Author Archives

Rally at the Roundhouse

Tomorrow morning  I’ll be at a rally for Republican Candidate for Governor, Susana Martinez
Friday, May 28, 2010 at 10:00 am
At the Front of the State Capitol Building
490 Old Santa Fe Trail, Santa Fe, New Mexico
If you’re there, please introduce yourself. I’ll be the one with all the kids.

My daughters’ political ad debut

The Russell girls, in a tiny but spectacular portion Adam Kokesh’s ad:
Kokesh for Congress Ad

Projections…and projection

Joe Monahan writes about the New Mexico governor’s race,
[S]ome of our analysts see a developing problem for Susana [Martinez] — the strength of GOP lieutenant governor candidate John Sanchez. He is spending heavily on TV and is the favorite to take the prize over Brian Moore and Kent Cravens. But will many GOP voters want [...]

Federal health care law hurts New Mexicans

According to the New Mexico Independent, a “quirk” in the Federal Health Care Monstrosity of 2010 will mean higher premiums for thousands of New Mexicans.
Why? It’s complicated. My eyes started to glaze over the first time I read the story and I had to backtrack several times to figure out exactly what was [...]

Stop the carnage

The drunk driver who killed an 18-year-old woman last month had a blood alcohol level five times the legal limit.   When I saw the photos of the twisted wreckage and read that Cecilio Jaramillo had been driving in the wrong direction when he crashed head-on into Mariah Arguello, I would have bet that his BAC [...]

Michelle Malkin vs. Adam Kokesh

Adam Kokesh is a candidate in the Republican primary for a New Mexico Congressional seat that Republicans virtually never win.  Third District GOP candidates rarely make it onto the radar screens of the Big Guns of the national political scene.  To be sure, Michelle Malkin is one of those Big Guns, and the day before [...]

Why I don’t blog much these days (part 3)

This is Cordelia at the ice rink, where the three big girls and I have been spending quite a bit of our time lately. Skating is great exercise, and great fun, but it eats into my writing time.
As if I didn’t have time management problems enough, my husband and I are going to take up [...]

Why I don’t blog much these days (part 2)

At the moment, I can be thin or I can be interesting, but I cannot possibly be both.

Why I don’t blog much these days (part 1)

This is Portia’s new hobby.
It’s only fun if she has on her clothes and, ideally, her shoes as well.
Therefore, anytime I fill or drain the bathtub, I need to stay in the room, or post a guard.
Regrettably, the guards (the older girls) are the sort that would get themselves and their fellow soldiers killed [...]

Did the Iranians hack Facebook this time?

I was just wondering, because I’ve been having a world of trouble with it the past few days.
Were I superstitious, I might suspect it was a sign I should be doing something more productive with my time. Mercifully, I am not.

Is he or isn’t he? Only his bartender knows for sure.

I just discovered another very cool thing WordPress 2.9 lets you do — embed video right into your blog just by pasting the You Tuble URL. You don’t have to use the “insert video” icon, or even paste in the embed code. Just the URL text, right into the post.
I know, I know. [...]

Just because I can

I have nothing in particular to say about Raphael’s School of Athens, but uploaded it just because I like it, and just because I can.
If I was going to write something interesting, it would be about my insane fellow countrymen who think we should all have to take our shoes off to get on planes, [...]

Why I am so clever

The post title is pinched from a chapter title in one of Friedrich Nietzsche’s books.  I cannot remember which one, because I had time either to look it up or pinch and upload a picture of philosophy’s bad boy, but not both, so I chose the latter.
And yes, that means that I can now [...]

So you think I’m too young to use a knife?

Go ahead and try to take it…out of my cold, dead hands.
Obviously, I figured out how to get a new photo onto the blog, since Portia was a little bitty baby when my technical difficulties began.  I still can’t upload pictures to the blog, but I can upload them to Flickr or Picasa and then [...]

Am I blue

You’ve seen this picture before.  You’re not seeing a new one because I have been unable to upload new images to my blog for many, many months now, and it’s really got me, well, blue.
It used to be so easy.  I’d press the “insert an image” icon, and then click the “Choose files to upload” [...]

How the other half lives

Not the rich other half, or the poor other half, but the other half that has two children.  What’s the average for American couples now?  2.1 children?  1.9?  Something like that.  This week, I have 2.0 because 2.0 of my 4.0 are in California with my husband.  The house is quieter.  The laundry doesn’t pile [...]

Take two aspirin and call me when you’re terminal

First we heard that 40-something women like myself no longer need to have mammograms, and women over 50 don’t need them annually.  Now we get to cut back on Pap smears to test for cervical cancer as well.
Over the next week or so, presumably, we can expect to hear that prostate screenings can be pushed [...]

Transparency in action: your tax dollars into the abyss

Jim Scarantino of the New Mexico Watchdog reports that $6.4 billion in federal stimulus dollars has gone to non-existent congressional districts.  Yes, you read that right:  non-existent districts.
Ed Pound at the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, blamed the apparent disbursement of your tax dollars into non-existent congressional districts
on the recipients not knowing in which congressional [...]

