The Vote

It doesn't look good for the Democratic party and it probably is even worse for the country.

Well, I voted a few days ago. It hurt me, but I voted for two Republicans. They appeared to be slightly less crooked than their Democratic counterparts. Lesser of two weevils.

Otherwise, I went Democratic Party. Unfortunately, in a couple of the most important races the Republican is likely to win. Susanna Martinez, our governor, has the advantages of incumbency, support from Sarah Palin and the likes of the Koch Machine, and her Hispanic heritage and name. Her opponent lacks notable electoral virtues, except for the name he shares with his father, a popular former governor.

Our US Representative is the execrable Steve Pearce, a made guy in the Republican right wing, thoroughly dishonest guy, and advocate of every idiotic policy of the Oil Oligarchy. His opponent is little known, underfunded, and a less than brilliant campaigner. So that’s another vote of mine that is unlikely to do much good.

More interesting was the vote for State Representative. These small scale local races are usually conducted at pretty low intensity. This year’s election featured a rematch between the Republican who won by 8 votes (on the second recount) last time and a Democratic candidate who got off to an excellent start. She looked to be doing pretty well until Dark Money unleashed a massive negative media campaign against her, complete with television spots and a full page newspaper add – a campaign at many times the financial scale that these local races usually attract.

It sure looks like control of the New Mexico State Legislature is really important to some big Republican players out there – Koch Machine or similar operations, I would guess, with their actual identities carefully concealed thanks to the right wing hacks of the John Robert’s Supreme Court.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec...
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st...
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more