Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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Former President Barack Obama stirred up some attention this month when he suggested lackluster support for Kamala Harris among Black men is mostly about her gender. “Part of it makes me think that, well, you just aren’t feeling the idea of having a woman as president, and you’re coming up with other alternatives or other reasons for that,” Obama said at Harris’ campaign offices in Pittsburgh. “You’re thinking about sitting out, or even supporting somebody who has a history of denigrating you?” Obama likened this attitude to betrayal. “Women in...
It’s the usual partisan story. Folks who love Kamala Harris and hate Donald Trump thought she did fine in her interview with evil Bret Baier on Fox. Folks who love Trump and hate Kamala thought she was the same unqualified presidential candidate they’ve been watching for three months. But anyone in the middle, any truly independent or still undecided voter watching Fox, would have been left thinking a bunch of negative things about Harris. She didn’t look or act the least bit presidential. She recited her usual platitudes. She said nothi...
A documentary filmmaker, Mark, went to Hawaii to capture the stories of pearl divers. These guys make unassisted dives to retrieve oysters. By “unassisted,” we mean they have no oxygen tanks. They’re diving in the skin God gave them, holding their breath. This is a feat that takes years of training and is never without danger. Mark interviewed an older pearl diver, Mr. H, in the elderly man’s small home. Mark heard the tragic story of Mr. H’s son, who died one day after diving too deep or s...
Set aside for a moment the devastation that has hit the Southeast after back-to-back hurricanes. Turn instead to what’s happening in our little corner of the planet. Studies suggest the human body can’t survive outdoors in sustained temperatures of 120 degrees Fahrenheit or more. And yet, Phoenix, Ariz., just endured a summer that included 56 days of 110-degree temps. And here it is October and they’re still cooking under 100-degree days. Over here in New Mexico, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported August was the hotte...
Over the past few months, Donald Trump has stoked the flames of white resentment on the campaign trail. Speaking to conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt last week, the former president — who once referred to himself as a “gene believer” and has a known obsession with genetics and bloodlines — accused migrants coming to the southern border of being “criminals” and having “bad genes.” It’s the latest in a long line of bigoted and xenophobic statements from Trump, ranging from immigrants migrating from “s—hole nations” to supposedly “poisoning t...
Jeeze. In just one day everyone in the country saw why the people in charge of the Democrat Party want to keep Kamala Harris off TV. And in just one day everyone in the country saw why Donald Trump wants our sitting vice president on TV as much as possible. The Trump campaign wants Harris to make a hundred more unscripted appearances on her media tour – even on safe, friendly and embarrassing liberal political places like “The View,” the Howard Stern radio show and “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” On “The View” Harris didn’t merely deliver...
I heard an excellent sermon about temptation recently, and while the preacher was expounding on the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, something triggered a reminder that God satisfies the desires of every living creature (Matthew 3:13-4:-11; Mark 1:9-13; Luke 4:1-13; Psalm 145:15-16). Each temptation represented a desire of Jesus’ heart that is also common to all humans (1 John 2:15-17). Satan offered to fulfill those desires for Jesus, but Jesus responded with Scripture, which many consider to be the way out of temptation God provides (1...
Every now and then, someone comes along who makes a unique contribution to the world in which he live. Kris Kristofferson, who died recently at age 88, was that sort of man. Kristofferson hit Nashville and the country music scene in the 1970s, first as a broom-pushing songwriter on Music Row, then as a gravel-voiced singer/songwriter on the Nashville scene, and finally as a movie star in Hollywood. But before all that, he was a standout athlete in rugby, football and boxing, a Rhodes Scholar and an Army officer. He was even offered a teaching...
It still seems so surreal. Sean Combs’s arrest last month on charges including sex trafficking and racketeering conspiracy represents a stunning reversal of fortune for the hip-hop impresario. As recently as a year ago, Combs was feted as an industry visionary before a sudden series of sexual assault accusations emerged. Prosecutors said in an indictment that, since 2008, Combs (aka Diddy) has been the puppet master of a colossal criminal outfit that included employees and engaged in various sordid antics, including kidnapping, threats of v...
Tim Walz did a lot better than I thought he would in his debate with J.D. Vance on Oct. 1. Walz didn’t knock himself out of the race like Joe Biden. And he flashed some of the human skills and policy smarts that got him elected and re-elected as a congressman and governor by the good people of Minnesota. But Vance clearly won – throwing the baseball equivalent of a one-hit shutout. He quickly took charge of the debate and showed the 40 million Americans tuning in he was the smart guy who went to Yale, and Walz was the former high school foo...
The story is told of a tight-rope walker 100 years ago. He amazed crowds by working high above the ground, without a net. He displayed superhuman dexterity. He would go across the chasm of certain death, perched on a single, thin cable. He went forward and backward. He used a large pole for balance and then went without it. He’d cross on a unicycle, then on a unicycle while juggling. The crowds were delighted. He certainly seemed to have that high wire mastered. At one point, he pushed a wheelbarrow across and back, to thunderous applause. U...
Other than the presidential election and a super-tight congressional race down south, it’s a fairly tame general election in New Mexico. It could have been a more consequential year, with a mid-term, term-limited governor struggling to keep her party in lockstep on issues like crime containment and school calendars — while every seat in both the state House and Senate are up for election. Currently the New Mexico Senate is run by the Democrats, who command a 27-15 supermajority. All 42 Senate seats are up for election this year, but only 14...
