Salazar & Vilsack Confirmed

The Senate swiftly approved six members of President Barack Obama's Cabinet today, but put off for a day the vote on his choice of Hillary Clinton to be secretary of state. The Senate confirmed all six with a single voice vote a little more than three hours after Obama took the oath of office to become the 44th president. But Democratic hopes to add Clinton to that list were sidetracked when one senator, Republican John Cornyn of Texas, objected to the unanimous vote. Those confirmed were Steven Chu to be energy secretary, Arne Duncan at education, Janet Napolitano for homeland security, Eric Shinseki to head veterans affairs, Ken Salazar for interior and Tom Vilsack to lead the department of agriculture....

Wolf decision leaves Obama a land mine

So picture yourself as Interior secretary Ken Salazar this week. The Bush administration has left you an immediate decision on whether to move ahead with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's plan to remove federal endangered species protections from wolves in Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, eastern Washington and northern Utah. Thirteen environmental groups including the powerful Defenders of Wildlife and Natural Resources Defense Council are poised to sue. These mostly Democrats are among the strongest supporters of your new boss Barack Obama. Indeed, they have friends in the transition team and now probably friends in the White House who are getting a lot of calls. The callers are telling you and them to delay or not publish entirely the delisting rule Jan. 27. They want your Fish and Wildlife Service to start all over with a "stakeholder process" that brings ranchers, environmentalists and hunters together in a big new public negotiation aimed at convincing hunters and ranchers they need to support killing fewer wolves. But now among the people calling you and the White House are western Democrats like Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and Wyoming Gov. Dave Freudenthal. Schweitzer is telling you that if delisting is delayed it will empower the radical anti-wolf forces in his state who have said all along the environmentalists - and now the Obama administration - would never allow the states to take over management. He would report that a bill may come to his desk from the Legislature this year, calling on him to tell the federal government to "shove it" on wolves....

Previously ‘settled’ wolf issue back to square one

A new year has rolled around but some things haven’t changed in dealing with the federal government. Last week the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, it its mission to delist the grey wolf in the northern Rocky Mountains, announced it will try and remove the predator without Wyoming in the process. Last year the USFWS tried to delist the canine and had approved Wyoming’s management plan. But after a federal judge blocked the delisting in July, the USFWS abandoned Wyoming’s plan. The governor issued an emergency rule to address the judge’s concerns about the number of breeding pairs in the state and the paths to genetic diversity. But the state has maintained its position on having dual status and created trophy game and predator zones. And therein lies the big problem. After approving the dual status last year, the USFWS has completely backed away from supporting Wyoming’s plan....

Computer to calculate climate change -- has huge carbon footprint

For the Met Office the forecast is considerable embarrassment. It has spent £33m on a new supercomputer to calculate how climate change will affect Britain – only to find the new machine has a giant carbon footprint of its own. “The new supercomputer, which will become operational later this year, will emit 14,400 tonnes of CO2 a year,” said Dave Britton, the Met Office’s chief press officer. This is equivalent to the CO2 emitted by 2,400 homes – generating an average of six tonnes each a year. The Met Office recently published some of its most drastic predictions for future climate change. It warned: “If no action is taken to curb global warming temperatures are likely to rise by 5.5ºC and could rise as much as 7ºC above pre-industrial levels by 2100. Early and rapid reductions in CO2 emissions are required to avoid significant impacts of climate change.” However, when it came to buying a new supercomputer, the Met Office decided not to heed its own warnings. The ironic problem was that it needed the extra computing power to improve the accuracy of its own climate predictions as well as its short-term weather forecasting....A great example of how government works. The average folks in those 2,400 homes will need to make sacrifices, but don't ask those critters in the government offices to do the same.

Gore ice sculpture unveiled in Fairbanks

Al Gore is now a wintertime fixture in Fairbanks. Well, make that an ice sculpture of the 2007 Nobel Prize winner and leader in the movement to draw attention to climate change and global warming. Local businessman Craig Compeau unveiled the frozen likeness on Monday. The 8 1/2-foot-tall, 5-ton sculpture dominates a downtown street corner from its perch on the back of a flatbed truck. Compeau says he's a "moderate" critic of global warming theories. He used Monday's unveiling of the sculpture to invite Gore to Fairbanks -- where it was 22 degrees on Monday -- to explain his global warming theories. He says it will stand through March, unless it melts before then.

