Friedman's Best

As I leave for my meeting you simply much read Thomas Friedman today. He is absolutely correct in his observations. After reading it you can begin to understand why America has been let down by the current administration in DC.

Have a great weekend!

On the Road

I will be traveling for a few days. I am not sure I will be able to blog from the great metropolis of Ely, Minnesota so this might be my last missive until Sunday. I will be attending a Council Meeting of the Wilderness Society. I have served on that Council for about 13 years. It is a great organization and it enables me to stay involved with the Wilderness movement. The temperature up there is already plummeting so it should be a change.

The Same But Different

The Albuquerque Journal's editorial this morning on Heather Wilson's protective attitude towards saving the Valle Vidal was confusing at best. I am glad Heather wants to protect that heavenly piece of northern New Mexico. She needs to after signing on with bush to make a joke out of most of this nation's environmental laws over the last five years. This Valle Vidal position of hers is good, but she has a long way to go.

The Journal Editorial says that the Valle Vidal should not be compared to the proposed Otero Mesa Wilderness protections that many New Mexicans feel should be enacted. They are right in that, but only so far as the ecosystems of each of those pristine areas are concerned. They are certainly different but they should both be protected. Yes, one is more beautiful than the other because it has trees and lakes and water.
However, Otero Mesa's Chihuahuan grasslands are just as important for the species it harbors.

I think the real difference in these two New Mexico Landscapes is that big contributions to our Republican congressional delegation comes from Yates Petroleum. They are the ones who want to drill the hell out of Otero Mesa.

The Journal's environmental editorials lately have been consistently pretty good. This one is not.

Now, how Strange is this?

Corn Dog Extrordinaire

The 2005 Corn Dog was awesome. Deputy State Fair Manager Rodger Beimer gets an A+ for his reconnaissance. This corn dog stand was great. Flowers out front too! What more can you ask other than a good cook.

Meagan cooked my corn dog.


Look at the size of this!

This was a full meal and it cost $3.00. This little stand is located in the food court right off main street at the main entrance. Tonight I am considering taking an extra Zocor pill. But this was worth it.

An Astonishing Man

After dining on my corn dog at the fair I went with Rodger to sit with him at lunch in the Sponsors Tent. I think Rodger has had all the carnival food he can handle after three days.

We were joined by a really nice guy by the name of Benjie Segovia. He runs the Country Store at the Fair. He is a marketing specialist with the New Mexico Department of Agriculture. He spends a lot of time in Mexico working to improve the genetic makeup of Mexican cattle. He does that because much of our beef supply comes from Mexico as calves because the depleted grazing lands in Mexico are incapable of fattening up those calves. Apparently those calves are hard to fatten up once they are here too so work is being done on genetics to change that.

Anyway during the course of our discussion we started talking about Mexican laborers in the United States. I asked Benjie if he had ever seen the movie, "A Day Without A Mexican", which is a funny movie about what would happen in Los Angeles if one morning everyone awoke and all Mexican workers had disappeared. It is a hilarious movie.

Benjie then said something I could not believe. He has not been to see a movie since he went to see E.T. Think about that. Think about how much money he has saved that would have otherwise gone to buying buttered popcorn and diet coke.

I didn't think anyone could go that long with out going to a movie. Admittedly, I am on the other end of the spectrum. I go at least 3 or 4 times a month in addition to having three net flix movies delivered to the house every month. I am a movie freak. Anyway, Benjie is a really nice guy and I hope someday soon he will find the time for some big screen viewing.

Click here. This is funny.

Once a Year

It is that time of year where I make another annual pilgrimage. It is not far nor difficult. It is to the New Mexico State Fair. I have been going to the Fair since I was born. My dad and mom used to love to take us to the horse races at the Fair and we would go quite a bit during that season. My dad especially enjoyed going and I never really saw him get more excited about anything than winning at the Track. He did well at handicapping the nags but he was never compulsive about it.

I remember as a toddler going with my sister and twin brother to the terrace on the grand stand where you could look out over the midway's carnival rides and food sellers. That brings me to the point of this blog. The CORN DOG!



Now every year I go to the Fair primarily for my annual search for the best corn dog. I love corn dogs. They are really bad for me so I limit my intake of them to what I can find at the State Fair. All corn dogs are not alike. Some of the vendors there sell pretty bad ones. But there are a few conscientious corn dog vendors who know the importance of perfection. That means a high quality tube steak that has been submerged and saturated with the very best of whatever it is they dip it in. I am pretty sure it is mostly cornmeal, but I know there is a lot of other bad stuff in there, but certainly nothing worse than what is in that dog.

