North Korea warned foreigners in South Korea to leave the country under threat of attack.
At least 14 people were injured in a stabbing attack at a community college in Texas.
Cuba will return a couple who kidnapped their own children from Tampa.
Possible agreement on background checks sets stage for Senate vote.
“Gang of 8″ immigration bill to be introduced by Thursday.
UConn beats Louisville to win women’s NCAA basketball championship.
The Tigers beat the Blue Jays.
Syrian opposition turns down U.S., Russian invitations.
Karzai orders U.S. Special Forces out of key Afghan province.
The White House preps states for cuts if/when sequestration hits.
Secretary of State John Kerry is off on his first overseas trip.
Yet another snowstorm comes barreling out of the Rockies.
Raul Castro says this term is his last.
And the Oscars went to…
U.S. to provide aerial refueling for French aircraft in Mali.
Ten Afghan police officers killed in suicide attack.
Sandy refugees scramble for shelter.
Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin (D) to retire after 2014.
Hugo Chavez starts more cancer treatments in Cuba.
Thirty people die in Egypt after verdict over rioting.
Technically the U.S. government went over the cliff at midnight, but at the last minute the White House and Republicans worked out a compromise deal on taxes and sequestration. The Senate whooped it through 89-8, and the House will vote on it later today, which means it could still blow up and we’ll be back where we started.
Hillary Clinton is still recovering in at hospital in New York from a blood clot near her brain. This development is not necessarily life-threatening, and doctors say she should make a full recovery. But it does make the right-wingers who said she was faking her illness to get out of testifying before Congress about the incident in Benghazi look like churlish asshats. But then again, they already were, so no news there. Two years from today I expect us to be chattering about her standing in the Iowa polls, a year out from the Iowa caucuses.
Marriage equality comes to Maryland today. It was one of three states that voted by public referendum to legalize the unions over the objections of such ironically-named hate groups like Focus on the Family, the National Organization for Marriage, and One Million Moms. They had claimed that judges and legislatures had no business overturning the will of the people and no state would allow same-sex marriage if the the people got to vote on it. Maryland and two other states, Maine and Washington, made that point moot, and now those groups are trying to figure out a way to overturn the elections. Best wishes to the happy couples.
The last two Cuban day workers at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base have retired, but there’s no legal way for the U.S. to pay their hard-earned Defense Department pension without violating the embargo. It’s long past time the embargo itself was retired, and without a pension.
Today marks Marty’s thirteenth birthday. She’s been my friend Brian’s faithful companion since she was a pup, and she’s still going strong. Best wishes.
And today marks a milestone for my 1988 Pontiac 6000 LE Safari station wagon, which I have also had since it was a pup. It is now officially 25 years old, thus making it an antique car.
That’s what it looked like when it was twenty years old. I’ll have more pictures of it later this week when it comes back from the body shop where it’s getting some nips and tucks done to make it ready for its first national AACA show in February.
Happy new year, everyone, and may this one be better than the last one.
Cliff Report — President Obama is “confident” they can reach a deal.
Marriage equality comes to Maine.
Warrantless wiretapping bill is renewed without amendment by Congress.
Former President George H.W. Bush is improving in a Texas hospital.
Syrian leader Assad goes into hiding as his regime is on the brink of collapse.
Venezuelan VP in Cuba to visit ailing Hugo Chavez.
President Obama addressed mourners at the vigil in Newtown.
John Kerry is expected to be named Secretary of State.
Egyptians back constitution; voter fraud alleged.
Boehner makes an offer on raising taxes.
Two police officers were shot and killed outside a market in Kansas.
Fidel Castro nominated for seat in Cuban parliament.
A U.N. panel says Cuba’s jailing of Alan Gross was “arbitrary.”
A U.S. Navy SEAL was killed in the rescue of the American aid worker kidnapped by the Taliban.
Poll — 60% of Americans support raising taxes on incomes over $250,000.
