Opening Night H.S. Football Wrapup

8-27-10 High School Football Recap - Mayfield Cruises, LCHS Wins, Onate Humbled, Hatch Dominates, MVCS Loses Tough One

Mike Bradley's Mayfield Trojans returned Chapin's opening kickoff for a touchdown out of their dangerous starburst return play and the beating began. MHS never stopped pouring it on until the final gun. When it was all said and done El Paso Chapin was on the short end of lopsided 51-8 loss at Irvin High School Stadium.

At the Field of Dreams in Las Cruces Jim Miller's Las Cruces Bulldawgs made just enough big plays to outlast a talented El Paso Eldorado squad. LCHS quarterback Jeremey Buurma had a huge night in the Bulldawgs 23-20 win with 280 yards of total offense split almost evenly between running and passing.

The Onate Knights 2010 debut was a humbling one in El Paso last night. El Paso Franklin dominated the line of scrimmage from start to finish in an easy 49-2 win over Kelly McKee's squad which lost most starters off last year's solid 9-3 team.
Mesilla Valley Christian School dropped its opener on the road at Marfa, Texas. The final score was 40-30.
Hatch Valley Dominates Second Half, Downs Tucumcari
8-27-10 HATCH, N.M. - Hatch Valley High School’s running game wore out Tucumcari High School in the second half en route to a 35-18 win on Friday. In the second half, the Bear rushing attack accounted for 266 yards and four touchdowns, two each by Miguel Herrera and Joshua Chavez.
Tucumcari led 12-7 at the half but the off season conditioning paid off for the Bears following halftime as they dominated the second half on the ground.
“We hang our hat on the running game,” Hatch Valley Coach Jack Cisco said. “Our boys pull tires in the offseason with the rim, a chain and a harness. I was pleased to see them get after it in the second half after being so nervous in the first half tonight.”
The Rattlers scored back-to-back touchdowns in the first half on passes from senior quarterback Dalton Wood to climb out of an early 7-0 deficit. At the beginning of the second half the Bears took control. Hatch Valley needed less than two minutes to take the lead for good when Chavez scored his first touchdown to give his team a 13-12 advantage. With 1:44 left in the third Herrera broke a 78 yard run for a score to make it a 20-12 contest. The Rattlers didn’t give up and mounted a drive that finished as Wood connected Jakus Martinez on their second touchdown combination of the night. The two point conversion failed, leaving the score at 20-18 with 6:10 remaining in the fourth quarter. From that point on, it was all Bears, with the crushing blow coming as a Wood pass was intercepted by Hatch Valley’s Chavez with 4:47 remaining.
Combined with the dominance on the ground in the second half, the Bear defense limited Wood and the Tucumcari passing attack to just 34 yards.
Cisco made defensive adjustments at halftime.
“We changed the front and switched our stunt angles,” Cisco said. “We played man to man defense in the second half, which we didn’t do in the first half.”
Wood finished the game 12-27 passing for 128 yards and three touchdowns with the one ill-timed interception, while Bear quarterback Geno Angel didn’t attempt a pass in the second half completing just two of his six passes in the game for 65 yards.
Hatch Valley from Class 3A moves to 1-0 and will travel to Lordsburg next week while Tucumcari of Class 2A is 0-1 and plays at New Mexico Military Institute next week.

Opening Night H.S. Football Wrapup

Zuckerman - Most Fiscally Irresponsible Gov't in History

Mort Zuckerman

Mort Zuckerman in U.S. News and World Report - There is an instinctive conclusion among the American public that President Obama's stimulus package has failed to create a sustained recovery. Unemployment has increased, not declined; consumers have retrenched; housing starts have crashed along with mortgage applications; and there is a fear that a double-dip recession may very well be in the pipeline. The public perception, reflected in Pew Research/National Journal polls, is that the measures to combat the Great Recession have mostly helped large banks and financial institutions, and that's a view common to Republicans (75 percent) and Democrats (73 percent). Only one third of either political leaning thinks government policies have done a great deal or a fair amount for the poor.

