As Tip O’Neill never said, “All politics is loco.”
ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Mentally Ill Free To Buy Guns in N.M. by Tom Cole
There were nearly 1,000 involuntary commitments of the mentally ill in 2010 alone, according to the state Administrative Office of the Courts. … We are talking about tens of thousands of people in New Mexico who by law shouldn’t have firearms.
New Mexicans should read Tom Cole’s quotations from Harrison Schmitt, Martinez’s proposed head of the state Energy, Minerals and Natural Resources Department. I’ll start with the end of Cole’s column.
ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Harrison Schmitt: in His Words
In one posting, he says a "philosophical wedge" has been driven between the government and its citizens, creating a divide that is wider than at any other time since just before the Civil War.
It seems to me that Schmitt has been doing some of the hammering on that wedge.
ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Harrison Schmitt: in His Words
Schmitt on Anthropogenic Global Climate Change:
"There exists no true concern … about the true effects of climate change — only a poorly concealed, ideologically driven attempt to use conjured up threats of catastrophic consequences as a lever to gain authoritarian control of society."
Classic conservative paranoia: It’s all part of the totalitarian movement of the Left. (Just like the “Patriot” Act and DOMA.) I think Climate Change Deniers are part of a power grab by corporations that will destroy anything and everything for profit. Schmitt also supports endless corporate welfare in the form of “Cold War II” with China.
One more quote from Schmitt, who believes the Minimum Wage and Social Security numbers are unconstitutional:
"The Government violates constitutional equal protection most generally by restricting the land-related economic and recreational activities of residents of Western States when no comparable restrictions are possible in most Eastern States. …”
Yup, Western wilderness is unconstitutional because there aren’t comparable Eastern wildernesses. Apparently, engineers make lousy constitutional scholars. (BTW: I’m all for creating equally large wildernesses in the East. It’s only fair.)
A tangent regarding the endless ways in which abqjournal.com frustrates its users. When you select text to quote from the site, text is appended to that quote, such as this:
Read more: ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Harrison Schmitt: in His Words http://www.abqjournal.com/upfront/12215407746upfront01-12-11.htm#ixzz1AphNqDcA
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Kudos to the Web designer who is so clueless about interface yet able to hack some JavaScript. Now, I know that some media sources object to the common practice among bloggers of quoting from those sources, even though every media source quotes other media sources – somehow, it’s wrong when bloggers do it. Like almost every blogger, I cite the sites I quote from. Still, abqjournal.com insists on tacking on this ugly bit of code. (Note the hideous URL.) I’ll bet this got the coder a pat on the head.
The Albuquerque Journal is lucky to have a writer of the calibre of Winthrop Quigley. Quigley has a knack for stepping through a logical process with dispassion. I’m thankful he takes on Calcified Cal Thomas’ resurrection of the death panels, a coldly calculated effort to frighten the townfolk into raising their pitchforks at the start of the new Congress.
ABQJOURNAL UPFRONT: Doctor Discussion Hardly a Death Panel
By Winthrop Quigley
Journal Staff WriterIt was probably too much to expect that we might enjoy at least a brief respite, now that the elections are over, from much of the nonsense that passes for public discourse. We managed to get only to the second day of the new year before Cal Thomas revived the death panel canard in his syndicated column, which the Journal publishes.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as required by the health care law passed last year, has started paying medical professionals about $111 to spend time discussing with their Medicare-eligible patients anything on their minds. CMS has issued a rule saying that these so-called wellness visits, available annually, can cover the care the patients would like to receive at the end of their lives, if that’s what they want to talk about. Patients have the discussion only if they ask for it. …
Self-described conservatives like Thomas argue in other contexts that given enough information individuals make the best choices for themselves. …
When patients’ desires aren’t known, the health care system has an incentive to provide excessive care and run up expense unnecessarily, if only to avoid a lawsuit. …
In the world of death panel fabulism, it’s better your doctor not know what your preferences are. It’s better that you not know your options. It is a world where personal freedom is threatened by information and achieved through ignorance.