Army urges judge to dismiss lawsuit

Army officials insist they acted properly in doing a 2007 environmental study of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site and argue that a lawsuit from ranchers in U.S. district court in Denver claiming otherwise should be dismissed. The Army filed those comments last Friday in response to a lawsuit by the Not 1 More Acre group that is opposing the planned expansion of the 235,000-acre training area northeast of Trinidad. The opponents claim the Army's 2007 analysis looking at doing more training at the current Pinon Canyon site failed to adequately look at other training alternatives or the environmental impact of current use. The lawsuit is being argued before Senior Judge Richard Matsch and the Army's filing on Friday was its first response to the lawsuit. Essentially, the Army's answer to the lawsuit is twofold: ranching opponents failed to raise these claims during the public comment period on the environmental study and, secondly, the Army did not need to do more extensive analysis on other training options because there is no "excess" training space at other Army posts....

Grand Junction area ranchers ruminate Dominguez, Escalante proposal

At least two Mesa County ranchers aren’t very happy with U.S. Sen. Ken Salazar’s proposed Dominguez Canyons Wilderness Area and Dominguez-Escalante National Conservation Area. Legislation to create the 210,000-acre designations was approved last week in the U.S. Senate; the House is expected to consider the issue this week. “It’s definitely going to affect our ranch,” said Massey, who runs 1,200 head of cross-bred cattle and whose family has run cattle in the area for more than a century. Miller owns thousands of acres of land within the National Conservation Area. His cross-bred cattle graze on the proposed wilderness. Most of the work done now on Miller’s ranch is done on horseback, and that won’t change, Miller said. He’s most concerned about the future ability for the ranch to hire people willing to work from the back of a horse. “As times change, we’re seeing the era of the horseback cowboy diminish. It’s diminished a lot in the last 20 years,” Miller said. Also, Miller’s permit is short on water, he said, and without the ability to drive to the area where his cows need to graze and drink water, he may not be able to build the needed stock ponds....

Lubbock native talks cowboy culture in presidential politics

The term "cowboy" can refer to a fashion, a stereotype or a lifestyle - aspects that have impacted politics. B. Bryon Price, a Lubbock native and expert in Western culture, led a discussion Jan. 15 at the National Ranching Heritage Center about cowboy culture in presidential politics. The discussion, titled "Black Hat, White Hat: The Good, The Bad and The Enduring Image," dealt with the prominent cowboy image in politics and the negative image that has been associated with cowboys. Price said the image of a tall, heroic figure in boots and a cowboy hat has been continuously present in the United States and its politics. "The cowboy image remains the most visible, resilient and controversial images associated with the president," he said. He said the image generally is used in politics in a positive way because the image often symbolizes action, masculinity and strength....

So, was Teddy Roosevelt a cowboy or a snake in the grass? I'd put him in the snake den myself, but would like to hear from them who think different.

It's all about horses

For Ord Buckingham, a fourth-generation Kaycee cowboy, horses have been and probably will always be a part of his life. “My whole entire being revolves around them," he said. "I’ve been around horses all my life. Without them, I don’t know what I’d be doing - nothing, I guess. It’s who you are and without that, you ain’t nothing.” Buckingham, with his family, owns a small spread a few miles east of Kaycee. He and his wife of 30 years, Carole, have six children. Ord’s occupation is "starting" young horses. Years ago, cowboys would call it breaking horses, but now, the more user-friendly terminology is starting horses. Which means Ord takes a horse and gets a 30-day start on it, working with the animal until it knows the basics. His work allows someone to come along and own it, ride it or make whatever he or she wants out of the animal. Local and national ranchers hire Ord to start their horses. “You can get hurt breaking horses," he said in reference to why he remains in business. "A lot of people lack the know-how or they lack the time or it’s a lack of want-to.” Ord has started horses and sent them to Kentucky, Georgia, Ohio and New Jersey....

