The Heavy Burdens Of Robert Leftwich...Harlingen Simply Won't Look To The Future...Black Clouds Loom In Town...

"Our wretched species is so made that those who walk on the well-trodden path always throw stones at those who are showing a new road..." - Voltaire

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - Suddenly, one of the hundreds of area politicians is doing something. Robert Leftwich, progressive city commissioner in this one-horse town, has gone on record as saying much needs to change here...and change quickly. And just as suddenly, local naysayers have raged against him.

Welcome to The Town That Just Couldn't Stand Itself.

Harlingen is about as low as a town can go. Good jobs are scarce. Unemployment is high. Alcohol is the city's river. Kids are being caught smoking Marijuana on weekends. Cops are being anything but cops. The mayor is missing mentally from any of the meetings aimed at finding solutions. Residents are of the cheap variety. The city's pulse is weak.

Leftwich this week took-on the city's water utility, leading the effort to remove problem boardmembers he feels simply do not have the community in mind when making decisions that have proven costly. And perhaps to be expected in the town's politically-charged atmosphere, he drew the ire of those who saw him as being pushy, uppity and a rabble-rouser. Not that Leftwich did not have his supporters. Some on his side of the ledger fought back against the naysayers, labeling them as being naive and ready for the grave.

No one disputes the fact that a monstrous, dark cloud hangs over Harlingen, one ready to drown the community in even larger problems. Sales tax revenues are down, leading some to wonder where the budget axe will eventually fall. Layoffs in the making? Without question. It is being said that the screaming from a thousand drownings will be haunting, foreboding scenes already being imagined right & left.

Leftwich's action has been seen as political grandstanding. The case could be made that he is merely the local Dutch boy with his finger in the breaking dike. Is Harlingen not believing its huge problems? Can there be residents who do not see the mess? Is analysis the answer? Is the theatre really dead?

Who knows what will next befall Harlingen?

A comatose mayor and one recalcitrant city commissioner (Ms. Marra) may stall or delay action. But action will come, because action is part of the deal. It'll come from efforts such as that exhibited this week by Commissioner Robert Leftwich, or it will come from the rain-fat clouds breaking. Apres Leftwich, Le' deluge.

Harlingen is a small town that cannot afford its people to be small...

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In Battle For Cameron County Judge, Candidate John Wood Is Inches Ahead Of Incumbent Carlos Cascos...

"A Republican can be shorter than a Democrat and still win an election, but never the other way around..." - Ron Mexico

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The image exploded off the big television screen like some mind-whacking sight no man could ever comprehend. Well, perhaps only in the height-challenged Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

There was Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos being interviewed by Action 4 News reporter Melissa Vega on the station's evening broadcast yesterday, and danged if Republican Cascos didn't look like some dwarfish dude. How tall is this guy?

Or, well, is Ms. Vega a huge tub of a woman? Someone tell us quickly!

In our haste to be part of the most boring political race in America, we shot a note to his Democratic opponent, the erstwhile John Wood, telling him he should play the Height Card against Cascos. But, as could be expected, we got no immediate reply. Someone could be heard in the background saying something goofy to the sexy-voiced woman talking to me on the telephone, something that sounded like, "We never, ever talk to The Tribune. Hang up the fuckin' phone!"

So, we're not on Wood's list of favorite advisors. But we're cool. It's just that we were flummoxed by the sight of Cascos standing alongside Ms. Vega (shown in photo above) and looking like an off-duty clown for the Circus Vargas. How can Macho-fueled Cameron County stand a chubby shorty for county judge? How tall was former Judge Gilberto Hinojosa? You telling me he got his ass kicked by Carlos Cascos? Noooooooo. That is the, uh, height of absurdity!

So, we'll see what John Wood pulls out of his top hat in the final days leading up to the November 2nd election. It won't be a rabbit, that's for sure. It'll likely be a yardstick, which he'll carry around when seeking votes to note the height difference between him and Cascos.

In a man's world, every inch counts...

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[EDITOR'S NOTE:...Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos is shown in photo atop this story in the company of the Brownsville police chief and Mayor Pat Ahumada. Cascos is at far right, the shorter of the three men...]

Rumors Move Across The Local Geography in County Politics...Has John Wood Applied For a Job At Banana Republic?...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The insider spoke in hushed tones, careless whispers that bounced off the shag carpeting and never the walls inside campaign headquarters. It was getting late in candidate John Wood's dogged drive to win the race for Cameron County Judge. Antsy was the word of the day here this morning.

