Eric at Fire Ant Gazette is taking the high road and is reluctant to say that the new website for the Midland Horseshoe Complex blows.

But it does.

Note to The Republican Leadership

Re: Your reaction to the FBI search of a corrupt Congressman's office

It ain't playing well in Peoria. Or Midland, for that matter.

Congressman Conaway's blog is silent on the issue so far.

This is not a time to close ranks.

In one sense, the re-election of New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin makes sense. Post-Katrina I was hoping that Louisiana would finally rid themselves of...well...Louisiana politcal mores.

But is the theory really tested when Mayor Nagin defeats a member of the biggest political family in the state?

Perhaps not. As much as Mayor Nagin was in over his head (no pun intended) during Katrina, it could be that his defeat of Louisiana Lieutenant Governor Mitch Landrieu might indicate that the voters are indeed tired of Louisiana politics as usual.

Mitch's sister, current U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu, can't be too comfortable right now. Nor can the Crying Governor.

More from Will Collier over at VodkaPundit who knows the city better than I.

The anti-war dhimmis want so badly for it to be 1968 again.

But it just isn't.

Not funny....and funny at the same time:

Hard-line Shiite militias in Baghdad have issued a blanket death sentence for homosexuals, lesbians, prostitutes, liberal professors [emphasis mine] and booksellers.

The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to keep the ban of offshore drilling.

"People don't go to visit the coasts of Florida or the coast of California to watch oil wells," Rep. Sam Farr, D-Calif., said.

They don't usually walk or ride their bikes to Florida or California, either.

Bad news from Iran:

Human rights groups are raising alarms over a new law passed by the Iranian parliament that would require the country's Jews and Christians to wear coloured badges to identify them and other religious minorities as non-Muslims.

I guess the good news is that this won't be happening in Europe again for at least...well...thirty or forty years.

(Hat Tip: Michelle Malkin)

UPDATE: Story may be untrue. Stay tuned.

"You could be getting ripped off at your favorite gas station," cries the first line of this NewsWest 9 online story. The rest of the article continues with the same tone which is that the consumer is always getting short-changed.

But they also provide a spreadsheet of the findings that you can download and have a look at.

Correct me if I am wrong, but it looks to me (based upon this spreadsheet) that the consumer is just as likely to get more gas than they paid as less.

Any mechanical pump makes errors. But sometimes they are in your favor, too.

Remember that bumper sticker around town a while back that read "Dear Lord, let there be one more oil boom before I die. I promise not to piss it away this time"?

Well......it was bull****.

This has got to be the bottom story of the day.

On Thursday, May 23rd, President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale will become the longest-living, post-administration President and Vice President in U.S. history. On that day, they will surpass President John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Adams and Jefferson lived 25 years, 122 days after the end of their administration.

The record would have been even longer had they held the election sooner.

This is kind of cool. This here blog is mentioned in a Wikipedia entry on Gulf War II.

"An interesting analogy presented by Jessica Well where she [sic] shows a Life magazine article from 1946 discussing the failures of Denazification entitled Americans are Losing the Victory in Europe."

It has us paired...sort of...with no less than Victor Davis Hanson. This on top of us getting a hat tip from the current White House Press Secretary. Does this make us legit?

Look at all of the comments concerning the new performing arts center to be built for $45,000,000 in state tax dollars and tell me with a straight face that the Republican party is the party of small government and fiscal restraint.

"This is an amazing accomplishment."

No. It. Is. Pork. Pure and simple. We may have wished for it in the Vision 2000 statement, but It was the stroke of a pen that took $45,000,000 from the taxpayers of the state of Texas so that the Permian Basin could have "Broadway quality shows" for, what, three or four nights per year? And the Symphony several more. To be sure, this new venue will be able to hold some events that the area cannot currently stage but once you subtract the number of events that could be held elsewhere (graduation for UTPB at the Ector County Coliseum? Un-possible!) the venue will be dark most of the time.

