Why is Lincoln Diaz-Balart an untouchable?
By Alvaro F. Fernandez
Why would an egocentric politician like Lincoln Diaz-Balart give up a potentially powerful seat in the U.S. Congress? He says he will dedicate time to an organization his father created half a century ago known as the White Rose. He also plans to return to the practice of law -- something he has not done in a quarter century.
When Diaz-Balart announced his retirement from Congress on February 11, I thought the reason he gave the media was weak, especially coming from an overly ambitious man who appears healthy and is only 55. Am I the only person who found it very strange that Diaz-Balart had just endured the toughest electoral battle of his life, which he won handily, and then had decided before the end of the term to call it quits? Reporters here in Miami blew off digging for possible reasons, which is what they’re supposed to do.
Republican glee has short life
The GOP may be feeling pretty good right now but lookout for the train coming down the rails. That is why Republicans are once again trying to rebuild their support in the Latino electorate, according to a lengthy analysis in The Washington Post.
Dancing with wolves?
By Elsa Claro
In 2004, dramatic messages and photos about four American contractors executed in Iraq were released. The event led the unaware to think that these were civilians trying to repair what the invaders had destroyed, but it was soon learned that they were mercenaries.
Shortly before, details had circulated about companies created by former soldiers and officers, particularly from the American and British armies, who would act anywhere as long as they were paid in cash or with natural resources – money, mines or shares in African companies, for instance.
Emergency earthquake appeal: Support Cuban-trained
Haitian doctors
The woman with the many millions
By Varela
Around the 1990s, Ana Margarita Martínez was a divorced woman who, like many others, sought temporary consolation in churches. Before that, I believe she had attempted classes in Casino Wheels, yoga and aerobics, but they were either very expensive, tiring, or just not what she wanted. To any grieving soul, an evangelist meeting is always welcome because, if it doesn't instill faith in the great beyond, it connects the soul with the here-and-now, where it can find little gatherings and establish friendly relations. And that's what counts, when you're lonely.
The problem was that, amid the celestial choirs and the hallelujahs, she ran into a Richard Gere look-alike, a Cuban named Juan Pablo Roque, who had just defected. They married and proceeded to live happily. It is not clear whether the felicity was by mutual complicity or because a woman with a man who looks like a Hollywood actor is always happy. (I have not made a survey to that effect, so my guess is empirical.) One thing or another, Ana Margarita one day discovered that her loved one – Richard Gere's double – had skedadled to Cuba and was making statements on television like an agent of the Cuban government.
Spited, the lady turned to the courts, where she alleged that she felt used, violated and abandoned...
Department of Defense, Inc.
By Saul Landau and Nelson Valdes
President Obama called his $3.8-trillion budget a big step in restoring America’s economic health. Last year he promoted TARP, the Troubled Assets Relief Program to bail out the financial sector at a mere $700 billion. Anyone -- even billionaire bankers -- can make mistakes that wreak ruin on the rest of us!
Obama also declared as “untouchable” the Pentagon budget of $1.5 trillion (including hidden costs in other government branches), which dwarfs the rescue package for the financial oligarchs.
Venerable or fanatical?
Bobby Sands was a 27 year old Irish volunteer for the Irish Republican Army and a member of the United Kingdom Parliament. He died on hunger strike while incarcerated for possession of firearms -- some claim he was a political prisoner.
Upon his death,
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said: He [Bobby Sands] was “a convicted criminal. He chose to take his own life.”
The Chicago Tribune editorialized: “Mahatma Gandhi used the hunger strike to move his countrymen to abstain from fratricide. [Bobby Sands] deliberate slow suicide is intended to precipitate civil war. The former deserved veneration and influence. The latter would be viewed, in a reasonable world, not as a charismatic martyr but as a fanatical suicide…”
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The enthusiasm gap
By Robert Reich
From the Robert Reich blog
I had dinner the other night with a Democratic pollster who told me Dems are heading toward next fall’s mid-term elections with a serious enthusiasm gap: The Republican base is fired up. The Dem base is packing up.
The Dem base is lethargic because congressional Democrats continue...
Obama’s first year MVP: Hilda Solis
The new secretary of labor is doing just what she should be: standing up for workers’ rights.
By Mark Engler
Those who voted for “change you can believe in” in 2008 have found many reasons since Obama’s inauguration to be disappointed with the new White House. But there have been some bright spots in the administration’s first year as well -- positive steps that illustrate the difference that a progressive-minded administration can make when it stands up to corporate interests and is unafraid to act in the public good. One well worth acknowledging as the administration’s second year gets underway is the work of the Department of Labor under Secretary Hilda Solis.
From the beginning, Obama’s Labor appointment was one to cheer. Solis grew up in a predominantly Latino suburb of Los Angeles, the daughter of immigrant parents who were both union members. She was the first in her family to receive a college degree. In 1994, after more than a decade in public service, she became the first Latina ever elected to the California State Senate. There she helped to defeat an anti-labor ballot proposition and was a leader of the effort to raise the state’s minimum wage.
Click to continue reading...Republicans give green light for reconciliation
By Bill Press
History repeated itself [last] week at Blair House, the nation's official guest house for former presidents and foreign dignitaries, across thestreet from theWhite House at 1651 Pennsylvania 
Avenue.
It was here in 186l that President Abraham Lincoln offered command of the Union Army to General Robert E. Lee.