WWJWD?

Yeah, what will John Wood do? After the contest, we mean. Chances are very good that he will lose to incumbent Carlos Cascos on November 2nd, and so we were asking about Wood's future. And then one of his campaign workers, a naive-looking man with nothing to lose, said it: "John's submitted an application at Banana Republic at the Mercedes outlet mall."

Now, we asked ourselves: Do we have that on good authority? The outlet mall, popular as it is in the poverty-stricken Rio Grande Valley of Texas, has no reputation as a cemetery for losing political aspirations. John Wood working as a salesman at Banana Republic seemed plausible, but we could not help but wonder.

We tried sitting the mustachioed Wood down for an interview, tried all damned day. But his spokeswoman kept telling us he was taking a nap, and then it was something about Wood taking a shower, and then it was something about Wood catching up with the county doings by sitting at his computer to read the day's offerings at MyLeaderNews.com - Harlingen's no-nonsense Blog. In any case, he never came out of his office, and it would have been something, say, to see Brownsville City Commissioner Melissa Zamora pop-in just so that we could ask her what the Hell she's doing helping his doomed campaign. But she never showed, as they used to say in All-Nude bars of the 1970s.

So, we drove to Mercedes and hung-out at the expansive outlet mall's food court for a sandwich and chips before going-off to look for the Banana Republic store. There, we were told all Summer clothing was at half-price and that men's blue jeans could be had for an additional 10% off the price tag. For a second, we could imagine John Wood working in this store, hounding customers, smiling his ass off, being cordial and helpful, just to make a sale, yeah.

There was something musty about the aroma inside the store. Perhaps that was why...

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Clarence Thomas & The Strange Woman He Married...He's a Sex Pervert; She's a Sex Pervert's Pal...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - Clarence Thomas, that lost Black-American who for some strange reason finds himself on the U.S. Supreme Court, married a stupid, White woman. Her name is Virginia, and we gladly show her in the photo above seated alongside her stud.

Why do we do this?

Because this past weekend, Virginia Thomas called Anita Hill and left this message on her answer telephone: "I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband. So give it some thought and certainly pray about this and come to understand why you did what you did. OK, have a good day."

Talk about opening old wounds. This one takes the cake.

Anita Hill, shown at right, is the lawyer who accused Clarence Thomas of playing sexual jokes on her in the years ahead of his 1991 nomination to the Supreme Court. Those hearings rank up there with the Nixon-hanging Watergate hearings in Washington, D.C. lore. Who can forget Hill's appearance before the confirmation committee? Not I, said the reporter.

Hill accused Thomas of making sexually suggestive comments to her when Hill had worked for Thomas at the Education Department and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. She told the committee of being subjected to sexually-explicit commentary from Thomas, and of finding Black Man pubic hair on her soda cans when she'd return to her desk after meetings with clients.

That Virginia Thomas now wants an apology from Hill is absurd. Clarence Thomas, the least intelligent of the nine Supreme Court justices, never denied the allegations, saying only that he was being subjected to a "lynching" by having the hearings include Anita Hill and her damaging comments about his behavior.

Virginia Thiomas should thank her maker that Clarence is not in jail.

To her credit, Anita Hill has issued a brief statement about the telephone call, saying she has no intention of apologizing. Virginia Thomas is shameless in this latest episode. Her stud can never erase the horrible imagery left by Hill's dramatic testimony. And although he was ultimately confirmed to the seat on the nation's highest court, he remains a man tainted by the worst of accusations.

Clarence Thomas is a Republican - an Oreo of the first order...

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WORLD EXCLUSIVE:...UFOs Reported In Zapata County...Could David Hartley's Disappearance Be An Alien Abduction?...

By IGNATIUS BECERRA
Staff Writer

ZAPATA, Texas - Guarded authorities here are downplaying reports of unidentified flying objects buzzing nearby Falcon Lake in the dead of night, sightings that more than a few fearful residents believe may be connected to the recent murder of David Hartley. Many believe Hartley was abducted by space aliens, and not gunned down by Mexican drug cartel thugs, as has been reported in the press.

Hartley was supposedly shot last month by Mexican pirates who attacked him and his wife as they scooted across the popular lake's waters aboard Jet-skis. His body has never been found, even though his wife Tiffany told police she saw the attackers firing automatic weapons at her as she fled the brazen killing. Hartley's Jet-ski also has not been found.