Elko saddles up for 25th cowboy poetry gathering

During the last quarter-century, Waddie Mitchell has seen cowboy poetry turn from a novelty to a staple. When the first gathering was held in Elko in 1983, organizers had no idea how successful it would be. Mitchell, one of Elko County’s pre-eminent cowboy poets, said he wasn’t even sure the first event would come together. Getting ranchers off the ranch isn’t always easy. But during the slower time in January, it did happen, and, Mitchell said, “it’s changed my life completely.” “If someone told me 26 years ago I’d spend the last 20 years on the road entertaining and writing poetry for a living, I’d not only argue but I’d bet my saddle I wouldn’t.” Lucky for Mitchell, no one made that prediction. Now, the event will celebrate its 25th anniversary Jan. 24-31. Produced by the Western Folklife Center, the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering has grown to a week of events. Since the first gathering, the art, like Mitchell’s life, has changed....

History, Hollywood and the Great American West

An event unlike any other in the world, the High Noon Western Americana Antique Show and Auction offers a very special opportunity for those passionate about the American West to immerse themselves in the richness of its legacy as it lives on today, stronger than ever. It's no wonder that each year High Noon's auction catalog alone is a virtual history book of the American West, coveted by collectors worldwide. This year, the High Noon Western Americana Spectacular will feature three exceptional events over four days. It all begins on Thursday, Feb. 5, 2009 at the Phoenix Convention Center in downtown Phoenix and concludes on Sunday, Feb. 8. The High Noon Western Americana Weekend Event is comprised of a Western Americana antique show, one of the country's most important Western Americana auctions, and starting this year, a day honoring Al Luevand, consummate gentleman and life-long supporter of Western lifestyle....

It's All Trew: Romans say take your meds and pray

I have often wondered where the big R with the little x mark used on medical prescriptions originated. An old 1949 Coronet Magazine (remember those?) offered an explanation. It seems early Roman "druggists" evolved from early day tribal medicine men and began concocting certain ingredients for relief from maladies. They called these mixtures "recipes" like a chef would create and record in a cook book.. The letter R in the Roman alphabet means "to take." So we have a recipe the druggist mixed for us to take. Now, at the time medicine was crude and uncertain so to aid in the cure offered, the druggist made the little cross on the leg of the R to remind the patient to pray for recovery from the malady. Take the recipe and pray. The symbol is still in vogue today, maybe more so than ever. All medicinal advertisements present a paragraph touting the good, and several pages of fine print warning of the bad. So, we now should "take our recipe and pray the recipe doesn't kill us." Among my collections of antique oddities I acquired a small cast-iron pot with two spouts opposite each other looking like a teapot with two spouts. It had a lid at one time and a wire bail for carrying. The spouts contain wicks to light, the cast-iron pot is heavy, hard to tip over and definitely not a kitchen or railroad utensil. An oil-field magazine recently featured the item in an article titled "The Yellow Dog Lantern." It was patented in 1870 stating, "for illuminating out of doors especially derricks and places in the oil field where explosions are eminent." The lantern burns fresh crude oil showing a yellow glow instead of a flame thus making it somewhat safer around explosive gasses. The Yellow Dog name comes from workers who used the device stating, "the two spouts glowing in the night resemble a dog's yellow eyes. The price was listed in equipment catalogs as $1.50 each in 1884....

Bush Commutes 2 Border Agents’ Sentences

President Bush on Monday commuted the sentences of two former border patrol agents who had been sentenced to more than a decade in prison for shooting and seriously wounding a Mexican drug dealer in Texas in 2005. With a day left in his presidency, Mr. Bush exercised his constitutional power to grant clemency — for the last time, according to a senior White House official — in a case that has touched off fierce debate in the Southwest. The two former agents, Ignacio Ramos and Jose Alonso Compean, had attracted considerable support among advocates of tougher border security, who argued that the agents were just doing their jobs....

