OPINION: Thawing Out The Cold Hard Truth

Leftish Drivel
By Paul Krza

It’s been cold this winter in Socorro, colder than ... well, to coin a term, colder than a right-winger’s heart to the reality that Barack Obama is really the 44th president of the United States.
So cold that the cold water coming out of the faucet is, actually, cold! So snowy that Magdalena Ridge looks like a Santa Fe ski resort (well, its elevation is a few hundred feet higher than the Duke City’s Sandia Crest, you know).
How cold? Local weather observer Bob Schwiegerath, who’s been keeping track for a decade, says December was the coldest in the last 10 years in Socorro.
I guess this all means that global warming is a great big myth, right? Whoa, all those scientists at New Mexico Tech would probably say, not so fast. A string of warmer years and then one cold one does not really mean anything.
Well, that’s science. In the 21st century, climate change talk is mostly politics, not science. Take Rust, that guy on talk radio, for example. (Yeah, I know, that’s not his name, but I’d like to call him that, because of his corrosive effect on rational political discussion.) Not long ago, I heard Rust chuckling that all this warming talk was a bunch of B.S., because just as Al Gore was out talking on the East Coast, folks there were buried under a blizzard.
“It’s just that simple,” using this rusted-right logic, to explain things. Simple enough to say, in 2010 politics, that the election of just one Republican in Massachusetts means a profound shift in the political weather. There’s been a tsunami of comment in its wake, predicting the end of Obama and progressive change.
It’s the same logic applied to the rising national debt, which if you believe the rusted folks, only happened last year, also under Obama. None other than ex-Sen. Pete Domenici surfaced last week to lament the debt situation, in his new position as co-chair of something called the “Debt Reduction Task Force.”
Cold weather. Cold day in hell in Boston freezes Democrats. St. Pete comes in from the cold to get hot about debt. Holy cow! Sounds like a bad dream, or at least a bad movie.
But wait. Let’s apply a dash or two of longer-term logic here. Let’s start with Domenici, and his born-again deficit rage. A glowing account in Sunday’s Albuquerque Journal about the senator’s new “fitting role” suggests he was “instrumental 12 years ago in passing the first balanced budget amendment in more than 30 years.” Perhaps, but conveniently omitted was the president at the time: Democrat Bill Clinton, under whose presidency national debt turned into surplus!
And then there’s Pete’s own sordid public debt record. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Domenici sponsored or co-sponsored 103 earmarks totaling more than $197 million in fiscal year 2009 ranking him 31st out of 100 senators. They didn’t call him St. Pete for nothing -- he got the name for wheeling pork to the state, all part of “our avaricious appetite for borrowed money” that he and other Republicans, including that new guy from Massachusetts, now decry!
Oh -- let’s not forget that Pete and pal George Bush rang up bigger government debts with the ill-advised Iraq war, which was slyly kept off-budget.
Which brings us to that supposed earthquake election on the East Coast. Do you think that if the Republicans lost there they would have declared utter defeat, folded their teabag tent and surrendered to Obama and company? Not likely.
But to the greater question: Does the unexpected win by the Brown-baggers portend a tectonic shift in politics? Maybe, but maybe not. Let’s not count Obama out, yet. And let’s recall who helped get us into this economic predicament.
Here’s something else to remember, about that “government” spending. It is not necessarily all bad, you know. There are, as I’m sure even Pete and other Republicans would admit, many worthy “public” projects that we fund collectively as citizens, such as highways you drive on every day. In fact, on that list of Pete’s 2009 pork earmarks is some $10 million to Socorro, for the telescope on Magdalena Ridge, and over to Tech for first-responder training.
Just as with the weather, politics are a bit more complicated than just a cold winter.
Oh -- maybe it really hasn’t been as cold this year as you think. Some data I found on the Internet suggests 1971 was a real chiller: In January, the temp hit minus 12 in Socorro, and in June of the same year, it slipped to 35.
Now, if we could just get the right to recognize that Obama is really the president awry in paradise.
Paul Krza’s views do not necessairly represent those of the Mountain Mail.

OPINION: Thawing Out The Cold Hard Truth