The Michigan legislature will vote today on right-to-work.
Highway deaths in U.S. hit a 62-year low.
Gas prices fall 10 cents in three weeks.
The Strauss-Kahn case has been settled out of court.
Egypt — President Morsi calls for a referendum on the new constitution.
Air base attacked in Afghanistan.
North Korea is planning to try to launch another missile.
Tunnel collapse outside Tokyo traps motorists.
Cuba wants to trade prisoners.
A wildfire in Rocky Mountain National Park causes evacuations.
A tour bus took a wrong turn at MIA and hit an overpass; two dead.
Iran unveils a new missile system.
Cuba’s dream of an oil bonanza is coming up dry.
Target employees protest against working on Thanksgiving.
Another scandal: General demoted for lavish spending on travel.
Nearly 1,000 uncounted ballots were found in Fort Lauderdale.
R.I.P. Esther Scott, mother of Florida Gov. Rick Scott.
Folks in Australia and the South Pacific enjoyed the total eclipse.
Syrian military agrees to a holiday cease-fire, but shelling continues.
The New York Times reports that Wen Jiabao, China’s prime minister, is a very rich man.
Justice? Gay-bashing cousins in Kentucky acquitted of hate crime.
New York City cop charged in cannibalism plot.
Cuba’s migration policy change welcomes returnees.
Hurricane Sandy left 11 dead in Cuba, Jamaica, and Haiti.
Tropical Update: Tony is heading east, south of the Azores.
World Series: Giants win again. C’mon, Tigers, get it together.
Until this night fifty years ago, the most famous Cuban in America was Desi Arnaz.
Fifty years ago today: October 22, 1962.
I remember it very well. I was ten years old, just becoming aware of things going on outside my own world of grade school, and because I had a friend whose father had been working for an affiliate of the company my father worked for in Cuba, I had a personal connection.
I didn’t know it at the time, but we came within hours of World War III.
The final presidential debate is tonight; foreign policy is on the agenda.
Jordan foils an al-Qaeda plot.
A shooting in a Wisconsin hair salon kills three, injures seven.
Fidel is still alive, a week after he was reported to be at death’s door.
A 5.3 earthquake rattled central California.
Gas prices are falling in some places as demand slows.
Tropical Update: Still looking at Invest 90L and 99L.
The Giants force the Cardinals into a Game 7 of the NLCS.
Some people in Europe want to get into the war in Syria.
Canadian border agent shot; assailant killed.
U.S. court reverses conviction of OBL’s driver.
Cuba will end the exit visa requirement in January.
A 4.0 earthquake rattled New England.
Citigroup CEO quits suddenly.
Tropical Update: Hurricane Rafael heads east.
The Tigers beat the Yankees to go up 3-0 in the ALCS.
Voting Wrongs — Elizabeth Drew on how the GOP is planning to steal the election.
Florida 2000 was the poisoned apple of our electoral system. Republicans saw that by manipulating the rules they could –when it comes down to it—steal an election. Ample evidence exists that a majority of Floridians intended to, did, or thought they did, vote for Al Gore. Following the success of the George W. Bush team in winning Florida and thus the election came Karl Rove’s zealous use of alleged “voter fraud” as an instrument for expanding the power of the party and the Bush White House. At the behest of the Bush White House in 2007, the Justice Department fired seven US Attorneys on the ground that they hadn’t pursued voter fraud, which the attorneys said they could find no evidence of. (Rove had other motives.) The next step would be gaining control of as many state governments as possible: The Republicans took over twelve in 2010, to reach a total of twenty-two. Through them, the Republicans launched a national drive to intimidate and hinder the Democratic party’s constituencies from voting—in the name of protecting the political system against a cooked-up threat.