A post, finally, amid snow flurries, typing lessons and sneaky back-door tax increase elections

Just a quick note to let my readers know I haven’t taken leave of the land of the living.  It’s been a very busy couple of weeks.  I’ve done some reassessment of priorities, and have really focused on getting our schooing routine in order and, to a lesser extent, getting my exercise regimen going again.  [...]

What’s new

My posts have been few and far between lately, compared to my output a few months ago, say.  This business of educating one’s own children is a responsibility that’s been weighing heavily upon me of late.  When you homeschool, and your kids turn out to be ignorami, there’s nobody else to blame.  That’s some pressure, [...]

The personal and the political

The personal — On the bright side, no one in my house has swine flu yet.  On the not quite so bright side, my washing machine died with a load full of sopping wet, not-yet-clean clothes inside.
The political — I’d say Chris Christie is going to win a big, fat gubernatorial victory, wouldn’t you?
Ricardo Leon [...]

Surrender Dede

That’s the headline emblazoned across the sky in this brilliant bit of photoshoppery.  It’s done in the style of the “Surrender Dorothy” the Wicked Witch of the West wrote in the sky with her broomstick.  I can’t insert it here, because of technical difficulties, but the picture is at Nice Deb and Frugal [...]

Look who’s shaving her head

My friend Tanya Van Dyke, that’s who.  She’s doing it through St. Baldrick’s, an organization that raises money for childhood cancer research.  It works like this:  someone, like Tanya, agrees to shave her head in order to get her friends and family to donate money to St. Baldrick’s for cancer research.
Personally, you couldn’t pay me [...]

Sarah Palin endorses Doug Hoffman

I cannot tell you the joy with which I read that headline, via Memeorandum. Newt, digging himself in ever deeper with the party’s conservative base, reiterates his support for Dede Scozzafava.
If Doug Hoffman does defeat the GOP’s appalling nominee in the NY23 race, it just may be the wake-up call the party needs.  Or maybe [...]

Pearls before swine

Via Memeorandum, I read TV Newser’s report that President Obama spent two and a half hours giving an off-the-record briefing to a small coterie of left-wing media luminaries including Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow of MSNBC (which, unlike Fox News, actually is a news organization), Maureen Dowd, best known for overuse of sexy double-entendres [...]

Absentee blogger

That’s me this week, still trying to get our school routine back on track after the vacation.  There just isn’t a lot of creative energy left over for writing.  Oh, and you didn’t miss the NMI link; I took this week off, the first time I’ve done so since I began writing the column.
I’m [...]

The end of the vacation and the Nobel Peace Prize

Today I woke up in my own bed again after ten nights in various hotel beds, couches and air mattresses on the floor.  My back will take a few days to recover, both from that and from far too many hours in the car.  I’d give just about anything to spend the morning at home, [...]

My mom went to Nordstrom and all I got was this lousy blog post

In the information age, having too few computers with online connections is an even greater hardship than having too few bathrooms.  Here, belatedly, is the link to my column at NMI this week.  It’s about Obama and the Olympics (and old story by now) and my take on it may surprise you.
There were so many blog [...]

Because bloggers are supposed to post every day

Or at least every weekday.  That’s what they say.  They.  You know they, right?  I’m not sure exactly who they are, but they probably have fewer children than I do.  Or they might have more, but they are guys, and have wives to go along with all those kids.
This week, my four children and I are [...]

Throw enough money at Johnny and surely he’ll read

This is the title of my NMI column that ran yesterday.  Normally it runs on Tuesdays, but they ran it early.  I wanted to leave the Allen Weh interview as the top story on Monday, so I did not link to the column until today.
Coincidentally, a commenter on the Weh interview linked to his [...]

Allen Weh, candidate for governor of New Mexico

The first time I saw Allen Weh was when he addressed a meeting of the Santa Fe County GOP a little over a year ago. Weh was then chairman of the New Mexico Republican Party, and as he spoke, my husband leaned over and whispered, “I’ll bet that guy’s a Marine.”
Indeed he is.  Not just [...]

You’re all racists

Update:  NMI published this column today, September 27, 2009.  Original post (written September 21) below:
You’re all racists — that was to have been the title of my New Mexico Independent column today.  But about an hour after I submitted it, I received an e-mail from my new editor (my previous editor, David Alire Garcia, [...]

Worth a click

I’ve been working on the speech I’m giving at the New Mexico Turn Around conference in Albuquerque tomorrow, so I didn’t have time to write a post today.
I did want to take time to link to Nice Deb’s excellent post debunking the leftist charges of racism again anyone who has the temerity to criticize any [...]

Ignore them and maybe they’ll just go away

This, apparently, was the line of reasoning at the Santa Fe New Mexican, whose editorial staff elected not to cover the Tea Party held here in Santa Fe at the State Capitol on Saturday, September 12.  This egregious example of biased journalismis the subject of my New Mexico Independent column today.