Skittish cops here will not confirm the UFO sightings, and they are not ready to say Hartley was taken aboard the alien aircraft (shown in photo above) and whisked-off to some faraway planet. But talk to residents and be treated to stories of weird numbing sounds moving across the region late at night, and of lights streaking and then not streaking across the darkened Zapata County sky.

"They're here," said an old woman who said she has lived her entire life in the county. "I now know UFOs are real. And if you ask me, yes, it's very possible they took that young man from McAllen (Hartley). But don't expect our sheriff or anyone in town to say UFOs visit us, 'cause they always worry about our fishing tourism being hurt by any little, Ol' negative thing."

The object is described as a flying wing dark blue-black in color, with gigantic light orbs set below the wing's V-shaped areas. One eyewitness, who admitted he'd been drinking Tequila, reported hearing what sounded to him like "a reverb. You know, like on an electric guitar amplifier of the sort you see onstage." This latest UFO, he added, was his second such sighting.

"The other one was sort of cigar-shaped, man," he said. "It scared the Beejeezus out of me, cause it was, like, flying in on me and I thought I'd be beamed aboard. I was ready for it, but it scared the Hell out of me."

Dr. Alan Hynek, director of the government's Project Blue Book, which monitors UFO sightings, said, "As a scientist, I must be mindful of the past; all too often it has happened that matters of great value to science were overlooked because the new phenomenon did not fit the accepted scientific outlook of the time."

According to a spokesperson for the federal agency, Hynek was on his way to Falcon Lake with a team of department experts to take soundings of the lake bottoms and explore area treetops for burns. Mexican officials, meanwhile, also were expected to cooperate with the UFO expert. According to a source, Mexico cited a lack of any evidence in saying they believe David Hartley was likely abducted by a spaceship, and never was the victim of Mexican drug pushers. The Zapata County Sheriff's office declined to comment on the Hartley case, or on the reports of UFO sightings.

"Haven't seen'em muhself, nope," said a cigar-chomping man eating enchiladas at a local cafe...

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In The Valley, No Time For Big Time News...National Politics Not Our Expertise...Screw The Readers...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - Smalltown newspaper people like to tell you that all news is local, that they don't give a damn about national or international events, that the money to be made is local money. That is why you are more likely to see an advertisement from the local used-car dealership in your hometown paper than you will, say, an Ad for fancy watches sold only in New York.

And that's fine.

But when the country is falling apart, or, more correctly, being torn to shreds from coast to coast, well, one would think that, yes, what happens in Vegas doesn't have to stay in Vegas. There are a dozen or so wild political contests being waged from Delaware to California, contests that pit witches against tired and old white men and contests in which one woman seeking the governorship of La-La Land is blowing $150 million of her own cash.

You'd never know it reading the Valley Morning Star here. This newspaper seems to be the darling of the Winter Texans and the venue for lightweight neighborhood news. But it's no different in Brownsville downrange, where The Herald is known more for what it ignores than for what it covers. Same for The McAllen Monitor on the western end of the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, where you'll find more national news than in any page of its two aforementioned sister newspapers, but it'll be cut and buried in the inside pages.

So, what is it with the region's news media?

Why won't these three dailies enter the fray at a time when every American citizen ought to be engaged in this burning national debate about the horrible economy, the terrible wars across the Atlantic, the indefatigable immigration mess, the insanity of the extremists Far-Right politicians arriving as members of the Tea Party, the unresolved flirtation that is the Gay issue? Can a community such as this one move across the universe as if alone in its provincial miasma? Should we worry about it?

The Valley Morning Star here is a shell of a daily newspaper. These days, it sails or hangs on the legs of a small number of novice reporters, most of whom, says one city commisioner, do not have the smarts to tackle to the doings at City Hall. But, we ask, did they ever? Much of the blame falls on the citizenry's inability to demand better news coverage. Harlingen does not. It merely putters alongside the Morning Star's unambitious tune, obliviously waltzing to nothingness.