One website said Corn dogs were supposedly created in 1942 for the Texas State Fair by Neil Fletcher. He is dead now another website said. Corn dogs are an excellent source of calories, fat, cholesterol and salt.

My good friend Rodger Beimer, the Deputy State Fair Manager, has become indispensable in finding the location of the finest corn dog vendors as they start setting up shop a few days before opening day. This year he has opined that it is at the food court. The top of the stand has a large red sign that says, Corn Dogs.

I will probably go there tomorrow for lunch. I will take photos.

Kick the Poor When They are Down

This one got past me since I was traveling yesterday, but the New York Times saved the day with their editorial.

How uncaring is it that bush issues a proclamation cutting existing wage rates for rebuilding work contracted by the government in New Orleans? Just when I think it can't get worse with this White House, It Gets Worse!

bush Prayer Gambit

bush has pulled out the religion card by designating Friday as a National Day of Prayer. Maybe he wants people to pray for his Presidency. I would hope if people pray that they also send what ever they can afford to the Red Cross. You know the saying, 'praise the Lord and pass the ammunition.'

I just googled bush and prayer and got 7,550,000 hits in .08 seconds. He has done this before.

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
Mohandas Gandhi

Mexicans Skirt the Minutemen

This is rich. The Mexican Government has sent a convoy north over the border to aid relief efforts on the American Gulf Coast. I wonder if the Minutemen watched. Read about it here.

The Albuquerque Journal said in an editorial this morning that suspending the gas tax might be a good idea. Senator Joe Carraro and Congressmen Pearce came up with that idea. They said we could use the anticipated state surplus to make up the difference for road funding. I still think a windfall profits tax on the oil industry would be a better way of providing relief. Or, perhaps we could stop road construction projects that affect the good legislators districts as a way of making up lost revenues. I am sure Joe and the Journal wouldn't mind losing the Paseo project, would they? Ok, that was a dumb rhetorical question.

The more interesting question is should the gasoline tax be limited to 17 cents per gallon? New Mexico has a low tax compared to most of the states. See here. Seventeen cents might be a lot at $1 a gallon gas, but at $3 a gallon it is very low. It should really be a percentage if we want to properly fund transportation infrastructure. I understand it used to be that way and it might be a time to return to that scheme.

Ritual

Life goes on! Here you see Justin, Noelle and Bobbi immersed in the fall ritual. The bagging and freezing of two bags of medium Hatch Green Chile. MMMM. I took the afternoon off to watch.

Let's see, Noelle leaves Thursday for Bangkok for a semester, Justin leaves for San Francisco to check out an MBA fair and to see some friends on Saturday, and Bobbi returns to Washington, DC to her job on Sunday. We are all over the place.

The Media

Read here to see Domenici defend his committee's funding of flood control in New Orleans.

A good friend sent me this transcript link for the press briefing in the White House today. It is encouraging.

"I'm mad as hell, and I'm not going to take it anymore."

The City That the Clueless Forgot

Dr. John Simkovich, director of the Charleston, S.C.,-based Department of Health and Environmental Control, got word from FEMA to prepare for a planeload of Katrina victims from New Orleans. He was able to assemble a team of physicians to greet the plane, which, FEMA officials told him, was due to arrive in just half an hour. And then . . . .

"Unfortunately, the plane did not come in," Simkovich said. "There was a mistake in the system, coming out through FEMA, that we did not receive the aircraft this afternoon. It went to Charleston, West Virginia." A line of buses and ambulances idled behind him at Charleston International Airport as he described what happened.

To Google

I just googled the words Katrina and incompetence and got 107,000 hits in 0.35 seconds.

Still Funny

Some things are still funny in this surreal atmosphere of natural disaster and unnecessary war. One of the guys at the Albuquerque Journal spotted this in the NYTimes today.

New York Times
Correction: Sept. 6, 2005, Tuesday:

An article in Business Day about Brendon Loy, the Notre Dame student who was one of the earliest to sound the alarm about the potential threat to New Orleans from Hurricane Katrina, misstated the name of Mr. Loy's dog. It is Robbie, not Becky (which is his fiancée's name).

60 Years on the Planet

Those who believe in reincarnation say that we might come back as lesser beings every time. The question then is, "Is this our last trip around." I am just thinking about this on my 60th birthday, which is today, for some reason. I don't know why except maybe for the fact that I think some politicians are certainly on that last trip around. I am thinking of some New Mexico Congressmen and Legislators who are suggesting we should do away with the 17 cent per gallon gasoline tax because of high prices. As Homer Simpson would say, "D'oh". Forget about funding transportation projects and mass transit.

