I am writing today to announce the closure of the New Mexico Independent. After three and a half years of operation in New Mexico, the board of the American Independent News Network, has decided to shift publication of its news…
While environmental activists played their part yesterday during demonstrations at the capitol building, going so far as to dress up as solar panels and to sing the tune of “You Are My Sunshine,” their counterparts, the anti-cap-and-trade contingency who has…
Roughly one quarter of University of New Mexico students are unimpressed with the state’s flagship public school, according to a survey that questioned college students about their higher education experiences.
Gov. Bill Richardson spoke for more than eight minutes before a roaring crowd at Invesco Field in Denver. And far from being the serious, solemn speech he had predicted, he gave what for him was a rousing speech that had some people in the field stomping and rattling the bleachers.
Richardson walked onstage after Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine, who gave his own energetic speech.
Those who have heard Richardson speak again and again don’t expect much in the way of oratory. But from the start, Richardson was more galvanized than he often is. And he offered a few money lines that sparked roaring from the crowd.
Here are a few examples.
After going through a litany of ways that GOP presidential nominee John McCain had changed his mind over the years — on torture, on the Bush tax cuts, on rebuking the religious right and then seeking out their support — Richardson threw out this line: "America is ready for change. But John McCain has only changed his mind — on taxes, on immigration, on global warming, even on torture."
Soon after that line came this doozy: "John McCain may pay hundreds of dollars for his shoes, but we’re the ones who pay for his flip-flops."
Ouch!
Richardson also took on the Bush administration’s policy of hunting down terrorists not where officials believe them to be but where they are, he said — in Pakistan and Afghanistan, not Iraq. He also criticized the Bush administration for going after loose nuclear materials "not where we think they are but where they are, like in Russia," the governor intoned for the crowd.
The governor also hit McCain on the economy. "His economic advisers say Americans families are whiners," Richardson said. "But when the oil companies whine John McCain says they need more tax breaks."
Richardson also often hit on hot-button issues for many in the Democratic base, saying Americans need a president who supports union rights, who stops spying on Americans, protects a woman’s right to choose and who respects the Bill of Rights, a president who shuts down the prison at Guantanamo Bay and stops torture.
"Finally we need a president who in his first day in office says this, ‘I will follow and uphold the Constitution of the United States’ and then actually does it," Richardson said to a screaming crowd.
It was a speech full of red meat for screaming Democrats, but for someone who often stumbles over himself, Richardson appeared to pull off an energetic speech before the biggest crowd he has ever spoken in front of — and he did it better than he often did in his own presidential campaign.
