Category Archives: Politics

South Carolina Sends Message…to Obama

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— This blog is reposted from Saturday night; the usual business-oriented blog on Mondays will be published tomorrow. —

Though it is easy to dismiss that bane of the average American – the so-called “experts” – they do hold vast institutional and collective wisdom – but perhaps it is about the past.  All of them – from the left to the right – have been wrong this year.  And so in this uproarious year, their judgment is now near useless given South Carolina.  None of these experts expected that after three GOP contests three different candidates could call themselves a winner.  One does not have to be an expert in these things to sense something is not plumb with things-as-usual.  I have been around journalistically and politically long enough to be confounded totally by what has happened in South Carolina. For me, it now is not outside the possibility that President Obama could lose this election.  Continue reading →

South Carolina Sends Message to….Obama

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In this uproarious year, it now is not outside the possibility that President Obama could lose this election.  One does not have to be an expert in these things to sense something is not plumb with things-as-usual.  I have been around journalistically and politically long enough to be confounded totally by what has happened in South Carolina.

For conventional thinkers, this is not the year to be conventional.  My thoughts have been all along that Obama was going to sweep over any of the Republican candidates.  Now I am not so sure.  Will Florida tell the tale?  Perhaps.  Watching Mitt Romney on television was looking at someone who, it turns out, is not as good as he thinks he is.  This business of running for President is not like directing a takeover of another company – running for President is not insider work.  Romney talked tonight as if he were talking to his staff instead of the country.  His spiel was canned and repetitive.  Newt Gingrich offers something new: New language, new energy, new anger – the stuff of which most elections are made and won. Continue reading →

Accenting the Positive

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So yesterday’s blog that Mitt Romney perhaps should consider spelling his name Romñey given his Mexican heritage got me thinking about the use of accents in names and words when presented visually on English-language television.  More and more, television stations and newspapers are using accents and punctuation marks to spell properly the names of individuals, places and things.  Little by little, the media is reflecting the new demography of the country. Continue reading →

Enough already! ¡An eñe for Romñey!

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Presidential elections can be learning moments or lead to moments in which the electorate can transcend history.  In 1960, Americans came to know quickly that the world would not soon end when a Catholic became President. Perhaps, too, this year’s election can lead some uniformed voters to learn a thing or two about Mormonism – and about Mexico.  Odd, often contradictory moments in life can teach important lessons, educate people and move them out of self-induced ignorance.  Sometimes the news that informs people can be mundane, sometimes riveting.

Some Republican voters who were once head-over-heels in love with Newt Gingrich are still reeling from the news that this schlock anti-government conservative politician took millions of dollars from semi-governmental agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to act as a historian.  The mundane should be amusing at best.  That Mitt Romney’s father was born in Mexico should not be shocking – in another time and place, that is.

In today’s Republican Party, however, anything associated with Mexico, immigration and the Dream Act that would help immigrant students is electric to GOP voters.  And Mitt Romney is personally associated with all three in deed and in concept:  With a father born in Mexico of a family that emigrated there and then emigrated back to the United States and that received government aid to get them started upon their return, Romney perhaps ought to consider using the ˜ over the ‘n’ in his name.  In an age when an anxious public pines for authentic men and women to lead them into the future, spelling his name Romñey would be a more accurate representation of who he is.  Continue reading →

Tim Tebow, South Carolina and ¡Rob! What Would Jesus Do?

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Three quick thoughts on a Friday.  The sitcom that premiered last night featuring Rob Schneider as ¡Rob! marrying into a Mexican-American family will have a short run.  Stock language.  Stock stunts.  Stock everything.  Notice anything different between it and what preceded it, The Big Bang Theory?  As much as I had hoped it would click and as well-intentioned as its supporters no doubt are, the show lacks minimal interest.  One of the previews for the program suggested it was a HispanicLatino version of the revered All in the Family.  It did not even begin to approach that old sitcom that broke new ground and even set people to think.  It should be of note that the strongest character in ¡Rob! was Eugenio Derbez, a successful Mexican actor of his own right.  In previous attempts at capturing the HispanicLatino angle, Hollywood fails on the core issue: Trying to stuff the HispanicLatino experience into an American model while tripping up on language.  Viewers got robbed.

