in other news, real furbys:

It wouldn’t be a surprise if Detroit loses at least one of its four professional sports teams within the next 10 years because ownership sells to an outside interest and the franchise moves to an area with a stronger economic base.

If you don’t think that’s possible, then you’re not looking at the current local economic situation with a realistic eye.

ok, but this is where sharp gets on the crazy train:

Detroit and Phoenix are the only two cities that support four professional sports teams in four separate facilities. That requires four teams capable of finding enough corporate backing for those all-important luxury suites in four different stadiums/arenas to keep the coffers filled without sharing the facility operational costs with another tenant.

That task becomes much tougher for teams in the aftermath of this economic crisis — especially in Detroit.

The idea of the NFL waiving television blackouts in Detroit has been nationally perceived as the equivalent of a government bailout. But the difference between Congress stepping in to assist the automotive industry and the Lions getting a break from the NFL is that there’s no competition for the NFL. It’s a monopoly. It possesses full marketing control and can dictate, without competitive challenge, the market price for its product.

That’s why it cannot turn a blind eye to what’s occurring in Detroit.

huh? i definitely don’t understand this analogy. blackouts exist to encourage people to go to games. how is lifting it like a bailout? the NFL is not taking its money and giving it to detroit, it’s just loosening a tactic used to create incentives to go to games. if your incentive isn’t working, then you might as well make money from tv advertising, right? and what does it being a monopoly have anything to do w/ anything? huh?

and here’s more nonsensity (yeah, i made up that word).

There’s an obvious reason why the NFL hasn’t gotten a new franchise in Los Angeles: It cannot guarantee sellouts in the country’s second-largest media market. The NFL’s primary business objective remains establishing a premium local value for tickets of home games.

Los Angeles residents have long understood that there’s more available to them on a sunny, warm fall Sunday than paying top dollar for an NFL football ticket.

Detroit residents may soon discover there’s more available to them on a cold, cloudy fall Sunday, too. That’s precisely why the NFL cannot afford to lose a Midwestern stalwart like Detroit.

are home game tickets really the main revenue source of the NFL? i can’t find the dollars for this, but it seems that advertising and licensing would be a huge deal, too. LA is a shitty sports town filled w/ transplants with no loyalty. what a horrible analogy. so the lions haven’t sold out some of their games this season. WE ARE 0-10 and have been horrible for YEARS. the fact we were selling out games at the beginning of the year is a testament to loyalty that i doubt even the NFL would ignore. detroit is such a homer town. if they can get their record up close to .500, every game would start to sell out again.

i also like this: “Detroit residents may soon discover there’s more available to them on a cold, cloudy fall Sunday, too.”

haha. um no, they won’t find jack shit.

drew sharp sucks.

anyways, here’s an excellent defense of subprime loans. basically what it says is that ethical subprime lenders — those who weren’t using loans to sell up to wall street — have low default and foreclosure rates AND they still make money (and continue to make money, even as everything else tanks).

In recent months, conservative economists and editorialists have tried to pin the blame for the international financial mess on subprime lending and subprime borrowers. If bureaucrats and social activists hadn’t pressured firms to lend to the working poor, the story goes, we’d still be partying like it was 2005 and Bear Stearns would be a going concern. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has repeatedly heaped blame on the Community Reinvestment Act, the 1977 law aimed at preventing redlining in minority neighborhoods. Fox Business Network anchor Neil Cavuto in September proclaimed that “loaning to minorities and risky folks is a disaster.”

This line of reasoning is absurd for several reasons. Many of the biggest subprime lenders weren’t banks and thus weren’t covered by the CRA. Nobody forced Bear Stearns to borrow $33 for every $1 of assets it had, and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac didn’t coerce highly compensated CEOs into rolling out no-money-down, exploding adjustable-rate mortgages. Banks will lose just as much money lending to really rich white guys like former Lehman Bros. CEO Richard Fuld as they will lending to poor people of color in the South Bronx.

But the best refutation may come from Douglas Bystry, president and CEO of Clearinghouse CDFI (community-development financial institution). Since 2003, this for-profit firm based in Orange County—home to busted subprime behemoths such as Ameriquest—has issued $220 million worth of mortgages in the Golden State’s subprime killing fields. More than 90 percent of its home loans have gone to first-time buyers, about half of whom are minorities. Out of 770 single-family loans it has made, how many foreclosures have there been? “As far as we know,” says Bystry, “seven.” Last year Clearinghouse reported a $1.4 million pretax profit.

