New Mexico Mercury

El Machete: Force Feeding Liberty

Force Feeding Liberty

Fool’s Gold: Best in Show

I was riding my bicycle outside of town where, unobstructed by houses and buildings, I could see campaign signs for miles. That’s when I figured out how to fix our broken election system.

I sometimes ride one of those sleek road bikes made for athletes and other recreational crazy persons. My bike is a lower-end model that nevertheless weighs less than my water bottle thanks to technology discarded by NASA for making their spacecraft too light. Yet despite being designed for atmospheric re-entry, the bike fails to withstand the usual cracks and bumps in the road caused by extreme contractor ineptitude...

U.S. Bank’s Wonderful Gift to UNM

U.S. Bank has just given the University of New Mexico $1.7 Million to buy luxury seating areas in the University’s sports complexes, so one percenters can sit on their fat butts, suck down their beer, and root for the Lobos. The “donation,” “bribe,” “payoff,” or whatever you call it is the brainchild of UNM athletic mastermind Craul Pebs.

“Screw education,” said Pebs, “We got dough, and that’s what counts!”...

Reed’s Rules & the Drive to Create Colonies

I was listening to our vice president mouthing off to the Russians about not permitting one country to simply take over another, and all I can think is, what hypocrisy! The United States is the champion of starting wars, then collecting the spoils.

As I watched the VP, I flashed back to when we precipitated the Spanish-American War. The United States has not altered its face, the one it shows to the world, since the turn of the 20th Century. The thinking that precipitated the Spanish-American War, undeniably, was in evidence some years before...

Rebuilding Economies on the Border

“Mexico is the draw and we’re along the way,” says Mayor Philip Skinner of the tiny village of Columbus, noting how the violence across the border in Palomas, Mexico and further south had cut into the number of visitors who passed through Columbus, thus hurting the local economy. He was speaking at a recent and historic meeting of local political leaders from both sides of the border, stretching from Silver City in the north to Casas Grandes to the south. The meeting took place in Columbus and he was the organizer and this driving force in this bi-national effort...

Why Disenfranchise Teen Voters

When more than 100,000 youths 16 and 17 years old cast votes Sept. 18 in the most important election in Scotland in 300 years, they also cast a ballot in the United States and dozens of other countries around the world that have been debating youth voting.

In the Scottish election, advocates of independence lost, but youths on both sides of the heated referendum won. Polling showed that the newly registered voters were as well informed as their older peers, were as serious about the issues and by and large put reasoned calculations of economic benefit ahead of emotional appeals to Scottish nationalism. There was no indication that the young were more subject to manipulation or were more naive than older voters. As a result, all of Britain is on the verge of enfranchising teenagers...

El Machete: Hello from Gitmo

Hello from Gitmo

Fool’s Gold: Spin Cycle

It’s been a rough autumn in the news. From ISIS to reports that Tony Bennett is still alive, I for one am as depressed as ever. Other people are always saying, “Newspapers should run more positive stories, like about that nice young boy who picks up roadside garbage for free.” But other people don’t realize that no one—not even that parolee doing his time collecting trash—commits truly selfless deeds worthy of print.

No one, that is, except for me. For just as Rumpelstiltskin spun whole roomfulls of worthless straw into precious gold before it broke the camel’s back, so I want to puree leftover news into easy-to-swallow gold before anyone else chokes on it...

New Mexico, Where Scotusocracy Rules

I love our new Scotusocracy here in beloved New Mexico, though it looks an awful lot like the political system in some other countries, if you ask me.

Bigtime experts say, democracy works thisaway: Two candidates with different views put their cases to the voters to decide which candidate seems best qualified. The voter is the decider, and this causes citizens to have lots of problems trying to choose which of the two to vote for. There are debates and two campaigns, and stuff like that, and it’s all just so very confusing and demanding. Thank God now we have a better way thanks to the Soopreme Court...

El Machete: Political Art

Political Art