When new Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham fired her first education secretary, Karen Trujillo, in July 2019 after just six months on the job, I thought it was a rash decision. But to be fair, I was biased. Like many people in Las Cruces, I knew Karen a little bit, and liked her. Still, the governor’s explanation seemed weak. “It is absolutely imperative that we genuinely transform public education in this state,” she said. “We must identify a vibrant and ambitious new leader for the Public Education Department as soon as we can.” “She just didn’t ha...
Are you better off than you were four years ago? That simple question to America’s voters was coined in 1980 by my father when he debated Jimmy Carter on TV. Part of my father’s closing statement, it probably won the night for him. Since then, it’s become a question that has been asked to voters in some form or another in every televised presidential debate. My father followed it up with several other rhetorical questions that are just as relevant today as they were 44 years ago: “Is it easier for you to go and buy things in the stores than it...
I have great respect for those talented in other languages. My father was a second-generation missionary in South America who became a Bible translator, developed a written language for a Peruvian tribe and wrote down their folklore so they could learn to read, after which he translated the New Testament for them. I also have great respect for those who’ve figured out how to communicate with people who cannot see, speak and/or hear. However, as proud as I am that we can communicate by various means, a recent event concerned me. I passed s...
Like clockwork, every presidential election we see a new set of attacks on the Electoral College. The Electoral College is the system by which the United States has elected every president since the Founding. As you may be aware, the Electoral College was the result of compromise among the Founding Fathers to resolve conflicting interests among the colonies that ultimately agreed to adopt the U.S. Constitution, thus becoming the first 13 American states under the Constitution. While the Electoral College has several components, the most...
Every two years New Mexico voters get the chance to make changes to our state constitution. Some years they’re big, fundamental changes, like scrapping the old state Board of Education in favor of a secretary appointed by the governor or ending the cash bail system. Some years they are just tinkering around the edges. This is one of those years. Voters will have four constitutional amendments on the ballot this year. Two of them will increase state support for disabled veterans and all veterans who have been honorably discharged. I don’t know h...
It’s usually good to be a purist, but not in politics. Purism in politics is not feasible. The Republicans in the House proved that for the millionth time last week when they tried to pass the Save Act by attaching it to a CR – a continuing resolution that extends the funding of the federal government and prevents a government shutdown. CRs are what have to happen almost every year when Congress fails to pass its annual budget to fund the government — something that it’s constitutionally required to do by Oct. 1. In other words, if Congres...
My Bible tells me that God exists outside of time. God created time. God works in and through time, but time does not affect God. Scripture says of Jesus that “his goings forth have been from of old, from eternity.” It says in another place that a thousand years are like a day to him. The Lord’s experience of time is necessarily different than ours because he is the one who created it, the one who owns and controls it. On the other hand, here we are, stuck on earth, clicking through moments one second after another. We can’t speed it up when...
When New Mexico’s rural hospitals called for help, our entire state came together – hospitals statewide, the governor’s office, NM Health Care Authority and legislators from both sides of the aisle -- to pass the 2024 Health Care Delivery and Access Act. New Mexico is at a pivotal moment as we struggle to address healthcare challenges facing our hardworking families especially when it comes to access to healthcare. Almost half of our residents are enrolled in Medicaid and, frankly, the Medicaid reimbursement rates to pay our doctors, nurse...
What is old is new again, at least in the world of politics. Recently, Fox News host Jesse Watters made a quip questioning the veracity of Barack Obama’s birth certificate during a live edition of The Five. Regardless of whether he was being intellectually dishonest or not, Watters presented the topic of Obama’s birth certificate as somehow fraught with political intrigue and announced he would be dispatching his producer to find out the truth. “That’s why we’ll be sending Johnny to Hawaii to get the truth about the birth certifica...
Trump or Harris? The pundits and so-called political experts in the liberal and conservative media are still arguing over who won last week’s presidential debate. They’ll never agree. And they’re all so biased and partisan, they can’t be trusted to be honest anyway. But both sides did seem to agree on one thing – ABC News was the biggest loser. By far. Whatever shred of legitimacy ABC’s news-gathering operation had left, which wasn’t much, it was destroyed in full public view during the Trump-Harris debate. For 90 minutes millions of p...
I had prepared another article for today's Quay County Sun, but when I realized the issue's date, I decided to write about terrorism despite having written about Patriot Day last year. This article is biblically based, but it's also heavily editorial, and I had to rush to meet the deadline. It seems that since shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, we'd made fairly good headway against global terrorism and, for a brief period, could actually be at some ease knowing our country was being well-protected against it. Now, terrorism has reared its ugly head...
America’s free press is in crisis. Local journalism, necessary to maintaining an informed and active citizenry, is struggling to survive as Big Tech companies — namely Meta and Google — have used their power to manipulate news and magazine publishers for their own financial gain. They set the rules for how, where and when we see news content online and how much revenue is made. By not negotiating with local news publishers on usage terms and refusing to pay them fairly — or at all — for their work, Big Tech has driven many local outlets o...
I heard a report the other day that the St. James Hotel in Cimarron is closing. Another Wild West landmark goes down. The St. James is where I got the best steak I’ve ever eaten, but that wasn’t so long ago, when its owners’ focus was more on fine dining than cowboy accommodations. Back in the day, it was a rough and rowdy place, to say the least. Lots of shoot-em-ups, dozens of killings — one estimate I read had the total at 26 dead. Traveling lawmen and notorious outlaws frequented the place, and stories have been passed down about visits...