Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
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The Kamala Harris-Mike Pence death match will go down in history as another forgettable vice presidential debate, but it had its pluses. It showed us two important things we already knew. It showed us that Vice President Pence is a smart, sober and able defender of Donald Trump and his record at home and overseas. And it showed us that Sen. Harris is an empty pants suit who likes to laugh and smirk, play the race and gender cards, hide her own leftwing politics and blame the Trump administration for everything that’s wrong with the world. T...
Homonyms, also called homophones and homographs, are words that sound the same but have different meanings and usually different spellings (for example, bear, as in carry; bear, as in Smokey; and bare, as in naked). I was recently reminded that homonyms can be fun when one of my devotional writers used the words “hole” and “whole” in an article, although, they made no connection about them being homonyms. So I thought I’d write an article about biblical use of “hole” and “whole” and their homonymic variations, although I can’t even begin...
The book of Judges is a thrill-ride. It's filled with the stuff of great storytelling: courageous heroes; despicable antagonists; amazing miracles; thrilling acts of valor; love and lust; honor and revenge; and, a faithful God acting in righteousness throughout. It's also a tough read, because, for all the excitement and heroism, it manages to descend from its high points to some disastrous pits, with ugly portraits of human nature. There's no happy ending to be found in Judges. (That will come...
Before President Donald Trump contracted COVID-19, a strong case could be made for modifying the format of the remaining debates from face-to-face to remote. Now it’s essential. It may seem premature to consider the format of future debates before we know the seriousness of the president’s condition. But at present the nation should operate under the assumption that the president is going to recover and that the campaign will go on. The first debate was a disaster. Only those with an appreciation for rhetorical blood sport found anything upl...
Just in case I was missing life in Southern California, eastern New Mexico has been getting a little bit of California in the air over the past several weeks. Westerly winds have carried smoke from California’s catastrophic wildfires to Quay County in varying quantities. On good days, it was a light haze that created an eerie orange glow with a red sun in the morning and evening. On bad days, it shrouds even the passes through the mesas. In that way, it reminds me of most days in Southern California. Smog routinely fogged the valley we lived i...
“If you want to make God laugh,” Woody Allen once famously said, paraphrasing a Yiddish proverb, “tell him about your plans.” That’s not an issue for President Donald Trump, at least not on healthcare. He’s been promising a healthcare plan since he started running for president, often with superlative adjectives attached, and yet never produced one. His lack of a proposal was a stumbling block in Tuesday’s debate and plays into a broader, long-standing Republican vulnerability on healthcare. Polling tends to show that, far and away, the thr...
I’ll not say who specifically is the basis of this article because everyone probably knows someone living the earthly life described below. So, picture this: A person becomes a Christian, but they’re never really able to get over their mischievous tendency, some of which is actually sin. Nonetheless, they always repent and ask forgiveness. Finally, they die, and after entering heaven, their mischief continues to the point that God tells them they must go back to Earth to become more mature. Sound familiar? Thankfully, there are a couple of maj...
People of color suffer more than lost TV America does not have to be full of racists to have a situation of long-standing racial injustice. All that is needed is a political contingent that maintains power by pursuing this agenda. Michael Reagan, in his Sept. 9 column, spends a lot of space listing outstanding examples of achievements by people of different racial backgrounds. However they are exceptions to the rule. Reagan is very upset that the Black Lives Matter movement has received so much coverage on TV. An excellent source that reveals...
The status between Israel and Bahrain is no longer ambiguous. Less than a month after the United Arab Emirates forged a peace agreement with the Jewish state, the Kingdom of Bahrain followed suit. Representatives from all three countries were on hand at a White House ceremony on Sept. 15 to celebrate the new Abraham Accords Declaration. In a region that will soon produce young Emiratis and Bahrainis who are fluent in Hebrew, Israeli graduates from UAE and Bahraini universities, and regular commercial flights among all three countries — with a...
President Trump has been calling Democrats “radical socialists” and just last week, he said they might be “Communist.” Trump knows that words like “socialist” and “Communist” are bad. But I wonder if he knows what these words mean. There are two common meanings for “socialism.” One is moving toward economic equality among people. The other is state control of goods and services. The U.S. is a capitalist country, we are taught to believe, so we think free markets should control just about everything in the way of goods and services. Most econ...
It didn’t matter what the findings of the Breonna Taylor grand jury were going to be. Black Lives Matters and their sympathizers were well prepared to riot on Wednesday night in Louisville and other cities, like New York and Washington. The video of that rented U-Haul filled with big signs and who-knows-what-else is all the proof you need that their “peaceful protest” was a planned operation. Taking over the streets, burning down buildings, destroying businesses, shooting things at police and roughing up ordinary citizens was like a summer job...
The loss of Ruth Bader Ginsburg is a double blow. It will be felt as a personal loss by millions of Americans, and it will stress America's politics at a moment when its fabric is already threatening to come apart. Consider this a measure of the country's current plight: What could be sadder than to fear that the death of a selfless and extraordinary public servant is more likely in the coming weeks to divide the nation than unite it? Justice Ginsburg taught many lessons over the course of her career in the law. One of the most important will...
Ross Douthat is a New York Times columnist who occasionally throws cold water onto the Times' generally red-hot liberal editorial opinions. Douthat's Sept.12 column, to me, was one of his most thoughtful and disturbing to those who, like me, tend to think President Donald Trump's response to the COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented, world-class disaster. After reading Douthat and probing a little more, I have to conclude that while Trump's response certainly made our COVID-19 response worse than it could have been, we should consider...