Truly, is there any reason to believe that we will have any more success filling this venue than we have had filling the stadium complex with non-local events. And remember how big those promises were?

"This is a wonderful gift."

No. It may look like a gift to from the angle of the MOSC, but gifts are usually transferred at the option of the giver. This is an expropriation of resources from one sector to another utilizing raw power over any idea of a highest best use for the money.

Midland Mayor Mike Canon said having the CEED building "enabled the speaker to do something which not only helped UTPB but helped the speaker help the area."

Does Mayor Canon give West Virginia's Senator Robert Byrd a similar pass? I would bet not.

"We are checking off major goals," [Councilman Berry] Simpson said. "This is exciting."

No, Mr. Simpson, I believe the word is "intoxicating".

As part of an overall bond package from the State of Texas a $35,000,000 performing arts center will be built next to the CEED Building at 1788 and Loop 191.

I sure am glad we threw those big spending Democrats out of office or we might have built three or four of them out there....I guess.

Here, finally, is conclusive proof that not only was the Pentagon struck with a rocket instead of an airliner on September 11, 2001...but it was struck with the Saturn V booster rocket that was supposed to lift Apollo 11 into orbit on the "moonshot" that everyone now knows was filmed on a soundstage somehwere near Area 51.

All we need to do is identify the mysterious man in the lower corner of the image and we can solve this whole puzzle!

Uh,......why is everyone looking at me like that?

Hoosegow Hottie Smackdown:

California 1
Iowa 0

It will interesting to see what these four buildings (Vaughn Building, One Wall Plaza,and the Gihls Tower and Permian Building) , bring at auction come June 1.

Real investors spending their own money generally provides better information on value than breathless press releases.

The Prodigal Website....it was lost and now is found. Although the new new MDC website is not yet ready for prime time it is much better than "Page Not Found" any day.

Now...back to the original question: Has the recent oil boom had the expected effect on downtown occupancy? The new new MDC website has 2005 occupancy stats here. It will be interesting to see the 2006 numbers when they come out.

P.S. Looks for these current links to the MDC website to go dead pretty soon when they move the MDC site from the prototype server to a more permanent address.

And, no, if the downtown occupancy is not what we hoped it would be after these past three years of good oil prices it is not the fault of the Chamber and/or the ED people. They don't have any control over such things.

Now.....taking money from the taxpayers on the false pretense that they do is another matter entirely.

Question: Why does Dallas Maverick's owner Mark Cuban cost himself all of that fine money complaining about the referees?

Answer: Because it works, obviously.

The Hunt For The MDC Website: Day 2

Still not there.

This means more than just a server hiccup. Wow.

For you "A Christmas Story" fans out there...Google "Major Award", sit back, and grin.

From Internic Whois:

Domain Name:MIDLANDTEXASEDC.ORG
Created On:23-Dec-2002 15:17:43 UTC
Last Updated On:26-Jan-2004 17:26:08 UTC
Expiration Date:23-Dec-2006 15:17:43 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Tucows Inc. (R11-LROR)

Maybe we can pick this up when it expires in December.....after they have moved to totallylegalkickbacks.com.

Suppose five years ago I showed you the stats for downtown occupancy. And let's also say that at that time I could magically tell you what the price of oil and gas was going to do for the next five years and you believed me 100%.

If I then asked you to guess what downtown occupancy would be now, after the five years of incredibly high oil prices, would it match up with what the occupancy has actually turned out to be?

Or at least what you think they might be if we could find them. The Downtown Midland, Inc. (downtownmidland.org) web site doesn't even exist any more. And don't try getting any stats from the Midland Downtown TIRZ website. It is just a site full of the usual Economic Development word salads and meaningless platitudes (Strengthen core downtown assets! Transition unproductive or vacant buildings!). No stats on where we are now or were we have been.

And get this. I try the links for the Midland Development Corporation on the Chamber's website and they are dead. OK, so the Chamber web master hasn't updated the links. Fine. It happens.

So I Google the Midland Development Corporation and try to follow the top link.

Page not available.

