Monthly Archives: March 2005

Mine

He’s Coming Back! – Updated 3-15

ABQjournal: Bush To Push Plan in N.M.

WASHINGTON? President Bush is expected to visit New Mexico? possibly next week? as part of his national tour to drum up support for his Social Security reform proposals.

In a speech in Louisiana on Friday, Bush said he was going to “head out West” to New Mexico, Colorado and Arizona after visiting Florida next week.

White House Spokesman Taylor Gross confirmed that the president would be visiting New Mexico as part of his Social Security tour but declined to release the exact date or town.

Hey, Duhbya, You're Fired!

Dump Bush photos by mjh

Update 3-15

ABQjournal: Around New Mexico
Bush Coming To Albuquerque

WASHINGTON — President Bush will visit Albuquerque next week as part of his national tour to promote Social Security reform, the White House announced Monday.

Bush will arrive in Albuquerque next Monday [3/21] and will spend the night at an unspecified location.

On Tuesday morning [3/22], he will lead a town-hall style discussion about his proposal to invest a portion of Social Security revenues in private investment accounts, said White House spokesman Taylor Gross.

Gross said details, such as when and where in Albuquerque the town hall event will be held and who will be invited to attend, will be released later this week.
—–

SENATOR JEFF BINGAMAN
SPEAKING ON SOCIAL SECURITY: A CRISIS?

Wednesday, March 23, 7:00 PM

UNM Law School, Room 2401

Stanford Drive, north of Lomas, south end of golf course
All are welcome ? bring your friends

loco

Update on Santa Fe Hate Crime

ABQjournal: 3 More Indicted In Gay Man’s Beating By Jeremy Pawloski, Journal Staff Writer

Deputy District Attorney Shari Weinstein, who presided over defendant Isaia Medina’s arraignment Friday in District Court, said Maestas suffered a broken nose, facial injuries, a concussion and lung injuries from “aspirating on his own blood” when he lost consciousness during the attack. …

Weinstein said in court that Medina was the “most culpable” of the six males charged in the beating, and that Medina, by his own admission, “straddled the victim” as he repeatedly punched Maestas in the face. …

Medina’s sister, Brandie Ulibarri, 26, said outside court that her brother “never starts fights” and that it hurts her when the issue of him being prejudiced against gays, or anyone else, comes up.

“He has lots of bisexual, gay and lesbian friends, so I don’t think that’s the issue with him,” she said.

But Weinstein said during the hearing that all of the defendants psyched each other up in the car ride to La Quinta, exhorting one another to “(mess) up the faggots.”

The three men newly charged in connection with Maestas’ beating are:
Joseph Cano, 18;
Jonathan Valdez, 20; and
Paul Montoya, 20, all of Santa Fe.

Each is charged with one count each of aggravated battery, conspiracy, contributing to the delinquency of a minor and criminal damage to property.

Previously charged in the case:
Isaia Medina;
David Trinidad, 17;
Gabriel Maturin, 20.

Trinidad is charged in his indictment with one count each of aggravated battery, battery, conspiracy and criminal damage to property. The District Attorney’s Office has said it intends to seek adult sanctions against Trinidad although he is 17.

All six men charged in the beating that put James Maestas, 21, in the intensive care unit at St. Vincent Hospital for over a week will be prosecuted under New Mexico’s “hate crimes” statute, the state Attorney General’s Office announced Friday.

[previous related entry: mjh’s Blog: Evil Among Us]

Letters-to-the-Editor

A Progressive Responds to a Moderate’s Slap, While the Radical Right Arrests Them Both

Jim Scarantino is an odd duck. He’s an environmentalist AND a Republican. No, seriously, stop laughing! He’s a Republican AND he dislikes Bush — lots more of those around, not that they stopped Bush from retaking power. He’s not afraid to confound expectations — remember, he calls himself a “moderate Republican” (the more popular term is RINO). He’s like a silver minnow at a Republican fish-fry.

Now, I can say that we ought to conserve more energy and the world would benefit in countless ways. But I’m a known liberal, so no one would be surprised. But when a REPUBLICAN says:

“Global warming, or more accurately global climate change, is real and we’re causing it. Only wackos, idiots, Exxon, Peabody Coal and corrupt politicians are still in denial. Feel free to insert ‘The Bush White House’ anywhere in that list, unless you think I’ve got it covered.”

You’ve got to draw a breath — a Republican wrote that?! Kudos. But before we start to wonder if maybe there was a problem at voter registration or he’s just trying (weakly) to rebel against hippie parents, make sure you see the full context.

Not only is Jim gung-ho for nuclear power (uniting him with Dick Cheney, no moderate), not only does he worship St Pete, er, like Domenici more than I do…, who sold his own fiscal conservatism for cheap, but Jim seems to be a disciple of John Leo. Leo, you shouldn’t care, is a one-man army fighting against the greatest scourge since Communism: “Political Correctness.” Leo has countless examples of liberal universities and others showing just what idiots they are. “Political Correctness” is one of so many strawmen used by conservatives to keep political passions inflamed. It’s money in the bank for them.

