NBA on it’s way to OKC: Sonics move to Oklahoma

The now-former Seattle Supersonics will move to Oklahoma City immediately and play in OKC’s Ford Center this season under terms of a settlement announced on Wednesday.

The SuperSonics name and colors will remain in Seattle.  A new name and new colors for the Oklahoma City team will be announced soon.

I know that my friends in Norman, Edmond, and OKC are already trying to figure out how to get their businesses and/or law practices to pay for their PSLs and season tickets — even though it will likely be baaaaaaad basketball for a while.  In a few years they may wish that the New Orleans Hornets had decided to permanently move to OKC.

For the Seattle perspective, click here… Ouch.

For my Oklahoma friends, I have two things to say: Welcome to the NBA and Go Rockets!

Nota Bene: Today’s Reading Assignment

• Late-Period Limbaugh — Zev Chafets, New York Times
• Bush Can Take Pride in Scorn — Mark Davis, Dallas Morning News
• Why More Jews Won’t Vote Dem This Year — Jennifer Rubin, Jerusalem Post
• What Latinos Want from Their President — Alberto Gonzales, Los Angeles Times
• ’60s Begin to Fade as Liberal Professors Retire — Patricia Cohen, New York Times
• The Three Geographies of This Election — Joel Kotkin and Mark Schill, The Politico
• GOP’s Flawed Attack on Obama — Noam Scheiber, The New Republic
• Attacking McCain’s War Record Not Working — Jay Newton-Small, Time Magazine
• The Return of Thomas Malthus — Robert Kaplan, The Atlantic
• Debating Obama’s ‘Move’ to the Middle — Ed Kilgore, RealClearPolitics
• Area residents seek upgrades from city — Jennifer Friedberg, Houston Chronicle
  
• End of Wes Clark’s VP Campaign — Steve Kornacki, New York Observer
• Dallas Cowboys stadium bonds rise in cost for Arlington — Jeff Mosier, Dallas Morning News
• McCain Not Fundraising for GOP — Aaron Blake, The Hill
• Obama Opposes Gay Marriage Ban — John Wildermuth, San Francisco Chronicle
• Grill Power: Elitist feminism and the New York Times — Heather MacDonald, City Journal
• In Praise of Political Insults — By Joseph Tartakovsky, Wall Street Journal
• Citizen Stupid — Rick Shenkman, Mother Jones
• Guts or a PhD? — The Economist
• The Conservative Welfare State — Peter Ferrara, American Spectator
• Cindy’s fortune: An asset and a liability — Kenneth Vogel, The Politico
• Decades Later, Still Asking: Would I Pull That Switch? — Benedict Carey, New York Times
• Can Barack Buy the Presidency? — Karl Rove, Wall Street Journal
• The Battle for Catholic Voters — Amy Sullivan, Time
• Why I’m Not Patriotic — Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive

Nota Bene: Today’s Reading Assignment

• Tyranny of the Old — Will Wilkinson and Kerry Howley, New York Times Video
• Court Will Be Last Bastion of Conservatives — E. J. Dionne, Washington Post
• Obama Faces Netroots Revolt Over FISA — Ari Melber, The Nation
• Hillaryland at War — Gail Sheehy, Vanity Fair
• Do the Math: Obama Won’t Win the South — Thomas Schaller, New York Times
• The GOP’s December Surprise — James K. Galbraith, Mother Jones
• Drill Now as the conservative MoveOn? — Avi Zenilman, The Politco
• Women prefer men with stubble for love, sex and marriage – Roger Dobson, London Daily Telegraph
• Can’t Darwin and God get along? — Vincent Rossmeier, Salon Magazine
• Obama Turns Centrist — Ruth Conniff, The Progressive
• Strange Currencies — Eliza Caney, National Journal
• McCain game plan worries insiders — David Paul Kuhn, The Politico
• Free the Fireworks! Can individual citizens be trusted to celebrate Independence Day with a bang? — Greg Beato, Reason Magazine
• Starbucks to close 600 US stores, rein in growth – Jessica Mintz, Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Nota Bene: Today’s Reading Assignment

