Thursday - March 6, 2008 A big West Texas greeting from the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy who assisted the Wicked Witch Of New York in victory against Barack Hussein Obama in the State of Texas.  I never thought I would be glad to see Hillary Clinton, or any other Clinton for that matter, win an election.  While she might be the most evil female on the planet, I believe her to be less dangerous AND more beatable in the general election.  With that being said, the Right Wing Conspiracy needs to be even more vast than what it already is. By the end of election day I was beat.  I was at the polling site at 5:30 A.M. and when I finally got home that night it was after 9:20 P.M.  Election day was interesting to say the least.  I don’t know how many of you have ever worked the polls on election day but it is quite an experience.   Of course if you have some really good people working with you it makes life much easier.  I was very fortunate to have 4 other Republicans who had all worked elections in the past and it went really smooth.  The end of the day when the polls closed was a bit hectic in the fact that it seems like every election has a little different step that you must deal with.   On this particular primary election the Republican and Democratic primaries were both held at the same location.  After the polls closed the Democrats had a caucus at the polling site and were fairly disruptive to the rest of us who were attempting to count unused ballots and do paperwork involved with the electronic voting machines and getting everything into the correct locked ballot box and putting all of the portable electronic machines and electronic ballot counter back into their carrying cases and taking down the paper ballot booths.  All of this equipment had to be returned to election headquarters in the center of town.  I attempted to get the Democrats to wait until we had the area cleared before they held their meeting but that was not going to happen.  Anyway I will address that in another paragraph. I did notice quite a few people who several of us recognized  as registered Republicans voting in the Democratic Primary.  Now according to the Democrats, this was totally unacceptable and should not be allowed as it damages the purity of their election.  Well let me tell you that Republicans were not the only crossover voters.  Democrats were also crossing over to vote for Mike Huckabee.  Of course some of them were known to some of out poll workers but occasionally you would receive another subtle hint:  One lady was voting on the electronic machine and she had just logged onto the machine and she called out to me to assist her so I walked over and she pointed to the screen where she had voted for Mike Huckabee.  She said, “This is the only person I want to vote for in this election, so how do I pass up everything else and just have my vote for President counted?”  I told her that she might want to look at the following screen as there were some referendum items in which she might be interested. (These were only on the Republican Primary ballots). She said, “I don’t care about any of that other Republican stuff, I just want to vote for President.”  So I told her what to do and went away.  She punched the correct buttons and went on.  Now, call me just naturally suspicious but I would just bet that she was a crossover Democrat.  We had several incidents just like that and all they were interested in was their vote for President.   Another subtle hint was that they knew everyone working the Democratic Primary and stopped to speak to them on their way out. What struck me as a bit unusual was the fact that McCain was heavily favored to win Texas in the Republican Primary but Hillary and Obama were a toss up.  If this is an example of typical liberal thinking, God help us if they take the White House. Of course all of that meant nothing to me.  My whole day was made when a young Army Sergeant wanted to vote and wanted to use the electronic voting machine but needed help to get started as did many others who were using the electronic machine for the first time.  I showed him how to log on and he took it from there.  After this young man voted he came back to the table where we were all seated and said, “I sure want to thank all of you for volunteering to work this election.  It means a lot to us to be able to vote no matter where we are.”  We told him in unison, “No Thank You for your service”.  It was almost like it was rehearsed.  That young Sergeant made my day. Now about the caucus.  This was a Precinct Caucus at which the Precinct Democrats chose delegates to attend the County  Democratic  Caucus where the delegates will be chosen to attend the State  Democratic  Convention where delegates will be chosen to attend the National  Democratic  Convention.   Now I thought, Hey!  Why end it there?  Why stop at the national level.  Why not immediately following the National  Democratic Convention  why not have a National Democratic Caucus  and choose delegates to the Continental  Democratic Caucus where delegates could be chosen to attend the Hemispheric  Democratic Caucus   at which time delegates from there would be picked to attend the  Global  Democratic  Caucus  and from there they could have a Solar System  Democratic  Caucus and from that body could be choose delegates to attend the Galactic  Democratic  Caucus  and finally we could have a Universal  Democratic  Caucus.   