Once the GOP convention finally gets off the ground Tuesday, it will be a multicultural marvel that Democrats will be hard pressed to replicate.
Oh, sure, the Dems have multi-culti prince Barack Obama, and they have the extra added attraction of an openly-lesbian congresswoman in Wisconsin’s Tammy Baldwin to kick things off.
The Democrats also have keynoter Mayor Julian Castro and his fellow mayors Cory Booker, Michael Nutter, Antonio Villaraigosa and Anthony Foxx; California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris and Rep. Barbaba Lee; Illinois' own Tammy Duckworth; and TV personalities Cristina Saralegui and Eva Longoria.
GOP convention a marvel of diversity (for real)
Aug. 28, 2012Florida congressman under investigation for alleged shadow campaign
Aug. 23, 2012
Paul Ryan may not have provided much of a bump to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign anywhere but in Wisconsin, but as the headlines popped up in South Florida late Wednesday, you know he’s gotta be feeling some relief that he didn’t go with Sen. Marco Rubio.
What, you can’t find anything about Rubio that’s particularly scandalous in the last few days? Look closely: Rubio’s BFF David Rivera, the Cuban-American GOP congressman from South Florida, provoked this lead graf on the Miami Herald's front page Wednesday morning:
Akin’s disgraced but Ryan connections remain
Aug. 21, 2012For all the outrage GOP presidential aspirant Mitt Romney has expressed over Missouri Republican candidate Todd Akin’s comments about “legitimate rape,” he’s probably a little glad Akin stuck his foot in it.
Why? Because how else were Romney and the other GOP bigwigs going to command the spotlight in such a way as to create the impression that the Republican Party isn’t really all that bad for women?
First of all, Akin: “From what I understand from doctors, pregnancy (from rape) is really rare. If it’s legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut the whole thing down.”
Even Romney couldn’t let that pass. “Congressman’s Akin comments on rape are insulting, inexcusable, and, frankly, wrong,” Romney said. “Like millions of other Americans, we found them to be offensive.”
Order by Arizona governor blocks DREAMers
Aug. 16, 2012
On the first day of President Barack Obama’s program to extend some measure of legal protection to undocumented youth, Gov. Jan Brewer of Arizona signed an executive order that denies them any benefits in her state.
It’s just one more mean and spiteful move by Brewer. She’s getting the predictable accolades from far right wackos but it's another short-term move with long-term negative effects for Republicans among the country’s fastest growing population: Latinos.
Is Ryan a liability with Latino voters?
Aug. 15, 2012If Latinos are the great swing voters of 2012, what does Mitt Romney’s selection of Paul Ryan as the GOP's VP candidate mean? And where, if anywhere, will Ryan have an impact with Latinos?
Because he represents Wisconsin’s 1st Congressional District, which is more than 90 percent white and only about 6 percent Hispanic, Rep. Ryan has not had a need to address issues with Latinos in mind, or with a message tailored in any special way for them.
So what does Ryan think about the issues important to Latinos?
According to a June 2012 Gallup poll, U.S. Hispanics are most concerned about (in this order) healthcare, unemployment, immigration, economic growth, the gap between the rich and the poor and the deficit.
Beck Research did a study at about the same time that echoed roughly the same sentiments with one crucial exception: Education.
Commentator says children of gay parents need to be rescued via ‘Underground Railroad’
Aug. 11, 2012
Conservative talk radio host and blogger Bryan Fisher believes America is in peril — thanks to a pro-homosexual crusade. And, he would like children of same-sex couples to be “saved” — via kidnapping — in a new kind of Underground Railroad.
At least that’s what he said Tuesday, clear as day, in the exchange above. In other words, he thinks that kids growing up in same sex households — no matter how loving or supportive — are in imminent peril.
Thursday afternoon, Fisher walked it back a bit: “The bloviating left has come completely unhinged, hysterically and ludicrously accusing me of supporting kidnapping raids on homosexual households to snatch children from their beds. I, of course, have suggested no such thing.”
Mexican folk great Chavela Vargas dies at 93
Aug. 7, 2012Tuesday is a second day of mourning in Mexico. Chavela Vargas, one of the greatest singers of Mexican traditional music, died Sunday at age 93. While Monday tens of thousands of Mexicans of all ages and economic and social strata gathered spontaneously in Garibaldi Plaza in Mexico City — the very heart, the pulse and epicenter of Mexican music and culture —to sing and cry in the heat and thunderous rain until deep in the night, Tuesday's farewell at the Palacio de Bellas Artes will be formal and, perhaps most ironically given her history, official. No other Mexican cultural figure — not Cantinflas or Pedro Infante — has had such a prolonged farewell.
The Senate's growing conservative Latino caucus
Aug. 4, 2012When Ted Cruz, the U.S. senate GOP nominee, wins in November — and it will be a helluva a scandal if he doesn't — the world’s greatest deliberative body will have three Latino senators. And two of them will be Republican.
Given the Democratic Party’s much greater civil rights record and its much more traditionally muscular grassroots efforts, there’s something off about those optics. So how did that happen?
Robert Menéndez, the Latino Democratic senator from New Jersey, rose up the old fashioned way, through a close and often controversial mentorship with an older pol, former Union City Mayor William Musto (against whom Menéndez eventually testified). Menéndez worked his way up steadily, from school board member to mayor, to state senator to U.S. congressman to U.S. senator.