Ricardo J Gonzalez for a Better America

In an attempt to share some of the spotlight with the Democrats, McCain gave a sort of "Back to the Future" speech where he looked forward the the changes his Presidency would like to accomplish by 2013. I will try to give this some more in depth analysis soon, but it seems to be at least a novel idea. Politicians usually try to prevent giving out any specific goals or ideas for fear that it would turn away some of their potential voters, and its refreshing to hear someone outline something a bit more tangible than "improve the economy" or "get more jobs". Among the things listed were a reduced military presence in Iraq by 2013, a tax-reform and potential "flat-tax", as well as others. Stay tuned for more info on the speech and on McCain next week.

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The Catholic Church announced that it is OK for Catholics to believe in aliens. To summarily dismiss the possibility would be to "set limits on the creative liberty of God." according to Rev. Jose Funes, who is the director of the Vatican Observatory. I agree wholeheartedly with the premise, and I believe that too often people love to set their limits on God (hello, creationists!), I wonder if the official permission of the Vatican was needed. Were there really that many Catholics afraid to believe in the possibility of extraterrestrials because it might be a sin?

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President Bush, trying to fulfill as many cliché's as possible before his Presidency ends, is on his official peace-in-the-middle-east tour. Well, sorta. The President is in Israel for the 60th anniversary of the country's independence, and during his visit he hopes, as always, to promote the idea of peace. While giving a speech, it seems that he might have likened Sen. Obama to those that would try to appease Hitler. Although he never mentioned Obama, or Hitler for that matter, it was implied that he meant both. Or did some people just interpret it that way? Either way, the President it getting accused of taking advantage of Israel's independence celebrations in order to play partisan politics.

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On the heels of the Myanmar cyclone disaster, China had a massive earthquake from which it is still recovering. As of today the Chinese were still finding survivors in the rubble. The consensus is that the Chinese government is dealing with the disaster incredibly well. It should be interesting to see what sort of discussion comes of this in the future, comparing the Chinese response to the American response during Katrina.

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In California today, Supreme Court for that State overturned the ban on gay marriage. San Fransisco allowed it, law makers outlawed it, and now the court is saying its OK again. Just when you thought the madness would stop, it seems that many predict this will only last for a few months, until a ballot initiative to change the state constitution to ban gay marriages goes through in November.

While this would be a great opportunity to discuss the sides of the gay marriage debate, I find that overdone and uninteresting. In the interest of full disclosure I will say that I generally agree that the Government has no business telling consenting adults who they can or cannot marry, be it because of their race, or because of their sexuality. That being said, I want to discuss what I find to be the more interesting topic at hand: so called Activist Judges.

Activist Judges is a term thrown around a lot, mostly by conservatives, to describe judges they don't like under the idea that they are interpreting laws and the constitution incorrectly. While I have no numbers to support it, I would guess that it's used to refer to left leaning judges more than the opposite, but in general I think it applies to anyone who makes a decision they don't like. As someone who generally agrees with the idea of a checks-and-balances form of government, I absolutely despise this term.

Each of our States, much like our federal government, has as the foundation for all of its laws the State Constitution. This Constitution exists because the citizens of each state gave some of their power to the government, which is to say other citizens, and placed some restrictions on the power that these governments were to have. The Supreme court is essentially charged with being the living advocate for this document, in charge of deciding whether the actions of the other branches, legislature and executive, are following the rules that the citizens set. They use as a basis the collection of information they have from the previous Constitutional Spokesmen, along with their own interpretations to make their decisions. This is why why the judges write their opinions down, not only to explain them to the citizenship, but to help future Judges to understand their decisions in the hopes that they will make better, more informed rulings in the future.

If our Judges are truly "activist judges" interpreting the Constitution in whichever way suits them in order to bring about change, then we as citizens have not only the right, but the responsibility to remove them from their job. However, if we allow them to be accused of this when it is not true, to be denigrated for doing their job and defending the rules that we have set forth to limit the power that our elected officials have over us, then we are giving away our power, and there is no need for the Judicial branch at all.

I have the highest respect for our Constitutional Judges, and I do not envy the difficulty of their position. I do not always agree with the decisions they make, but it is their responsibility to make them to the best of their ability. It is their responsibility to tell those that are in power that they are wrong, that they don't have the authority to do this or that, and because of that I am sure they are not endeared with our politicians, and in fact, I would be very concerned if they were. Next time you hear talk of Judicial Activism, remember that judges are their to protect your rights, not the rights of the government.

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I was watching the news this morning and I saw a headline that caught my eye. "DNC Delegate Sells his Vote for $20 million", or something of that nature. While at first I expected some sort of interesting controversy about an idiot superdelegate trying to profit from the highly contested primary, what I found out was actually quite different, and quite interesting.

Steven Ybarra's role as a superdelegate, as far as I can find, comes from his work in the DNC Hispanic Caucus, where he currently works as "Chair of the Committee on new citizens' outreach and voter registration for the DNC Hispanic Caucus and is the Pacific Regional Director for the DNC Hispanic Caucus". Quite the lofty title. As for the purpose of the $20 million he's demanding for his vote: Mr. Ybarra wants the money in order to setup concerted efforts to court the Mexican-American community of eligible voters, something that according to him, both Democratic candidates have largely ignored.

