I want Goddard to win just as much as anyone else here (I've petitioned for him in Flagstaff, but that's like shooting fish in a barrel all things considered), however, he's too "cerebral" for common people to relate to.

This is like the 2004 presidential election on a smaller, slightly-more idiotic scale: We don't want someone who knows how to fix the state, we want someone who's going to continue to make it legal to harass the brown people.

Brewer doesn't concern me, as I don't think she'll win the primary. I'd be more worried about pitting Goddard against someone like Buz Mills.

Well, I guess we have our answer.

Well tell Goddard, or someone involved in his campaign to get their crap together regarding his website, its atrocious. Look at Mills' website, its much better. It has an 'issues' tab, and you can click and see his stances on various things. Even though their just lame, thoughtless one paragraph blurbs, they're better than the nothing Goddard is putting out there.

EDIT: VV Welp I sent their campaign an email about it, we'll see if they respond/care.

See that's part of the problem. Most of the people I've talked to who work for his campaign down in Phoenix have this "Well, he's smarter than the GOP candidates, so he'll win" attitude, so there's not a whole lot of effort going into the campaign. I haven't heard anything in weeks, and there's hardly any mention of his campaign in the Republic, ever. I know the Democratic primary isn't nearly as crowded as the GOP, but the lack of publicity right now is concerning.

That, and the air of superiority crap from his staffers is going to kill Goddard's campaign in the long run. They're grossly overestimating the intelligence of the average Arizona voter.

immigration realities
 

While I'm still trying to get over Hoovers veiled threat that those who don't agree with him had better zip it, I thought I'd give those not sure what to think a tad bit of direction.

The sad truth is, and Don would agree with this despite having a different take on immigration:

What most Whites, most educated Asians and certian better off Hispanics and Blacks have no realization of is that there exits an entire other world underneath theirs they have no connection to. Unless you've seen it and touched it personally you can only make conjectures about these issues and speak in generalities. There can really be no such thing as a scientific study done on crime and illegal imigration. It would be like trying to pick up a fish in a bath tub full of ky jelly. I can talk about the war in Iraq even though I haven't been there but there are limits to how certain I can be about any of those topics. Unless you've known several personaly, as I have, and have some kind of idea as to how they are situated and conditioned you are really just having a political discussion about immigration and not a substative one.

1. I didnt make any threats, veiled or otherwise.

2. Your argument that unless you have personal experience with a situation you can't weigh in on it is ridiculous. By that logic movie critics shouldn't talk about films unless they've directed one themselves.

3. I've known many illegal immigrant, one of my best friends through High School and college (who now lives in Uganda) and his entire extended family were in this country illegally for about 15 years, I knew them all fairly well. So I guess that 'point' of yours gets piddled away too.

I know a lot of us are fans of SimCity on here so I thought I'd show you the new IBM city management game that is supposed to be a more complex, more adult version of SimCity.

http://gizmodo.com/5530030/ibm-cityo...the-real-world

^^^ Cool. We'll find out soon how good it is.

New York (New Jersey really) was just granted the 2014 Super Bowl at the new Giants/Jets stadium. Bad news for us in the Valley, it would mean the next possible time UofP could host is 2015 though if other new stadiums come online (Im not sure if there are any in the works or not) another AZ Super Bowl could get pushed back further.

Arizona actually pulled its bid from the 2014 game which is fine as due to the Giants new building and all the surrounding negative publicity in AZ we likely wouldn't have gotten it anyway. I do hope we can get another Super Bowl and don't have to wait over a decade between them like we did last time. The more big events like this we can host the better chance Phoenix would have down the line of hosting things like Worlds Fairs and Olympics like I like to dream of.

I like the 2014 choice. Newark is close, 7 miles to Times Sq/Broadway tourist haven and thousands of hotels rooms.

Phoenix (Glendale, which is much farther away from Phoenix {really Scottsdale} than the Meadowlands is to Manhattan and Newark Airport) probably won't host another Super Bowl for quite some time because there isn't much of anything in the entire west side of Phx in terms of lodging and entertainment. Until this is addressed, I wouldn't count on a game anytime soon.

According to Google Maps: From Wild Horse Pass, which hosted a Super Bowl team, to U of P is over 36 miles, up to 1.5 hours in traffic!

I thought they were not even trying for the 2014 super bowl and putting all the eggs in the 2015 basket.

^ Phoenix won't get another Superbowl until SB 1070 is reversed by the legislature or struck down by the courts.

In fact, there's growing evidence that the exodus from Phoenix has accelerated. I predict another 10% drop in sales tax revenues in fiscal year 2010 as the economy continues to retract and perhaps a 5% loss of population just this year alone, for the first time in history.

According to the Census Bureau, Arizona's population influx declined from 188,000 per year in 2005 to 12,000 last year, in 2009. That's a 90% drop in immigration to Arizona. SB 1070 and the other shenanigans might just be the straw that broke Arizona's already wounded economic back.

