The Observer Online — County extends bus service to Cochiti Lake, Jemez Springs, By TOM TREWEEK/OBSERVER STAFF REPORTER

Sandoval County … officials kicked off two new bus routes, dubbed the Sandoval Easy Express, that will run from the Rio Rancho Wal-Mart into the rural areas of the county.

Route 4 runs to Jemez Springs, with stops at Zia Pueblo, San Ysidro, Jemez Pueblo and Cañon. Route 22 heads to the village of Cochiti Lake, stopping at Santa Ana Pueblo, Algodones, San Felipe Pueblo, Santo Domingo Pueblo, Peña Blanca and Cochiti Pueblo. Both routes make stops at the Presbyterian Medical Center on High Resort Boulevard and the Sandoval County Rail Runner station in Bernalillo. County officials are also planning a route to Cuba. …

Service … runs from Monday to Friday each week.

The first bus leaves Jemez Springs at 6 a.m. and the last bus returns at 7:05 p.m. The first bus out of Cochiti Lake takes off at 6:20 a.m., with the last bus arriving at 6:45. The buses will be run by the Santa Fe-based All Aboard America, which also operates the Park & Ride bus service. …

There will be no fares for the first two months while the county finalizes the rate structure. According to county Public Works Director Phil Rios, the fees will likely be no more than $3 and will be based on the length of travel, similar to the zone system now used by the Rail Runner Express.

http://www.observer-online.com/articles/2007/04/21/news/story2.txt

I like this picture and think it is funny. Maybe we need to work Sigourney Weaver into the scene. peace, mjh

updated 11/29/07

ABQjournal North_News: Chávez Talks Job Cuts at LANL By Dan Boyd, Journal Staff Writer

On Monday, Chávez acknowledged he probably won’t win over many of the “trust-fund elite” [mjh: Said with a sneer.] in Santa Fe, but played up his New Mexico heritage and said he thinks he can connect with working-class voters. [mjh: Yes, the impeccable Chávez radiates working class and a fake warmth.]

Although more than seven months remains until next year’s primaries, early surveys lend credence to that prediction. A recent SurveyUSA poll of 2,100 registered New Mexico voters said Udall holds a sizable lead over Chávez and would probably win the election if it were held today. [mjh: Thus the attacks: Cut your opponent down with the death of a thousand cowardly cuts.]

Mind you, I enjoy being an outsider, a white guy born into pacific and asian culture — I’m a native Hawaiian — growing up on the edge of black culture, living immersed in the unique diversity of multi-cultural New Mexico. Marty is entitled to play his “native son” card, but he should stop studying the Republican playbook. Everyone in New Mexico came from someplace else, some more recently than others. Still, as someone once asked in a movie, “what would life be like without an asshole?”

Marty said, “There’s some things where you fight to the end, you don’t cave like [Udall] did.” Tom Udall was the only Representative from NM and one of the few in the nation to vote against the deceptively named PATRIOT Act. He did not cave. That one act may be reason enough to support Udall. mjh

PS: In the paper, the headline reads “Chávez Criticizes Udall”; on the Web, the headline is “Chávez Talks Job Cuts at LANL.” Headline editors are gods.

Udall’s track record makes him fit to take Senate seat – Opinion

Editor,

I spent 1,200 hours working on Rep. Tom Udall’s 1998 campaign for Congress and, like many others, voted to elect Udall because of his integrity, his sense of justice and his outstanding work during his eight years as attorney general. I didn’t expect him to take orders from whatever inflamed portion of the public had something to say on any national scale, but, rather, to exercise his carefully considered judgment on issues and on specific votes. …

Fortunately, a vast majority of New Mexicans seem to agree. The only poll in this regard taken by Heath Haussamen gave [Udall] 69 percent, Mayor Martin Chavez 29 percent and Leland Lehrman 2 percent. …

Combating … corporate interests is precisely why I support Udall for the Senate. His advocacy and representation of New Mexico will be outstanding. He will win after clobbering the primary candidates and presumably Rep. Heather Wilson in the general election. New Mexicans should be really glad about this and not get sidetracked by nonsensical utterances that he is not fit to be in the Senate or not tough enough.