Conveniently, the five conservative Justices of the Supreme Court, in an unusual bout of the “activism” they usually deplore, overturned in Citizens United over more than a century of law protecting the political process from uncontrolled contributions by corporate interests as well as labor (which cant compete on raising such funds). Corporations that would prefer more relaxed regulatory policies and lower corporate taxes have combined with the Republicans and others who want to get rid of Obama in making huge contributions to the new Super PACs. And Sheldon Adelson, under legal challenge for his management of his casinos in Macao, and willing to shell out $100 million to get a friendlier Justice Department, became one of the most powerful people in America. Candidates, including the newly chosen Republican vice presidential contender, paid court to Adelson in his Las Vegas headquarters.
The highly conservative American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), financed by the Koch brothers and big corporations drew up a “model law” to guide Republican-controlled states in designing ways to keep Democratic supporters from voting. Other conservative groups—some originating in the Tea Party, which is also supported by the Koch brothers—have also sprung up to join the fight to restrict voting by allies of the Democrats. The group True the Vote, for example, is operating on a theory of pure fantasy: its literature imagines busloads of unqualified You-Name-The-Democratic-Group being dropped off at registration places. True the Vote officers say that they will go to polling places to make sure that unqualified people are not permitted to vote. The country may now be entering into a period marked by confusion or even chaos in our election system. Hundreds of thousands of people are about to start to go to the polls before their states have settled their voting requirements, or without knowing what they are. Though the rules have yet to be decided in either state, voting has already begun in North Carolina, and is scheduled to begin in Ohio on October 2. Either candidate needs to win by decisive margins in both the popular and electoral college vote to avoid a legal mess.
Fact vs. Fantasy — Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic argues that the inability to judge arguments on their merits and separate fact from fantasy is what ails the conservative movement.
Just now, the GOP nominee was exposed as believing, or pandering to donors who believe, that the 47 percent of Americans who vote Democratic are the same 47 percent of Americans who pay no income taxes. That is demonstrably false, but many on the right have lined up behind his remarks, and started to shame co-ideologues who dared to criticize the Republican standard-bearer.
Breitbart.com has spent much of the Obama Administration giving its readers the impression that ACORN, the board of NPR, and the question of whether or not the NAACP is racist are urgent priorities for the right. In doing so, it elevated a young man with a hidden camera who tried to lure a female reporter on a boat, intending to seduce her on hidden video and then humiliate her with the footage. Despite that, the young man remains a hero to many movement conservatives.
For them, the ends justify the means.
[...]
The right needs to value robust argument more highly. And to denigrate those who subvert it more forcefully. For public discourse is all it has to test ideas and formulate an evolving agenda.
If Hugh Hewitt and Dennis Prager reflect on why they conduct themselves with more integrity than Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin, even though they needn’t do so to succeed in talk radio; if the most intellectually honest scholars at the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation think about why they hold themselves to a higher standard than the most hackish of their colleagues; if all the people who know better reflect on the reasons for their own behavior, they’d perhaps better appreciate why it is vital to stop staying silent when prominent co-ideologues fall short of the most minimal standards.
Yes, there will always be hucksters. And spending all one’s time fighting them is a foolish enterprise.
On the right today, they are so numerous, prominent and shameless, their pathologies so ingrained in right-wing media and politics, their wealth so corrupting to young talent, and their pathologies so seldom challenged by those who know better, that Republicans are operating at a persistent information disadvantage. (Too many believe even their own bullshit.) The Bush Administration showed that it’s possible to win at the ballot box anyway — but that the victory isn’t worth much, save an ill-conceived war in the desert, exploding deficits, and a financial crisis. Improving on this metric won’t solve all the right’s problems, or answer every question about the right way forward, but it would go a long way toward mitigating its least defensible excesses. For some, the resulting improvements would be enough to make the GOP preferable to the Democrats.
Where Is Cuba Going? — John Jeremiah Sullivan returns to Cuba with his family and looks at the past and the future of that tragically magical island.
