… yet another Not your “typical Hispanic Democrat vote”
h/t The Anchoress
American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture
By Fausta
By Fausta
Babalu links to the UK’s Guardian, McCain plays on fear of ‘communismo’Cuban American voters in Miami fear Barack Obama’s policies will lead the country down the path to communism
“Communismo,” said Michael Garcia, 30, the son of Cuban émigrés who works at his family-owned accounting business.
“I shouldn’t have to pay more taxes because I work harder than other people,” he said. “The things that Obama say scare me because that’s everything that Fidel said. These things are associated in my mind with going down the path to communism.”
…
“Communismo,” said Michael Garcia, 30, the son of Cuban émigrés who works at his family-owned accounting business.“I shouldn’t have to pay more taxes because I work harder than other people,” he said. “The things that Obama say scare me because that’s everything that Fidel said. These things are associated in my mind with going down the path to communism.”
They’ve been there, they’ve been done for by that,
“Obama is saying 100% the same things that Castro was saying before 1959,” said Nerty Piscola who left Cuba as a teenager in 1969. “It sounds good. Many people want to be equal, but the result is that everyone is equal and everyone is poor. We don’t want to go through the same experience again.”
The fears run even deeper among those who were adults at the time of the revolution. “If Obama takes power, you are going to see all the people going to the fields to cut sugar cane,” said Lazaro de Jesus, a sign painter.
I don’t agree with the sugar cane part, but To some Cubans, Obama is a young Castro. The cult of personality, the talk about redistributing wealth, the call for a national volunteer service, the Communist friends.
The Guardian article continues,
Cuban Americans, because of their numbers and their history of voting Republican, have for years been the power brokers in Florida.
In recent years, they have been reinforced in their anti-socialist, anti-Democratic views by a new wave of Spanish-speaking exiles from Venezuela. At least 80,000 have settled in Florida since Chávez came to power in 2000.
Lorraine Thomas, a businesswoman who left Venezuela in 2002, argues that an Obama White House would destroy the very essence of America.
“If Obama wins, I think he is going to take half of the American dream away,” she said. “You are going to come here and you are going to get taxed a lot of money and you are going to give money to people that don’t work and are lazy.”
Anyone who believes there is a “Hispanic” vote is deluding themselves.
By Fausta
Vote Twice?
My friend Allyson noticed, too, and decided to write The Gap. Here’s her letter:
To the Board of Directors of Gap, and Officers of the Company,
I have been a loyal customer of GAP since it first opened. I have seen the many changes both design wise, and artistically and I have always been inspired by the concerns for AIDS and other projects like the Whitney artist items that have brought art into daily life. However, as a consumer and activist, I was shocked by one of the buttons you are promoting in your “VOTE” campaign.
I was in your shop in Walnut Creek this weekend, and purchased a button that says “VOTE TWICE”. I was perplexed by this statement, as it is illegal for any citizen to vote twice and seeing the GAP encourage voter fraud was shocking. I bought the button as evidence, and kept the receipt as I am still outraged that your company is selling this propaganda to a group of voters, many who have registered for the first time. I also complained to the sales girl who said I was not the first person to say that this was a very innappropiate message and that she did not have a proper response from corporate regarding this controversial button.
Is this the type of message you want to go to our voters, youth, and new immigrants who are learning what America is, how our voting laws work and what our laws represent?
I think this button should be pulled, and a full page advertisment in newspapers, and on your official website saying that this is indeed not the intent of GAP to encourage voter fraud.
I will no longer shop at GAP, Old Navy, Banana Republic, or PIPERLIME again until I understand why this message was supported by the GAP, as this will only encourage your design team to continue to spew hatred of our legal system and create permission to do something illegal.
This letter will go to media, as well as my email list encouraging many others to complain and stop supporting GAP, either by selling their shares, or not spending our money at your establisment.
I look forward to a prompt response on your positon regarding “VOTE TWICE” buttons.
Thank you
Allyson Rowen Taylor
An international retail chain supporting voter fraud.
You can’t make up this stuff.
(I’ll be posting the contact information for The Gap later today)
UPDATE
The contact information is a fax number since, as Allyson found out, The Gap doesn’t accept outside emails: 614 564 2077 this is the liason to the Customer Relations and CEO.
UPDATE, Thursday 30 November
Welcome, Memeorandum, Michelle Malkin, Doug Ross, Norwich Bullettin, Socialist Squirrel, Atlas Shrugs, Beyond the Headlines, No Runny Eggs, Blatherings, Riggword and American Princess readers!
Welcome also Sondra K, Decidedly Right and Gateway Pundit readers.
Welcome also Classical Values and Sandra Rose readers.
Thank you Kyril for the stumble.
Please visit often.