I’m not saying that there is no such thing as “Political Correctness.” However, I am saying that it doesn’t dominate liberalism, and using it to tar other facets of liberalism is not valid or even bright. 80% of complaints about PC would be eliminated by this: think more about what you say about others and less about what they say about you. Doesn’t sound quite as threatening as gay-enviro-communism.

Still, the Radical Right, the frightened Right, has made an art of accusing people of things they don’t do.

It wouldn’t be a Republican attack piece if it didn’t skewer some liberal icon. His choice: Ed Abbey, the late curmudgeon and misanthrope. Conservatives can’t stand liberals respecting someone with flaws — in spite of their own worship of Goldwater, Nixon, Raygun, and the Bushes. Abbey was the antithesis of the forces that destroyed Glen Canyon to create Lake Foul — the same forces that have brought the Republicans to power. Abbey is deeply connected to an American tradition of love of wilderness, wildness, frontiers and independence, with a mistrust of conformity and corporate homogeneity. Like him or not, he was a great American, closer to Teddy Roosevelt than George Bush (any way you want to parse that).

In an article that will mostly be read by progressive thinkers, Jim has the laudable guts to say: maybe you’re close-minded about something. But he has to wrap that useful message in such dim-witted right-wing terms as to make it even harder to take. Why bother? Of course, what conservative journal would allow him in print?

If we are going to start talking about Nuclear Power, I have some questions. Which countries are the biggest consumers of nuclear power? I’d guess Germany (or some country in Europe) and Japan. But I understand that Germany is closing nuclear plants — why?

How is opposition to nuclear power proof of moral bankruptcy or hypocrisy? Why must we choose to rape ANWR, Valle Vidal, Otero OR build nuclear plants? Aren’t there other options, like conservation, that we might try for consensus on?

Jim knows as well as the rest of us: when someone comes to your door to haul you off for what you’ve said, that person won’t be a liberal. It’s politically incorrect to observe that our country is far less secure, financially and politically, than it was before the Radical Right assumed power. mjh

loco

Dumbest Quote of the Day

ABQjournal: Bill Saying N.M. Marriage Must Be Between Man and Woman Advances to House By Kate Nash, Journal Capitol Bureau

Sen. William Sharer said his bill aims to provide the best the state can for its children.

“Ninety percent of the men in prison today don’t have a dad,” he said. “Obviously, they have a father, but they don’t have a dad. And that’s where I’m coming from, how can we help those guys have a dad?”

It has always struck me as a ridiculous lie that letting two people of the same gender marry weakens marriage. But even that argument isn’t as stupid as the one above. How is denying two loving people their legal rights going to translate into dads for delinquents? Are homosexuals actually to blame for dads abandoning their progeny? Isn’t this really a problem with heterosexuals? Maybe they shouldn’t be allowed to marry (or required to adopt a convict).

Let’s not forget that Republicans (1) don’t give a damn about people in prison unless they have some comforts to be stripped away and (2) don’t legislate social change (ha!). mjh

MARRIAGE BILL VOTE

Here is the Senate’s 25-12 vote Wednesday approving a measure (SB 597) to define marriage as a contract between a man and a woman.

Voting yes, in favor of the measure, were 17 Republicans and eight Democrats. Voting against the bill were no Republicans and 12 Democrats. Not voting or excused were one Republican and four Democrats.

REPUBLICANS VOTING YES
Rod Adair (Roswell)
Vernon Asbill (Carlsbad)
Mark Boitano (Albuquerque)
Joseph Carraro (Albuquerque)
Kent Cravens (Albuquerque)
Dianna Duran (Tularosa)
Clint Harden (Clovis)
Stuart Ingle (Portales)
Gay Kernan (Hobbs)
Steve Komadina (Corrales)
Carroll Leavell (Jal)
Steven Neville (Aztec)
William Payne (Albuquerque)
Leonard Lee Rawson (Las Cruces)
John Ryan (Albuquerque)
William Sharer (Farmington)
H. Diane Snyder (Albuquerque)

DEMOCRATS VOTING YES
Carlos Cisneros (Questa)
Joseph Fidel (Grants)
Tim Jennings (Roswell)
Richard Martinez (Espanola)
Mary Kay Papen (Las Cruces)
Lidio Rainaldi (Gallup)
Bernadette Sanchez (Albuquerque)
James Taylor (Albuquerque)

DEMOCRATS VOTING NO
Dede Feldman (Albuquerque)
Mary Jane Garcia (Do?a Ana)
Phil Griego (San Jose)
John Grubesic (Santa Fe)
Linda Lopez (Albuquerque)
Cisco McSorley (Albuquerque)
Gerald Ortiz y Pino (Albuquerque)
John Pinto (Tohatchi)
Shannon Robinson (Albuquerque)
Nancy Rodriguez (Santa Fe)
Michael Sanchez (Belen)
Leonard Tsosie (Crownpoint)

DEMOCRATS NOT VOTING
Ben Altamirano (Silver City)
Pete Campos (Las Vegas)
Cynthia Nava (Las Cruces)
John Arthur Smith (Deming)

REPUBLICANS NOT VOTING
Sue Wilson Beffort (Sandia Park)

poetry

“It was as if I’d had a hallucination.”

