I’ve been remote, I know. Each day you come back, wondering, ‘where is he?’ ‘He could be hurt!’ ‘Why isn’t he blogging!’ Sorry — my real life overwhelmed my virtual life. It started with cross-country skiing last Friday. Then an old friend came to town. We three ate well. In addition to Mer’s homemade strawberry pie and pots du creme, there was the peanut butter pie at the Range. And fillet mignon. And burritos from Golden Pride (the new huge one on east Central). And we hiked the Ojito again. Then I had two classes to prep and teach. So, here I am days later, finally showing up with my shoes in my hands, sorry I worried you but glad you waited up. mjh
QOTD
From News Hounds: We watch FOX so you don’t have to.
Fox News Channel ad introduces new motto
A sexy female voice-over says “We’re always live” ….
FNC shows re-runs from 11pm ET to 5am ET weekdays.
Maybe I misunderstood and she’s saying “We’re always lies.” Yeah, that must be it – they’re replacing their ridiculous old motto with a more accurate new one.
Anti-Gay Protest Starts at UNM
ABQjournal: Around Northern New Mexico
Anti-Gay Protest Starts at UNM
An anti-gay church group has apparently rescheduled its planned Santa Fe protest, and they plan to kick off their New Mexico activities at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.
Members of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kan., recently announced they would picket eight Santa Fe churches that expressed support for a 21-year-old gay man who was severely beaten in February. The group had planned to picket outside the churches on April 17 and outside City Hall on April 18, but the group has postponed its Santa Fe visit by a week.
According to its Web site, the group will be picketing at UNM on Central and Stanford shortly before noon on April 23. The Santa Fe protests are scheduled for the afternoon of April 23 and for April 24.
37th, 49th, whatever
ABQjournal: N.M. Ranks 37th in U.S. in Per-Pupil Spending By Gabriela C. Guzman
New Mexico ranks 37th in the nation for per-pupil education spending, according to a report recently released by the U.S. Census Bureau.
On average, the state spent $6,870 per student for the 2002-2003 academic school year, which is a 3.8 percent increase over the $6,606 spent during the previous academic year. …
In New Mexico, all revenue sources for public education are distributed equally among the districts. This system has garnered local and national accolades for fairly funding education for all children. …
New Mexico, for example, should be compared to a state like West Virginia: The two states’ populations, the amount of revenue generated from property tax and the number of school-age children mirror each other.
However, West Virginia spent $8,218 per pupil in the 2002-2003 academic school year? $1,300 per pupil more than New Mexico.
New Mexico ranks in the top 10 for federal spending (fourth) and state funding (ninth) on education, according to the census report. But when it comes to local resources, the state plummets to 49th.
Cranky Saint Pete
In his speech to the National Wildlife Federation?s annual meeting, [New Mexico Governor Bill] Richardson claimed: ?There?s an energy bill before Congress. It is a bad bill. It is a bill that says America is going to get out of its energy dependence by drilling, drilling and drilling, production, production, production. It is short on conservation. It is short on energy efficiency. It is short in new technologies for solar, wind and biomass. And it is a bill that on its face should be defeated.?
?There is no energy bill, so Governor Richardson or anyone else critical of ?the bill? doesn?t know what they are talking about. I truly believe the governor would be better served by being constructive instead of mouthing off in speeches about things he couldn?t possibly know about. Maybe the governor intended for his speech to be an April Fools prank, but I?m not laughing,? Domenici said.
I stopped caring what Saint Pete says when he abruptly dropped his lifelong fiscal conservatism. This quote makes him sound like a cranky old man. And, since we have seen his bill before, unless there has been a sudden change, we know who is pulling the April Fool’s joke. Fraud and fakery from the GOP. mjh
Senator Domenici
(202) 224-6621
Office of the Governor
(505) 476-2200
John Leo Lies
USNews.com: John Leo: A regrettable limit on life (4/4/05)
Think of the Terri Schiavo case as another red-versus-blue issue. Congress, Republican-dominated and therefore mostly red, asked the federal courts to take a fresh look. The federal judiciary, in its customary imperial blue, contemptuously told Congress to take a hike. It wouldn’t delay the execution for even a few days. For that, you need to be a convicted cop killer. …
Terri Schiavo, who is severely damaged, but not in pain or dying, not brain dead, and in no position to protest her own execution on grounds that other people consider it best for her. …
She has never been given a PET scan, one of the most sophisticated tests used to diagnose PVS, apparently because her husband refused to allow it. The killing of Schiavo is a scandal successfully redefined as unexceptional and therefore moral.
Somebody needs to represent the brain-dead and John Leo is certainly qualified.
I read Leo in part because it’s good for me, just like a small amount of arsenic or a few leeches might be. If Leo is one of the deep thinkers, they are indeed a shallow bunch. His regular appearance is ample proof the “liberal media” hasn’t been very effective in shutting out the Radical Right (we’re just not as effective as fascists as they will be). Of course, you might argue that Leo is a straw man, a liberal writing as stupidly as possible to make all conservatives look bad. It’s working.
In what I am sure won’t be the last Schiavo column, even though she is now dead, Leo does it all. He misrepresents, distorts, and distracts. Just one of his lies: calling the judiciary ‘blue’ when conservatives have appointed more judges than liberals. The fascist end-game involves destroying the third branch of government — from within or without doesn’t matter to them.
While the vast majority of those surveyed — on the left and the right — said “keep the government out of Schiavo’s fate,” Leo says it is another Red vs Blue issue (and you know who the good guys are). That’s a bald-faced lie told to split people and exploit that split. Typical behavior for Leo and his ilk.
Leo knows little about the facts of Schiavo’s condition and less about medicine. Either he has gone out of his way to stay ignorant or he’s denying the truth.
If Leo is a sincere disability advocate, where has he been? How often has he spoken out on behalf of people in irreversible comas or persistent vegetative states?
The silver lining to Terri’s cloud is that many people are taking the time to talk with their loved ones about how they want to be treated if they should ever end up in such a condition. Don’t just talk — put it in writing. mjh
QOTD
The propaganda machine has plenty of time to repair the damage. Heck, within a few months Fox News will have the true believers convinced that Harry Reid personally pulled out Shiavo’s feeding tube while Nancy Pelosi held her down. — Billmon