George W. Bush speech after capture of Saddam Hussein:

The success of yesterday's mission is a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq. The operation was based on the superb work of intelligence analysts who found the dictator's footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers in the hunt for members of the fallen regime, and in their effort to bring hope and freedom to the Iraqi people. Their work continues, and so do the risks. Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate 'em.

Glorious Dear Leader Barack Hussein Obama speech after killing of Osama bin Laden:

And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network. Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan. And finally, last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

Last night I entered the lotus position and channeled my mind back in time to 1915 in Zurich and told a young Jewish patent clerk what the missing link was in his Theory of General Relativity.

I wanted to improve music in the world so I put my fingers to my temples and gave a certain a German composer in Leipzig the theme for "The Goldberg Variations."

From today's MRT:

The City Council authorized City Manager Courtney Sharp to negotiate a Chapter 380 agreement with Simon Property Group, which operates Midland Park Mall. Mall representatives, according to the city, have requested assistance for their proposed $6 million renovation of their property. While city documents indicate they asked for the city to participate at the amount of $1.5 million, Perry said it will be significantly less.

Sharp has said the city never has participated with a retail provider on a remodel project.

According to the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 380 "authorizes Texas municipalities, both home-rule and general law municipalities to provide assistance for economic development. Texas cities may provide monies, loans, city personnel, and city services for promotion and encouragement of economic development."

So, we pass an economic development sales tax to fund the MDC and they have a huge bank, but Simon Properties goes straight to the City for Economic Development dollars? The same City that had to raise property taxes last year because they couldn't make their 2010-2011 budget without a tax increase?

What fund is this going to come out of? I'm sure someone at the City will point to all the sales tax revenue they weren't counting on in the last budget. I say, where is my property tax roll-back FIRST.

The City should send Simon Properties to the MDC and drop having the City Manager negotiate an economic development agreement with the Mall. That's why we have an MDC.

I'm surprised Simon Properties didn't ask for a tax abatement too.

My other prediction is that the Midland Central Appraisal District will never add $6 million to the taxable value of the mall property once this remodel is done. I have yet to find ANY economic development incentee that had their facilities appraisal raised by the value of the improvements they were quoted at length of making.

FYI: Midland Park Mall LLP has been valued at $37,000,000 since 2008.

We have all heard how the Governator has admitted to having sired a child by another woman while he was married to Maria Shriver. I do not for a second condone this; he ought to have kept his little soldier in his pants, and failing that, ought to have seen to it that little Arhnolds weren't coming out. There is such a thing as birth control.

Maria has moved out. Maria, a Kennedy. Maria, who got Ahnold to campaign for Teddy Kennedy during his most vulnerable race. One of their children is, I'm told, signing his surname as Shriver. Well, so be it.

I am amused however to find that a Kennedy has enough brass cheek to take umbrage when a spouse steps out and acts like, well, an entitled Kennedy.

Oh. I get it. Kennedys get to do what they wish. Mere mortals don't. You have to be a member of one of the single most dissolute family in America who still has some social status to act like, well, a Kennedy.

Maria, your male Kennedy heirs screwed anything that wouldn't file suit or go to the DA and they spent a hell of a lot of time and money keeping the lawyers away from the Kennedy tribe.

So suck it up and shut up, Maria. It's not like you're not used to male hound-dogs; you grew up in a family of them. It's your time now for betrayal and hurt, just like all the other women in the Kennedy family.

I'm surprised you noticed; considering your family, noticing adultery would be like a fish noticing water.

Quit acting the martyr.

,

It's the attitude which is picture-perfect.

The excellent Pat Condell on the death of the late mass murderer Osama bin Laden.

They should have kept the body. They should have brought the son-of-a-bitch back to New York, pickled him in alcohol, and mounted him on top of the Ground Zero mosque with a pork chop in his mouth and a fireman's ax up his ass. Or is that just me? Facing Mecca, of course. Because we wouldn't want to be disrespectful.

Anyone reading this blog is unlikely to be sympathetic to Osama bin Laden. Anyone with a memory reaching past the last election will recall people jumping to their death from 100 floors up to avoid being burned to death. But let's not forget our betters, who of course, instruct us from their mother's basement.

One of this lot is Alex Parenne, who write in the on-line left-wing mag Salon:

Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaida and the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, was recently killed by American commandos, which is, for Real American Patriots, a Good Thing. But Barack Obama is getting all the credit, which is, for said residents of the authentic portion of this glorious nation, decidedly a Bad Thing. How is a typically bloodthirsty right-winger supposed to revel in America's victory over an enemy while still detesting the socialist usurper in the White House who made this victory possible? It's easier than you might think. All you need -- as with most right-wing thought -- is a bit of cognitive dissonance.

Mr. Parenne does have a usage though--whenever I read bilge like his, it makes me less sad to see the nation being disassembled by people of his ilk, because I'll be dead while he and his fraternal vermin inherit the wind.

Screaming "With our blood and soul, we will defend you, Islam," jihadists stormed the Virgin Mary Church in northwest Cairo last weekend. They torched the Coptic Christian house of worship, burned the nearby homes of two Copt families to the ground, attacked a residential complex, killed a dozen people, and wounded more than 200: just another day in this spontaneous democratic uprising by Muslim hearts yearning for freedom.

