Misc.

The headline in the Albuquerque Journal this morning on President Obama winning the Nobel Peace Prize really pissed everyone off in this house hold. It says, "Nobel unlikely to help Obama". Now, that is a pretty negative headline for a Nobel prize winner. It is ironic, as one of my hiking buddies said this morning, that the only ones who will not understand the importance of this award to an American President is the American people themselves. C'mon, this is an expression of how good the U.S. is looking to other world nations right now. Be happy about that! Or is a striving for peace now not a good thing?

State Government is now facing the full blunt trauma of the economic downturn. Oil and gas prices are still in the crapper and a deficit of 600 million or more in the state budget means pain. It is pain we should all accept. Every special interest group will be howling.

I hope the remedies to this will not mean layoffs of any employees. Cuts can be made through well thought out furloughs that can be spread through the fiscal year to take the sting out. That way everyone in state employment still has a job and health care coverage.It is just medicine that must be taken until times get better.