By Fausta
I can name that party eight paragraphs down the article: Congressman’s $200,000 loan
U.S. Rep. Luis Gutierrez’s loan from a developer who contributes to his campaign raises questions about how clout drives the city’s zoning system
By Fausta
Leon Krauze and Rafael Garate interviewed me last night in their Radio Caracol show regarding the US presidential race. As soon as I find the link I’ll post it.
Today at 11AM Eastern, however, my 15 Minutes on Latin America will be on Ecuador’s judges. Chat’s open by 10:45AM, and the call in number is 646 652-2639. You can listen to the podcast here. Please join in!
By Fausta
Erik has a new video, but before we get to that, the McCain campaign has finally insisted that the LA Times release a video where Obama, Ayers, and PLO supporters toast Edward Said’s successor, Rashid Khalidi — former mouthpiece for master terrorist Yasser Arafat – at a dinner sponsored by the Arab American Action Network (AAAN) in 2003.
Notice who unearthed this story, which the LA Times is holding back:
Gateway Pundit reports that the Times has the videotape but is suppressing it.
Back in April, the Times published a gentle story about the fete. Reporter Peter Wallsten avoided, for example, any mention of the inconvenient fact that the revelers included Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, Ayers’s wife and fellow Weatherman terrorist. These self-professed revolutionary Leftists are friendly with both Obama and Khalidi — indeed, researcher Stanley Kurtz has noted that Ayers and Khalidi were “best friends” (And — small world! — it turns out that the Obamas are extremely close to the Khalidis, who have reportedly babysat the Obama children.)
Nor did the Times report the party was thrown by AAAN. Wallsten does tell us that the AAAN received grants from the Leftist Woods Fund when Obama was on its board — but, besides understating the amount (it was $75,000, not $40,000), the Times mentions neither that Ayers was also on the Woods board at the time nor that AAAN is rabidly anti-Israel. (Though the organization regards Israel as illegitimate and has sought to justify Palestinian terrorism, Wallsten describes the AAAN as “a social service group.”)
Perhaps even more inconveniently, the Times also let slip that it had obtained a videotape of the party.
No videotape, no full transcript have been released of what was said at this event as of the writing of this post. Andy McCarthy asks,
Given Obama’s (preposterous) claims that he didn’t know Ayers that well and was unfamiliar with Ayers’s views, why didn’t the Times report that Ayers and Dohrn were at the bash? Was it not worth mentioning the remarkable coincidence that both Obama and Ayers — the “education reform” allies who barely know each other … except to the extent they together doled out tens of millions of dollars to Leftist agitators, attacked the criminal justice system, and raved about each others books — just happen to be intimate friends of the same anti-American Israel-basher?
But hey, Khalidi, like Ayers, lived down the street from Obama, too:
Khalidi later lived near Obama while teaching at the University of Chicago.
Well, yes, but according to the LA Times,
I list the above to make the point that Khalidi is not a simple casual acquaintance.
And then there’s the videotaped party which tape the LAT refuses to release:
At Khalidi’s going-away party in 2003, the scholar lavished praise on Obama, telling the mostly Palestinian American crowd that the state senator deserved their help in winning a U.S. Senate seat. “You will not have a better senator under any circumstances,” Khalidi said.
The LA Time’s excuse for not releasing the tape?
“The Los Angeles Times did not publish the videotape because it was provided to us by a confidential source who did so on the condition that we not release it,” said the newspaper’s editor, Russ Stanton. “The Times keeps its promises to sources.”
I can see why the LAT won’t reveal the name of its source, but why not release the tape? Is it perhaps that the source fears for their safety? The LAT has had no compunction in revealing a classified counterterrorism program, so why demur now?
How damming can it be?
Let’s find out:
Or, as far as the LAT goes, Why not just say “the dog ate it?”
The media’s in the tank for Obama. It’s getting to the point that even the cat can understand it:
Ayers is also not simply a casual acquaintance of the Obamas: Dig it!
UPDATE
Via LGF, Zombietime reseached Barack Obama’s Close Encounter with the Weather Underground. Go read every word.
UPDATE 2
Via LGF
By Fausta
By Fausta
Hugo Chavez is visiting Ecuador, where he and his pal Rafael Correa called for all Latin American socialists to work jointly to solve the economic crisis.
It would be more convincing if the Venezuelan economy had been doing well up to now, but don’t let the details bother you.
Chavez also told Correa he’ll be dropping by “every two or three months”, I would guess to supervise the binational integration program implemented by both countries.
Correa has been busy at implementing all massive changes to the Ecuadorian Constitution, including a full overhaul of the courts. The country’s top judges are dismissed and temporary 21-member court is supposed to be chosen at random from the ranks of the old one until a new, permanent court takes over in 2009.
