AtticaFlinch

There's not a person in this country who hasn't broken the law. I'm pretty sure this isn't the actual bottom line, but just the most widely accepted excuse to justify bigotry. I'm not saying you're a bigot, just that bigots frequently wear a guise of law and order to mask their bigotry. This may not apply to you, but if you actually take such a hard-line, legalistic, black/white approach to every single law on the books in our common law legal system, which I must assume you do if you're not a bigot, then I can't imagine ever enjoying life. Rigidity is dull.

Again, this has virtually nothing to do with zoning. What you're referring to has more to do with easement rules and restrictions. Besides, considering both Midtown CVSs occupy their entire city block, it would be impossible to build to where the "parking is behind the store." That's just not geometrically possible unless you're MC Escher. Oddly enough, there are cars in that parking lot, and the CVS hasn't shut down for want of customers. Not yet. If people were really bothered by CVS's lack of "urban lifestyle" vision, they wouldn't shop there.

Is that what's happening? I suppose all those border patrol agents don't actually exist, and I suppose all those backhoes headed towards the border to build the second largest wall in the history of mankind is all part of my imagination. (Oddly, the Great Wall of China was to keep out people intent on raping, pillaging and plundering, not people who were merely trying to eke out an existence.) Border Patrol's annual budget is $10.1 billion dollars and the border fence has been projected to cost $6.5 billion over the next 20 years. It doesn't really sound as if we're not trying to discourage illegal immigration, but what do I know? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Customs_and_Border_Protection http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/systems/mexico-wall.htm

I misinterpreted. My bad.

I'm sure you were sufficiently outraged upon learning of this bit of socialistic largesse. I'm sure a charity would have been available to hand a few dollars over had the blasted government not decided to be so intrusive and big. The commies. Er... So... You broke the law? Seems contradictory to get upset about people entering the country illegally, and then turning around and illegally giving them an unreported paycheck. You've just lost the ability to rail against illegal immigrants because they've entered the country illegally because... well... obviously the letter of the law isn't the real concern. So, what is the real concern about illegals? Considering the amount of work contributed and the willingness to work jobs most Americans consider to be beneath them, I think it's a fair trade.

As RedScare noted, illegals don't generally fill out a 1040EZ every year. Public hospitals definitely benefit from state funding. I can't locate anything about private hospitals and state funding, but I'll keep looking.

Factcheck.org addresses this on the front page of the site.

Don't get your knickers in a twist. I wasn't specifically calling you a xenophobe. You asked what Obama's plan was if he wasn't going to treat illegals, and my response fairly overtly implied there is no plan, and he was merely saying it to placate his loudest detractors, who happen to generally be bigots and xenophobes. It's a rhetorical technique. He took away their loudest shouting point, and now they'll be forced to devise another, even more arbitrary issue to be outraged about. I can see clearly now his shrewd techniques are more effective than I'd ever anticipated they would be. He's taking racists further and further away from any tightly veiled protests and publicly reducing them to what they actually are. Since there is no legitimate beef with his policy, he's exposing the vile hatred that infects the core of so many Americans and underlies his opposition. Soon, people will be forced to react to their ugly reflections in the mirror. It's brilliant, really. Oh, and everybody pays taxes. Even if you're too poor to afford to have it deducted from your income, then you still contribute through goods purchased. Also, taxes are taken out of everyone's pay, but the poorest receive it back later. That's essentially a short-term interest free loan to the government. The government made money on that money while they held on to it, so the fact they got to keep it in their coffers, even for a short time, still benefitted Uncle Sam.

Nobody rides bikes in River Oaks unless they're doing it indoors on a stationary because their personal trainer has them on a "spinning" regimen.

But it's not opposition to illegal immigration we're discussing. It's oppostion to treating illegal immigrants when they're sick or hurt. Being opposed to lax borders and being opposed to medical ethics are two different things. One reflects a rigid adherence to manmade laws as if they're immutable and God inspired. The other reflects xenophobia, or just being a d**k. You can choose your own words to describe it, but I think xenophobic sounds more polite.

So... are you suggesting that by restricting developers, you're actually encouraging them to build? So you know, no area is "trying" to be urban. It either is urban or it isn't urban. The difference, I suppose, is the model of urbanity you hold ideal, which based on your posts seem to be more inline with the Manhattan model, is that correct? Let's use Midtown as an example since I believe that's what you're referring to in the first place. There are two suburban-styled CVSs in Midtown, which is something that stick in the craw of some people like you. But how, pray tell, would zoning have prevented that? The buildings are built as they are for reasons dictated by the real estate market in the area, not by lofty hopes of Houston becoming the next New York. Reality's set in here. This isn't the Field of Dreams. Just because you build it doesn't mean they'll come. The reality is CVS built "suburban" stores because Houston in car-centric (even in Midtown), and people need places to park. Why would they build it in a way that would doom it to failure? That would just be dumb. And, forcing them to build in any specific way that would be dumb would be even dumber on the part of the local government. CVS wouldn't have built anything at all if the costs were too prohibitive and the store wasn't built to meet the needs of the consumers. Then, there'd be no pharmacy in the neighborhood, which would make it even less "urban" which would make it less cool which would drive the property values down which would make it a ghetto again.