Of course with each step up in size of the caucuses, the number of delegates would increase in size.  Stay with me on this now.  IF and I say IF we could ever get the Solar  System  Democratic  Caucus held on the Planet Mercury, that would end the caucus business since they would all be burned to a crisp.  (Now for those of you who reside in the People’s Republic of San Francisco,  Planet Mercury is the closest planet to the sun and has boiling hot temperatures.) Last week end some friends and I attended the Region 1 Basketball Tournament which was held here in San Angelo.  This was for class 4A high school boys basketball.  The final game was between Ft. Worth Southwest  and Amarillo Palo Duro.  Amarillo Palo Duro was the only undefeated basketball team in the state.  Palo Duro got in foul trouble pretty early in the game and had the lead with 10 second left and Southwest tied it up.  In overtime 2 Palo Duro players fouled out and Southwest went on to win the game 104 to 100.  It was one of the better basketball games I have seen in many years.  The absolute best since I left Hobbs, New Mexico.  Hobbs, New Mexico as some of you already know is nationally recognized as having one of the premier high school basketball programs in the country.  Now while this was a really exciting game, what I remember most was that during the playing of our National Anthem, every single player on the Amarillo Palo Duro team faced the screen with the flag and each player had his right hand over his heart.  I mentioned that to my friend Carl Williams and he had also noticed it.  Not so with the other team.   Now I know that it is not mandatory but I always do it and I thought it was pretty cool that a bunch of high school kids from the Texas Panhandle showed that kind of respect. This past week I picked up an old book and read it for the third time.  The title of the book is “Drug Lord” and was written by an El Paso, Texas reporter named Terrence E. Poppa.  The book is about a man named Pablo Acosta and his drug smuggling cartel headquartered in Ojinaga, Chihuahua, Mexico.  My interest in this particular book was re-kindled by some of the reports of the violence being perpetrated at the present time along both sides of our Southern border.  Also this book made reference to a double homicide in Hobbs, New Mexico, the investigation of which Tony Knott and I were both participants.  There were also some references to other occurrences in the Southeast New Mexico area involving people who were handled by our department.  I remember being contacted by Mr. Poppa prior to the release of his book and he wanted an interview regarding this double homicide but at that time the case was still open and the defendants had not been positively identified or charged so any interview regarding that case was prohibited.  Most of the information in Mr. Poppas book was well researched but some of the information he received was from a former law enforcement who was more interested in painting himself as a heroic figure than he was in the book as a whole. But I like to read this book and it brings back some memories but most of all it tells us that the volume of drugs being smuggled into this country from Mexico CANNOT happen without the blessing of Mexican Government Officials.  It was true then and it is true today.  What finally did Acosta in was the fact that he began using drugs heavily AND he became so infatuated with the fame he had been acquiring that he began to brag to reporters about paying off Mexican Government Officials which of course included the police at every level along with the Mexican Military.  At one point in the book Acosta told the author that he was paying off approximately $100,000  per month to the Mexican authorities.  Now not only did he have the government in his pocket but he and all of his Pistoleros had Mexican Federal Police credentials. After some of Acosta’s people were busted by a federal wiretap in a Southeastern New Mexico town, one of the people arrested turned informant big time and after the DEA had all their information together the Hobbs Police Department was contacted and I along with a Detective Sergeant drove to another city and interviewed this witness who was in the car along with one of the shooters when the two brothers were murdered in Hobbs a couple of years before.  We got enough information from this witness to indict 4 people for the murder.  Now here is where our system gets really screwed up.  The information gathered from the wiretap was nearly 2 years old and the New Mexico Supreme Court in their infinite wisdom ruled that the information, while gathered legally, had not been acted upon as rapidly as the court would have liked so they quashed the grand jury murder indictments.  If you have been reading or listening to reports of what is presently going on along our Southern border with these drug smugglers and human smugglers boldly shooting at law enforcement officers on the U.S. side of the border and the shooting and intimidation of people in the U.S. border towns you will see that things have only gotten worse.  