stadium isn’t draining any money from the schools, or diverting money that currently exists and could go to schools, it’s a new revenue source, one that exists for a stadium. No stadium, no new tax, no new revenue, no net impact on the schools whether there’s a stadium or not. Finally, DC spends more money per student than any state in the union. The DC school problem is one of mismanagement, not funding. But hey, it’s easy for me to say, I moved to Maryland.

The other angle is that Linda Cropp may be the Grinch who steals my Christmas. (Spoiler Alert: If you don’t want to know what you’re getting for Christmas skip to the next paragraph.) Last week I went online and ordered Washington Nationals gear for all the male members of my family and a few friends. I thought it would be nice for them to be the first folks on their blocks to get some Nats gear to show off. Yesterday the team suspended all promotional activities. The nice folks at MLB Shop.com couldn’t really give me a direct answer about the things I’d ordered. It seems like they’re waiting for a definite answer before they ship anything, which means they may never ship, which means I may be giving my little brother a picture of the shirt that might be coming to him eventually, maybe. My guess is that MLB’s pride would cause them to cancel my order if the team doesn’t go to DC rather than allow me the fun of giving my folks gear for team that only ever existed on paper, and in the hopes of DC baseball fans. “You’re a mean one, Linda Cropp! You really are a fiend…”

The Kerry camp is supporting a recount in Ohio, though they also concede that it won’t change the outcome of the election. What if the recount shows Kerry winning by 10,000 votes? Will they still concede? If Kerry wins will he be suddenly scarred by acid?

So Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi ARE on steroids. Or were, at some point. So Giambi’s weight loss wasn’t totally due to the tumor, or the bacteria, or VD. So hitting 258 homeruns after the age of 35 (~51/yr) after hitting only 445 in the previous 13 years (~34/yr) isn’t just due to a new workout routine. SHOCKING!!!! Every one of Barry’s stats should carry a *, as should Giambi’s and anyone else proven to be on roids. The players involved should be suspended indefinitely. It doesn’t matter if the evidence is culled from illegally obtained testimony. As commissioner Landis said after the Black Sox Scandal, "Regardless of the verdict of juries, no player that throws a ballgame; no player that undertakes or promises to throw a ballgame; no player that sits in a conference with a bunch of crooked players and gamblers where the ways and means of throwing games are planned and discussed and does not promptly tell his club about it, will ever play professional baseball." In this case the references to gambling can be replaced with doping and apply just as well today as it did in 1921. Of course Shoeless Joe didn’t have Don Fehr on his side. The fact is that there will likely be no reprisals against any of the MLB players connected to the BALCO scandal because MLB is too weak and too afraid of the union to do anything bold.

All right folks, that’s it for now. I’ll be back in the Bay starting Dec. 22nd so hit me up. Happy holidays.