Horses Offering Healthiest Inauguration Seats

The best seats at the U.S. presidential inauguration events, in terms of health and comfort, are not the coveted VIP bleachers, but instead are those reserved for the hundreds of horseback riders appearing in the parade, suggests new research. A study in the latest issue of the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies found that riding on horseback not only eases back pain, but it also improves the rider's confidence and emotional well being while reducing stress. The findings add to the growing body of research that horseback riding and related equine assistance therapy programs for disabled and injured individuals benefit human participants. Lead author Margareta Hakanson explained to Discovery News that the main reason seems to be "that the movements transferred from the horse's body to the rider are very like the body movements made by a person walking." There are no excessive movements, but a continuous bilateral influence on postural balance that is enhancing balance reactions and the fine movements in the rider's trunk," added Hakanson, a researcher in the Department of Public Health and Community Medicine at Goteborg University in Sweden. She and her colleagues analyzed how horseback riding, along with other equine-related therapies, affected 24 patients suffering from back pain and other health problems. Post treatment, riders were evaluated on both their physical and mental well-being. All participants experienced benefits in both areas. "For those suffering from back pain, a horse at walk provides relaxing movements," Hakanson said. "Apart from the movement influence, the psychological effects of managing, communicating with and steering a large animal promote self confidence." Deborah Van Buren is a therapist and certified riding instructor at Equine Assisted Therapy at Mountain Valley, located in Carmel, California. She has observed similar results in her patients, who consist of children requiring physical, occupational and/or speech language therapy. Both she and colleague David Bates say riding and equine therapies especially seem to help patients with mobility problems, including those who use wheelchairs. "Riding gives them back their independence," Van Buren said. "Instead of being forced to look up at people they can sit tall and look straight ahead. It's a very empowering feeling to be on a horse."....I can testify to this, having multiple sclerosis. Imagine going to the pens, haltering your horse and leading him to the barn, watching every step so that you didn't hit a rock or uneven ground that would cause you to lose your balance. Imagine your legs getting fatigued and weaker as you brushed him off and cleaned his hooves. Imagine holding on to the fence or the horse trailer as you carried your saddle to him and swung it on his back. And then, imagine yourself atop 1100 lbs. of pure athlete, feeling the gathering of his muscles and the pure surge of power and quickness, all under your complete control. Damn how I miss it...I'll share with you another experience I had with Buster, my heading horse. After not being able to ride, I sulked around for quite a few months, not wanting to be around ropers, horses or anything else that reminded me of what I had lost. Finally, I decided "what the hell, let's see what I can do in a wheelchair." I figured I could at least brush him off, comb his mane and tail and keep him looking respectable. Sharon gathered Buster and tied him on the driveway, so I could get to him in my wheelchair. She came in the house and said "Buster is ready for you." I left the house excited to see what I could do in the wheelchair. It turns out I had every reason to be excited, because Buster knew me, but he had no idea what that was rolling at him at a high rate of speed. His idea was to make fast and frequent tracks out of there. Thank God the halter rope held, and since then Buster and I have reached a mutual agreement. He now knows that's me in that contraption, and I now know to be a little more sensitive around animals in my wheelchair.
This picture is of Buster, now 28 years old, and my 8 year old granddaughter, Jenna Rose DuBois.

