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Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas

Opinion

Smokey Briggs

Sage
Views

By Smokey Briggs

Tuesday, March 12, 2002

Home shopping needs a shot of testosterone

I do not like television. I think it is a brain-eating tumor sucking the life out of our nation's youth.

Usually I avoid it entirely. The reason I avoid it entirely is that television is addictive to me. If my eyes flicker across the screen for a moment my weak mind can become entranced with all the pretty colors and sounds. Two hours later I realize that there is drool on the couch and I have to go to the bathroom.

So I avoid it.

But, sometimes it gets me. Usually late at night, after bedtime books have been read. Undoubtedly She-who-must-be-obeyed has the channel changer.

It is the "channel changer" in our house, not the "remote." That shift in terminology took place 18 months or so after our first child was born. Go figure.

Like I said, She-who-must-be-obeyed has the changer, which she refuses to use past flipping the channel to man-hell also known as The Home Shopping Network, which most women refer to simply as QVC.

I still do not know what QVC stands for but it is on all the little packages the UPS guy brings.

I slipped into man-hell the other night with a sleeping 14-month old drooling on my chest and daring me to move and wake her so that another endless night of play could begin.

I was scared to breathe, much less move.

Seeing my predicament, SWMBO quickly flicked the channel to the man-hell channel and left the room with the channel changer conveniently across the room.

After 15 minutes of fake pearls, knit sweaters, food blender things, food chopper things, Taiwanese knives and mascara, I realized something.

First, the sales pitch was good. It created a sense of urgency to own not just one eyeliner pencil but several. And I rarely use the stuff.

Second, everything on QVC is for girls.

Yeah, they have a cordless drill or something once a fortnight, but it is usually a girly-drill with a matching case of girly drill bits for hanging pictures or something.

Men of the world we are being violently discriminated against.

This must end. We must demand QVC _ for men.

Home shopping charged with testosterone.

Yeah.

I can see it.

I can hear it.

"For only $9999.99 you can own not one, not two, but three MAG-58, tripod mounted, belt fed machineguns with interchangeable barrels that will accept three of the most popular caliber cartridges in the world. And, if you order in the next ten minutes, you also get, absolutely free!, these perfectly matched ammunition links and this brand new, military spec, ammunition linking machine. Gary, why don't you show us what these babies will do on the deer lease."

"Sure Dave," Gary says as he begins chasing a white tail buck across a field with a red stream of tracers.

"Wow, now that little darling will bring home the meat."

"Stay tuned everybody because now that Gary harvested the deer we are going to demonstrate our next product _ the brand new M43 ManTruck built especially for QVC-M by a new company that only uses vehicles and parts found in Third World junkyards to build its products."

"Wow Dave."

Yeah, wow. Where is my credit card. The big one. The man-sized credit card.

I might even quit hating television if I could watch QVC-M.

Our View

Have you voted?

Today is the day here in Reeves County. If you want your vote to count for local offices you pretty much have to vote in today's Democrat Primary.

If you do not vote you are foregoing to exercise a right that free men have fought and died over the centuries. As you read this, free men are fighting and dying for your rights in Afghanistan and in the Philippines.

The battle for freedom never ends.

It will be a shame if we win that battle on the battlefield and then lose it through apathy at home.

A right not exercised is a right lost.

Vote today if you can make an informed decision.

If you cannot, you should not vote, but you should make sure that when the next election comes around, you can make that informed decision.

It is our duty.

Your View

What has Galindo accomplished?

Dear Editor:

I would like to add my opinions to those already circulating about the county Judge's election. Jimmy Galindo is asking the voters of Reeves County for another four years. Why? What has he accomplished and shown? Favoritism, like creating jobs to the chosen few in order to secure his position as county judge; like taking credit for job creation at RCDC when we know that the person responsible for that is the prison warden; and wasteful taxpayer spending. There is no need for an additional county attorney to oversee legal activities at RCDC when we have an elected county attorney to do that job, also, why relocate the tax office at our expense. Someone is making big bucks during this administration while we the taxpayers get the shaft.

Our county is in chaos, we are in deep debt and it reflects on our community. All you have to do is drive around to see closed businesses, piled up trash in empty home lots, and unemployment problem, which will increase once McCain closes it doors. Yet all Jimmy Galindo is worried about is who pays their taxes. And he speaks of further plans for the county, such as the planned "Water Park." Has he thought about the water shortage? Or is this just another pipe dream to gain another four years?

Do not let dirty politics and gossip discourage you from voting. It's our responsibility as citizens to cast our vote for the betterment of this community. Please exercise your right to vote on March 12. If we don't vote we have no right to complain.

Sincerely,

Becky Pena

Election doesn't matter, nothing will change

Dear Editor:

In the Tuesday, March 5th edition of the Pecos Enterprise, the Opinion page was primarily focused on the two candidates for County Judge. These letters struck a chord and inspired this response.

The first letter that I wish to comment on was entitled "Citizen critisizes Galindo for having a dance during Lent." The title of the letter is self-explanatory. What infuriates me & several of my contemporaries is that not everyone in Pecos is Catholic. The religious season that the Catholic Church is in does not affect many of the citizens of Pecos. If Galindo wanted to have a dance and paid for it as a "political promotion" he was well within his rights. If the elections and dance happen during Lent, oh well. As I understand it there is in our government a very clear seperation of the church and state. I understand that a majority of the citizens in Pecos are Catholic. What I would like to know is how many Catholics attended this dance knowing it was Lent. This obviously did not stop people from attending. If this had been a real issue, nobody would have attended this dance. That letter was a pointless, meaningless atttack on Galindo.

