Psst! Governor, I gotta a idear.

I am nominating you for a Pulitzer! (Do you know how to pull an itzer?)

I bet he does.

You know those city boys. They always know such things.

As a matter of fact, Joe, we supply about 1/6 of the nations natural gas, and have more oil and gas wells than the eitire mideast. They got some real good wells, though.

Joe
Joe, are you hell-bent on ruining my neighborhood? What a sore head!

BBB :wink:

Well, there's two of the 260 residents speaking up. Maybe they're the senators?

Nah, seriously. . . I love Albuquerque. Fell in love with in on the way to Vegas one day. May move there some day.

No.no no. BBB, I'm trying to make you some real money here. Look, I admit it. I stole that letter from a movie producer friend of mine, I thought people here at A2k should see it. I can't tell you her name, I'll just call her Pam, you know like the spray. Anyway, she's putting together this movie about the Iraq thing, going to have Affleck and Mel Gibson maybe, Madonna is signed on, we had Arnold to do a cameo but now he's got some kind of two-year committment somewheres else.
Anyway, it's all about the regular stuff, you know, valient GI's in the gigantic humvees and jeeps or whatever all followed around by this Fox news camera crew (Affleck and Madonna) and they get into all these messes. Blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda,yadda when it hits Pam, she's brilliant you know, it hits her.
"Why not do the real thing?" she says. I'll never forget that. wow.
We were like, like go over to the war?
'No,' she says, ''we do it here. Like in New Mexico.''
See, I told you this is her idea, the New Mexico part. And it's perfect for you and Roger too because all you guys are going to get 43 Billion dollars.
And some it is going to get spilled on the ground, if you know what I mean.

Okay, look, we were trying to get funding for the movie, do you know how hard it is to a lousy 600 million to make a movie these days? But if we can get the 43 Billion with a B, well, crap we have a budget to do things right, right? We take maybe a billion, there's a billion apiece to the Dakotas and the rest is yours to spread around what's left of the place.
40 billion will build a lotta golf courses. Right? Right? Right?

Okay, let's talk downsides. You got your Santa Fe, which Pam says is off limits on account of her having some kind of spiritual awakening there about twenty years ago. Whatever. But we can shoot the hell out of all those rocks and nobody will care. I mean it's rocks, right? What else?
Oh yeah, Albuquerque. Now see, I thought that might be a problem too, but we did two on the street surveys, kind of like what Jay does on his show and guess what? We asked:
Which of these is an American city:
A) Albuquerque
B) Nasiriya
C) Chechnya
D) None of the above

They all said D, Sorry, but that's the way it is. So nobody is gonna miss a few hundred yards of Albuquerque neighborhood. And you'll have the 40 billion to slap up a couple of hundred of those tiled roof ranchhouses that you all love. On the survey thing, You got to remember that like half of the folks in the US (okay, less than half) voted for Bush and 40 percent of them like homeschool their children so how are they to know geography??? Forget it.
(No offense to Montana who I'm sure has got a son so smart like you wouldn't believe.)
And it's got to look like the stuff on the TV news now or somebody's going to catch on. We have a plan for when people start asking how come no GIs are getting whacked on a daily basis. We tell them 'body armor', it's new, we can't talk about it. Isn't that great? Pam didn't think of that. I did.

So get with it, BBB and you too Roger, call your governor and tell him or her, (how am I supposed to know which), to get with this before the Senate votes. Oh, and say that we've got a couple of feelers from the folks in Durango who are willing to let the whole thing go for a solid ten billion. So cheap and it does look like those mountains Osama keeps showing up on.

Okay, so I'll call you.

love

Joe
Joe, I just e-mailed Asherman to ask him to respond. He could save Pam lots of money by writing the script and designing and painting the indoor sets.

And Ash should have a major role---he could be right in character with the theme.

Since Natalie has gone back to teaching, I'm sure there must be a role for a school marm for her.

So now you have four New Mexicans ready to fight for America on the cheap.

WOW! I just had another idea. The next time Dyslexia and Diane come down from Colorado for a visit, we could hog-tie them until they agree to play a role and maybe cough up a nickle or dime.

