Just when you think Rick Perry is really trying hard to change his polarizing ways, he appoints a controversial gay-baiting preacher to his 2007 Texas Inaugural Committee. Aren't inaugurations supposed to be festive? Not with a buzz kill like Dwight McKissic on the team. Both Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst appointed the inaugural committee and its leaders. McKissic was Perry's pick. He’s always a big hit at right-wing hate rallies, but you have to wonder what Perry was thinking when he tapped the angry rev to help plan the Jan. 16 event around the theme: "Texas: Imagine the Possibilities." With McKissic on board, we imagine that anything is possible. The last time Perry and the preacher shared a stage together, McKissic created an ugly uproar by suggesting that gays and gamblers were to blame for Katrina's deadly destruction in New Orleans. Afterward, a Perry spokesman said the governor, who was running for re-election at the time, didn't agree with the sentiment but that he couldn't go around muzzling every idiot with whom he shares a stage. No, he just appoints him to his inauguration committee.

Gov. Rick Perry has promoted his long-serving (and long-suffering, no doubt) press secretary, Kathy Walt, to special assistant for communications, while Robert Black – Perry's officious spokesman during this year's election rout – advances to chief talker for the governor's office. Ted Royer, a Perry speechwriter, will become deputy press secretary. In her new job, Walt, a statehouse reporter for The Houston Chronicle before she jumped to Perry's office in 2000, will help direct the Governor's Competitive Council, the latest of Perry's economic development initiatives. The new council will combine the wisdom of private industries and the higher ed and K-12 communities in an effort to fatten Texas' economic opportunities. And just think what it might do for Perry's political career as a potential vice presidential nominee. To be sure, Walt will have her work cut out for her. Her new duties will also require her to cajole state agencies into doing their part to bang the drum for Perry's public policy initiatives, no matter how costly or half-baked some of them might be. In other gubernatorial staff changes, Luis Saenz, the strategic brains behind Perry's re-election campaign, will start the new year as a lobbyist, the Statesman reports.

This FAQ from the City Manager's office to Council regarding the Northcross/Wal-Mart controversy is disappointingly matter-of-fact:

What does the developer mean by the term "new urban model"?

A Wal-Mart representative indicated that its use of the term refers to a store with multiple stories or a store that has a parking garage.

Shucks. And we thought it meant they had imported cheeses. (Well, pretty much everything there is an import, but regardless...)

What it really means, however, is squeezing bucks out of non Wal-Mart shoppers John Q. Hipster and Sally WholeFoods, because Wal-Mart's market reach is so massive, they can't open a new store without cannibalizing profits from another one. At sone point, they have to reach outside the Larry the Cable Guy demographic. As a recent story in the Washington Post put it, "Wal-Mart's biggest competitor may still be itself. In areas where the chain has two stores, the opening of a third siphons off 20 percent of sales from the other two."

An addendum to this week's council meeting has been posted on the city's Web site. It reads:

82. Staff presentation regarding the answers to questions from Council and the public regarding the proposed development at Northcross Mall and consideration of direction to the City Manager. (Council Member Brewster McCracken, Council Member Jennifer Kim and Council Member Sheryl Cole)

The language is easily broad enough to allow for action – denial of the site plan due to public notice violations ranking high on neighbors' Christmas lists. We'll find out Thursday if they get a big box under the tree, or what they really want – a smaller or nonexistent Wal-Mart.

UPDATE: We initially titled this Northcross Resolution Posted, when the municipal hair-splitter in us pointed out it's actually an item. So there.

The Responsible Growth for Northcross blog points to a pretty incendiary interview Brewster McCracken delivered to KVUE over the weekend. Dude does not mince words:

"We do have grounds, in fact, a legal responsibility to stop this site plan," McCracken said.

He said a city memorandum may hold the key to legally stopping the go-ahead for the Wal-Mart site plan. He says it's not what's in the memo that's most important, but what was left out.

"We've learned from our own staff that we did not follow the law in the city of Austin in providing legally required notice to impacted neighbors," he said ...

McCracken said if the site plan is rejected, he does not believe Wal-Mart of (sic) Lincoln Development would file suit, because he says both companies are interested in continuing to do business in Austin.

Couple that with the word on RG4N's front page ("City Council members were planning on presenting a resolution for the December 14 council meeting that would suspend the site plan for Northcross. On Friday, we learned that they have changed their minds because they are afraid Wal-Mart and Lincoln Property might sue the city."), and it's an all-out speculation frenzy!

For something that's engendered such a level of commotion and controversy, it's possible that precious few have actually read the Big Box ordinance. Find it and more back up information here.

Not that anyone ever accused the Houston suburbs of being an oasis of understanding, but for fuck's sake, c'mon:

"KATY, Texas - A plan to build a mosque in this Houston suburb has triggered a neighborhood dispute, with community members warning the place will become a terrorist hotbed and one man threatening to hold pig races on Fridays just to offend the Muslims."

Yup, because there's no target more high value than Katy, Texas.

And you thought arresting pot smokers – or, closer to home, using confidential informants of questionable credibility as the sole evidence to convict dozens of people for minor crack possession (as in Tulia or in Edna, Texas) – in the name of the (never-ending) War on Drugs was bad? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet: According to a report in London’s Guardian, fed-paid narco informant Guillermo Ramirez – a.k.a. Lalo – was given more than $220,000 by agents from Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (among other agencies) to infiltrate a Mexican drug cartel in Juarez. Worse, they actually listened in while CI Lalo participated in numerous cartel-ordered murders.

To top it all off, when details of the scandal finally made it up to Washington, D.C. – through Western District of Texas U.S. Attorney Johnny Sutton, and on to then Attorney General John Ashcroft, and DEA head Karen Tandy – the official reaction was merely a threat to fire a colleague, El Paso DEA Special Agent-in-Charge Sandy Gonzalez, if he refused to quit talking about the details of the feds’ deadly relationship with Lalo. Read and be disgusted.

After weeks on end of paint-drying bureaucratic tedium and yawn-inducing dispatches from The Zoning Zone so boring Jeff Jack himself wouldn't touch them if they involved a drive-thru porn and liquor emporium opening in the base of a 600-foot point tower on West Lynn Street, could next week's City Council meeting – the last of the year – finally provide any modicum of intrigue or excitement? Looks that way.

Thank God (or Wal-Mart) – it's the Christmas Miracle!