News New Mexico: 11/30/10

Aggie Hoops Falls 74-72 To UTEP As Late Rally Falls Short

bleedCrimson.net Report
The New Mexico State men's basketball team's second half rally fell just short on Tuesday night as they lost 74-72 to rival UTEP. The Miners sweep the season series after winning 73-56 in El Paso one week ago.

The Aggies and Miners traded the lead back and forth in the first half until the 5:43 mark when Troy Gillenwater was called for a technical foul with the teams tied at 30. Randy Culpepper hit both free throws to give the Miners a 32-30 and they would not trail the remainder of the game. Just seconds later the Miners would get a steal by Randy Culpepper who was fouled hard by Abdoulaye N'doye as Culpepper attempted a dunk on the fast break. N'Doye's foul was called intentional giving the Miners two free throws and the ball which they turned into four points and a six point lead at 36-30 with 4:35 left in the half.

Randy Culpepper scored 25 of his 32 points in the first half including 14 straight and 16 of UTEP's final 20 points to send the Aggies into halftime trailing 40-35.

The Aggies would cut the deficit to three points on a Hernst Laroche layup with 54 seconds remaining. After Julyan Stone hit one of two free throws to put the Miners up by four points at 71-67, Laroche would again get a layup to cut the deficit to just two points at 71-69 with six seconds remaining. The Aggies would quickly foul Christian Polk who hit both free throws with five seconds left. Laroche would bury a three pointer with 1.2 seconds remaining to cut the deficit to one point. The Aggies would foul and with less than one second left in the game Randy Culpepper would hit one of two free throws to seal the Aggies' fate.

Female police chief killed, 18 bodies found near Texas border

From The San Antonio Headlines Examiner.com - by Jack Dennis -Mexican drug cartel hitmen have resorted to killing female police chiefs now. On Monday, November 29, 2010, suspected drug hitmen killed Hermila Garcia, the 36-year-old police chief of Meoqui in Chihuahua, Mexico, while she drove her SUV through the town. A few hours later Mexican soldiers found 18 bodies buried on a ranch near the town of Palomas, Mexico. These murders add to the list of more than 31,000 people killed in Mexico since Dec. 2006. The vast majority of the violence is in northern Mexico, along the Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and California borders. Because so many policemen have been killed by the cartels, women have come forward this year to fill the slots vacated by the deaths and men abandoning the jobs. Even female students and housewives have becoming police chiefs in some of these towns. Read more

Cost of Green Power Makes Projects Tougher Sell

From the New York Times.com - By MATTHEW L. WALD and TOM ZELLER Jr. - Michael Polsky’s wind farm company was doing so well in 2008 that banks were happy to lend millions for his effort to light up America with clean electricity. But two years later, Mr. Polsky has a product he is hard-pressed to sell. His company, Invenergy, had a contract to sell power to a utility in Virginia, but state regulators rejected the deal, citing the recession and the lower prices of natural gas and other fossil fuels. “The ratepayers of Virginia must be protected from costs for renewable energy that are unreasonably high,” the regulators said. Wind power would have increased the monthly bill of a typical residential customer by 0.2 percent. Even as many politicians, environmentalists and consumers want renewable energy and reduced dependence on fossil fuels, a growing number of projects are being canceled or delayed because governments are unwilling to add even small amounts to consumers’ electricity bills. Read more

Earmark Ban Fails - It's Business as Usual

From Townhall.com - By a sizable - but dwindling - margin, the Senate on Tuesday voted in favor of allowing lawmakers to keep stocking bills with home-state projects like roads, grants to local police departments and clean-water projects. But with the House set to tumble into GOP hands and anti-earmark reinforcements coming to the Senate in January, the window seems to be closing on the practice. Tuesday's 39-56 tally rejected a GOP bid to ban the practice of loading spending bills with so-called earmarks - those parochial provisions that lawmakers deliver to their states - but it appears the curtain is coming down on the practice. Read whole story here:

