Jackson Hole Underground

When the filing period for the 2008 election closed last month, I was surprised to find no one challenging Mayor Mark Barron.

Fawning profiles in the local media nonwithstanding, there has been a lot of grumbling about Barron on barstools and coffee counters, owing mostly to the new parking garage and the rapidly changing face of downtown.

Another lawmaker ripe for a challenge is state Rep. Keith Gingery, a Republican who owes his election in 2004 to GOP gerrymandering. Gingery has rankled his constituency in Jackson by sponsoring abortion bills and his flip-flop on a secrecy bill that made correspondence between lawmakers and lobbyists off-limits to the public.

I wasn’t surprised to find him running unopposed because the Wyoming Legislature is an unpaid job that requires a lot of travel around the state and spending several weeks in Cheyenne each winter.

Should either of these pols be coasting to another term?

We who feel the issues merit more rigorous debate than a fill-in-the-blanks questionnaire from the local papers have another option: a write-in campaign.

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(Editor’s note: This post comes from Favio Snimp, just back from motorcycle racing across the Sahara and never afraid to be a contrarian.)

If you’re likeable, recently deceased and have been on TV a lot, you’ll get rave notices. Tim Russert certainly is getting his air time, right up there in Anna Nicole Smith territory. MSNBC seems to have instantly commissioned “Dirge for Tim for Lone Plaintive Horn” and repeats it often.

What, exactly, did Tim Russert offer to our needy nation? All the grim lamenters, on TV and in newspapers, agree. He was “the real deal.” He was “the ultimate dad.” An unending variety of accolades repeat the same sentiment: Russert was a regular guy who loved his family and remained faithful to the Buffalo Bills.

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By now you may have heard about the home page of John McBush McCain, where alongside his campaign strategy and Iraq policy is an equally weighted section devoted to “Golf Gear.” An indication of the demographics of his supporters, and his savvy grasp of the Internets.

The site has brought him blogospheric ridicule, but less funny is McCain’s latest assertion that it’s “not too important” when U.S. troops come home from Iraq. In this clip (after jump) he stresses that reducing casualties is what’s essential, oblivious to the fact that every day our soldiers are mired in a hostile land, away from their families, at a cost of $343 million per day, is a casualty for American taxpayers.

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I know Bush bashing has become somewhat passé, but try as we may to look toward the future, it’s hard to get past the crimes and ineptitude of this administration and the fact that we’re apparently letting them get away with it.

What set me off recently — besides the admission by former White House flack Scott McClellan that the case for war with Iraq was exaggerated, and the Senate Intelligence Committee report that confirmed that confession — was this excerpt from a new book by retired Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez, the former U.S. commander in Iraq.

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As town gears up for the Jackson Hole Film Festival, tonight there will be a showing of an off-festival movie that revs the debate over snowmobiles into a full-throttle indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration’s approach to government.

“A Snowmobile for George” is the story of California filmmaker Todd Darling’s ride into the exhaust cloud of deregulation. Following his own curiosity after buying a sled, Darling races from the controversy over allowing snowmobiles in Yellowstone to runaway coal-bed methane drilling in the Powder River Basin to a hideous die-off of salmon on the Klamath River.

The 96-minute film will screen at 6:30 p.m. at the Jackson campus of Teton Science Schools, off Highway 22. The event is being sponsored by the Western Organization of Research Councils, an association that represents ranchers and other landowners on issues of water, air and soil quality. On hand will be George Smith, a cowboy poet from Sheridan.