Enough with Tim Tebow.  Anyone who shows off his religion as much as he does makes me nervous.  The comment sections of any story on any news site on this guy seem fairly certain there is another story there that in time will come out.  The not-so-hidden references to his allegedly unknown sexual orientation are a bit disquieting.  I pray he is not gay. If he is, this circus will last 75 years.  I hope that the Denver Broncos, a team I ordinarily like, lose badly this weekend for purely selfish reasons. Continue reading →

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

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So Andrea Mitchell on her program yesterday on MSNBC I think ran a clip of a Mitt Romney ad seeking HispanicLatino support.  I guess that was what he was doing.  It might have been an old ad when he ran for governor or senator.  Three weeks after saying if Congress passed the Dream Act he as President would veto it, the idea of a Romney commercial seeking HispanicLatino votes is indeed an illusion.

True, not all HispanicLatinos support the proposal to assist college-age students who are in the country illegally, most for no fault of their own.  But whether a majority of HispanicLatinos support the Dream Act is not as important as what Romney’s sentiments represent: A red target that he and the other Republican candidates have painted on the backs of all HispanicLatinos.

More interesting than ascertaining if most HispanicLatinos support the act is determining whether any of the dreamers, as I call these holders of our future, are or were the children of the subcontracted undocumented workers that used to take care of Romney’s lawns and shrubs.  I presume the well-resourced Obama campaign is looking into this matter, as well as to the possibility that Romney’s investments in more than 70 companies that led to workers losing their jobs might have included any HispanicLatinos. Continue reading →

Authenticity: The Menendez Margin

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There is a reason beyond the obvious as to why Sen. Bob Menendez could be the most important HispanicLatino politician in the country today.  Yes, being a member of the Senate and of its majority party helps.  But Menendez’ strength is not simply institutionally derived.  Rather, he can speak in a credible way in English and in Spanish that eludes other prominent HispanicLatinos and being able to do so bequeaths him with the most important tool that all political leaders must have: The power to communicate.  Money might be the mother’s milk of politics but the ability to communicate effectively is its currency.  As such, Menendez could be one of President Obama’s most important tools for re-election.  Continue reading →

On Iran, North Korea: Little Input from HispanicLatinos

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It would seem we are headed for a national security moment with Iran almost certainly and with North Korea by happenstance probably.  One or both of these nuclear-charged events might take form during the presidential campaign.  The timing would probably help Barack Obama win re-election, most of the country rallying behind its commander-in-chief.  A national security crisis – especially one dealing with Iran – in which the United States either participates in militarily or is thought to support the actions of any ally – would encumber serious repercussions on American foreign policy and set it on a course for decades to come.

On Iran, not one credible HispanicLatino is known generally or publicly to have been engaged in developing any of the provisional strategies to deal with an armed conflict or its aftermath.  Since HispanicLatinos already fight – often disproportionately – in the nation’s wars and will do so in greater numbers as their population grows, the decisions that might generate future conflicts must be developed with the active participation of qualified and credible HispanicLatinos lest any policy of war or peace adopted lack credibility as it unfolds or lose it over time.  Unbeknownst to most policy decision-makers the war in Iraq was hugely unpopular within the HispanicLatino community. Continue reading →

The Soldiers Return, the Soldiers Vote

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All the left-over hubbub about Iowa yesterday left me thinking about a truck that drove by on a freeway near Dallas with white-washed lettering splashed across its rear cab window.  It was not a new truck.  It had the weathered look of real work.  The driver was not displaying his support for a team involved in the high school football playoffs.  Instead, the ghostly lettering proclaimed, “Welcome home!  Merry Christmas!”  On either side of the window, a red and gold decal of the Marine Corps framed the message.

I have no idea how the returning soldier population and their immediate families are going to vote in this year’s election.  I wonder if any or all of them will remember that Barack Obama brought them home from the useless and costly lie that was Iraq.  I think about those who died, were maimed or are now psychologically impaired, and I am thankful that Obama defeated John McCain.  Had he been elected, McCain would not have ended Iraq and might have expanded military operations there.  That is what military men do. Continue reading →

Rick of the Saints

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It seems so long ago that in the 1960 presidential election a Catholic candidate was fighting for his political life.  John F. Kennedy won by a whisker, fending off religious bigots.  Probably 75 percent of the country has been born since then and Catholicism no longer matters, for the most part, to a vast majority of voters.  It means more to people today that Mitt Romney is a Mormon, yet it says as much that a Catholic, Rick Santorum, might be the choice of evangelical Christians when the conservative wing of the Republican Party makes its stand in the South against Romney – whose forebears were the ones who feared Kennedy the most.

The fact that the South might block Romney’s push for the nomination says more about the Catholic Church than it does about the Republican presidential circus.  That a Catholic candidate like Santorum (whose name in Latin means “of the saints”) is so right-wing in his philosophy tells us how the Church has changed – and how it intends to grow its role in national political affairs.  Continue reading →