BBB

Actually there are many who do believe that New Mexico is a foreign country. Each month New Mexico Magazine has a feature where folks relate humorous anecdotes about companies who refuse to deliver packages out of the country to places like Albuquerque. For sometime now, we have been fostering a movement to turn that illusion into reality. We are agitating to secede from a country speeding down the track to disaster.

To our west, there is California that would welcome the Big Quake. The whole state has been in a death spin for years. Home to the far Left, California took a great thing and drove it into the ground. The People took over the government demanding ever-greater services while removing themselves from the tax base. Referendums passed legislation that made government if not impossible, extremely difficult. Now they've nullified an election to replace a ghost governor with one who can't speak and hasn't a clue about running a State. "Ask Washington to bailout the State, kiss their boo-boos and make it all better." What a policy. The Big One would put out the fires, sink the ghetto-cribs of drug-selling gangsters, and still qualify for large Federal Disaster funding.

We did try once before to rid ourselves of the dead weight of the Easter Seaboard. We offered to end the Cold War by giving the old USSR everything east of the Mississippi, if they'd just call the whole thing off. Unfortunately, word of the deal got out before it was finalized. The Russian people revolted and ended Communism rather than be saddled with the "gift". Crumbling infrastructure and weather to rival Siberia made the Northeast unattractive to Moscovites. The Deep South had a more welcoming clime, if you ignore the humidity, but the "race" thing still lingers in the minds of many. Anyway, the deal fell through and the Southwest still has to deal with Washington and New York pundits who think they know best how we should live our lives. Just think what a great country we might have been without carrying the weight of the Far East, Drat!

It would be wonderful to reconstitute the country to include just the Southwest stretching from the Colorado to the Texas Gulf coast, from Mexico north to northern border of Colorado. The country would have all the petroleum we would need and contain the great agricultural breadbasket of the world centered on the Great Plains. Culturally we would be more homogenous, though we are a rich mixture of Indian, Hispanic and Anglos who have lived as part of this great land for centuries. We produce the beef, and chili are the foundations of a healthy diet. Here, in our open space, we can breath freely, see the stars and the horizons uncluttered with the pollution that choke the urban nightmares of the far coasts. Our low population density means that we welcome our neighbors because there are so few of them, and we don't have to live scrunched up against them 24/7. Here, people still believe in the American Dream though the socialist plague is gaining currency through the advertising driven media dominated by New York and California. Ah, but ?'tis only a dream.

Our efforts to separate New Mexico from the rest, is an up-hill battle. First, our citizens are among the most patriotic and loyal to the United States anywhere. Our young people sign up for the military in large numbers, and New Mexico National Guard and Reserve forces are robust organizations. In even the poorest adobe homes there will be seen the stars and stripes, often displayed along with yellowing photographs of sons and fathers who died in the nation's defense. A good part of our population is military. We host some of the most important military bases in the country. In Albuquerque the number of retired military people make up a sizable portion of the overall population. Retired Colonels and naval Captains are a dime a dozen here.

We are a pretty conservative State, and don't take to wild pursuit of mirages. Our Governor is a staunch Republican with a taste for foreign policy, and perhaps the occasional hope that he will someday be President. The Pueblos' greatest desire, if they would admit it, is that all the "latecomers" from Spain and America would go away so that they could go back to the Old Ways. Some of the small Hispanic settlements haven't changed much in four hundred years, though time has washed the names from the stone markers in their little church graveyards. There is something about the almost timeless landscape that makes radical change seem somehow vaguely obscene. When one finds themselves alone among the mesas and prairies, with nothing but the wind whispering songs of eternity, we find a patience to endure the many hardships that this land does exact. We walk in beauty, whether we will or nay.

We tend to be proud, but self-conscious of the problems that we face in this Enchanted Land. Our economy is not as strong as we would like, and many here are either unemployed or employed far below their capabilities. We are home to Sandia Laboratories, and other high-tech businesses, but they can only employ a small portion of a generally well-educated workforce. Though wages and income are low, prices also tend to be lower than in other States. Wherever there is unemployment/underemployment there can develop feelings of impotence. Some fall into a lassitude and give up even trying to better their lives. That can result in generations of poverty and alcoholism. The State does need to develop a more vibrant economy to provide meaningful employment. We don't tax ourselves as much as some, but then our social services tend to be somewhat lower as well. We refuse Bond Issues to push modern thoroughfares through the lava beds around ancient petroglyphs, but approve Bonds for Libraries. Foreigners are sometimes amazed that we have no library fines for not returning borrowed books on time in Albuquerque.