Consequences of Lame Duck Sessions

Commentary by Rachel Pulaski - The Senate has proven to America that lame duck sessions should be banned. One controversial moratorium that was up for vote Tuesday was the earmark ban. This ban would stop elected officials from appropriating funds for special projects without approval from the executive branch. More importantly, it would stop some of the political games played between our elected officials. For instance, H.R. 847 the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act which guarantees healthcare to 9/11 responders was tossed around in congress for years lacking bi-partisan support mostly because of the large amount of earmarks. Instead of the Democrats passing the bill through a simple majority they demanded a two-thirds majority vote. Democrats decided to pull a “procedural gimmick “ and forced Republicans either to eat humble pie or to oppose the bill and be open to charges that they were abandoning the heroes of 9/11. The Senate had a chance to end this madness but instead they decided to vote against the two year ban on earmarks. Only 42 Republicans have Senate seats in the lame duck session and most of the anti-earmark Republicans will not take their seats until January so this vote may not come as a surprise to some. The moratorium on earmarks was included in SB 510 the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Senate voted in favor of this giant FDA power grab today. This atrocity could make sharing food from your own private garden a “national security threat”. This bill would also lead to a much larger, powerful and overgrown FDA. The roll call session is available here. Clearly lame duck sessions are for the self indulgent politicians to stuff their pork filled bellies. We as voters should never allow politicians who have been defeated at the polls to continue to raise taxes, set policy or spend money that the electorate has decided someone else should be doing.

Heath Haussamen: Obama Needs to Stand Up and Fight

From NMPolitics.net -

Heath Haussamen

The president promised in 2008 to lead Washington into becoming a functional government. It’s time for him to keep that promise. President Barack Obama’s top advisers have concluded that their party’s losses on Election Day were caused “in large part by their own failure to live up to expectations set during the 2008 campaign,” the Washington Post reported recently. That’s an understatement. Obama didn’t just set the bar high for himself high during the campaign – he nearly set himself up as the messiah. In his 2008 victory speech, Obama said his election was “the answer that led those who’ve been told for so long by so many to be cynical and fearful and doubtful about what we can achieve to put their hands on the arc of history and bend it once more toward the hope of a better day.” “It’s been a long time coming, but tonight, because of what we did on this day, in this election, at this defining moment, change has come to America,” Obama said. Two years later, the change he promised hasn’t come. Sure, Obama has signed some high-profile legislation into law, including the controversial health-care reform, a massive bailout, and Wall Street reform. But that’s not the change he promised in 2008. The promise was that, rather than being red and blue states, Obama would lead us to being simply the United States of America. Read full column here:

Hillary Has To Go

Hillary Clinton

From slate.com - A U.S. diplomat must possess patience, poise, and tact. He must also be attentive to cultural differences, a good observer, and proficient in several languages. When called upon, he must use his skills as a negotiator in the national interest. And, as the latest dump of WikiLeaks tells us, if the dip works for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he must also be prepared to spy on his fellow diplomats.

To be fair to Clinton, she isn't the first secretary of state to issue cables telling U.S. foreign service officers to spy on other diplomats. According to the leaked diplomatic cables, Condoleezza Rice likewise instructed State Department diplomats to collect such intelligence, and I wouldn't be surprised if previous secretaries of state encouraged if not instructed their diplomats to push information-collection all the way to intelligence-gathering. But what makes Clinton's sleuthing unique is the paper trail that documents her spying-on-their-diplomats-with-our-diplomat orders, a paper trail that is now being splashed around the world on the Web and printed in top newspapers.

No matter what sort of noises Clinton makes about how the disclosures are "an attack on America" and "the international community," as she did today, she's become the issue. She'll never be an effective negotiator with diplomats who refuse to forgive her exuberances, and even foreign diplomats who do forgive her will still regard her as the symbol of an overreaching United States. Diplomacy is about face, and the only way for other nations to save face will be to give them Clinton's scalp.

More here

FDA in Bed With Big Business

From redstate.com - You probably remember the fanatical fear that gripped the nation these last few years in response to a few factories with tainted peanut butter. You may also remember the national panic when spinach was a killer stalking grocery stores across the country. These types of events are notorious for being blown out of proportion by the national media and being chaotic by virtue of bureaucratic over-involvement. While this may be remembered by many consumers as an annoyance, it is remembered far differently by the corporations that are subjected to massive regulation at the hands of bureaucrats from the FDA as well as dozens of state and local regulators across the country. More here

Massive Open Borders Entitlement Program

Michelle Malkin

From michellemalkin.com It’s no surprise to long-time readers of this blog that the pro-illegal immigration Wall Street Journal has come out in favor of the DREAM Act bailout. The WSJ editorial page has long crusaded for de facto and de jure amnesty — and I’ve exposed its deceptive campaigning on behalf of illegal aliensfor years. (See my deconstruction of a demagogic WSJ editorial page meeting attacking enforcement-first conservatives during the Bush shamnesty debacle.) 24ahead.com does a terrific job dismantling the latest DREAM Act propaganda from the WSJ, which backs the latest massive amnesty entitlement program and Democrat voter recruitment drive masquerading as an education bill: Not only does the Wall Street Journal endorse a bill that would harm American citizens, they also mislead about the bill: Restrictionists dismiss the Dream Act as an amnesty that rewards people who entered the country illegally. But the bill targets individuals brought here by their parents as children. What is to be gained by holding otherwise law-abiding young people, who had no say in coming to this country, responsible for the illegal actions of others? The Dream Act also makes legal status contingent on school achievement and military service, the type of behavior that ought to be encouraged and rewarded. More here