We see just how conservative — and one-sided — Trever is with his recent cartoon on the FCC and Net Neutrality. While *all* of the voices in the cartoon say "it isn’t broken," those wacky meddlers on the FCC insist on "fixing" Net Neutrality with wacky tools. Ha ha. Of course, the No Action / No Change view wants to let business decide how to throttle and divide the Net for its own profit. To insist "it isn’t broken" is to agree that money equals free speech and the Rich should have all the access they can afford. The Net belongs to all equally. The “don’t fix it” crowd wants to change that.
The Open Internet teaches net neutrality to everyone
The Open Internet is a nice little website that strives to explain the topic with very little text, and lovely vector graphics. It flows from top to bottom, with two main illustrations. The first illustration shows how things are today, with the ISP providing access to a raw "stream" of Internet goodness. The second one shows what things might be like if net neutrality is not guaranteed, with "special packages" offering "premium access" to email, Facebook, YouTube or other services many of us spend significant amounts of time browsing.
The site goes on to explain that ISPs would even be able to block access to certain services entirely so they could offer their own competing services — a frightening scenario. All in all, it’s a very quick and enlightening read and it sure beats having to explain the subject over and over again…
President Dwight Eisenhower, a Republican and a war hero, saw the insanity of the Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (his phrase) and tried to warn us January 17, 1961. Half a century later, we continue to piss money away on war and fight each other over the crumbs. Madness. Hat tip to NewMexiKen.
NewMexiKen | Best line to start the day
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower, “The Chance for Peace,” speech given to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Apr. 16, 1953 quoted by Glenn Greenwald – Salon.com
NewMexiKen | Best line to start the day
Military–industrial complex – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In the penultimate draft of the address, Eisenhower initially used the term military-industrial-congressional complex, and thus indicated the essential role that the United States Congress plays in the propagation of the military industry. But, it is said, that the president chose to strike the word congressional in order to placate members of the legislative branch of the federal government.
Military–industrial complex – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Add to the following important facts: Republican registration is around 32% and Independents less than 20%. Even if every non-Dem votes Republican (and they won’t), Republicans only win if Dems don’t vote or do vote Republican.
Democracy for New Mexico: NM Democrats Beating Republicans in Early Voting by 8000+ Votes
Here are the facts:
- 8,000 more Democrats than Republicans have voted early, according to the most recent data provided by the Secretary of State. This data does not include Early Voting that took place on Saturday, traditionally the busiest Early Voting day of the cycle, which is expected to increase the Democrats’ early vote margin considerably.
- Democrats also have a lead among “infrequent voters” — those who typically don’t vote in non-presidential year elections — a group that most experts consider a key turn-out target in order to win in 2010.
- And internal polling from just a week ago showed a much closer governor race — 45-46 — among likely voters. The internal polling in other campaigns also shows tight races, not romps.
Democracy for New Mexico: NM Democrats Beating Republicans in Early Voting by 8000+ Votes
ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Hear Us Roar!
Obama Is Indeed Miracle Worker
OBAMA MAY NOT be the Messiah, but he certainly is a miracle worker. He’s caused (1) the destruction of the Democrat Party, (2) the reformation of the Republican Party, and (3) the Journal to endorse conservative candidates.
And, while the ocean levels may have not dropped, hell has frozen over.
WILLIAM NAEGELE
Albuquerque
ABQJOURNAL OPINION/LETTERS: Hear Us Roar!
Funny. Two years ago, we said something similar about DUHbya: He destroyed all Republican prospects just two years after Karl Rove declared a generation of Republican dominance. By “reformation,” Naegele can’t intend the implication of reform as in make better (not bitter), because the Republican Party is no better than before. To their long-time one-note of Taxed Enough Already, they have added stopping Obama at all costs. Reformed? Hell, they aren’t even re-formed, just badgered into shape by the lunatic fringe. But that’s “conservatives” for you: They fanatically yearn for the past without actually remember how it really was. But why should their hindsight be any better than their foresight.
As for #3: LOL. Naegele, and Belen’s Christiansen, are favorites at Abqjournal because they are the only people who think Abqjournal is the least bit liberal. Snort. Yeah, it was a shock – a shock, I tell you – that Abqjournal endorsed the Republican.