I’ve been listening to 52nd Street by Billy Joel. There are a couple of tunes I don’t like, but three that I still love almost a quarter century later: Stilleto, Rosalinda’s Eyes and Until The Night:
Today I do what must be done
I give my time to total strangers
But now it feels as though the the day goes on forever
More than it ever did before
I took a daytrip to El Malpais National Monument and Conservation Area, south of Grants, New Mexico. Here are some of the photos.
Flickr: Photos tagged with malpais
El Malpais National Monument Information
Join the New Mexico Wilderness Alliance, the Coalition for Valle Vidal, the Coalition for Otero Mesa and Natural Resources Defense Council for a rally for America’s wildest public lands, focusing on Otero Mesa, Valle Vidal, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Saturday, February 5th, 2005
2 pm – 5 pm
Kimo Theatre, Downtown Albuquerque
Come learn what you can do to help protect Otero Mesa, Valle Vidal, and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from Oil & Gas Development! Enjoy National Conservation Speakers, Local Music, Pueblo Dancers, and Poetry.
Contact Nathan Newcomer at 505/843-8696 for more information.
New Mexico Wilderness Alliance – Home
Save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Tell Congress to keep the refuge off-limits to oil and gas drilling.
It seems Mariano Grinbank thinks Democrats are worse than Republicans for trying to be their equals at shaping the discussion (“marching orders” 1/6/05). Sure, there are Democrats who believe winning requires adopting Republican tactics. Not that Democrats are quick to obey orders.
Christianity and other religions are not the problem. Your faith should govern how you encounter the world, it should not be used to govern how others live. America has a system of compromises designed to protect the minority from the majority, to make certain that those who have power can’t abuse it for long. If you are doing god’s will, you don’t have any reason to compromise. In this respect, bin Laden is far more conservative than Bush, though both let their faith dictate everything they do.
Progressives have to stay true to the long trend of our nation towards more liberty, equality and opportunity for every person. There is no reason a Christian can’t be a progressive. It’s not the Ten Commandments that are missing from the public forum — it’s the Golden Rule.
The Radical Right has created a truly unholy alliance, wrapping itself in the flag and the bible. This could easily become America’s form of fascism. Your god is not mine. Live your faith, but leave me in freedom and peace. mjh
Read Grinback’s letter….
Continue reading Marching Orders and those who march when told to
Daily Howler: How will major pundits respond to yesterday’s lies by George Bush?
KING OF THE LIARS—GEORGE BUSH: Has there ever been a bald-faced liar to match George W. Bush? At yesterday’s forum on Social Security, the president told a series of dumb, stupid jokes for an audience of perfectly decent Americans. And then he lied right in their faces. Incredibly, their president told them this:
BUSH (1/11/05): As a matter of fact, by the time today’s workers who are in their mid-20s begin to retire, the system will be bankrupt. So if you’re 20 years old, in your mid-20s, and you’re beginning to work, I want you to think about a Social Security system that will be flat bust, bankrupt, unless the United States Congress has got the willingness to act now.
And that’s what we’re here to talk about, a system that will be bankrupt.
“As a matter of fact,” Bush said, without irony, before he offered these bald-faced lies to the decent folks watching him speak.
What is wrong with Bush’s statement? Workers who are in their mid-20s will, by and large, begin to retire shortly after the year 2040. And will Social Security be “bankrupt—flat bust,” as their joke-cracking president said? Sorry. According to the CBO, the system will still pay full scheduled benefits until the year 2052. After that, will SS be “flat bust?” No, it will not, as Bush knows. After 2052, the system will be able to pay 81 percent of scheduled benefits. Even adjusted for inflation, those benefits will be far more than SS recipients are getting today.
Understand: If no changes are made to the system, recipients will get substantially more in 2052 than recipients are getting today! But incredibly, your lying president tells decent citizens that the system will instead be “flat bust!” And by the way: Even according to the pessimistic forecasts of the SS trustees, the system won’t be “bankrupt, flat bust” when young workers start to retire. According to the trustees’ gloomy projections, the system will pay full benefits until 2042. It will then pay 73 percent of scheduled benefits, more than recipients get today.
CNN.com – Official: U.S. ends search for WMD in Iraq – Jan 12, 2005
U.S. inspectors have ended their search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in recent weeks, a U.S. intelligence official told CNN.
The search ended almost two years after President Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq, citing concerns that Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction and may have hidden weapons stockpiles.
Forget about WMDs (and the lies and errors). Now we are on to the real crisis of Social Security! mjh
The Poor Man: Compare and Contrast
Rathergate vs. Saddam’s WMD – A Quantitative Comparison
[including]
Cost to American taxpayer $0.00 vs ~$150,000,000,000 (as of 1/12/05)
Number of American soldiers killed as a result 0 vs 1,357 (as of 1/12/05)
GOP leaders display arrogance BY ROBERT NOVAK
‘We are looking more and more like the Democrats we replaced,” a House committee chairman told me Wednesday. That comment came before he learned, to his surprise and sorrow, that the House Republican leadership had removed Rep. Chris Smith of New Jersey as chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee. The extraordinary purge buttressed the growing impression of arrogance as Republicans enter their second decade of power in the House.
[Two] disparate moves are united by a common purpose of making decisions from the top down. Smith was a chairman who did not take orders. The defeated spending reforms came from conservatives outside the leadership. …
[T]he new majority party resembles the old one in this sense: having long been in power, they act as though they are sure they will keep it forever. …
Majority Leader Tom DeLay and the other members of the Steering Committee wanted to purge Smith two years ago for defying the leadership on veterans spending, but Speaker J. Dennis Hastert saved him. This year, the pressure was so great that he was kicked off the committee. …
The new Appropriations Committee chairman, Rep. Jerry Lewis of California, is expected to be more attentive to the leaders than were his predecessors, whether or not he is a less open-handed spender. Smith’s fate suggests Lewis will be well-advised not to stray too far from what his leaders want.