Something Said's Been Said Before

Roll Call

General Van Riper

General Swannack

General Newbold

General Eaton

General Zinni

General Batiste

General Riggs

General Clark


Why do these Generals HATE our troops and our country?

posted by Mr. mXp @ 3:01 PM 0 comments

Mike's Daddy Warbucks?

In the past ten yeas the City of Milwaukee has never used any TIF money for downtown area residential developments. Now Barry Mandel and his Pfister & Vogel development just east of of the Park East TIF area are seeking just that -- an extention of that TIF or the creation of a new one. For once I agree with the Business Journal and their position that the project doesn't fit the city guideliness for assistance. TIF's should only be used where private development would not happen but for the public assistance. Why change the standard now? And why for a project that is in a corridor along the river that is just booming with condo development, a sign that the private market is surely working? What does the district alderman, Mike D'Amato, think?

"Pfister & Vogel is a unique circumstance that may warrant public financing" 3/24/06

"The question is not whether or not we should participate...The question is, at what level." 4/15/06

Now don't get me wrong, I like Mike. He's been relatively responsive to my neighborhood's concerns, and he seems like a decent guy. But this just makes you wonder... If you were a guy who may have future political ambitions, it would be very nice to have a big developer with deep pockets on your side, dont'cha think?

posted by Mr. mXp @ 10:30 PM 1 comments

Milwaukee's Loss, Cleveland's Gain

How Milwaukee can optimize its valley investment

--Brian Reilly is Cleveland's economic development director. Until last week, he was manager of Menomonee Valley Redevelopment for the Milwaukee Department of City Development.



A must read from this past Sunday's Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Crossroads section. We need more folks like Brian Reilly in Milwaukee city government. His new opportunity is our loss. I can only hope the vision he had for the valley doesn't fizzle away. We need Milwaukee to work on ECONOMIC development, not just land development. More cake, less icing!

posted by Mr. mXp @ 10:19 PM 1 comments

"Ryan's Kingdom is not as wild now"

posted by Mr. mXp @ 10:14 AM 5 comments

Let Us Ponder

Think back to 2004. Remember how often the terrorist threat level was changed? It was orange, two weeks later it's back to yellow, then 2 months later it's orange again.

Bring yourself back to the present. Can you even recall when the last time the threat level was changed? Can you recall when the last election was?

posted by Mr. mXp @ 5:09 PM 2 comments

There are good lies and bad lies...

The administration and its apologists have gone to great lengths to spin everything this administration does that is questionable. (And as time goes on there is nothing that isn't!). After taking a tough stance on leaks in his administration, we then find out that it was the Commander in Chief who leaked information in the Plame affair -- for the public good, of course. The liar in chief and his cohorts and supporters spin it all as "Well, there are good leaks and bad leaks. Of course, this was a good leak." The article in today's Washington Post will no doubt lead to another defense of the indefensible -- "There are good lies and bad lies....."

Lacking Biolabs, Trailers Carried Case for War
Administration Pushed Notion of Banned Iraqi Weapons Despite Evidence to Contrary

On May 29, 2003, 50 days after the fall of Baghdad, President Bush proclaimed a fresh victory for his administration in Iraq: Two small trailers captured by U.S. and Kurdish troops had turned out to be long-sought mobile "biological laboratories." He declared, "We have found the weapons of mass destruction."

The claim, repeated by top administration officials for months afterward, was hailed at the time as a vindication of the decision to go to war. But even as Bush spoke, U.S. intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true.

A secret fact-finding mission to Iraq -- not made public until now -- had already concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. Leaders of the Pentagon-sponsored mission transmitted their unanimous findings to Washington in a field report on May 27, 2003, two days before the president's statement.

The three-page field report and a 122-page final report three weeks later were stamped "secret" and shelved. Meanwhile, for nearly a year, administration and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories.

posted by Mr. mXp @ 9:15 AM 0 comments

Innie Meanie Minie Moe...

...catch a liar by his toe.

So now, is it Bush, Cheney, or Libby? Is Libby lying to cover his ass? Did Cheney lie to Libby to get his way? Or is Bush lying to us all about not knowing about the leak? Hmmm....

Defendant testified that the Vice President later advised him that the President had authorized defendant to disclose the relevant portions of the NIE. Defendant testified that he also spoke to David Addington, then Counsel to the Vice President, whom defendant considered to be an expert in national security law, and Mr. Addington opined that Presidential authorization to publicly disclose a document amounted to a declassification of the document

Good thing the administration restored integrity to the White House. (sic)

Looks like we're ALL wearing the blue dress now, eh?

posted by Mr. mXp @ 12:41 PM 0 comments

Sonno L'Italiano Americano

An interesting thought from Julian Sanchez at Reason:

...a little thought experiment: Imagine you've got a community of proud Americans living abroad for whatever reason, say in England. And suppose that even if they're perfectly happy there and doing what they can to fit in to their adopted society, their identities as Americans remain important to them. Now imagine—and this shouldn't be a stretch—that they begin to feel as though they're under attack as Americans, that the prevailing attitude in the country has become anti-American. They respond by staging a rally at which they wave lots of American flags, asserting their pride in who they are and where they've come from. Do the people who're livid over the Mexican flags find any part of this offensive?

To the 3 of you who visit every so often - discuss.

On a side note, I've an Italian flag hanging in my office. I don't have an American flag. My father, an immigrant, has several American flags in/on his car. Hmm...

posted by Mr. mXp @ 2:25 PM 3 comments