The other letters addressed either taxes, "dirty laundry" at the RCDC. In my opinion, if a person is or is not paying their taxes it should not be public business. The government will catch up to them eventually, one way or another they will pay. As for other "dirty laundry," has no one ever paid attention to any political campaign, be they local, state, or federal government? All campaigns are based on making the other guy look bad. I'm not condoning these techniques, but in our society this has become the norm. No election is based on the candidates qualifications. Whomever looks best at the time wins the elections, regardless of who is actually best suited for the job. We as a society have become so blindsided and ignorant of our government that we accept this. As for the letter that was about the RCDC, what does that have to do with the elections?

The comment made that I wish to respond to was that thousands of dollars were not being spent or invested in our local economy. What I would like to know is where should we go to spend our money? We basically have three stores; Wal-Mart, Bealls & La Tienda. We have no other options. We are forced to go out of town. We should be trying to encourage new and different businesses to come to our small community. But we don't. We make it harder for businesses to come to Pecos by petitioning against them. It is more important now than ever to try to encourage Pecos to grow. Pecos is getting smaller and smaller. We are watching Pecos die, and we are allowing it to happen. And opening yet another Mexican Restaurant is not going to help Pecos grow. There is a lot of talk of what we need in Pecos, but there is no action.

Ultimately, Tuesday's Opinion page was a waste of my time & your space. No matter who wins this election nothing is going to change. Nothing is going to get better. Everything will stay the same, if not get worse. Until someone or something forces Pecos to change, we are going to stay a dull and desolate community. The older people are too afraid of change. The younger community is too concerned with getting out of Pecos. These petty problems and generic candidates do not and will not affect anything in the long run. Name one person who has changed or improved Pecos...Nobody! (And I'm not speaking about repaving the streets or paving the curbs.)

Thank you for your time and space. Perhaps this blunt description of our community will effect our collective thinking and perspectives of Pecos and in the long run will better improve our small community.

Sincerely,

Benjamyn Ortiz

Libby Rodriguez

Mary Ann Tarin

Lisa Lujan

Dani Jaramillo

Zelda Baeza

Other Views

By Diane West

We've heard about Pakistan's Islamist religious schools, or madrassas, where hundreds of thousands of pakistani boys and young men have been indoctrinated in the hate-based teaching of radical Islam. A goodly chunk of the $600 million in economic aid the Bush administration has designated for Pakistan this year is for re-establishing that nation's school system, which both governments now recognize as having long been a state-sponsored, terrorist training ground.

But a radicalizing Islamic school system turns out not to be exclusive to any one country. The Wall Street Journal reports that the Netherlands is investigating 10 of the country's 32 state-sponsored Islamic elementary schools after a Dutch intelligence study fournd that many of these schools are funded "by what it called an intolerant Islamist foundation in Saudi Arabia and a society it said is controlled by Libyan intelligence." The intelligence report also says, "a number of the schools are run by boards with contacts to militant Islamic organizations such as Hamas."

The government insists it's not attacking Islamic education, but rather seeking to guarantee that Islamic schools, like other government-sponsored schools, "work toward the integration of minorities into Dutch society." (With a population of 16 million, the Netherlands is home to some 800,000 Muslims.) This rationale may say more about the politeness of the Dutch than the blamelessness of Islamic education, because the more we learn about Islamic schools, abroad and at home, the more at odds their all-too-often intolerant curricula seem to be with the tolerant societies in which they exist.

The Washington Post, for example, recently reported on a couple of Washington-area Islamic schools, including the Al-Qalam All-Girls School, where maps of the Middle East simply omit the state of Israel, and the Islamic Saudi Academy, where several students told a reporter "they are taught that it is better to shun and even to dislike Christians, Jews and Shiite Muslisms." Some teachers "focus more on hatred," one teenager said. "They teach students that whatever is kuffa," or non-Muslim, "it is okay for you" to hurt or steal from such a person. A school text teaches that a sign of the Day of Judgment is "that Muslims will fight and kill Jews, who will hide behind trees that say: `Oh, Muslim, Oh servant of God, here is a Jew hiding behind me. Come here and kill him.'"

United States Constitution

Amendment XVI [1913]

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever sources derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

HISTORICAL NOTE

This amendment was proposed to the legislatures of the several states by the Sixty-First Congress, on the 31st of July, 1909, and was declared, in a proclamation by the Secretary of States, dated the 25th of February, 1913, to have been ratified by the legislatures of the states of Alabama, Kentucky, South Carolina, Illinois, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Maryland, Georgia, Texas, Ohio, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, California, Montana, Indiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, North Dakota, Michigan, Iowa, Missouri, Maine, Tennessee, Arkansas, Wisconsin, New York, South Dakota, Arizona, Minnesota, Louisiana, Delaware, and Wyoming, in all, thirty-six. The legislatures of New Jersey and New Mexico also passed resolutions ratifying the said proposed amendment.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Constitution of the United States is the foundation of the great nation we live in. For 200 years we have lived within its framework of government and law and have preserved a level of freedom never equaled in history.

It is an amazing document. That it has served for so long is testimony to the brilliance of our nation's fathers.

It is not a complicated document. It is written in plain English. You do not need a lawyer or judge to interpret it for you.

And everyone of us should have read it once, and should read it again from time to time. It is the basis of our freedom.

When a court pronounces a law as either constitutional or unconstitutional, we should have valid opinions as to that court's interpretation of our Constitution. The first step is reading it, something far too many Americans have never done.

It is your Constitution. Not the government's, not the courts', not the lawyers'.

By reading it, you become its master — master of your destiny and our country's destiny.

In an effort to promote Constitutional literacy the Pecos Enterprise publishes a portion of the Constitution each week on this opinion page.

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York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
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