• Pioneering Chinese City Offers a Peek at Political Ferment — Edward Cody, Washington Post
• Some on Left Target McCain’s War Record — Ben Smith, The Politico
• Dreams From Obama’s Grandmother — Victor Davis Hanson, National Review
• Attacks on Michelle Obama Won’t Work — Ed Kilgore, The New Republic
• Is Carly Fiorina McCain’s VP Answer? — Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call
• Obama Works to Close Faith Gap — Reid Wilson, RealClearPolitics
• Obama’s Iraq Problem - George Packer, The New Yorker
• The Function of Dysfunction — Nathan Reeson, Chronicle of Higher Education
• Obama’s Boys of Summer — Daniel Flynn, City Journal
• McCain’s Univeralism vs. Obama’s Particularism - Gregory Scoblete, RealClearPolitics
• Democrats, Not Just Obama, Are Weak with Whites - Peter Brown, Wall Street Journal
• A Game Changer Left Unchanged by the Game — Thayer Evans, New York Times
• Hard Times for Student Borrowers — James H. Ewert, In These Times
• Editorial: How The Next President — Whoever It Is — Should Deal With Our China Problem — The New Republic
• What Pawlenty Can’t Do for McCain — Steve Kornacki, New York Observer
• Reputation makes or breaks a cult beer — Tom Feran, Houston Chronicle

Is Mayor White ready for state politics?

Gardner Selby, writing in today’s Austin American-Statesman poses that question…

If the methodologically weak Texas Lyceum Poll is to believed, maybe yes, maybe no.

Three discussion points regarding White and the Governor’s race in 2010:

1. Does Bill White actually have the strong name identification outside of Houston that we, living in Houston, assume that he has?
2. Assuming an Obama victory in 2008, will 2010 — a mid-term election with the Democrats playing defense — really be a good playing field for a Democrat running statewide in Texas?
3. Assuming that Kay Bailey Hutchison is the nominee for Governor, could White defeat her?

While the Texas Lyceum Poll is not the best measure to make an assessment of White’s chances, their numbers nonetheless suggest that he has some name ID work to do before mounting a statewide effort.

Fortunately for White, he can afford to take a wait-and-see approach to his post-Mayor future. 2010 is a long way off.  An Obama win may mean a return trip to D.C.  An Obama loss may strengthen his case for a Gubernatorial run in 2010.  A run by KBH for Governor may mean a run by White for the Senate instead, potentially against a Perry-appointed incumbent (a la Krueger vs. KBH), perhaps Greg Abbott or maybe even The Dew.  This is assuming, of course, that KBH doesn’t do her usual flirting with a run for Governor and then backs away — again. Oh, and did we mention Rick “I’m Running Again” Perry?  If KBH actually pulls the trigger and runs, she would be the prohibitive favorite to win — even against ol’ Slick Rick.

However, as college football has so painfully taught us, correlation does not imply causation — in this case, that the prohibitive favorite does not always equal the actual winner in the 2010 Governor’s race…

Stay tuned!

Fun with GIS: Rotten Neighbor…

One of our students saw this site and it made her think of our Urban Government class…

For grins, we typed in UST’s zip code (77006) in the box below…

… and this is what it came up with.  The red houses are primarily sex offenders.  Joy.  On the upside, the yellow houses are foreclosures if you’re looking to move inside the Loop and near the University…

Unfortunately, Rotten Neighbor — while interesting — doesn’t provide anything close to a full picture of area crimes or bad neighbors.  Sadly, neither does the Clery Act nor HPD’s crime stats site, since both are lagged by at least a month and are for reported crimes only.

Hat tip to Elizabeth Rinaldi!

Nota Bene: Today’s Reading Assignment

• ‘Exceptions’ let some schools fall short on tests and still boost state ratings — Holly Hacker and Katherine Unmuth, Dallas Morning News
• Dallas tougher than Houston on apartments’ owners — Mike Snyder, Houston Chronicle
• Longshots in the veepstakes — Lisa Lerer, The Politico
• Political Freelancers Use Web to Join the Attack — Jim Rutenberg, New York Times
• Dobson vs. Obama — Peter Wehner, Washington Post
• The Waitress Test: Obama’s Challenge With Working-Class Women — Connie Schultz, The Nation
• How Can a “Fellow Black Republican” Oppose Obama? — Larry Elder, Townhall.com
• Microsoft: The meaning of Bill Gates — The Economist
• What onions teach us about oil prices — Jon Birger, Fortune Magazine
• Parenting - So Ready to Send the Kids Off to College — Michael Winerip, New York Times
• Habitat for Houston — Will Holder, Houston Chronicle
• What Will It Take to Save Zimbabwe? — Alexandra Fuller, Vanity Fair
• Hansen Unhinged — Patrick Michaels, National Review
• America’s Economic Outlook: A Symposium — The American Magazine
• Editorial: Obama’s America is Canada – Washington Times
• Editorial: Don’t Give Bush Too Much Credit — Philadelphia Inquirer
• A silver bullet for Obama? — Jeff Jacoby, Boston Globe
• Character judgment — Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
• Yes, it’s messy, but toppling Mugabe may be the only option — Martin Ivens, The Times of London
• No Babies? - Declining Population in Europe — Russell Shorto, New York Times
• Drug Wars Next Door – Clarence Page, RealClearPolitics
• A New Political Geography — Alec MacGillis, Washington Post
• Our Broken Senate –Norman Ornstein, The American Magazine