These guys are doing this with a straight face too. All during a time of record breaking profits at the oil companies. Now I would think these guys are geniuses if they suggested it might be time for a windfall profits tax on those companies with the proceeds going to disaster relief.

Mercy Flight

Sunday afternoon I accompanied by brother, Tom Baca, the State of New Mexico Aviation Director to the Albuquerque International Airport. He was there to help General Services Department Secretary Ed Lopez. Governor Richardson made available the state's new Cessna Citation Jet for its first ever official flight to assist the delivery of technicians and blood supplies to Louisiana. Three technicians and a van load of supplies arrived in that hurricane ravaged state just two hours after taking off. This is a great first use for New Mexico's newest state bird. Wylie Coyote will never catch this Road Runner!

Question

Does any one have any "Impeach Incompetence" bumper stickers? Can we get some printed?

Convergence & Timeliness

It seemed from reading newspapers around the country this morning that the many trails are converging smack dab in the middle of bush's lap. There was a story about past success in dramatically bringing down the rate of infection of AIDS in African countries because America, prior to bush, funded education on the use of condoms. Now, the rate will increase once again because this incompetent administration will only give money to the same countries if it is used for preaching abstinence and not educating about condoms. How stupid is this? This could be construed as back door genocide, even if it is just religious fanaticism.

Another trail leads to bush's lap from the devastation of New Orleans' poor and black communities. This can be construed as genocide, even if it were only 100% pure incompetence.

I personally do not think bush is a racist. I do think he is the most incompetent President this nation has ever had.

Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence.
Napoleon Bonaparte

Has bush's sense of timing bottomed out yet? Today he said, "There are now two vacancies on the Supreme Court, and it will serve the best interests of the nation to fill those vacancies promptly," Mr. Bush said. "I will choose in a timely manner a highly qualified nominee to succeed Chief Justice Rehnquist."

Now, is this a good sense of timing? Urging quick action to get another right winger into the Supreme Court while bodies are still floating in the waters of the Gulf Coast?

Couldn't he have said, "we have many priorities in the gulf states right now and we will get to these other matters when we can." Has Rove had a stroke?

Read Frank Rich today. It is harsh but it is accurate.

Saturday Reading

Sometimes Maureen Dowd of the New York Times is a little over the top for me. But today she might be right on the money.

One Question

Who is in charge of the Federal Government's on the ground emergency response teams? And, one more question shouldn't bush find someone that is a proven administrator and put him in charge of this relief effort immediately? Obviously, his White House and FEMA folks haven't risen to the challenge and something needs to be done today. This is heartbreaking. Remember General George C. Marshall? He was the guy in charge of the Marshall plan to bring aid and relief to Europe after World War II. He made it possible for that war torn continent to recover. We will need no less than a man of that caliber to see the Gulf Coast protected and renewed. That person isn't one of bush's current cronies and so bush should throw a wide net.

If you don't do anything else today. Read this.

Oops!

Many folks have said they want to comment on my ranting. You can now do so. I had not set the program up to let that happen, but now it can. Discussion is welcome.

What Would Teddy Do?

I had a great conversation at lunch today with my regular noon time buddy, Tim Flynn-O'Brien. He related a discussion with a friend of his yesterday about the current players in the White House and the controlling GOP majority in Congress. Democrats like Senator Landrieu in Lousiana have helped them.

The discussion centered around the fact that this crew in DC are primarily concerned with instant gratification. Tax cuts for the rich, war profits for the favored corporations, development over conservation, and the eradication of social safety nets.


Think back to that Republican Teddy Roosevelt. According to the National Geographic, the area of the United States placed under public protection by Theodore Roosevelt, as National Parks, National Forests, game and bird preserves, and other federal reservations, comes to a total of approximately 230,000,000 acres or about 84,000 acres per day during his Presidency! See it here.

Think now about george bush reversing a policy that has for decades protected the wetlands that protected New Orleans in the favor of developers. Think about his cutting flood control budget dollars for New Orleans to fund his war in Iraq.

Theodore Roosevelt embarked on his remarkable conservation odyssey at a time when many people would have thought it unnecessary, because the United States at that time had untold vacant lands that had not been exploited. So why worry? Well, Roosevelt had something in his character and sense of ethics that bush and his cronies have totally lost, and that is concern for the future. bush and his buddies will not be able to worm or spin their way out of this malfeasance. The hurricane was not their fault, but some of the aftermath can be pinned directly upon them and rightly so.

"The conservation of natural resources is the fundamental problem. Unless we solve that problem it will avail us little to solve all others."---Theodore Roosevelt