The Animal Rights Agenda Of America’s Next Regulatory Czar

Barack Obama’s pick for “regulatory czar,” Harvard Law School Professor Cass Sunstein, may be the incoming president’s most popular appointment so far. Judging from his resume -- best-selling author, “pre-eminent legal scholar of our time,” and an endorsement from The Wall Street Journal -- we can almost understand why. Almost. Because as we’re telling the media today, there’s one troubling portion of the new Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) Administrator’s C.V. that has seems to have flown under everyone’s radar: Cass Sunstein is a radical animal rights activist. Don’t believe us? Sunstein has made no secret of his devotion to the cause of establishing legal “rights” for livestock, wildlife, and pets. “[T]here should be extensive regulation of the use of animals in entertainment, scientific experiments, and agriculture,” Sunstein wrote in a 2002 working paper while at the University of Chicago Law school. “Extensive regulation of the use of animals.” That's PETA-speak for using government to get everything PETA and the Humane Society of the United States can't get through gentle pressure or not-so-gentle coercion. Not exactly the kind of thing American ranchers, restaurateurs, hunters, and biomedical researchers (to say nothing of ordinary consumers) would like to hear from their next “regulatory czar.” A version of the same paper also appeared as the introduction to Animal Rights: Current Debates and New Directions, a 2004 book that Sunstein co-edited with then-girlfriend Martha Nussbaum. In that book, Sunstein set out an ambitious plan to give animals the legal “right” to file lawsuits. We're not joking: “[A]nimals should be permitted to bring suit, with human beings as their representatives, to prevent violations of current law … Any animals that are entitled to bring suit would be represented by (human) counsel, who would owe guardian like obligations and make decisions, subject to those obligations, on their clients’ behalf.” It doesn't end there. Sunstein delivered a keynote speech at Harvard University’s 2007 “Facing Animals” conference. (Click here to watch the video; his speech starts around 39:00.) Keep in mind that as OIRA Administrator, Sunstein will have the political authority to implement a massive federal government overhaul. Consider this tidbit: “We ought to ban hunting, I suggest, if there isn’t a purpose other than sport and fun. That should be against the law. It’s time now.”....

Note to readers

This came up in a comments section, so should mention here. I'm experiencing some health problems. been bedridden for 3 days, typing this with one hand. Sitting at desk with pc is much handier than this damn laptop in bed.

Will get the blog up to speed as soon as I am back to normal, not sure when that will be.

Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Orange underwear

Julie Carter

Sharing my orange underwear experiences used to be restricted to gatherings of ranch folk who knew exactly what I meant and how the skivvies got in such a state.

Always ready to be amazed, I recently learned that small towns with very old iron pipe waterlines often experience the same casualties to the resident Fruit of the Looms. It is a subtle reminder that we are still living somewhat primitively.

Here in New Mexico we guard water as the precious commodity it is, ranking right up there with sainthood and the sacraments. We may possibly be a little more cautious with our water than the average earth dweller except perhaps those that have camels tethered outside their tents.

In order to stay ahead of the water game the best way possible, ranch water is "stockpiled" in large storage tanks located near the well or along the pipelines that transport it to the backside of the pastures. Because many outfits have to pump every drop of water necessary for themselves and their livestock, it's a full-time job to keep ahead of it.

Big circular storage tanks are made from large sheets of metal welded together and set in concrete. On some older ranches, it is not uncommon to see old railroad tanker cars parked next to the well and used for water storage.

This is where my orange underwear adventure began. Just such a tanker sat on the hill behind the ranch house.

It stored the water for all the domestic use, as well as the corrals and several pipelines that ran north and south from the headquarters. To keep up with the demand, the well's submersible pump usually ran 24 hours a day.

Unwritten ranch law says not keeping the water storage tanks full is a major crime, because inevitably, the minute the tank is allowed to get low, or worse, completely empty, Murphy's law takes over. The well will simply, with no warning, quit working.

Following the cussing over that, there will be days and nights of hauling water from somewhere until the well is fixed.

The pump went out on a Saturday night. As luck would have it, everyone was gone early to late on Sunday, so no one noticed.

By late Monday morning, I knew without looking that the well was likely down. I was doing laundry and my water pressure was getting weak. Hoping maybe it was something as simple as a broken float on the drinking tub at the corrals, I went looking for that but found nothing.

Remember, the washer is still running.

I went back to the house to find the rinse-cycle pumping water into my washer that was a very vibrant rust orange. The bottom-of-the-tank rusty dregs from that old railroad tanker were flowing over the clothes.

It was the last load of laundry for the day and it was the underwear. The white ones.

While Martha Stewart may have quickly given a marketable name to that particular shade of color soaking into the BVDs, I could only think of unladylike things to say. Indeed, for a bit, I lost my religion.

To shortcut the expletives and the futile wash and rewash efforts, I will share that for at least a year, all the members of my household wore underwear that matched in color - something resembling a dark and very unmanly peachy tone.

No, it wasn't a life-threatening trauma. It is just one of those "life on the ranch" adventures they don't put in the brochures.

It’s The Pitts: What Would Grandpa Say?