Read about this in the local paper? See it on the evening news? We are averting our eyes as radical Islam advances. We are buying into the MSM narrative that the unrest in the Middle East - Yemen, Libya, Egypt, Syria - is all being promoted by democracy loving, Muslim Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson wannabes. The narrative is dead wrong, emphasis on the word "dead."

Here is Andrew McCarthy at NRO on the ongoing overthrow of leaders in the Middle East:

...the "Arab Spring" is not the Arab Spring. It is the Islamist ascendancy. Like good democracy fetishists, though, the media is seeing the Egypt it wants to see. To the contrary, in the real Egypt, Islamist ideology is the mainstream, coursing from the beating heart of Al-Azhar University through every part of the country. Without the much-derided Mubarak around to clamp down on it, Islamists have Copts and secularists paralyzed by their habitual "unrest" and "clashes."

Emphasis mine.

And:

The goal is to make sharia the only law of Egypt, just as it is the only law of Saudi Arabia and Iran. It is the goal of the Brotherhood in all of the scores of countries in which it operates: gradually implement sharia, enclave by enclave, country by country, until a global caliphate is established.

The water carriers for radical Islam in the MSM may never understand that they, due to their weakness, would be among the first casualties under sharia.

The Long War continues and is getting more dangerous, not less, under our current feckless Administration in Washington.

Among several "must" reads lately is this. We saw Baroke Owebama on his Texas tour this week, whining about immigration and opining on the border which is a mere 150 miles south of Midland...

Sayeth Mr. Krauthammer:

"They" play politics with deficit reduction, with government shutdowns, with health care. And now immigration. It is ironic that such a charge should be made in a speech that is nothing but politics. There is zero chance of any immigration legislation passing Congress in the next two years. El Paso was simply an attempt to gin up the Hispanic vote as part of an openly political two-city, three-event campaign swing in preparation for 2012.

And as we saw, and Mr. Krauthammer documents, the Tuscon Truce is over:

After all, the Republicans want to kill off the elderly, throw the disabled in the snow, and watch alligators lunch on illegal immigrants.

The depths of my lack of surprise are matched by the heights of my disgust.

November 6, 2012 cannot get here fast enough.

Read the whole thing.

Apparently Representative Craddick filed the bill to create the Midland Utility District on April 28th. It is now formally known as HB3861.

Water is a big deal these days, but not everyone in the County is in need of a water system to replace contaminated or diminished wells.

Though a few are in desperate need of a new water supply, this isn't just for them. This bill authorizes the creation of a 54,050 Acre (84.45 square miles) district with the authority to impose a property tax up to $0.65/100. Basically, every inhabited area south and east of Midland is being lumped into this district, including several existing public water supply systems.

In contrast, the City of Midland encompasses a mere 71.5 square miles and imposes a property tax of $0.47285/$100.

The City of Midland has hundreds of millions of dollars in water infrastructure built over decades. This utility District is going to have to spend something on the order of $100 million to serve that entire area by the time things are done, especially if they have to meet the 4-inch minimum line size and rural fire fighting requirement in the bill. Don't believe the $53 million being put out in public information meetings. That figured on smaller diameter water lines and providing flows that wouldn't provide for rural fire service. Also, the City of Midland isn't going to have the water to supply such a district, so getting a different source of water isn't going to come cheap.

The bill has been referred to the Local and Consent Committee. If it makes it out of there it is smooth sailing to the Senate, because most Representatives don't mess with bills on local and consent, they just pass it on without a record vote.

I don't see any roadblocks to this becoming a law in Austin, so all that is left is the authorization election. If the boosters get that through, welcome to the world of utility infrastructure taxes East and South Midland County residents!

You better enjoy paying taxes, because it will be a decade before some of you see your water.

When will our elected officials remember that they enacted a TIRZ that has been in place for almost a decade, and will be around for another 20 years to "recapture" ANY increase in property values in downtown properties and deposit them in a dedicated fund for downtown improvements? Here is the latest example from the MRT:

"It is in all of our best interest that we make downtown a vibrant, thriving central business district because it helps keep taxes low for homeowners"

The only way this is true is if the City of Midland, Midland College, Midland County and the Hospital District would have dedicated that portion of their "share of the gain" that is currently going to the TIRZ to downtown projects. I don't know about you, but I don't think Midland County, the Hospital District or Midland College would have given a dime to downtown from their budgets. Now, we as homeowners have to make up the difference in higher taxes from these entitites to offset what they have to contribute to the TIRZ every year.

In this tough State budget year just ask Midland College how important that money they will have to give to the TIRZ this year and next year will be, or ask the Hospital District how important the funds they will have to give to the TIRZ are in the face of Obamacare and Medicare/Medicaid cuts?

What has the value of the TIRZ been to these entities? Even if the TIRZ is ultimately successful in generating additional downtown property values, they won't see any of the fruits of thier contribution for another 20 years! Meanwhile, the remainder of the property tax payers are going to have to cover that lost downtown revenue for another 20 years.