The Writer’s Almanac – MARCH 7 – 13, 2005

On this day in 1923, Robert Frost’s poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening,” was published in the New Republic magazine. It was Frost’s favorite of his own poems, and he called it, “My best bid for remembrance.” He’s remembered for many of his poems today, but that one is his best known and one of the most popular poems in American literature.

Though it’s a poem about winter, Frost wrote the first draft on a warm morning in the middle of June. The night before he had stayed up working at his kitchen table on a long, difficult poem called “New Hampshire” (1923). He finally finished it, and then looked up and saw that it was morning. He’d never worked all night on a poem before. Feeling relieved at the work he’d finished, he went outside and watched the sunrise.

While he was outside, he suddenly got an idea for a new poem. So he rushed back inside his house and wrote “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” in just a few minutes. He said he wrote most of the poem almost without lifting his pen off the page. He said, “It was as if I’d had a hallucination.”

He later said that he would have liked to print the poem on one page followed by “forty pages of footnotes.” He once said the first two lines of the poem, “Whose woods these are, I think I know, / his house is in the village though” contained everything he ever knew about how to write.

Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

loco

We Pay Taxes, So You Shut Up!

ABQjournal: Otero Mesa Drilling No Longer Economical
By Chuck Moran, president
Independent Petroleum Association of New Mexico

The petroleum industry in New Mexico (you know, the businesses that pumped $1.3 billion into state and local tax coffers in 2004) … the state’s vital resource industry … and my industry is very good at extracting them safely with a minimal impact to the land.

[versus]

disingenuous eco-obstructionist groups … completely unnecessary and highly expensive systems … their yacht-and-caviar-foundations… primarily funded by out-of-state money … self-appointed protectors of the land abuse the public trust in pursuing their own agenda? regardless of what it costs or who gets hurt … the obstructionist, a.k.a. “environmentalist,” community

The BLM readily admits that the Otero Mesa resource management plan is the most restrictive ever issued in U.S. history. [mjh: Uncannily, just a few days ago, I predicted this argument]

If lined pits were not safe, efficient and cost-effective they wouldn’t be the standard for all oil and natural gas production everywhere else in New Mexico, let alone the rest of the nation and world.

The sad? and largely unknown? part of all this is that the activist groups (primarily funded by out-of-state money) that claim to be “protecting” New Mexico lands for the benefit of the people are actually doing just the opposite. Their self-indulgent, perverted view of reality is denying us all economic opportunity and prosperity.

The disinformation campaign must go on. [mjh: his words, not mine]

¡Que lástima, pobrecito! Things are so hard for an oil executive. People just aren’t satisfied to take a payoff and shut up — they expect the industry to pay taxes AND stay away from 1% of the land. If Mr Moron can’t earn a living with oil, he should run for President.

But first, let me admit, I have tasted caviar and I actually am self-appointed, but I don’t own a yacht or SUV (I’ll bet $100 that Mr Moron owns both).

Chuck certainly earned his bonus with this piece. He reminds us all how valuable his industry is (no threat intended). He paints those who speak up as “self-indulgent, perverted” and not from around here (tell that to the thousands of NM hunters opposed to drilling in Otero). By relentlessly slandering his opponents, he salts the earth so that people just won’t know what to think or who to believe — a page from Karl Rove, the Architect of Victory. Good job, Chuck! mjh

Dump Duhbya

One Christian feeling hijacked by politics

One Christian feeling hijacked by politics By Gena Caponi Tabery

I live in a country that is increasingly eager to challenge its citizens’ loyalty, among people of faith increasingly determined to dispute the faith of others. Some people who call themselves Christians – and some church leaders – are beginning to redefine Christianity in such a way as to exclude worshipers with whom they disagree. I fear a religion in which ideology is more important than theology.

If someone – like me – who has worshiped as a Christian for more than 50 years suddenly feels afraid of the extremes of that religion – what must it be like for those of different beliefs, or of unbelief? …

If I question political decisions, am I un-American? If I don’t agree with a fundamentalist, am I un-Christian? …

Nowadays, so many people are looking for a fight. I’m not. Neither am I afraid to pray in public. But I am afraid of my faith being hijacked to promote someone else’s political agenda. I am afraid of my faith being used as a weapon in a crusade against anyone who dares to think or believe differently. … I don’t want to be mistaken for a hijacker