All of these things tend to mitigate against our efforts to declare our independence. However, all is not lost. Independence would give the Governor his opportunity to become a national, even international, star. State legislators would overnight become more important and politically significant, and that always is attractive to politicians. New institutions needed to operate as a national entity would generate whole new categories of jobs. We might found "off-shore" banks to help shelter the wealth of enterprising New Yorkers. We could convert the existing forces within the State into a powerful military with one of the world's leading Air Forces. We could demand a seat at the table with the other world nuclear powers, since we would possess a mighty arsenal of nuclear weapons and the means to produce many more. Why shouldn't we demand "Most Favored Nation" status and Foreign Aid from the Colossus that dominates the North American Continent? By controlling the water in the Rio Grande, both Mexico and Texas might be persuaded to support our move toward independence from a nation that so often has scorned, or even denied, our existence.

The Zia flag would assume it's rightful place in the United Nations, and would provide a bridge between the cultures of North American and Meso-America. The millions of tourists who come to thaw their frozen bones in our warm sun would be welcome, so long as they have the proper Visa … or MasterCard. Passport control would provide jobs and help to protect us from the intrusion of unwelcome elements clamoring to get in.

Of course you're right, a preemptive strike against New Mexico may be warranted as a means of maintaining our subjugation to the might of the Eastern Establishment and seductive dreams of the California Jacobeans. BTW, we are transplanted to paradise from California where we made our pile. No zealot so dedicated, as a recent convert.

One quibble, Asherman. Our governor is Bill Richardson, former representative to congress - till appointed ambassador to the UN by Bill Clinton. Oil companies are threatening to move their wells to Colorado or Texas after seeing his latest tax schemes.

Richardson was a pal of Clinton? I think I knew that, but he blows with the wind.

It probably is a good thing that most of the country is so ill informed about our State. There are already far too many refugees crowding in. By limiting immigration our water problems would be much less severe, and the urban sprawl out onto the west mesa would tear up a lot less of the pristine desert. Water and jobs are the limiting factors to population growth, so their scarcity does have an upside.

What do you think of a separate nation that covered essentially the same ground purchased from France in the Louisiana Purchase?

Works for me. Probably a good thing I wasn't around when it was our manifest destiny to populate the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific. I would have said from Baffin Bay to Tierra del Feugo.

Ash
Bill Richardson is a Democrat, at least the last time I checked up on him.

BBB

Indeed.

Why, shut my mouth. Just goes to show how little I keep up with the political scene.

thats ok Ash still thinks i am a Republican. ;

Thanks to everyone for their comments.

Asherman:
Having just perused most of the Chamber of Commerce, New Mexico Tourism Bureau, Highway Dept sites, I have to say THEY NEED YOU to write about New Mexico for them. Excellent work! So poetic that I'm going to feel so bad when we start bombing. (Except for the Richardson thing and you can be forgiven for that.)

I really like the idea of kidnapping Coloradoites (especially the hogtying part.)

This all started because a friend of mine whom I've known since the '60's recently moved from California to Sante Fe, New Mexico (sound familiar A-man?) And we got to thinking about New Mexico declaring war on the US in order to get part of the reconstruction money, but I think "Pam" had the better idea. Just buy off Washington for half the money!!

==
I don't think the idea of an independent country comprised of New Mexico, Colorado, Kansas and Texas would work because the Texans would insist that it be named :



Texas.


Joe

Dys ... you're NOT a Republican?! Damn, I thought there was something weird about you, now I can see why.

Hey Joe, how you gonna get from Kansas to Texas without including Oklahoma? (squinting at map)

Does this mean we'd all have to start saying "Yee haw" and stuff like that? Hmmm...I guess if there was enough money in it...(thinking)...