Fine. That happens too from time to time. But I will check back tomorrow to find out what we are getting for our $4 million per year.

On the other hand....If I disagree with the general MDC philosophy of transferring public funds into favored private hands why in the world should I be unhappy if I saw something like this that decreases their effectiveness?

Meanwhile, the ED fund purported to bring jobs to Midland builds....and builds...and builds...and there is no one to hire.

Would using, say, just half of the yearly ED take for a few years to pay off another "Economic Development Project" i.e. the Stadium Complex, be such a bad idea?

UPDATE: The Downtown Midland, Inc. web site has been located. For reasons unknown they have abandoned downtownmidland.org for downtownmidland.info...a vastly inferior internet address. And unless I am wrong the site is not even hosted by a local ISP. In any event, there are no downtown occupancy stats to be found there. In fact, there is much to not be found there.

Whether it be cheerleading, sunshine pumping, or Kool-Aid drinking you have to admire the enthusiasm here. And if exclamation points translate into occupants then downtown will be full by July.

Baby-daddies and Baby-mamas?

Celebrity gossips are not known for their contributions to English letters. In tabloids, the copy is breathless, the headlines are stunningly literal, and the "hand-written" photo captions seem to toggle between 'Awww!' and 'Ew!' But as they zero in on celebrity mating and breeding rituals, the magpies keep breaking new linguistic ground. First they imported the British term bump, a noun used to refer to the protruding abdomen of a pregnant starlet. Then they awarded celebrity couples mash-up nicknames like "Bennifer," "Brangelina," and "TomKat." Now they've seized upon baby-daddy and baby-mama, two useful terms that have long appeared in hip-hop and R&B lyrics, and are slowly stripping them of their emotional fangs.

The Oxford English Dictionary defines baby-daddy as "the father of a woman's child, who is not her husband or (in most cases) her current or exclusive partner." The baby-mama entry follows the same template with the genders reversed. But some gossip writers have been adopting the first part of the definition and ignoring the second. Salon recently called Tom Cruise "Katie Holmes' baby-daddy," even though the couple is engaged. And Gawker refers to Keven Federline as "Britney Spears' baby-daddy," even though the couple has been married for more than a year.

The Cruises and the Federlines are or were at one time both married and together.

Brangelina, however, provides us with direct evidence that the term "slut" has fallen out of favor.

Eric at Fire Ant has touched on this and I agree with him (and disagree with George Will). It is not a civic duty for anyone to see a movie.

Whether that movie is United 93 or Brokeback Mountain.

To learn about what happened to United Flight 93 and the other events of that day? Perhaps.

But to see a movie about it?

No.

I will see the movie. But not to learn or even refresh my memory for neither is required. I will go to support the effort.

You Reap What You Sow, Part XXXIII:

It's a real shame that this mean-spirited blowhard [Bobby Knight] might break the NCAA career wins record of a class guy like Dean Smith.

When Knight finally retires, this delightful funnyman sure will be missed. Here are some of the many hilarious memories he'll leave us with.

• Assaulting a cop in Puerto Rico at the Pan Am Games, then bragging about mooning the country from his window seat on the flight home.
• The knee-slapping bull-whip sketch with Calbert Cheaney.
• Belittling that poor guy at the post-game press conference with a nice f-bomb.
• Forcibly moving Neil Reed into position at practice by the throat.
• Separating his son's shoulder on a hunting trip.
• Shooting a hunting partner on a different hunting trip.
• Trying to humiliate Jeremy Schaap, son of his supposed friend.
• Shoving his assistant coach into a bookshelf before firing him.
• Waving soiled toilet paper in front of his team to motivate them.
• Asked by Connie Chung how he handled stress, answering, "I think that if rape is inevitable, relax and enjoy it." [That kinda sounds familiar. --Ed.]
• Putting a tampon in a player's locker to mock him.

All this from a guy who grabbed a student by the arm to lecture him about manners. (That is pretty funny actually when you think about it.) Just the kind of person you want at your institute of higher learning.