We landed under searingly vivid skies, something like what the blue tablet from a packet of Easter dye lets off. The land right around the airport is farmed; we saw a man plowing with oxen. The fertility of Cuba is the thing you can’t put into words. I’ve never stood on a piece of ground as throbbingly, even pornographically, generative. Throw a used battery into a divot, and it will put out shoots — that’s how it feels. You could smell it, in the smoky, slightly putrid smell of turned fields. More and more, as we drove, that odor mingled with the smell of the sea.
This was the first time I was in post-Fidel Cuba. It was funny to think that not long ago, there were smart people who doubted that such a thing could exist, i.e., who believed that with the fall of Fidel would come the fall of Communism on the island. But Fidel didn’t fall. He did fall, physically — on the tape that gets shown over and over in Miami, of him coming down the ramp after giving that speech in 2004 and tumbling and breaking his knee — but his leadership didn’t. He executed one of the most brilliantly engineered successions in history, a succession that was at the same time a self-entrenchment. First, he faked his own death in a way: serious intestinal operation, he might not make it. Raúl is brought in as “acting president.” A year and a half later, Castro mostly recovered. But Raúl is officially named president, with Castro’s approval. It was almost as if, “Is Fidel still . . . ?” Amazing. So now they rule together, with Raúl out front, but everyone understanding that Fidel retains massive authority. Not to say that Raúl doesn’t wield power — he has always had plenty — but it’s a partnership of some kind. What comes after is as much of a mystery as ever.
Our relationship with them seems just as uncertain. Barack Obama was going to open things up, and he did tinker with the rules regarding travel, but now they say that when you try to follow these rules, you get caught up in all kinds of forms and tape. He eased the restrictions on remittances, so more money is making it back to the island, and that may have made the biggest difference so far. Boats with medical and other relief supplies have recently left Miami, sailing straight to the island, which hasn’t happened in decades. These humanitarian shipments can, according to The Miami Herald, include pretty much anything a Cuban-American family wants to send to its relatives: Barbie dolls, electronics, sugary cereal. In many cases, you have a situation in which the family is first wiring money over, then shipping the goods. The money is used on the other side to pay the various fees associated with getting the stuff. So it’s as if you’re reaching over and re-buying the merchandise for your relatives. The money, needless to say, goes to the government. Still, capitalism is making small inroads. And Raúl has taken baby steps toward us: Cubans can own their own cars, operate their own businesses, own property. That’s all new. For obvious reasons it’s not an immediate possibility for a vast majority of the people, and it could be taken away tomorrow morning by decree, but it matters.
Otherwise, our attitude toward Cuba feels very wait and see, as what we’re waiting to see grows less and less clear. We’ve learned to live with it, like when the doctor says, “What you have could kill you, but not before you die a natural death.” Earlier this year Obama said to a Spanish newspaper: “No authoritarian regime will last forever. The day will come in which the Cuban people will be free.” Not, notice, no dictator can live forever, but no “authoritarian regime.” But how long can one last? Two hundred years?Perhaps a second term will be different. All presidents, if they want to mess with our Cuba relations at even the microscopic level, find themselves up against the Florida community, and those are large, powerful and arguably insane forces.
My wife’s people got out in the early 1960s, so they’ve been in the States for half a century. Lax regulations, strict regulations. It’s all a oneness. They take, I suppose, a Cuban view, that matters on the island are perpetually and in some way inherently screwed up and have been forever.
Doonesbury — Community property.
Egypt’s new president spells out terms for U.S.-Arab ties.
Pakistani official offers a bounty for the killing of the anti-Islam film.
On the other hand, a lot of Muslims decry the violence over the stupid movie.
President Obama keeps up the 47% attack in Wisconsin.
Paul Ryan panders to Little Havana.
Hello, Sailor — The fleets are in Key West.
A man who mauled in a tiger’s cage in the Bronx zoo wanted to be “one with the tiger.” (He almost was one with its stomach.)
The Tigers beat the Twins, tighten the division race.
The Syrian government is not in the mood to talk to the rebels.
Hezbollah says Iran will hit U.S. bases if Israel attacks.