Hispanics as a voting bloc are relatively new to the scene. The Democrats have a long established relationship with the African-American community, but these strong ties do not exist with Latino voters. It seems surprising to me to see how little effort they are putting into building those ties, considering the evidence that shows Hispanic voters were a key voting bloc that delivered the 2004 election to George Bush. I would think that a relatively unaffiliated voting bloc, that is large and getting larger, would be a gigantic point of focus for anyone interested in becoming the next President. While Obama and Clinton focus on people that will probably vote for them anyway, namely African-Americans and Blue-Collar European-Americans, McCain is launching an aggressive campaign to court the Hispanic vote. Mr. Ybarra is not trying to get a bribe to vote for a candidate, he's trying to push the Democrats into doing the same, which would be an extremely good idea.

In an extreme exercise in missing the point, a blogger on the Official DNC site says:

Many minorities share democratic values such as social equity and social justice therefore there is vast potential for democratic candidates to gain these votes. Steven Ybarra has blatantly violated these values and may have turned away minority votes by attempting to extort 20 million dollars from other Democrats.

I think the Democrats are making an extremely dangerous assumption in thinking that Hispanics will vote for them simply because they are a minority. The past two Presidential elections have proven that this was wrong. The Democrats have built a relationship with African Americans by listening to their problems, their concerns, their efforts, and working with them to accomplish their goals. Their idea of building relationships with Hispanics is pointing to the Republicans and saying "Those guys want tougher immigration laws and therefore hate you, so you have no choice but to vote for us" while the McCain and the Republicans are knocking on doors, meeting with community leaders, and bringing Hispanic voters to the table. Which approach do you think will help build a strong long-lasting voter base?

While Ybarra's method might be disagreeable to some, he makes a strong point when he says that Democrats cannot afford to ignore Hispanic voters. If either of the democratic candidates actually stop long enough to listen to what he's saying, it might be the best $20 million they will spend. If they don't, Latino's will start to realize that they have more in common with the Republicans than they were led to believe, and I won't be surprised to hear talk in 2012 about how it was the Hispanic voters that helped lock McCain into the Presidency in 2008.

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Now that most everyone has accepted that Sen. Obama has won the primary, rumors are going around that he might choose Sen. Clinton as a running mate. In a Gallup poll asking Democrats if he should choose her, 55% said yes:



I wonder about the wisdom of this idea. Clinton has for the most part been ruthless in attacking Obama, saying he's unprepared to run, attacking him for being disconnected, etc, etc. I would assume that all of these things will come back to bite them in a general election. Can she really be the VP candidate if she believes all these things? If it turns out she was 'just kidding' about every single piece of negative campaigning she did, are we supposed to just accept that?

I sincerely doubt that Sen. Clinton would accept the VP nomination. Not only would she have to eat her words, which I doubt she'd find appetizing, but it would also mean she'd have to try to win in the General Election. It would confirm too many of the ideas that people already have that she's ruthless and completely self-interested, and would do anything for power. The problem with her having to try to win the general election is that if she tried too hard, and actually won, she wouldn't be able to run for President in 2012.

The interesting part is that Clinton supporters seem to be all about having her in the Whitehouse however she can get there. Among them, 73% favor the idea of her as VP. Obama supporters aren't as willing to forget everything she said during the campaign. 52% of them would prefer if he chose someone else. I'm sure they're worried, like I am, that if she got into the White House in any office other than President, she would do her best to take over.

Either way, the Obama vs McCain election should pan out to be an interesting one.

Link to the Gallup poll info here.

Este articulo en español en: http://rickyenespanol.blogspot.com/2008/05/obama-clinton-08.html

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Former Congressman Bob Barr announced his candidacy for President on the Libertarian Ticket today, some several months behind all of the other candidates. Rep. Barr, who is probably most known for introducing the resolution to look into impeachment proceedings for President Clinton, left the Republican Party in 2004 to join the Libertarian Party.

Commentary is already popping up that Rep. Barr is just trying to become a spoiler for Sen. McCain, much in the same way that Nader did for Al Gore in 2000. Prof. Charles Bullock, a Political Science professor at the University of Georgia, Rep. Barr's home state, disagrees:

Even disenchanted Republican voters, once they see how far apart the options being offered them by McCain and Obama are, they're going to conclude that they prefer McCain. He may not be their first choice, but they would prefer him substantially more than Obama, and realizing that McCain's going to need every vote he can get to have any chance of winning.

Whether or not Bob Barr and the LP can get enough votes to make a big difference in the campaign at all is debatable. The Libertarians have shown a history of having no clue how to run a campaign, even though they have some of the strongest ideas on the political landscape. I wonder what the purpose of the announcement this far into the race is however, if it is not to do exactly what they're accused of. If the Clinton years taught us anything, its that Republicans stick closer to their true philosophical roots when there is a Democrat in the White House. Newt Gingrich's Contract with America shows evidence of that. So maybe the goal of getting a Democrat in the White House isn't a terrible one from a Conservatives perspective.

Regardless, we'll keep a close eye on this campaign and see what develops, and how successful the LP is at not embarrassing itself this year. I sincerely doubt that Barr can replicate the success that Ron Paul has had in the primary.

A short clip of his announcement below:


Addendum: Official Bob Barr campaign website at: http://www.bobbarr2008.com

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Probably not. But I found this clip from last night's show that echo's some of my sentiments on Hillary Clinton that I pointed out in my post about the Indiana Primary. Tongue-in-cheek as it might be, I don't think they're too far from the truth.

Clip at Hulu.com

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