Mexicans and Machines: Why it’s time to lay off NAFTA

Thoughts to ponder from Drew Carey at Reason TV. Yes, that Drew Carey.  He’s definitely not your usual Hollywood liberal:

Campaign season is just getting warmed up, but looking back on the primaries we’ve already seen plenty of the usual fare: candidates shaking hands, hanging out at diners, and scaring voters about foreigners who are taking your jobs.

Sometimes the threat comes from China, Japan, or outsourcing to India. Today, it’s NAFTA, the North American Free Trade Agreement—you know, all those Mexicans taking our jobs.

Senator Barack Obama joins the likes of CNN’s Lou Dobbs in decrying NAFTA. So many free trade foes fret about cheap foreign labor, yet they rarely holler about competitors who will work for far less than any foreigner. Politicians don’t pay much attention to it, but—from Terminator to Ice Pirates—Hollywood films have been warning us about humanity’s inevitable war against the machines.

“Now, think about it,” says Reason.tv host Drew Carey. “How are we supposed to compete against something that doesn’t get paid, doesn’t get health insurance, and never goes on breaks?”

Today, we don’t need human workers to book our travel, do our banking, or file our taxes. From factory workers to symphony conductors, countless workers are locked in battle with soulless job stealers known as computers, websites, and robots.

“No job is safe from the robot threat!” warns Carey. Of course, the warning is more than a little tongue-in-cheek. There’s no need to take a sledgehammer to a robot, because, although technology shakes up the labor market, it ends up giving us higher living standards as well as more and better job opportunities.

Like technology, trade gives us more good stuff than bad—yet Americans are likely to cheer technology and fear trade. No doubt TV talkers and White House wannabes will keep stoking our fears of foreigners until voters and viewers stop buying it—or until robots snag their jobs, too.

Related: Why Are These People So Ashamed of NAFTA? The Democratic myths about free trade – Steve Chapman, Reason Magazine 

Nota Bene: Today’s Reading Assignment

• Perry marks milestone as poll shows problems for 2010 — Peggy Fikac, Houston Chronicle
• Why Veeps Now Matter — Michael Barone, RealClearPolitics
• A Tactical Leap of Faith – Michael Gerson, Washington Post
• We All Deserve To Die — Noah Millman, The American Scene
• Winning Sam’s Club Voters — Rich Lowry, National Review
• How Obama can lose — Paul West, Baltimore Sun
• Conservatives warm to McCain’s view of the law — Ben Adler, The Politico
• How Obama can lessen the intensity of the opposition — Jeff Greenfield, Slate Magazine
• Video: Mexicans and Machines — Drew Carey, Reason TV
• Just because a movie is conservative doesn’t make it any good — Sonny Bunch, Doublethink Online
• A Better Way Than Cap and Trade – Bjorn Lomborg, Washington Post
• A Modest Proposal: Teach the Gangbangers Respect — John Nova Lomax, Houstoned Blog, Houston Press
• Texas mayors call better education vital — Mary Flood, Houston Chronicle
• Mommy, I’m Home! – Chris Schonberger, Forbes Magazine
• ‘Wall-E’ Is a Masterpiece for the Ages — David Edelstein’s Movie Blog, New York Magazine
• Obama and the Electoral College Math — Eleanor Clift, Newsweek Magazine
• Pretzel Logic – Howard Kurtz, Washington Post
• Got A Plan for Zimbabwe? I Don’t – Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation
• The Master and Medvedev — Jeffery Tayler, The Atlantic
• The Last Hero of Tiananmen — Philip Pan, The New Republic
• Our Leaders Are Not War Criminals — Stuart Taylor, National Journal
• How Sally Quinn made me a better Catholic — Melinda Henneberger, Slate Magazine
• The Celeb Factor in Politics — Courtney Martin, The American Prospect
• McCain, Obama, & the Catholic Vote – Ryan Anderson, The Weekly Standard
• Extra Crispy at Russo’s New York Coal-Fired Pizzeria — Robb Walsh, Houston Press

Solar Economics: The Sun shines on Texas…

Yet more stuff from McKinsey Consulting today.  This time, it’s on solar power.