Stephen Fox
Daily Lobo reader

alibi . november 22 – 28, 2007 Democrats Against the War. Oh, yeah? Since when? By Jim Scarantino

In the Senate primary, only one credible candidate has opposed the war from the beginning. Tom Udall voted against war authorization. He also voted against the PATRIOT Act. His courageous stands can’t be discounted as “easy” for a congressman from a safe seat. Other Democrats with safe seats folded when their country needed them to be strong (examples: Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, Diane Feinstein). And, if you study its demographics, Udall’s district is not all that “safe.” Udall’s immediate predecessor in the job was a right-wing Republican.

Martin Chavez never spoke against the war until recently. He has explained he was preoccupied with running the city. But other big-city mayors opposed the war before the first bombs fell. The thousands of anti-war New Mexicans who marched down Central, between rows of Chavez’ police officers, also had other things to do. Back in those days, let’s not forget, Chavez was courting Republicans for his upcoming re-election.

Most likely every Democratic candidate who says they now oppose the Iraq War is sincere. For many, we can only take them at their word. But a few others have proven their opposition to America’s most idiotic war goes deeper than expedient words offered at campaign time.

I have my choice for the person I — a would-be pacifist — would most like to punch in the face: The Despicable Man of the Year.

Everything about this man infuriates me. His cluelessness. His selfishness. His power to defy nature; his willingness to defy all sense and decency. Despicable.

The Associated Press: Huge Water Park Planned for Ariz. Desert, By CHRIS KAHN

MESA, Ariz. (AP) — By tapping rivers and sucking water from deep underground, developers have covered Arizona with carpets of Bermuda grass and dotted the parched landscape with swimming pools, golf courses and lakeshore homes.

Now another ambitious project is in the works: A massive new water park that would offer surf-sized waves, snorkeling, scuba diving and kayaking — all in a bone-dry region that gets just 8 inches of rain a year.

“It’s about delivering a sport that’s not typically available in an urban environment,” said Richard Mladick, a Mesa real-estate developer who persuaded business leaders in suburban Mesa to support the proposal called the Waveyard. [mjh: Rhymes with graveyard. It’s about money and an utter indifference to anything else.]

Artists’ drawings of the park show surfers gliding through waves that crash onto a sandy beach and kayakers navigating the whitecaps of a wide, roiling river. Families watch the action from beneath picnic umbrellas. If constructed, the park would use as much as 100 million gallons of groundwater a year.

Mladick, 39, said he wanted to create the kind of lush environment he remembers from growing up in Virginia Beach, Va., and surfing in Morocco, Indonesia, Hawaii and Brazil.

“I couldn’t imagine raising my kids in an environment where they wouldn’t have the opportunity to grow up being passionate about the same sports that I grew up being passionate about,” he said. [mjh: Use your imagination a little more: Move to Hawaii!]

Over twenty years ago, The Beach Waterpark came to Albuquerque. I wrote a letter to the editor about the foolishness of *wanting* — let alone building — a waterpark in the desert. At the time, I heard “Albuquerque sits on a huge underground aquifer that will last for centuries.” Yes, this was the consensus, a view very convenient to development. Not ten years passed before we started to wake up. But even when we slowly get a clue, we refuse to look back at our ignorance as an indication of how much remains. We’ll run out of water, air and earth long before we deplete our ignorance. mjh

PS: Contrast MalDick (sic) to the parents of Malkolm Boothroyd, who are spending a year birding while using as little of fossil fuels as they can. Here is a family that is having a great adventure together in the most positive way. If MalDick got into birding, he’d build the world’s largest aviary and fly everywhere stealing birds from nature. Despicable dimwit.

PPS: Following the bankruptcy of the Beach, a new waterpark is being built in Albuquerque, while the old Beach remains a memorial to our foolishness.