Articles By

James Burbank

Muy calentito for Hanna!

As most of you know, I am muy calentito for Hanna Skandera. In her fervent desire to determine the Final Measure of education, the perfect test that would for all time determine whether a student is edumuhcated to New Mexico standards, Hanna has gone to near super-human lengths in discovering and tracking down the Great Exam written by the finger of God on adobe tablets that exist somewhere south of the seventh sphere…

A kerfuffalo revisited

Thank you to all my many kind readers who have sent extravagant gifts and money orders to my secret offshore post office box in the wan hopes that I not write about you, which brings up UNM Psych. Prof Geoff Miller who posted the immortal tweet, “Dear obese PhD. (sic) applicant…”

Remember him? He was conducting research, when he twitterooed that fat slobs need not apply. The University was disturbed because Geoff was not following procedures and getting the appropriate prior approvals for his research.

Turns out the tweet was not the giant kerfuffalo I feared, but another minor academic tremor…

Dr. Feather and too many pina coladas

During prancercise this morning I happened to be thinking obsessively about former New Mexico senator-to-be Dr. Feather Wilson. Dr. Feather plays a rather tepid banjo.

During her candidacy she aired a TV spot that appeared every fifteen minutes for three months.  Dr. Feather was seen strumming about two chords after which the camera panned in on her big folksy smile, so the viewer knew– Dr. Feather is not just an expert in schmoozology and international hoi palloi, she’s a bona fide country fried human being…

Steve Pearce tells us what to do!

Pilgrim, if you want to contact New Mexico Rep. Steve Pearce from a zip code in northern New Mexico, forget it. Steve does not want to hear from you and he will block your e-mail from ever getting through on his pristine web site. You probably voted for someone else anyway. Steve does, however, have some brilliant fatherly, patronish-type advice for you, especially if you work for the federal government.

“Get yourselves efficient,” the coherent and persuasive Pearce intones. Steve is encouraging people here in good old drypocket NM to “lead by example"…

The path to economic salvation

Remember about three weeks ago when the Tea Party and other conservative groupies started screaming about how the IRS was picking on Sasquatch and his friends who were trying to educate the public about Ayn Rand’s secret recipe for fruitcake salad?

They were being singled out, they screamed, picked on and persecuted by Big Brother, who was actually off at a million dollar motivational conference in Hilo.

Well, hold onto your hats, the IRS, it turns out, when it was not partying, was also picking on progressive and liberal groups too…

The naked truth about the on-line underwear caper

I was absolutely taken aback when one of my many detractors told me in a recent e-mail “NOBODY CARES” that our distinguished gov. paid no Gross Receipts Tax on her on-line purchases.  This individual, who shall forever remain nameless and faceless, advised me to in his words, “Get a life.” I refer, of course, to one of my previous pieces in which I tsk, tsked the illustrious governor of our state for not paying Gross Receipts Tax on her on-line underwear purchases…

A Kerfuffalo or a Genius Idea?

I have always known that there is one unshakeable truth given to us by God: thin people damn well deserve to get ahead because the almighty has made skinny folks supremely more qualified, more talented, more perceptive, more articulate and more blessed than fat people who are ill-suited for the rigors of a life in which we all have to scurry about as quickly as possible.

Now I have living confirmation of the living truth of my insightful prejudgment thanks to self-styled “idiotic” and impulsive” UNM Psych. Professor, Dr. Geoffrey Miller, who so wrongly beats himself up over a little on-line kerfuffalo he made…

Bike-friendly New Mexico

Welcome to New Mexico, bicycle enthusiast. We are bicycle friendly here in our state. We’ve spent millions in our biggest city, Albuquerque, to develop a great bike trail system and we’re working harder every day to develop more trails for your biking pleasure.

By the way, did you bring your catastrophic accident insurance card in the highly unlikely event you might want to cross one on our tribal reservations where you might just be sideswiped a bit by a passing truck…

Social Security and the brat named Sequester

One of the greatest and most intractable problems we face these days is what to do about our exploding population of oldsters.  Some Progressive nitwits have suggested things are just fine and Social Security will not run out of money anytime soon. Conservatives know better and they have always raised the cry of alarm striking fear into the hearts of God-fearing people everywhere.

“The trust fund will go bust in the next few months if we don’t make radical program changes in the next fifteen minutes!” They intoned. “God wants us to do the right thing for future generations.  Amen." …

Governor’s terrible indiscretion revealed

The scandal has gone on almost a year. Gov. Martinez and her super minions in state government were exchanging state business, but doing so in private e-mail apparently to avoid public scrutiny.

Just recently Attorney General Gary King, who will run against Martinez in the upcoming gubernatorial election, seized these communications. And guess what: a hideous breach of trust has been revealed in one of the gov’s communications. Yes, Susana Martinez has been caught red-handed e-mail ordering undergarments from some Internet purveyor…