The graph above predicts when solar power will reach price parity with fossil-fueled electricity in certain parts of the world. Italy, for example, is just about at parity. According to McKinsey’s estimates, Texas should reach price parity with fossil-fueled electricity within ten years or so (around 2020), assuming, of course, that there is no technological breakthrough between now and then. 

So should we go out and buy some solar panels for our various ol’ homesteads soon? Hell no. Given how our various neighborhood associations have acted when some of us have put up a satellite TV dish, we can only imagine what they’d say about solar panels on the roof…

Hat tips to Andrew Sullivan at The Atlantic and Wick Allison at D Magazine.

Nota Bene: Today’s Reading Assignment

• Poll shows McCain with narrow lead over Obama in Texas — Wayne Slater, Dallas Morning News
• Obama: Change agent goes conventional — Kenneth Vogel, The Politico
• Let McCain Be McCain — Peggy Noonan, Wall Street Journal
• A Leader Lost to Despair - Washington Post Foreign Service
• Recent rulings spotlight election’s supreme stakes — Joseph Williams, Boston Globe
• Unequal America: Causes and consequences of the wide — and growing — gap between rich and poor – Elizabeth Gudrais, Harvard Magazine
• Yellow Science — James Kerian, Wall Street Journal
• Editorial: Supreme Court right on gun ruling — Dallas Morning News
• Editorial: Repeal the 2nd Amendment — Chicago Tribune
• Career Programs Stress College, Too, and Give Students a Leg Up, Study Says — Eric Eckholm, New York Times
• Vietnam wants a Houston consulate — Jenalia Moreno, Houston Chronicle
• No, McCain Isn’t ‘Doomed’ — John Fund, Wall Street Journal
• Apes get legal rights in Spain, to surprise of bullfight critics — Thomas Catan, Times of London
• Baseball, ‘Bull Durham’ and the Classroom – James Tuten, Inside Higher Ed
• Where are the Bush Democrats? – Paul Kengor, The American Thinker
• Reading The Onion Seriously – Theodore Hamm, In These Times
• Does the Housing Bubble Have to Pop? – Dean Baker and Robert Kuttner, The American Prospect
• Rep. Cannon’s Defeat in Utah Marks Victory for Immigration Control – Marcus Epstein, Human Events
• A Citizen’s Guide To the Post-Bush Globe – Justin Elliott, Mother Jones
• Hugo Chávez’s Jewish Problem – Travis Pantin, Commentary Magazine
• Protest gives preview of abortion debate — Julia Dulin, Washington Times
• Britain in the world: Ambiguous Albion – The Economist
• Who’s Legislating From The Bench Now, Conservatives?! – E.J. Dionne, The New Republic
• The Supreme Court helped Obama and hurt McCain yesterday — George Will, Washington Post
• The Sam’s Club Agenda of the G.O.P. — David Brooks, New York Times
• An Illegitimate Culture – Kathleen Parker, National Review

John Culberson: Most Connected Congressman?

From Dave Witzel’s post at Personal Democracy Forum Blog:

John Culberson, Republican from Houston, has taken an early but wide lead as “most connected Congressman” by posting a Qik video of his counter-ambush of a TMZ stringer and being the first person totwitter from the Oval Office. As he notes on the video, he tried to do a live Qik posting from the Oval Office of President Bush, but he was stopped by the Secret Service.

He’ll widen his lead Thursday with “the 1st telephone/internet/video/text real time townhall meeting“. He didn’t broadcast video from inside a committee meeting on appropriations saying “don’t think I’m going to try to take this into the committee room… I’m going to have to take this a step at a time.”

He’s taken some big steps already. Here’s the video (via Qik).