North Korea hints at economic reform.
The Democratic convention starts tonight.
President Obama stopped in Louisiana to see the damage from Isaac.
Travel to Cuba just got a lot more expensive.
R.I.P Michael Clarke Duncan, 54, Oscar-nominated actor for The Green Mile.
Tropical Update: TS Leslie could be a hurricane by Saturday, and there’s another areas of interest out in the Atlantic: TD 13.
The Tigers lost to Cleveland.
Left Out — Frank Bruni on the GOP exclusion of the LGBTQ community at their Tampa convention.
What the Republicans painstakingly constructed here was meant to look like the biggest of tents. And still they couldn’t spare so much as a sleeping bag’s worth of space for the likes of me.Women were welcomed. During the prime evening television hours, the convention stage was festooned with them, and when they weren’t at the microphone, they were front and center in men’s remarks. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney both gushed about their moms in tributes as tactical as they were teary.
Latinos were plentiful and flexed their Spanish — “En América, todo es posible,” said Susana Martinez, the New Mexico governor — despite an “English First” plank in the party’s regressive platform.
And while one preconvention poll suggested that roughly zero percent of African-Americans support Romney, Republicans found several prominent black leaders to testify for him. Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, delivered what will surely be remembered as the convention’s most stirring and substantive remarks, purged of catcalls and devoid of slickly rendered fibs.
But you certainly didn’t see anyone openly gay on the stage in Tampa. More to the point, you didn’t hear mention of gays and lesbians. Scratch that: Mike Huckabee, who has completed a ratings-minded transformation from genial pol to dyspeptic pundit, made a derisive reference to President Obama’s support for same-sex marriage. We were thus allowed a fleeting moment inside the tent, only to be flogged and sent back out into the cold.
It was striking not because a convention or political party should make a list of minority groups and dutifully put a check mark beside each. That’s an often hollow bow to political correctness.
It was striking because the Republicans went so emphatically far, in terms of stagecraft and storytelling, to profess inclusiveness, and because we gays have been in the news rather a lot over the last year or so, as the march toward marriage equality picked up considerable velocity. We’re a part of the conversation. And our exile from it in Tampa contradicted the high-minded “we’re one America” sentiments that pretty much every speaker spouted.
Spare Me — Leonard Pitts, Jr. isn’t impressed with the way either party talks about race.
Lord help us, they’re talking race again.“They” meaning Republicans and Democrats. Race is a critical, sensitive and sometimes painful issue with relevance to everything from environmental policy to education reform to criminal justice to media to healthcare. To address it requires political courage.
That’s why politicians do not address it. Usually. That changes during the campaign season when a given pol calculates that breaking his customary silence might net some tactical advantage.
Which is how we come to find Newt Gingrich last week on MSNBC piously lamenting how “racist” the network’s Chris Matthews is. The former House speaker displayed this previously unknown sensitivity while defending himself against charges of same.
It seems Matthews had the temerity to suggest that Gingrich, in calling Barack Obama a “food stamp president” during the GOP primary, had engaged in dog-whistle politics designed to rouse racial resentment among white working-class voters. Gingrich was shocked – shocked! – at the notion.
“Why do you assume food stamp refers to black?” he asked. “What kind of racist thinking do you have?”
It is apparently news to Gingrich that politicians sometimes speak in code, that when, for example, Ronald Reagan referenced his made-up “welfare queens” he was really promising white voters he’d make those lazy blacks get up off their behinds and work.
There was a study in the ’90s in which people were asked to envision a drug user, then describe that person. Ninety-five percent envisioned someone black. This, even though only about 15 percent of drug users actually are black. The point being that in the public mind, certain terms — “urban,” “poverty,” “crime” — carry racial weight, often at odds with reality. They are ways of saying “black” without saying “black.”