Lee Pitts

I don’t know quite what to say or think about what is going on in this country, although I do wonder what great leaders like Abraham Lincoln, George Washington and Ronald Reagan would say. I bet that Will Rogers and Mark Twain would write something entertaining and insightful. While I may not know what these idols of mine might say, I do feel confident they’d be pretty disgusted with us all.

There’s another hero of mine that I can say with confidence that I know exactly what he’d have to say. While I miss my Grandpa terribly, sometimes I am glad that he’s not around to see what’s happening to the country he loved. My Grandpa would look at the billions of dollars in bailouts being handed over to big banks and hold his nose. He’d remind everyone that these are taxpayer dollars being given to the same companies who couldn’t wait to open call centers and database hubs in India and elsewhere, wherever it was cheapest in the world. The effect was that foreigners got jobs previously held by American taxpayers. My grandpa would look those big bankers in they eye and tell them to call a 911 operator in Bangalore and ask them for the cash.

Grandpa wouldn’t have much sympathy for those of you who lost money in the stock market either. He’d want to know why you sent your money back to shysters in New York and trusted your retirement to a bunch of people you don’t even know to invest in options, swaps, hedge funds, spiders and a bunch of other gimmicks designed to steal your money. He’d suggest you shouldn’t invest in anything you can’t explain.

My grandpa would look at the games played on Wall Street and ask why anyone should be allowed to sell something they don’t own. You wouldn’t buy the Brooklyn Bridge would you? Maybe you would. He’d say it’s criminal for a bushel of wheat to trade 40 times from the farmer to the grocery store and that the man who grew it ought to make more money than the paper rustler who owned it for 20 minutes.

This man who didn’t owe anybody anything, would suggest that if you managed to save a little money there’s nothing wrong with paying off your house, cars and credit cards and then putting what’s left in a savings account at your local bank so that they could invest it in the community. Like loaning people money to buy houses. Speaking of which, he’d remind everyone of the model that worked perfectly well for many decades in this country: you could buy a house if you had 20% of the price in cash and your house payments would eat up no more than 25% of your income. If you didn’t have the money you rented until you did have it. There’s no shame in that. He’d also wonder why people need second homes when they are having trouble paying for one.

My Grandpa had a a good memory. He vividly remembered that December day when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He had friends that were killed in World War II and he was not about to buy a car made in Japan or Germany. I never knew him to own anything but a Ford. “We build great cars and trucks,” Grandpa would say, “and if more Americans bought them instead of the tin cans from Japan the car companies could continue to pay good wages and benefits to more Americans.”

When people say that we must bail out AIG, Freddie, Fannie, and all the rest of the pikers because they are “too big to fail”, my grandpa would ask why our government helped them get so big to begin with?

Grandpa would say that the answer is not to give people another “stimulus” so they can buy more stuff they don’t need. That’s what got us in such trouble to begin with. My Grandpa would say that what we need to do is put the crooks in jail, hold the politicians accountable, tighten up our belts, eat more beef and beans and go back to work earning an honest living. We’ll survive this economic mess, after all, we’re Americans, aren’t we?

The Original SUV

As our nation's Big 3 auto manufacturers face bankruptcy, we should return to the basics. Americans will soon need to embrace the original SUV

Inauguration will produce 575 million pounds of CO2

It ain't easy being green, and in the case of Barack Obama's inaugural, it seems like he's not even trying to green it up. According to the Institute for Liberty, the Obamathon in Washington will produce about 575 million pounds of CO2 emissions. In a study titled Carbon Bigfoot, the IFL concludes that the CO2 glut will be substantial. From the global warming wrecking celebs flying all over the place in their many private jets, to the many hundreds if not thousands of vehicles that will be used to get people to and in the midst of the inaugural, the CO2 carnage is at the amazingly high level. The IFL finds: * Celebrities, politicians, and bigwigs using 600 private jets will produce 25,320,000 POUNDS of CO2 * Personal vehicles could account for 262,483,200 POUNDS of CO2 * n the parade, horses alone will produce more than 400 POUNDS of CO2 The IFL also came up with a revealing illustration about what this all means. It would take the average U.S. household 57,598 years to produce a carbon footprint equal to that of the new president’s housewarming party....