Ecuador’s top judges faced a trial by lottery on Tuesday — with 10 of the 31 justices set to lose their jobs by chance under a newly approved constitution. And the justices say they won’t go along with it.
The court was dissolved on Sunday under a new constitution that took effect last week. A temporary 21-member court is supposed to be chosen at random from the ranks of the old one until a new, permanent court takes over in 2009.
But the court’s justices issued a statement last week announcing they would refuse to take seats determined by what they called a “degrading” lottery process.
Omar Simon, president of the electoral body appointed to carry out the lottery, told the Gama TV station Tuesday that he does not know what officials will do if the judges refuse to rejoin the new court.
Supreme Court Judge Rodrigo Bucheli said that the lottery process threatens the security of the judicial branch and the integrity of pending rulings.
“Instead of a technical judicial process, they are going to hold an implicitly political process,” Bucheli told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The constitution approved by referendum on September 28 established a transitional regime that will govern until general elections are held in early 2009. A new, permanent court is supposed to take over then as well.
Also related to Ecuador:
My friend Maggie had part of her letter published in the Miami Herald last week. Here’s what she wrote:
Before the Law Stands a Gatekeeper
It is a true and honorable old saying that the most successful constitutions are short and concise. Indeed, it can be said that a direct correlation can be drawn between successful nations and their short and sweet constitutions versus failed and failing states which most often hold overly lengthy, wafty and imprecise constitutions and laws. If as Kafka once lamented, `Before the law stands a gatekeeper’ for many global residents, that gatekeeper remains increasingly opaque, daffy and impossibly aberrant constitutions.Today a new crop of the wackiest manifestos are being pumped up around the Andes. Almost one year ago, Venezuelans rejected Chavez’s latest constitution which did not stop Chavez from enacting this incredulous screed by presidential mandate anyway. Bolivia will host a nationwide vote on their new one soon enough and Ecuador just voted on theirs the end of September. In all three cases, these horrifying so-called constitutions doom liberty and cease to function as constitutions and are instead manifestos.
In fact, all three interlock these Andean nations in to a constitutional bloc of states, also called “multi polar” thus obliterating what used to be known as independent states or Republics, joining now as a united bloc by constitutional caveat.
Coincidentally, all three share identical goals and share power as well. All three enjoyed so called constitutional scholars from Europe’s old communist party, notably so called “academicians” from Spain who buzz in and out of Quito, La Paz and Caracas. Our particular enmity is raised for the strict take over of educational curricula by the state….and for the state. This is the special parvenu of Hugo Chavez’s “academicians” out of the MIRANDA CENTER in Caracas, currently assisting in the full communist manifestos in these three nations, now forming a regional bloc. One of Chavez’s Miranda Board members in support of the Cuban school curricula is Barack Hussein Obama’s friend and supporter, Bill Ayers of Chicago. Chavez is also host and employer to Ayers’s step son along with numerous FARC actors such as FARC moll Piedad Cordoba, also enjoying Chavez’s accounts and “hospitality”, such as it is.
Having been one of a tiny handful who has actually studied these so-called constitutions and concluded that they are horrifying indeed, while handing full powers to one man for one purpose- I was astonished to note that the MIAMI HERALD reprinted whole cloth, with no due diligence and no fact checking, a well paid discourse promoting the Chavez-aligning so-called constitution of Ecuador, which removes democracy and attendant functional liberties, in a piece entitled, ” New constitution good for democracy.”
Here’s what the Miami Herald published:
Ecuador vs. democracy
Ecuador’s ”new” constitution was promoted in Luis Gallegos Chiriboga’s Oct. 8 Other Views column, New constitution good for democracy. However, Gallegos, ambassador for Ecuador to the United States, fails to mention that numerous articles in the ”constitution” hand full powers of the courts and every governmental or civic duty over to one man, Rafael Correa, Ecuador’s president, potentially in power until 2017.Correa teamed with a group of so-called constitutional scholars out of Caracas, plus FARC-supporting ”academicians from Spain” representing the old Communist Party who co-authored the recent Bolivian and Venezuelan constitutions. Understandably, Ecuador’s Catholic bishops rightly fear that Correa will seize all religious schools.
Although Correa repeatedly informed Ecuadoreans that they had no need to study the more than 150-page constitution, which they voted on in the fall, Correa himself oversaw a genuine restriction of open discussion and debate about the contents.
This so-called constitution also ensures safe haven for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, known as FARC, while legalizing narcotics. Of additional concern is a mandate in Article 418, that only leaves one to conclude that Ecuador is now formally inside the Chávez bloc of Bolivia and Venezuela.
The president of Ecuador calls this the ”new democracy.” But this constitutional manifesto is not new, and it is not democracy.
MARGARET L. PETITO, president, Friends of Rule of Law in Ecuador Inc., Washington, D.C.
Correa is only getting started in his changes.