The idea that Gingrich — a 69-year-old career politician — does not know this, or realize that “food stamp president” is such a term, strains credulity. If he’s really that much of a naif, let us hope no one has told him the truth about the Tooth Fairy. It would break the poor man’s heart.
Where race is concerned, Newt Gingrich is a disingenuous hypocrite. And Joe Biden is just a fool.
Did the vice president really tell a largely black audience two weeks back that if Mitt Romney is elected, the GOP will “put y’all back in chains.” Y’all? Really? A slavery joke?
Lord, have mercy.
Why didn’t Biden just show up with his pants sagging while gnawing a chicken bone? It couldn’t have been any less subtle.
Adios — Francisco Alvarado at Miami New Times on the slow death of Cuban radio in Miami.
Some observers say a move toward more moderate Spanish-language radio would be healthy for a town too long obsessed with the lives of two strong-arm brothers on an island a few hundred miles away.“On Cuban-American radio, you hear things that happened 50 years ago as if it was happening right now,” says John De Leon, an ACLU attorney and Miami native. “It’s highly nostalgic, but it is not conducive for change and progress in the community.”
But anyone who appreciates Miami’s unique history should feel a sting of regret if the kind of radio broadcast every day at La Poderosa fades to static; this is a format, after all, that El Exilio has used for 53 years to undermine Castro’s revolution and amass political power in South Florida.
These frequencies have hailed alleged terrorists such as Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles as freedom fighters and condoned bombing cars and offices to defy El Exilio’s enemies. They’ve fomented mob rule against those acquiescing to Fidel Castro, especially during the battle to keep Elián González in Miami. And thanks to pressure from the stations, Miami-Dade politicians have been forced to pander to listeners by banning Cuban musicians and ordering boycotts of Cuban-friendly businesses.
Those days might just be gone for good. “It is not like it used to be in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, when it was overwhelmingly Cuban-American,” former Miami Mayor Joe Carollo says of the stations’ influence. “It doesn’t have the same impact anymore.”
Doonesbury — The Ayes have it.
Jim Morin at the Miami Herald.
Left Out — Frank Bruni on the GOP exclusion of the LGBTQ community at their Tampa convention.
What the Republicans painstakingly constructed here was meant to look like the biggest of tents. And still they couldn’t spare so much as a sleeping bag’s worth of space for the likes of me.Women were welcomed. During the prime evening television hours, the convention stage was festooned with them, and when they weren’t at the microphone, they were front and center in men’s remarks. Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney both gushed about their moms in tributes as tactical as they were teary.
Latinos were plentiful and flexed their Spanish — “En América, todo es posible,” said Susana Martinez, the New Mexico governor — despite an “English First” plank in the party’s regressive platform.
And while one preconvention poll suggested that roughly zero percent of African-Americans support Romney, Republicans found several prominent black leaders to testify for him. Condoleezza Rice, the former secretary of state, delivered what will surely be remembered as the convention’s most stirring and substantive remarks, purged of catcalls and devoid of slickly rendered fibs.
But you certainly didn’t see anyone openly gay on the stage in Tampa. More to the point, you didn’t hear mention of gays and lesbians. Scratch that: Mike Huckabee, who has completed a ratings-minded transformation from genial pol to dyspeptic pundit, made a derisive reference to President Obama’s support for same-sex marriage. We were thus allowed a fleeting moment inside the tent, only to be flogged and sent back out into the cold.
It was striking not because a convention or political party should make a list of minority groups and dutifully put a check mark beside each. That’s an often hollow bow to political correctness.
It was striking because the Republicans went so emphatically far, in terms of stagecraft and storytelling, to profess inclusiveness, and because we gays have been in the news rather a lot over the last year or so, as the march toward marriage equality picked up considerable velocity. We’re a part of the conversation. And our exile from it in Tampa contradicted the high-minded “we’re one America” sentiments that pretty much every speaker spouted.
Spare Me — Leonard Pitts, Jr. isn’t impressed with the way either party talks about race.