US States and Canada Consider Cap and Trade

From Bloomberg.com - California, New Mexico and 10 U.S. Northeastern states may try to create a North American carbon market on their own now that President Barack Obama has given up on cap-and-trade legislation that stalled in Congress. The emissions-trading system would be based on a planned carbon market in California, the most populous state, and an existing regional cap-and-trade program for power plants in the Northeast, according to state environmental officials. Three Canadian provinces have also shown interest in a cross-border carbon-trading system, the officials said. “The key is to have as large and as liquid a market as possible,” John Yap, British Columbia’s climate-change minister, said in a telephone interview. Under cap-and-trade, the government creates a market for pollution rights by issuing a limited number of carbon-dioxide permits, which companies can buy and sell. More here

Next on Wikileaks Hit Parade.....Bank of America?

From Bloomberg - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who told Forbes magazine that he’ll release documents from a U.S. bank next year, said in 2009 that his group had a hard drive from a Bank of America Corp. executive. “We are sitting on 5GB from Bank of America, one of the executive’s hard drives,” Assange said in the Oct. 9, 2009, interview with Computerworld magazine, referring to five gigabytes of data. “To have impact it needs to be easy for people to dive in and search and get something out of it.” WikiLeaks plans to release “either tens or hundreds of thousands of documents depending on how you define it,” Assange said in a Nov. 11 interview with Forbes, declining to identify the bank from which the documents came. He said the release would occur early next year and would include “some flagrant violations, unethical practices.” Read full story here:

Banks Resisting Fannie, Freddie Demands to Buy Back Mortgages

From Bloomberg - Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are facing growing resistance as they attempt to push failed home loans off their books and onto the balance sheets of banks including Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. The two government-owned mortgage companies are enforcing contracts that require lenders to buy back loans that didn’t meet underwriting standards. At the end of September, the companies reported, banks hadn’t responded to $13 billion in buyback requests. A third of those were at least four months old and Freddie Mac has begun to assess penalties for the delays. Read full story here:

Consumer Confidence Climbs in November

From Bloomberg - Confidence among U.S. consumers rose in November to the highest level in five months and a gauge of business activity unexpectedly climbed, signaling the recovery is taking hold heading into 2011. The Conference Board’s sentiment index increased to 54.1, exceeding the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey, figures from the New York-based research group showed today. The Institute for Supply Management-Chicago Inc. said its business gauge advanced to the highest since April. Read full story here:

1st Post Mid-Term Summit Today at White House

From the Washington Times - Nearly two years after a newly installed President Obama ended an argument with congressional Republicans with the simple line "I won," he goes back into a room with them on Tuesday having now lost, and badly. The White House says the agenda for the meeting is to try to find agreement on a nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia and to work toward agreement on how to handle the Bush-era tax cuts, which are due to expire at the end of this year. But it will also be the first meeting since Mr. Obama endured what he called a "shellacking" at the polls, with his party losing more than 60 House seats and a half-dozen Senate seats. And all eyes will be on him to see how he handles having his coattails clipped. "My hope is that tomorrow's meeting will mark a first step towards a new and productive working relationship," Mr. Obama said Monday as he made a first gesture, expanding on a federal pay-freeze idea Republicans proposed earlier this year. "We now have a shared responsibility to deliver for the American people on the issues that define not only these times but our future, and I hope we can do that in a cooperative and serious way." Read full story here:

Obama Supports Bureaucrat Pay Freeze

From Washington Times - Calling it a starting point for a looming showdown on budget cuts, President Obama on Monday demanded a two-year pay freeze for federal civilian workers, aligning himself with congressional Republicans and against his labor union allies who warned that the freeze would "stick it" to the government work force. "The hard truth is that getting this deficit under control is going to require broad sacrifice, and that sacrifice must be shared by the employees of the federal government," Mr. Obama said, upping the ante on House Republicans, who had pushed earlier this year for a one-year freeze. Read full story here:

Showdown on Pelosi, Reed, Obama Tax Hikes

From Bloomberg - Congressional Democrats are ready to test Republican resolve on taxes this week by forcing showdown votes on their proposal to extend middle-class tax cuts. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi will schedule a vote this week on legislation that would retain lower tax rates and increased credits that apply to the first $250,000 of a married couple’s gross income or $200,000 for a single person, said her assistant, Maryland Democrat Chris Van Hollen. The Senate will vote “by next week” on Democrats’ proposal to extend middle-income tax cuts, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus told reporters yesterday. “There should be an early vote on middle-income tax cuts” before the Senate considers alternatives on Bush-era tax cuts set to expire on Dec. 31, said Baucus, a Montana Democrat. The vote’s timing will depend on the rest of the Senate’s agenda, he said. Read full story here:

German Austerity of 2009 Paying off in 2010

Angela Merkel

From Bloomberg - German unemployment fell for a 17th month in November as business optimism improved, underscoring the gulf between Europe’s biggest economy and peripheral nations struggling to cut debt. The number of people out of work declined a seasonally adjusted 9,000 to 3.14 million, the lowest since December 1992, the Nuremberg-based Federal Labor Agency said today. Economists forecast a decrease of 20,000, according to the median of 31 estimates in a Bloomberg News survey. The adjusted jobless rate remained at 7.5 percent. Read full story here:

Progressive Magazine: Perspective on North Korea

Matthew Rothschild

From Progressive.org - When the current Korean crisis emerged, I immediately contacted the wisest person I know on the subject. His name is Gene Matthews, and he spent decades in South Korea as a missionary who was active in the pro-democracy movement there. He’s a contributor to a great new book called “More Than Witnesses: How a Small Group of Missionaries Aided Korea’s Democratic Revolution.” Here’s what he has to say about the current standoff. “North Korea has always felt threatened by joint military exercises of the U.S. and South Korea, and has always protested against them,” he says. “This time, North Korea stated that the exercises were taking place in North Korean territory and that if shots were fired during the exercise they would retaliate.

Shots were fired (not at the North, it should be pointed out but out toward the ocean) and the North retaliated.” What’s saddest about this standoff, he says, is that it shows how far relations have slid in the last fifteen years. Read full column here:

Doh! - Data Lockdown Ordered

From the Register.com - The US government on Monday enacted new policies designed to prevent mass leaks similar to one rolled out over the weekend, when Wikileaks released thousands of classified diplomatic cables. On Sunday, the Pentagon announced new procedures for the use of thumb drives. Computers that store classified data will no longer be able to write onto removable media, according to Politico. The measure was described as a “temporary technical solution” to the problem of Pentagon personnel who may move vast amounts of secret information to unclassified computer systems. Read full story here:

The Tea Party's Big Mistake

From americanthinker.com - In the past week, there has been a call for the Tea Parties to introduce social issues into their "platform." Same-sex marriage, abortion, repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the teaching of abstinence over contraception, and numerous other agenda items of importance to social and religious conservatives have been put forth as issues that the Tea Parties should embrace. Not only should these issues be embraced, but the Tea Parties have been told that they must reconfigure their existing agenda and work toward solutions that satisfy the yearnings of these very same social and religious conservatives. Of course, these issues are of overwhelming importance to a significant number of people. I respect that these people are sincere and truly feel that the country will be hurt beyond redemption should things continue as they are. But a significant number of vocal people do not a political majority make. More here

Prime Minister of Kenya and Obama's "Cousin" Orders Arrest of Gays

Raila Odinga

In 2006 Barack Obama took a trip to Kenya at US taxpayer’s expense. While visiting Kenya as a guest of the government Obama campaigned with opposition leader socialist Raila Odinga, who claims he is Obama’s cousin. The opposition said Odinga was using Obama “as his stooge.” Video here This week Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga ordered a nationwide crackdown on gays this week. The radical Kenyan leader said police should arrest anyone found engaging in such behaviors. More here

Presidential High Hopes for Gary Johnson

Gary Johnson

From tampabay.com - TALLAHASSEE — A self-made millionaire Republican is campaigning in Florida on a platform of spending cuts and less government. It's not Rick Scott, anymore. This is Gary E. Johnson, a former New Mexico governor and advocate for the legalization of marijuana, who's putting out Florida feelers in a possible bid for the presidency in 2012. Johnson's campaign-style stops in Tallahassee, Melbourne and Orlando last week reveal that the presidential race is already at a low boil in the nation's largest swing state. Without Florida, Republicans say, they can't recapture the White House. More here

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