Lots of people in politics and the media out here in California are blaming global warming for the 26 major wildfires that have killed at least 24, burned more than 3 million acres and destroyed thousands of homes. But let’s get real. This state has been plagued by wildfires long before baby left-wingers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez decided that they’re caused by humans heating up the planet by burning fossil fuels. I grew up in Los Angeles in the 1950s. We didn’t have as many people, cars or smokestacks in those days, but we had plenty of 11...
“Pastor, God never instituted a particular form of government in the Bible!” Actually, he did. When God took ownership of the nation of Israel, the form of government that appeared in his law was radically minimal. In fact, it was founded upon individual self-government, in accordance with divine, moral instruction. When that self-government failed, causing actual monetary or physical damage to a neighbor, then there was a system of appeals courts that could hear cases and pronounce ver...
For my annual devotional plan, I alternate between reading through the Bible during the year and reading two or three devotional books. While this isn’t necessarily a recommendation of either book, this year I’m reading “The Best of the Bible — 365 Must-Read Bible Passages” (NLT, Tyndale House, 1996) and “365 Ways to Know God — Devotional Readings on the Names of God” (Elmer Towns, Regal Books, 2004). The passages used for Sept. 2 were Matthew 21:28-46 and 1 Peter 2:7-8 for the former and latter books, respectively, and presented a com...
Earlier this year, South African-born comedian Trevor Noah hit at the heart of a serious problem hurting America right now. “Nuance doesn’t sell as well in America,” Noah said in an interview with CBS. “Nuance means you can’t just take a stand and fight the other person. Nuance means we have to talk a little bit more. And until the American political system can find a way to represent the nuance that exists within America, you are going to create this false impression that there is This or That.” In a nation sharply divided by ideology, i...
Last week, we began learning about what President Donald Trump knew about the coronavirus and when he knew it as Watergate journalist Bob Woodward previewed a new Trump book called “Rage.” On Feb. 7, Trump apparently told Woodward that COVID-19 is “more deadly than even your strenuous flus.” “This is deadly stuff,” he added. Woodward has been justly criticized for not revealing the facts of this interview much earlier, but Woodward isn’t the president of the United States. Trump is. Well, the president didn’t want to cause a panic, he told...
Am I in hell, or just L.A.? The other day it was 121 degrees here. There’s so much smoke in the air from all the wildfires the sun looks like the moon. Everything’s closed because of the coronavirus pandemic. People can’t go to work. School kids are struggling to learn on Zoom. Parents are going nuts. Some are hiring teachers, wannabe teachers or former teachers to come in and tutor their kids. And now the Los Angeles County Health Department has tried to wreck Halloween. At first the county announced a ban on trick-or-treaters going door-...
The cattle industry is an intrinsic piece of New Mexico's history and culture and a vital component of our state's economy. Spanish explorers brought a small herd of cattle to the upper Rio Grande nearly 500 years ago and today New Mexico is home to more than 1.6 million head of beef and dairy cattle. Together, they are our state's most profitable agricultural products. The coronavirus has impacted nearly all industries and sectors worldwide and New Mexico's cattle industry is no exception. As...
President Donald Trump recently tweeted, “The United States of America will NOT be cutting funding to @starsandstripes magazine under my watch. It will continue to be a wonderful source of information to our Great Military!” The events leading up to this tweet have been confusing. Did the Pentagon or Trump shut down Stars and Stripes, a decision that Trump later reversed? Stars and Stripes is a venerable military funded yet independent news outlet for service members. The Stars and Stripes story broke in the wake of an Atlantic magazine art...
At least the media haven’t politicized the weather reports — yet. Watching the next Category 4 hurricane hit Florida is about all I can stand to see on TV these days. The news and cable talk shows are brutal — all partisan politics all the time. Sports programs are almost as bad, thanks to their blind worship of the Black Lives Matter movement and its dangerous ideas. The NBA coverage is the worst. You almost feel like you have to swear your allegiance to BLM or confess to being a lifelong racist before every tip off — which is why the NBA’s TV...
This might make me seem terribly unspiritual, but there’s a point. For years now I have been a fan of the sport of Mixed Martial Arts (MMA). One thing I’ve picked up along the way is that some of the best fighters don’t look very threatening at all. In fact, it’s often the opposite. The clean-cut guy with the “Dad-bod” could snap you in half if he wanted. The fighter with the mean face, tense as a coiled rattler on his way to the cage, may in fact be as tough as he looks. But, oddly, the...
Virus controls matter of science Michael Reagan and a lot of other Republicans seem to believe if you deny scientific facts that will make the outcome conform to their way of thinking. From the start, President Trump has ignored his scientific advisors, refusing to take the coronavirus seriously, then, pushing for returning to business as usual, paying no attention to scientific advice about taking some steps to control the coronavirus prior to opening business. Reagan, in his column published Aug. 19, said that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris...
There’s a windmill and capped well where I work next to a new well with an electric pump. Most of the windmill is intact, but the vane’s been locked in the furled position so whenever the wind blows, the wheel doesn’t turn. It couldn’t pump water anyway because the sucker rod’s also been removed. The windmill does still try to align itself with the wind occasionally, making an eerie screeching sound. So, this windmill is strictly ornamental, still standing only for its historic aesthetics, having been repurposed for that to maintain at least...