Lord help us, they’re talking race again.“They” meaning Republicans and Democrats. Race is a critical, sensitive and sometimes painful issue with relevance to everything from environmental policy to education reform to criminal justice to media to healthcare. To address it requires political courage.
That’s why politicians do not address it. Usually. That changes during the campaign season when a given pol calculates that breaking his customary silence might net some tactical advantage.
Which is how we come to find Newt Gingrich last week on MSNBC piously lamenting how “racist” the network’s Chris Matthews is. The former House speaker displayed this previously unknown sensitivity while defending himself against charges of same.
It seems Matthews had the temerity to suggest that Gingrich, in calling Barack Obama a “food stamp president” during the GOP primary, had engaged in dog-whistle politics designed to rouse racial resentment among white working-class voters. Gingrich was shocked – shocked! – at the notion.
“Why do you assume food stamp refers to black?” he asked. “What kind of racist thinking do you have?”
It is apparently news to Gingrich that politicians sometimes speak in code, that when, for example, Ronald Reagan referenced his made-up “welfare queens” he was really promising white voters he’d make those lazy blacks get up off their behinds and work.
There was a study in the ’90s in which people were asked to envision a drug user, then describe that person. Ninety-five percent envisioned someone black. This, even though only about 15 percent of drug users actually are black. The point being that in the public mind, certain terms — “urban,” “poverty,” “crime” — carry racial weight, often at odds with reality. They are ways of saying “black” without saying “black.”
The idea that Gingrich — a 69-year-old career politician — does not know this, or realize that “food stamp president” is such a term, strains credulity. If he’s really that much of a naif, let us hope no one has told him the truth about the Tooth Fairy. It would break the poor man’s heart.
Where race is concerned, Newt Gingrich is a disingenuous hypocrite. And Joe Biden is just a fool.
Did the vice president really tell a largely black audience two weeks back that if Mitt Romney is elected, the GOP will “put y’all back in chains.” Y’all? Really? A slavery joke?
Lord, have mercy.
Why didn’t Biden just show up with his pants sagging while gnawing a chicken bone? It couldn’t have been any less subtle.
Adios — Francisco Alvarado at Miami New Times on the slow death of Cuban radio in Miami.
Some observers say a move toward more moderate Spanish-language radio would be healthy for a town too long obsessed with the lives of two strong-arm brothers on an island a few hundred miles away.“On Cuban-American radio, you hear things that happened 50 years ago as if it was happening right now,” says John De Leon, an ACLU attorney and Miami native. “It’s highly nostalgic, but it is not conducive for change and progress in the community.”
But anyone who appreciates Miami’s unique history should feel a sting of regret if the kind of radio broadcast every day at La Poderosa fades to static; this is a format, after all, that El Exilio has used for 53 years to undermine Castro’s revolution and amass political power in South Florida.
These frequencies have hailed alleged terrorists such as Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles as freedom fighters and condoned bombing cars and offices to defy El Exilio’s enemies. They’ve fomented mob rule against those acquiescing to Fidel Castro, especially during the battle to keep Elián González in Miami. And thanks to pressure from the stations, Miami-Dade politicians have been forced to pander to listeners by banning Cuban musicians and ordering boycotts of Cuban-friendly businesses.
Those days might just be gone for good. “It is not like it used to be in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, when it was overwhelmingly Cuban-American,” former Miami Mayor Joe Carollo says of the stations’ influence. “It doesn’t have the same impact anymore.”
Doonesbury — The Ayes have it.
Jim Morin at the Miami Herald.
Mandatory evacuations are underway in areas outside New Orleans in preparation for Isaac.
Oil companies and refineries brace for the arrival of Tropical Storm Isaac.
The death toll has risen in the Venezuelan refinery explosion.
Six soldiers were punished for the burning of the Quran in Afghanistan.
Pianist Van Cliburn has bone cancer.
The daughter of Cuba’s vice president defected to Tampa earlier this month.
The Tigers had the night off.