Santa Fe Tea Party: the sequel

Just a reminder that Santa Fe’s second Tea Party will take place tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. at the east side of the Capitol building.  Speeches begin at 2:00.  More information here.
It’s going to be a very long day for me, with Fiesta, the Tea Party, followed by choir practice for the girls and mass at [...]

Guys who would never get laid if they weren’t politicians

I can’t say what I’d like to do to that disgusting lout Mike Duvall because it would be (a) unladylike and (b) illegal.  Duvall, Larry Craig, Mark Sanford and a host of other selfish narcissists who do their thinking with the little head act as though they’re trying to destroy the Repubilcan Party just when [...]

Obama and the nation’s kids; me and my kids

My NMI column this week.  I have more to say on the topic — and related topics — but I was in Albuquerque with the kids all day and am dead exhausted, so will wait until they’re asleep to write it.  Unless I fall into an exhausted sleep the minute they’re in bed, in which [...]

Jan Helfeld is my hero

Apparently this journalistic genius has been interviewing politicians (and making asses out of quite a few of them) for some time now, but I hadn’t heard of him until I saw the video of his interview with Congressman Pete Stark (D-Calif).  After Stark realizes that Helfeld has made his repeated assertion that a bigger national [...]

Taking the finger instead of giving it

Used to be when people got mad, they might give you the finger.  Apparently, that’s old hat, and now they take the finger instead, in this case, biting it off:
California authorities say a clash between opponents and supporters of health care reform ended with one man biting off another man’s finger.
When I read the headline [...]

They’re Uncle Sam’s kids now — he paid for them

My NMI column this week will, I think, become one of my all-time favorites.  Here’s the opening.
When the news came that Santa Fe’s public schools would get some of the federal stimulus bounty being handed out by a benevolent Democratic Congress and president, few suspected that some of that federal pork would turn rancid.
One of [...]

Santa Fe’s next mayor

Ah, the New Mexican.  I can always count on them for unbiased journalism.  The bold headline on yesterday morning’s top story was
‘A real grudge match’
The match is the mayoral race between incumbent David Coss and recently announced challenger Asenath Kepler.  The grudge, the paper obviously means to imply, is Kepler’s, since she had served as [...]

Our tax dollars at work

I don’t often advocate spending taxpayers’ money, but amid all the waste and pork, there are some public works projects that need doing, including an I-25 interchange at Richards Avenue in Santa Fe.  My NMI column explains why.

When being called a skank is a good thing

I had never heard of Liskula Cohen until the other day, when she won a lawsuit forcing Google to reveal the name of the anonymous blogger who had called her a skank and an old hag on a blog almost nobody except Liskula Cohen read.  Ms. Cohen was actually pretty lucky to be  called a skank [...]

The most sense I’ve heard anyone make yet about health care reform

A Facebook friend posted the link to this article, and because my friend leans leftward, and the piece is in the Atlantic, and ran six pages, and is entitled “How American Health Care Killed My Father” (here we go with a diatribe about the evils of health care being a commodity not a right, I [...]

Luján healthcare townhall tonight

Today, Mon. Aug 17 at 7:00 p.m. Northern New Mexico’s Congressman, Ben Ray Luján, is holding a healthcare town hall at the Unitarian Church at 107 W. Barcelona Rd.  It will feature a panel discussion with  health care professionals — no doubt cherrypicked by Mr. Luján so that they will all say health care reform [...]

Raising hell in defense of liberty

My New Mexico Independent column is up.
Update:  This is rich.  And they accuse us of astroturfing.  I guess it’s that old “plank in my own eye” thing.  HT:  Patterico.

Man’s inhumanity to man

I wrote this long, grim post several days ago, but as often happens, had to leave the computer before doing a final proofread and hitting “publish” and then was too busy to get back to it.  The news stories discussed are a few days old, but the sentiments are timeless.
It’s hard not to be a [...]

Read his lips

Again and again on the campaign trail, he repeated the same mantra.  The words might vary ever so slightly, but the message was the same:
Let me say this again:  no family earning less than $250,000 will see any form of tax increase.  Period.
Every time Old Man McCain would say that Obama was going to raise [...]

OH Mommy kicks off her stilettos and gets political

OH Mommy is the moniker of Pauline Karwowski, author of the blog Classy Chaos.  She’s listed on my friend MIT Mommy’s blogroll, and I stop by periodically for a dose of something light and entertaining when I’ve had enough for the moment of politics.  OH Mommy never writes about politics, or at least not that [...]

Solving the problems of the world, one crusade at a time

My local paper, the Santa Fe New Mexican, is experiencing financial difficulty.  Join the club.  And no wonder, since how on earth can a print newspaper compete financially with internet news sites that run on a fraction of the cost and provide faster and more diverse content?   Some people think this spells doom for us [...]