Incidentally, Pablo Acosta was eventually cornered at his ranch outside Ojinaga and gunned down by the very people he had been paying off for years.  If you can get a copy of the book, it is worth reading just to see how utterly corrupt the Mexican Government was and still is. ENVIRONMENTAL   ALERT! Now get ready for this.  Whooping Cranes are the new enemy of the large wind turbines which frequent the landscape of parts of West Texas and a whole bunch of California.  I heard this on the radio earlier in the week.  Some national environmental group has decided that some of the huge wind turbine ire in the migration paths of  Whooping Cranes.  Now let us remember that at one point in time in the past 100 years the Whooping Crane populations got down to about 15 birds in 1941.  There are at present approximately 525 Whoopers with about 266 of them who fly a migration path somewhere in the area of  wind turbines.  Now keep in mind that these flight paths are hundreds of miles wide.  I have seen Whooping Cranes flying one direction or the other all my life.  One year in Colorado I saw a flock of Whooping Cranes.  They were flying South and I was at an elevation of about 9,000 feet and these birds were flying several thousand feet higher than I was standing.  So we know that Whooping Cranes can attain an altitude of at least 12,000 feet.  Now I have seen as many wind turbines as the next guy and I have NEVER seen one which was 12,000 feet in height.  Let’s examine this a bit further,  the wind turbines are pretty easy to see,  they are not made out of clear plastic or any other substance which is transparent.  As a matter of fact you can see them for miles.  One can assume that since Whooping Cranes migrate at distances of thousands of miles that their eyesight is probably at least average.  So, my point is this.  If the Whooping Cranes are flying North or South, and they see a wind turbine which could be several hundred feet tall,  either gain a little altitude and fly over it OR fly East of it OR fly West of it.  When asked if there had ever been a report of a Whooping Crane flying into one of these turbines the answer was “No, but it is an area of great concern.”   OK. Let me share this thought with the Environmental Whackos.  It might be of great concern to you, but it is way down on my list of priorities. Also pertaining to our environment is something which has been troubling me for may years.  These same environmentalists told us years ago that there was a hole in the ozone layer which was caused by fluorocarbons created by hair spray and spray deodorants and other materials which were sold in spray cans.  This hole in the ozone layer was over the South Pole.  What has been bothering me for years is this:  “How in the hell do penguins and leopard seals operate those cans of hair spray and deodorants?”  We know that the Orcas don’t use any of those spray products so it just has to be the penguins and leopard seals.  Inquiring minds want to know. STUPID  CONGRESSMAN  ALERT: A request has been made by Representative Henry Waxman to the Justice Department to open an investigation into the Congressional testimony of Roger Clemens.  “It will receive the appropriate investigative action by F.B.I.’s Washington Field Office” according to an F.B.I. spokesperson.  I hope it does receive the “Appropriate Investigative Action” which in my opinion is the shredder. Which brings us to a brand new list for MUTT  OF  THE  MONTH: “Fat Teddy”; Henry Waxman;  Nancy Pelosi;  Harry Reid;  Barack Hussein Obama; Michelle Obama;  Hillary Clinton;  Bill Clinton;  Arlen Specter; The ACLU;  Code Pink; The UN. QUOTES: “I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven’t just been sitting on my ass all afternoon,”….  WILLIAM F, BUCKLEY  JR. “You cultivate the essential virtues: high purpose, intelligence, decency, humility, fear of the Lord, and the passion for freedom.” ……………..  WILLIAM  F.  BUCKLEY JR. After the Confederate defeat at Gettysburg: “I am as willing to serve now as in the beginning in any capacity and at any post where I can do good.  The lower the position, the more suitable to my ability and the more agreeable to my feelings.”……… ……………………  GENERAL  ROBERT  E. LEE - 1863 Please let us all remember our brave men and women in all branches of our U.S. Military.  Special prayers for:  Tony Knott, Hobbs, N.M.;  LCDR  Robert McLay - Iraq;  Sgt. Jeffery Knott - USMC; GySgt. James Walker - USMC, Iraq;  Jason Plilar - U.S. Coast Guard - Iraq;  GySgt. Randy Morrow - USMC; Midshipman Levi English - U.S. Naval Academy;  L.T. Drennan - Ada, Oklahoma;  I heard today that there are 2 surviving veterans of WW I left living in the United States so let us include them and all of our Veterans of the United States Military. I will leave you with this little thought from the cartoon strip, Dilbert:  This is a statement made by Catbert, the Evil Director of Human Resources: “90% of my job is convincing people that they don’t deserve what they receive.”  -   Now for those of you who are employees or former employees of the City of Hobbs:  Remind you of anyone? That about does it for this week but never fear, as long as we have Socialists/Democrats/Liberals in charge of both Houses of our legislative branch there will always be something to gripe about. Later JEM