There is another instinctive conclusion among the American people. It is that the national deficit, and the debts we have accumulated, are of critical political importance. On the national debt, the money the government has spent without the tax revenues to pay for it has produced mind-numbing numbers so large as to be disconnected from reality. Zeros from here to infinity. The sums are hard to describe; it is hard to describe an elephant, but you know one when you see one. The public knows that, shuffle the numbers as you may, the level of debt is unsustainable. Read more here:

Zuckerman - Most Fiscally Irresponsible Gov't in History

Miller - Worried About a "Franken" Incident

Al Franken

Conservative political phenom Joe Miller is warning that the national Republican establishment is dispatching attorneys to aid incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the looming battle over absentee votes in Alaska's GOP Senate primary, adding: "It concerns us anytime that somebody lawyers up and tries to pull an Al Franken, if you will." Republican officials confirmed Thursday that Sean Cairncross, the chief counsel for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is traveling to Alaska to help Murkowski prepare for the absentee-ballot count on Aug. 31. "We're up against a machine," Miller told Fox News Thursday evening. "Clearly, they're putting their pressure to bear. But I think we're going to prevail in the end." Miller stunned political insiders Tuesday when he appeared to edge out Murkowski for the GOP Senate nomination, despite the fact that she outspent his campaign by an estimated 10-to-1 margin. With all Alaskan precincts reporting in, Miller has a 1,668 vote lead. However, an estimated 7,600 absentee ballots remain to be counted. Some observers have speculated Miller may be at a disadvantage in the absentee balloting, because absentee ballots were mailed in before the last-minute surge in voter sentiment that appeared to put Miller over the top. But Miller, a West Point graduate who was awarded a Bronze Star in the first Gulf War, told Fox News Thursday evening that "we feel pretty good about those [absentee ballots]." Read more here:

Miller - Worried About a "Franken" Incident

Debra White - Why Run for Office?

Debra L. White

Friday morning NewsNM guest Debra White, a candidate for the New Mexico House of representatives posted her views on NMPolitics.net.
From NMPolitics.net - Ok, so here I am one day sitting on the couch and I realize I’m screaming at the television. Why, you ask? Well, it’s like this: I’m so frustrated with the way the country’s going; the state is out of money; folks are losing jobs left, right, and center; and businesses are leaving the state in droves. Our schools are broke, teachers are being furloughed, you have to wait three hours to get a new driver’s license, state government is corrupt, and if that’s not bad enough let me catch my breath and I’ll add some more to the list. Read more here:

Debra White - Why Run for Office?

Progressive Magazine: Iraq a Complete Failure

The United States is ending its combat mission in Iraq, leaving it in a complete mess. On virtually every count, the country is in the doldrums. Back in March, some commentators crowed about the parliamentary elections there, and how this vindicated the Bush Administration’s “nation-building” afterthought of a project.

Wall Street Journal alum (and, I’m embarrassed to admit, a schoolmate of mine) Tunku Varadarajan claimed at the Daily Beast website that “what Iraq has achieved in five years is a political wonder, and those who would deny that are being very, very dishonest.” Resident New York Times Middle East expert Thomas Friedman declared, “Former President George W. Bush’s gut instinct that this region craved and needed democracy was always right.” Read more here:

Progressive Magazine: Iraq a Complete Failure

Browns: How Many More BORDER Deaths?

Floyd & Mary Beth Brown

The shocking discovery of 72 murdered Hispanic migrants on a ranch just south of the U.S. border should be a wakeup call to all Americans that the security of our beloved nation begins at home. Here in Arizona we have seen firsthand the bloody consequences of the crime and violence being imported by criminal aliens across our borders. Peaceful Phoenix has been transformed into the kidnapping capital of America. A cadre of dedicated state and local officials has attempted to quell the violence. The result has been to watch these local leaders be sued, investigated and harassed by the police powers of the Obama administration. When will this insanity end? Read more here:

Browns: How Many More BORDER Deaths?

Ken Blackwell - The Tea Party

Ken Blackwell

Editors' note: this piece is co-authored by Robert Morrison. Michael Gerson is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush. He’s now a columnist for the Washington Post. He’s taken on the TEA Party movement in several recent columns. Mike Gerson was entirely right to commend the TEA Party for giving a quick axe to a local activist who wrote a parody of slaves asking “ Massa ” Lincoln not to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. It was a wholly offensive and witless piece that only fueled the left’s false claims that the TEA Party is racist. If only the left would give such a quick heave-ho to such thoroughly offensive characters as Bill (Mocker) Maher. Read more here:

Ken Blackwell - The Tea Party

Fed Chairman Jawbones at Jackson Hole

Ben Bernanke

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke said the U.S. central bank “will do all that it can” to ensure a continuation of the economic recovery and said more securities purchases may be warranted if growth slows. “The Committee is prepared to provide additional monetary accommodation through unconventional measures if it proves necessary, especially if the outlook were to deteriorate significantly,” the Fed chairman said today in opening remarks to central bankers from around the world at the Kansas City Fed’s annual monetary symposium held in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