--don

I'll bet that the pull factors of AZ are stronger than the push factors. People aren't going to avoid AZ because of a local law. Just look at the South. Their populations have never stopped growing and places like NC, VA, GA, FL, TX are leading the way.

If people believe they can make a living anywhere, they'll move there and as long as CA is next door with the high cost of living, AZ will continue to attract people.

While I do agree that the population growth has slowed significantly in the past two years, I disagree that this is a permanent trend. Don't forget that the Earth's population is growing at 70 million/year, so even if AZ doesn't receive one migrant, natural growth alone will continue here.

Affordability + Sunshine= Growth. It's very simple.

The only people that SB 1070 will keep away are mental midgets like Michael Moore and Kanye West. We should all be thankful they don't plan on entering our great state.

These are truly fantastic:

http://brettpassmore.com/2010/05/ari...1070-cartoons/

It is the myopic thinking like this that will lead to Arizona's continued economic misery. Companies, by and large, don't want to locate to such a heavily polarized state, especially one with as shitty of an education system as Arizona's. Low taxes and sunshine can only do so much, and once gas reaches $5 per gallon (coming soon to a filling station near you), cities like Phoenix will be absolutely hammered economically (I should say, hammered more, since Phoenix has already lost 400,000 jobs in the last four years). Unemployment is over 10% and climbing, and tax revenues continue to fall as the economy steadily dwindles. This is a recipe for disaster...

Now we are driving off convention and tourism business. 200,000 more jobs are at risk, according to the travel and tourism industry. More and more countries, cities and states join the boycott on Arizona every day. People vote with their pocketbooks and feet, and Arizona does not have a monopoly on sunshine and affordability. When you make Texas look like a liberal pansy (which is what Arizona is doing right now), then Texas becomes a mighty attractive alternative, not to mention having two larger world class cities, each of which has almost twice the size of Phoenix's rather pathetic economy (metro area GDP).

Right now, Arizona's not generating any jobs to draw any immigrants. Why should anyone move here? The only thing we will attract is white retirees and ignoramuses who want to move some place without those damned furriners messin' things up.

*sighs*


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...1984983575.png
Web Source: http://www.bea.gov/regional/REMDchar....cfm#chart_top

--don

I can almost guarantee that if you had lived here in the late '80s and early '90s (I don't believe you did), that you would have been screaming to anyone that would listen that Arizona was near its death bed. Guess what? It recovered (and people like you moved in). We boom and we bust, but our booms are much longer and much stronger than our busts. Do we need to diversify our economy? Certainly. The same can be said for many a metro region.

What I would consider myopic thinking is someone that can't envison things turning bad when they're going good (think someone living above their means with an adjustable rate mortgage in north Scottsdale in 2005) and one that can't envision things turning good when they're going bad (think of yourself today).

If anything, SB 1070 will help improve our broken school system long-term. Our job situation is showing signs of life (I believe we added nearly 20,000 jobs in April). You're drastically overrating the influence of the mass liberal media's hysteria regarding boycotts (while ignoring buycotts). Saying we make Texas look like a liberal pansy is comical and untrue. Small Government, an entrepreneurial spirit (Libbies wouldn't know much about that), sunshine, affordability, and no threat of natural disasters will continue to be a major draw to more than "retirees and ignoramuses who want to move some place without those damned furriners messin' things up." (Cute Libbie 101 line though).

I've said it before and I'll say it again. If you think Arizona is terrible and that we're circling the drain and you're clearly miserable here... then move. Really. It's that simple. Do you go to a party and complain the whole time about how boring it is yet stay until lights out?

Not everyone is having a hard time being successful here. Not everyone is unhappy. Not everyone thinks our state has no future. Only the eternally pessimistic tend to be so myopic.

^ I've been here since 1993. Arizona was still recovering from the 1991 recession, but that was very mild compared to the current recession. Now we've gone and made it worse.

And just for the record, since you want to personalize things, we didn't have an adjustable rate mortgage in north Scottsdale in 2005. Our jumbo was fixed with a very low interest rate, because our credit was then quite good. Not that this has anything to do with the subject at hand, and this is particularly low blow on your part, but that's because you can't rationally refute the points I made previously so you trot out the ad hominem including describing me not once, but twice, as a "libbie." I salute you, sir, for helping keep rational discourse alive. Please continue drinking the kool-aid and giving up your constitutional rights so big companies can make more money.

Telling people whose opinions you don't like to just move out isn't going to help Arizona, either in the short-term or the long-term. A lot of people in Arizona are hurting right now. Try not to be so smug...

--don

Didn't claim that you had an ARM in north Scottsdale. Said those that did were living above their means and not thinking ahead properly.

Also never said I want those with differing opinions to move. Rather, I stated that it seems illogical for those that are unhappy to stay in the same place that makes them unhappy.

When it comes to smugness, take your own advice.

Not only are you intellectually dishonest, but now you have resorted to false statements. Since rational debate is not in your bailiwick, let me stoop to your level:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...sam_douche.jpg

By the way, I'm not referring to you. Really, I'm not. *sighs*

--don