Community-development banks, credit unions, and other CDFIs—a mixture of faith-based and secular, for-profit and not-for-profit organizations—constitute what might be called the “ethical subprime lending” industry. Even amid the worst housing crisis since the 1930s, many of these institutions sport healthy payback rates. They haven’t bankrupted their customers or their shareholders. Nor have they rushed to Washington begging for bailouts. Their numbers include tiny startups and veterans such as Chicago’s ShoreBank, founded in 1973, which now has $2.3 billion in assets, 418 employees, and branches in Detroit and Cleveland. Cliff Rosenthal, CEO of the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, notes that for his organization’s 200 members, which serve predominantly low-income communities, “delinquent loans are about 3.1 percent of assets.” In the second quarter, by contrast, the national delinquency rate on subprime loans was 18.7 percent.

surprise! poor people and minorities can be responsible home owners and money managers. it just helps when banks realize that their interests are actually aligned with their customers’ (which has definitely not been the case in the past 20 years or so). it also helps when brokers don’t lie and take advantage of people who turn to the financial sector for assistance.

hat tip to maura.

here is bush w/ the arizona state men and women’s track teams.

arizona state, the classy school it is, does a version of the shocker as their official student hand gesture. it’s supposed to be a pitchfork (sundevils. get it?), but really, it’s still THE SHOCKER. you know it was made up by some asshole frat dude who was like, “dude, the shocker is so funny. maybe if we spread these two fingers apart a little, we can call it a pitchfork, the school won’t mind, and we can be assholes on national television all the time.” GREAT IDEA.

i almost do not have words for this photo, but really, i have a lot of words, such as: WHO IN THE WHITE HOUSE PRESS OFFICE THOUGHT THIS WAS AN OK IDEA TO TAKE AND DISTRIBUTE THIS PHOTO? why wasn’t there some young white house aide who was like, “hmmmm. that could be bad.” or “OMG WTF. do you know what that MEANS?”

and let’s say bush didn’t want to be rude and felt the need to take that photo w/ the team … does it mean they have to put it up on the whitehouse.gov site?

wow. thank you paulo for jolting me out of my blogging funk. you can’t even make this kind of thing up. it’s as if he’s not even trying anymore.

btw, i know it’s spam b/c the comments are like “Great site!” and “Nice post!” now if these were real comments, they wouldn’t be as tame as these. i like to think my comments run along the lines of: “omg you’re such an idiot” and “this is the funniest thing i’ve read EVAAAAAA.” on skunkgal, hyperbole rules.

also, anyone who knows me knows that part of me dies inside when exclamation points are used without irony. none of my real friends/readers would ever do that to me, and even if they tried they should know that i know what they’re doing. got that?

in conclusion, i still have NOTHING TO BLOG ABOUT, except for the fact that barack obama is apparently a star trek fan and that when he met leonard nimoy, he flashed him the vulcan sign. i’m not so sure about this “change” nonsense, but if the man watched DS9, i’ll lose my skepticism and follow him to the end of the earth (or, ahem, the final frontier).

it sort of feels like how it felt to be blown away by the dark knight. i literally have not seen a movie since.

and god, even the post-election newsweek extravaganza isn’t doing it for me. OMG WHAT’S WRONG.

maybe i should say the tom waits song gets M.I.A./blaqstarr treatment, but we all know why i really give a crap about this song …

as for obama’s night of infamy, the party started at stoney’s. the scene: pleasant but too many women. every projection elicited cheers and clinked glasses or angry boos and loud proclamations of FAIL. (BOOOO. mississippi FAIL! … BOOOOOO. oklahoma FAIL.) plus, an obama countdown actually did happen (just like new year’s, except at 11pm, when CNN called the race). we then tried to start a “socialism” cheer, but that pretty much died on the spot.

then off to 14th and U for wholesome hipster/ghetto ruckus, and when it came time to dry off, stetsons and local 16.

anyway, a crappy slideshow. there are some redundant photos, so deal with it, and warning: maura is in a lot of these photos b/c she’s my vigilant partner in crime.

siddig will def play emanuel in the obama movie of the future.

UPDATED: 11/5/2008 at 5:50 p.m.: sean has pointed out that emanuel also looks like robert downey jr. a normal person would have probably made this comparison first (downey is objectively WAY MORE FAMOUS than saddig). but i’m a freak. whatever.