The Fed chairman gave a detailed analysis of the economy and said growth during the past year has been “too slow” and unemployment too high. Still, he said a handoff from fiscal stimulus and inventory re-stocking to consumer spending and business investment “appears to be under way.” He also said that the “preconditions” for a pickup in growth in 2011 “appear to remain in place.” Read more here:

Fed Chairman Jawbones at Jackson Hole

Thomas Sowell - Moral Hazzard

Thomas Sowell

One of the things that makes it tough to figure out how much has to be charged for insurance is that people behave differently when they are insured from the way they behave when they are not insured. In other words, if one person out of 10,000 has his car set on fire, and it costs an average of $10,000 to restore the car to its previous condition, then it might seem as if charging one dollar to all 10,000 people would be enough to cover the cost of paying $10,000 to the one person whose car that will need to be repaired. But the joker in this deal is that people whose cars are insured may not be as cautious as other people are about what kinds of neighborhoods they park their car in. Read more here:

Thomas Sowell - Moral Hazzard

Rasmussen Poll Has Martinez Up by 5 Points

Susana Martinez

From the New Mexico Independent - Republican Susana Martinez leads Democrat Diane Denish by five points — 48 percent to 43 percent — among likely voters, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll released Thursday. The results reflect a positive movement for Martinez, the Dona Ana County District Attorney, who was tied with Denish, the state’s current Lieutenant Governor, in May and June according to similar Rasmussen surveys, the polling firm said in a release issued Thursday to announce the results.

Diane Denish

Martinez’s surge wasn’t enough to persuade Rasmussen to move the New Mexico governor’s race from the Toss-Up column to Lean GOP, however. Six percent of the 750 likely New Mexico voters who Rasmussen surveyed were undecided, while three percent preferred some other candidate in the race, the release said. Read more here:

Rasmussen Poll Has Martinez Up by 5 Points

War in Mexico - Atrocities Continue

From the El Paso Times - SAN FERNANDO, Mexico—Heavily guarded mortuary workers have begun identifying 72 migrants massacred near the U.S. border, while human rights advocates are demanding Mexico do more to stop the exploitation and abuse of migrants that they say led to the heinous crime. Marines are protecting the pink, one-story funeral home where the bodies were taken after being discovered on a ranch Tuesday, bound, blindfolded and slumped against a wall. Tamaulipas state Assistant Attorney General Jesus de la Garza said Thursday that 15 bodies had been identified: eight from Honduras, four from El Salvador, two from Guatemala and one from Brazil. Diplomats from several of those nations traveled to Mexico to help identify them, and Mexico's National Human Rights Commission sent investigators to monitor the process. Read more here:

War in Mexico - Atrocities Continue

Plot Thickens in Herrera's Office

Gary King

From the New Mexico Independent - Attorney General Gary King attempted to cover up allegations of wrongdoing by Secretary of State Mary Herrera, an Española attorney charged Thursday.

Attorney Rudy Martin said his client, A.J. Salazar, spoke to the FBI last week after turning over telephone numbers and potential witnesses to state Attorney General (AG) investigators five months ago, about the time he quit as Herrera’s state elections director and alleged wrongdoing in a resignation letter.

 Mary Herrera

“The two (AG) investigators did their job,” Martin told The Independent. “Gary tried to play politics and swept everything under the rug” to help Herrera and other Democrats in an election year, Martin said. That lack of action ultimately led two of his other clients — Herrera’s office manager, Manny Vildasol, and her public information officer, James Flores – to also go to the FBI with allegations of wrongdoing, Martin added. Read more here:

Plot Thickens in Herrera's Office

People first, pets second, then the urban wildlife

Commentary by Michael Swickard - posted on NMPolitics.net - The facts are simple. David pulled up to his house and noticed a rattlesnake in his driveway. He killed the rattlesnake to protect his family. No, he did not try to get along with the rattlesnake or pick it up and move it to the yard of someone else. He killed it exactly as I would have done. I was rather amazed when reading his column in the Las Cruces Bulletin that he would admit killing a Rio Grande High Mountain Desert Southwest Chihuahuan Wilderness Silvery Mexican Gray varmint rattlesnake. People add all sorts of extra names to ordinary varmints such as rattlesnakes to make them seem exotic. Also, they have been saying that rattlesnakes are not dangerous to our grandbabies when in fact they are. Well, he did kill the rattlesnake and wrote about it. I salute him. There are those people who think that rattlesnakes can coexist with grandbabies. Not so. Most of us kill varmints without public comment since there are wingnuts out there who weep copious tears and want us to walk around rattlesnakes at our peril. I was raised differently.

