Quick thoughts

Not much time today, but I did want to point out a column in the WaPo on the bizarre stadium game the Washington, D.C. council is playing with MLB. I don't have time today, but one day I'll post a full-scale rant about the idiocy of almost all publicly funded sports stadiums (this from a devoted sports fan). For today, you can read Marc Fisher's comments. He actually seems to think the stadium will be a "good deal" for D.C., but he points out some of the strange twists in the whole "we need a new stadium" saga:

After the council rejected the stadium lease that has paralyzed city politics for more than a year, the phones started ringing with top-shelf real estate developers on the line, the mayor (remember him, the bowtie guy?) resorted to begging, the big boys from baseball started making threats about leaving town (again), and, lo and behold, the council reversed itself.

Who switched? Carol Schwartz and the three council members who were elected in 2004 by running against the stadium deal: [Marion] Barry, Kwame Brown and Vincent Gray. Never mind that the stadium deal they campaigned against was considerably cheaper than the one they've now approved.

...

Nothing made sense on the night the baseball insanity finally (maybe) ended, except this: All along, council Chairman Linda Cropp and some of her flip-flopping colleagues wanted to have it both ways. They wanted voters to see them both as the politicians who brought baseball back to Washington and as guardians of the public accounts who stood tall against the fleecing of the District by baseball's zillionaire barons.

It's just that no one ever conceived they might try to establish both reputations in one night. Sorry, folks, but the council comes off instead as an erratic wild card, a barrier to good business.

That's all for today. Oh, Cousin Kari sent me some Sipsey photos (since my camera was out of commission for most of the day):