The world apparently agrees. That is why Coach Knight is not at an institute of higher learning.

You may have noticed that we have come and gone a few times during the last day or so. I have switched hosting companies from Verio over to Hosting Matters. I called SixApart offering to pay for help in the migration. They have not called back.

Why did I switch?

One: Because it is much cheaper.

Two: It appears to be working much much fatser on the Admin side, and

Three: I want make sure that when all the big dogs like Instapundit and Powerline and VodkaPundit all get taken down with another DDOS attack I go down with them.

Now that is blog Solidarity.

Test.

Apple Computer's new set of television ads are out and if you thought that they would be any less self-congratulatory and insufferable in their claimed superiority than the last batch....well....then you would be wrong.

This set features a Bill Gates look-alike (representing all of us un-cool nerd automatons who have cast our lot in with the Dark Side, i.e. Windows) paired off with the "Ideal Apple User" image as seen by a high-powered advertising executive...age 24.

In one ad, cool Apple Dude whips out a Walter Mossberg review like it is some sort of Techno Trump Card that renders all other preferences and situations moot.

In another, un-cool Bil Gates look-alike gets...wait for it....a virus! Apples don't get viruses, you see. Only unhip Windows users have to deal with that.

Do Macs have to deal with less viruses? Absolutely. Do they have to deal with at least some viruses? Absolutely.

Do Macs have to deal with a number of viruses that pretty much match up with their market share in sales of PC's. You decide. I have heard this referred to as Security through Obscurity.

Apple Macs are great machines. I have used them. I am intrigued by the way they do some things. But they are a competing platform, not an enlightenment nor a sign of higher culture or superior breeding among users.

I still like my Thinkpad T-Series just fine thank you.

UPDATE: And witness this recent Microsoft-caused atrocity. The horror......the horror.....

UPDATE: Reading further back...Eric has posted on this already. And Lileks agrees with me on the casting of the ad.

I'd like to recast the Mac guy. Some of us can find a razor, you know.

Well, the male Mac users can, anyway.

And one last note to all involved in these periodic OS flame wars that we have all come to love and enjoy: Whether it be "apoplexiage" or the causing of fury or many thumbtacks spit....it probably isn't coming from the guy who can point to the 92% market share.

I can't think of any ad that I have ever seen on the television that made me virtually cheer and think "Yeah! That'll get 'em!" A sign of low breeding, no doubt.

So Stephen Colbert Spoke! Truth! To! Power! the other night at the White House Correspondent's Dinner.

Yeah, okay.....but...when someone really, you know, speaks truth to power, shouldn't there be a hint of danger in it somewhere?

So Colbert does his truth-to-power-speaking in front of the President, and his wife, and both of their security details. Does anyone really fear for the guy?

The only thing in play as far as Mr. Colbert's well-being is whether or not he suffers whiplash from being rocketed to the Hollywood Cocktail Party Circuit A-List.

Again with the Hollywood "Courage".

George Clooney is in the news of late, fresh off of his Syriana courage-showing.

George, try this for an experiment: Announce plans to film "The Satanic Verses" and then stand back and watch.

Below are links to iowahawk's "Letters From Zarqawi" series:

Stop Questioning My Patriotism

Stop Comparing Me To American Moonbats

This War Sucks

I Hate My Boss

I'm Surrounded By Idiots

I Hate E-Mail

If you have some time and would like to have some coffee come through your nose please read them.

It has been four months since we last heard from Zarkman and that is just way too long to have to wait for a new letter. Please hit the tip jar over there so that Mr. Burge can quit his day job and spend more time on these letters.

Now...an observation (and question) that falls under the penumbra of "Fake, But Accurate", specifically:

Are these totally made up letters a more realistic view of Zarqawi's overall daily life and operational success than what is reported to us by the New York Times et al?

The big boycott is today, right?

Just checking.

UPDATE: The impact may be more profound than I thought. I have heard a rumour that Laurie David had to actually touch a dirty dish this morning.