I have three rules about varmints such as rattlesnakes: First, if I see them anywhere around my house or my family’s ranch house I kill them. If I see them around civilization I often will kill them so as not to leave the danger for other people. If I see them anywhere else such as in the desert I strictly leave them alone. Contrary to some people’s thoughts I do not hate nor fear rattlesnakes. At our family ranch south of Carrizozo I have thinned them out all of my life. As a child I pointed them out to my grandfather who killed them before they could kill me. Out in the desert I have left them alone all of my life. But, around the people I love I do not hesitate to act. Read more

People first, pets second, then the urban wildlife

Dawgs, Trojans, Knights, Son Blazers in Action Tonight

The High School football season kicks off tonight with all four local teams in action. At the Field of Dreams El Dorado (El Paso) will face Las Cruces High. Game time is set for 7:00pm. The game is a rematch of last year's season opener. Mayfield will go on the road to play El Paso Chapin at the Irvin High School stadium on the North East side of the city. Jeff Matthews and Greg Berry will have the call of that game on KSNM AM 570. Kickoff is set for 7:00pm with the pregame show beginning at 6:40pm. Last year the Trojans scored thirty-five points in the second half for a 38-0 win over the Huskies. Kelly McKee's Oñate Black Knights will head for El Paso to play Franklin at Coronado High School. Kickoff is set for 7:00pm. Mesilla Valley Christian School travels to Marfa, Texas for their season opener.

Dawgs, Trojans, Knights, Son Blazers in Action Tonight

Aw, Wilderness!

From the New York Times - by Ted Stroll - San Jose, Calif. - ONE day in early 1970, a cross-country skier got lost along the 46-mile Kekekabic Trail, which winds through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness in northern Minnesota. Unable to make his way out, he died of exposure. In response, the Forest Service installed markers along the trail. But when, years later, it became time to replace them, the agency refused, claiming that the 1964 Wilderness Act banned signage in the nation’s wilderness areas. Despite the millions of people who have visited the country’s national parks, forests and wildernesses this summer, the Forest Service has become increasingly strict in its enforcement of the Wilderness Act. The result may be more pristine lands, but the agency’s zealous enforcement has also heightened safety risks and limited access to America’s wilderness areas. Over the last 45 years Congress has designated as wilderness 40 percent of the land in our national parks and one-third of the land in our national forests — more than 170,000 square miles, an area nearly as large as California, Massachusetts and New Jersey combined — as wilderness. In March 2009, President Obama signed a law protecting 3,125 more square miles, the largest expansion in more than a generation. Wilderness, according to the act, is space “where the earth and its community of life are untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain.” Within those areas, the act forbids cars, roads, structures and anything else that could impair the “outstanding opportunities for solitude.” Read more

Aw, Wilderness!

To Bernanke: Maybe the Problem Isn't Rates?

Ben Bernanke

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke and European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet, who united to fight the worst global recession in six decades, may be diverging over the outlook for their economies. The Bernanke-led Fed, while saying U.S. growth would be slower than anticipated, announced on Aug. 10 it will buy Treasuries to set a $2.05 trillion floor on its balance sheet and keep interest rates from rising. Trichet said Aug. 5 that the euro-area economy was surpassing forecasts, which may pave the way for the ECB to look at phasing out its emergency lending measures. Read more here:

To Bernanke: Maybe the Problem Isn't Rates?

Bishop Jackson - Working with Glenn Beck

Harry Jackson Jr.

This weekend marks the 47th anniversary of the famed March on Washington - the crowning glory or turning point in the civil rights movement. It was also this march, which catapulted the “I Have A Dream Message” to the front pages of papers and eventually captured the imagination of the Nobel Peace Prize judges. The question for this coming weekend will be, “What would Martin do about the social ills of our day?” Both conservatives and liberals will voice their opinions this weekend. But why prompt an Armageddon over the legacy of Dr. King? A little history may be appropriate here. Several months ago the Glenn Beck Show chose this date for its Restoring Honor Rally and secured the Lincoln Memorial location, apparently not even realizing the King tie-in until later. The Honor Rally was originally designed as a spiritually oriented event to show the nation that the community of faith is united behind “our unswerving commitment to be ‘One Nation Under God.” Read more here:

Bishop Jackson - Working with Glenn Beck