Nota Bene: Today’s Reading Assignment

• Obamacons On the Rise? — Robert Novak, RealClearPolitics
• Clinton legacy presents quandary for Obama — Ben Smith, The Politico
• Dems in Delicate Talks to Unify Party — Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times
• For Obama, Wooing Hillary is Easy Part — Margaret Carlson, Bloomberg News
• 7 Ways to Rid the World of Mugabe — Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian
• On Obama’s Coattails, an Uninvited Rider — Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post
• Does Obama Really Have a Big Lead? — Howard Fineman, Newsweek
• The Can’t Do Society - Victor Davis Hanson, RealClearPolitics
• McCain and Obama: On the record — Fortune Magazine
• Why TV Ads Are a Waste of Money — Steven Stark, Boston Phoenix
• Obama’s aim: 14 Bush states and local races — Ben Smith, The Politico
• No Country for Young Men — Mara Hvistendahl, The New Republic
• In China’s Quake Zone, Aftershocks of the Spirit — Edward Cody, Washington Post
• Educated Policy in a Globalized World — George Will, Townhall.com
• U.S. Slipping in Internet Access — Elizabeth DiNocella, The Progressive
• Barack Obama: Rolling Stone Cover Story — Jann Wenner, Rolling Stone
• Biofuel use ‘increasing poverty’– BBC News
• Is Sour News Good News for the Dems? – Daniel Henninger, Wall Street Journal
• John McCain doesn’t work weekends — Jonathan Martin, The Politico
• The More, The Merrier for Obama — Kevin Freidl, National Journal
• Obama’s Path to White House is a Nationwide Tour — Greg Giroux, CQ Politics
• The Man Who Would Destroy The NCAA – Jason Zengerle, The New Republic
• McCain, GOP unleash anti-Obama plan — Jonathan Martin, The Politico
• This Guy Can Get 59 MPG in a Plain Old Accord. Beat That, Punk. — Dennis Gaffney, Mother Jones

Those battlin’ Astros…

Astros’ pitcher Shawn Chacon grabbed Astros’ GM Ed Wade and threw him to the floor yesterday after Wade requested a meeting and then yelled at the pitcher.  Fun.  Were they watching “The Bronx is Burning“? and taking a cue from the 1977 Yankees?

The Chacon-Wade fight reminded some of us of the fistfights that we witnessed in committee meetings among our professors while doctoral students… Good times, man.  Good times. 

Nota Bene: Today’s Reading Assignment

• Beyond the Airlines’ $2 Can of Coke: Catastrophic Impact on the U.S. Economy from Oil-price Trauma in the Airline Industry — Business Travel Coalition Blog
• I’m for McCain, but Not the GOP — Ralph Peters, USA Today
• Obama’s Transformation — Jay Newton-Small, Time Magazine
• Rethinking the Country Life as Energy Costs Rise — Peter Goodman, New York Times
• No ‘New Michelle’ — Andrew Satter, CQ Politics
• The anti-doomsday scenario –Geoff Colvin, Fortune Magazine
• Voting’s Neglected Scandal — David Broder, Washington Post
• GOP Mythmaking About Obama Won’t Fly — Maureen Dowd, New York Times
• What Exactly Was Wrong with the Presidential Seal? — Jim Geraghty, National Review
• What Happened to Maverick McCain? - Jason Horowitz, New York Observer
• It’s Not Even Close: Obama Should Pick Clinton for VP — Bob Beckel, RealClearPolitics
• $4 a gallon could seem cheap, analysts say — Kristen Hays, Houston Chronicle
• Dieselmania – Ralph Kinney Bennett, The American Magazine
• 20 bits of advice for graduates — Barbara Quinn, Dallas Morning News
• How Boris Johnson became a war criminal – Boris Johnson, London Daily Telegraph
• Baseball’s Other Racial Barrier — James Wagner, Wall Street Journal
• In Cyberspace, China’s People Find Their Voice — Ian Bremmer, RealClearPolitics
• Low Mexican Gas Prices Draw Americans — Adam Ellick, New York Times
• Feeding The Beast: Why Food Prices Are Skyrocketing — Alvaro Vargas Llosa, The New Republic
• Columbia U. Fires Teachers College Professor Accused of Rampant Plagiarism — Thomas Barlett, Chronicle of Higher Education
• The power and the glory — The Economist
• Make Money Not War — Andrew Title, The National Interest
• Stop the noise! — Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon Magazine
• Chaffetz’s win a GOP ‘wake-up call’ — Josh Kraushaar, The Politico
• A Drink in Search of a Frosty Mug– Eric Asimov, New York Times
• UBC professors probe ‘Cylons in America’ — Parminder Parmar, CTV