It's merely a rhetorical point to mollify Joe Redneck and his xenophobic concerns. No doctor with any sense of professional ethics would ever turn away a dying man because he didn't happen to be born here. If people stopped demanding such ridiculous things as not treating illegals, then Daddy Obama wouldn't be forced to lie to them. What's amusing, at least to me, is that many illegals pay taxes. It's hard to imagine, I suppose, but it's true. With the exception of those guys who hang out in the Home Depot parking lot and get paid cash for their labor, most of those other millions of illegals have phony-baloney social security numbers and have payroll deductions going to Uncle Sam just like the rest of us. It's true. I briefly worked for a company that hired three new Mexicans once, and they all had the same SSN. The "boss," whose name I'll never disclose, told two of them they had to go back to the flea market and get different numbers or else the IRS might do an audit. Within a couple hours, the two were back, each with different numbers scrawled on crumpled sheets of paper and new Texas IDs to match. I have no idea how they did it nor do I want to know, but to suggest illegals shouldn't get the public healthcare because they don't contribute is just plain false.

Strip malls are everywhere, not just Houston. Yes, even places with zoning. Crazy, I know. Dallas has strip malls, tons of 'em. And they zone the crap out of everything. There's a weird misconception among zoning acolytes that zoning is a panacea for blight. In reality, if done improperly and inflexibly, which it almost always is, it destroys the concept of community and perpetuates the dreaded sprawly car culture. By shifting land use from an organic need based utilization into something ordered and structured and separated by use and value, it drives neighborhood walkability away. Nothing is ever close to anything. Want a pizza? Go to the restaurant zone. It's five miles away, so you'd better hop in your car. Want dry cleaning? Go to the small businesses that use chemicals zone. It's not near the pizza zone, so you should probably get the dry cleaning first. Nobody likes a room temperature pizza. If this separation is what's desired, then Houston's got boatloads of 'burbs with restrictive HOAs that approximate zoning. Commercial along the main roads. Residential behind that. Industrial in someone else's 'burb. Not a single business is allowed to operate near anyone's home. Yes, folks, there's already zoning in Houston. And what's happening in the city proper ain't broke. Those of us who actually live in the city like it the way it is.

The argument was, as always, "That's going to cost money! Oh Em Gee, where are we going to get all that money?!" These are the same people who hoard their entire life savings under their mattresses, never spend a dime of it in their lifetimes and then leave it all to their cat when they die. I'm not implying they're mentally unbalanced, but... yeah, that's exactly what I'm implying.

Yeah, it's still there. Now that my wife and I are in Greenway from Montrose, I find those errant debit card charges have just changed addresses. She loves their bread. I have to agree. That place is freakin' good.

Not only does it look nice, but my eight-week-old baby was born here. Fantastic care, by the way. I do wish parking was a little cheaper (or that they'd validate!) though. It's impossible to find free parking anywhere within two miles unless it's between six and ten on Sunday night, and even then it's a trek to rival Amundsen's journey.

My office is nearby. I haven't seen much of anything change in about a year. It's as if we ate too many "magic" mushrooms and time just stopped. It's a good thing they finished the actual hospital before time stopped. By the way, I've heard from someone on the inside of MetroNational that the company is struggling financially, and the whole thing could possibly implode altogether. We could end up with another partially completed shell of a building. It's a good thing we're growing accustomed to seeing those around Houston. It's not Lebanon, Father. It's the economy.

And can we please stop referring to Montrose as Neartown? Please? The push has been successful in renaming Fourth Ward/Little Saigon to Midtown and the Galleria to Uptown, but c'mon, Montrose is the most established neighborhood name in the city. What's with this push to give Houston's neighborhoods Manhattan-styled names? At least in Manhattan, Uptown, Midtown and Downtown are geographically accurate. What's next, the Heights is SoHo and East End is Greenwich Village? We can call the Fifth Ward Queens and the Third Ward Brooklyn while we're at it. The possibilities are endless!

Anyone familiar with my work on City-Data knows I'm not Austin's biggest fan. So, here's a refutation of that article to reflect my version of the so-called truth. Best Barbecue: Actually, it's near Austin, but not in Austin. Lockhart, Luling and one single joint in San Marcos called Southwest BBQ have the best barbecue in Texas. Killer Mexican Food: Actually, the blandest Mexican food offerings of all Texas' major cities. But they're hip, cool and weird. They might get an extra style point or two, I suppose. Live Music: Yeah, there's live music there. It's got ACL and SXSW, but (in my opinion) that speaks more to the quality of the fans than the musicians. Anybody of any renown who plays in Austin plays in DFW, Houston and San Antonio too. A band's more likely to get blind appreciation in Austin than in Houston, but a band that's successful in Houston is more likely to actually be good. Austin Style: Everything listed in this section is hardly unique to Austin. What's just silly is that the article spends 3/4 of the paragraph discussing western wear when you're more likely to see a suit and tie, khaki shorts or dreadlocks in Austin than a cowboy hat. The Story of Texas: Yeah, because whatever Austin has is far more relevant than the Alamo or the actual site where the state/country won its independence (Houston/Deer Park).

Biological evolution's trigger, Natural Selection, gave us opposable thumbs and a gigantic brain giving us the ability to build such things as cities. Then again, it also gave us mosquitoes and manatees. This organic natural growth can either bring greatness, pure crap or useless oddities. Only time will tell. Natural selection took a billion years to bring basic one-celled life to the level of humanity whereas intelligent design says the entire thing occurred in 6000 years. Let's just be patient and Houston will blossom on its own, in its own time.

That's Montrose, Upper Kirby and Greenway. That's three neighborhoods for the price of one. Houston: Bargain City. (Should've submitted that to the slogan contest.

Seems like college students are the only people in Houston who've figured out how to beat the heat naturally.

This is a horrible idea. Those little streets are what saves my sanity when I use them to get around the immobile traffic at Westheimer and Montrose during rush hour.