In Brownsville, The Herald is no better. Indeed, the starving community's three citizen Blogs exist primarily to launch biting salvos at it, to note deficiencies, to shine the light on its mistakes, to wonder why it continues to publish, to damn the damned thing. In response, The Herald says & does nothing. Its flight pattern is that of a cropduster, swooping up and down, mostly down. At the top of the list of stories it has ignored is the bloody war across the Rio Grande in Matamoros, a Mexican bordertown whose geography literally laps up to Brownsville's downtown underbelly. For a more-ambitious outfit, this neighboring war would mean covering the hell out of it and earning a national reputation as a border newspaper-of-record. The Herald is not so inclined. Instead, it makes its daily bread off stories about outlaw massage parlors and a local government effort to rid the town of plastic bags at the grocery store. By all rights, it should be the company's flagship newspaper, but it isn't - and that seems to be okay with the management and the reporting staff.

In McAllen, The Monitor sashays along on a better-paved road. It will undertake investigative reporting, only that does not come along as often as the local state-of-affairs demands. The western fringe of the Valley it serves is a motherlode of stories to do with crime, from the one fueled by the ever-threatening drug cartels in ungovernable northern Mexico, to stupid cops in Starr County, to political corruption rivaling the one found in rotting Mexico across the nearby river. It, too, has largely ignored the national noise. You'll find a write-up every now and then, but more often than not it'll be an editorial or a guest column previously published by a major newspaper. It would seem that The Monitor also is of the opinion that, well, local opinions have no place in Big Time politics.

And to that, we say: "Que lastima..."

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Harlingen's Big Event:...Town That Dreads Sundown To Party With Warring Blogger Jerry Deal...

By DENNIS HOPPER
Special to The Tribune

HARLINGEN, Texas - Ever since the tire outlet Western Auto left town, this community of some 74,000 souls has lived a life shorn of fun and revelry. It's been forever, in other words.

Now comes next Thursday evening.

It'll be sometime after 6:30 p.m. at Chuck's Ice House when many area folks and pseudo-celebrities will gather that day to party with local Blogger Jerry Deal of MyLeaderNews.com fame. The old codger, both loved and hated in his own town, will be celebrating his second 39th birthday in the company of some notable people. Unconfirmned guests include the disgraced baseball player Jose Canseco (shown in A's uniform photo) and the body of former border bandit Juan N. Cortina.

Among the better-known residents expected to attend the wild soiree are controversial Private Dick Joe Rubio and, if a search party can find him, former Tribune Editor Eliot Elcomedor. A dozen or so lesser-known locals are also on the invitation list, including several reporters for The Valley Morning Star.

Missing from the list is Deal's blogging nemesis Tony Chapa of MyHarlingenNews.com, as is El Rocinante's Jerry McHale, as is Ed Shultz of MSNBC, as is Ana Nicole Smith.

Cortina's appearance is being handled by the operators of the Matamoros Wax Museum, which has promised to drive the border bandit's body to the party and set him up for photographs alongside a fake palm tree. Efforts to get KVEO commentator Ron Whitlock to do the same were unsuccessful. An employee for the Brownsville TV station (Channel 23) noted Whitlock is still alive.

Emceeing the event will be a Freddy Fender lookalike, with the keynote speech to be delivered by Harlingen City Commissioner Kori Marra, Deal's most loyal reader. "She'll be highlighting his life with a special Powerpoint presentation, as well as raising a toast to the Old Cowboy," said a Deal pal familiar with the bash's arrangements. "It should be a real honest-to-goodness shindig, like those that celebrated Wyatt Earp's birthday."

Scheduled to represent The Tribune is Editor Patrick Alcatraz.

"I'm looking forward to being in Harlingen for Jerry Deal's birthday," said Alcatraz in an Email to this reporter. "I always go to Harlingen when I get tired of people being nice to me..."

The price of admission, this writer was told, will be your brain...

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The Toilet Paper Caper:...And Other Brain-Eating Adventures In The Lovely Rio Grande Valley...

"Maybe the night'll roll in, one of those New Mexico nights - all gold and red and blue..." - Poetry of The American West 

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief 

McALLEN, Texas - I stopped off at my favorite local coffee shop here this Ayem and chatted-up half-the-morning with one of my newfound friends, a woman from Colorado. She kept talking about how she loved watering the plants on her property, and how it sure looked like it was going to rain, and, well, she didn't like that, 'cause there would go the watering ritual. I listened and smiled, sipping my dark roast slowly and thinking about other things that moved through my brain. It's almost September. The call of The West comes around about this time when I am away from my beloved New Mexico.

The thing is I'm not a good listener of meaningless chit-chat. My friends say I use the "interrupt" feature of my annoying social skills to move the conversations along, to take them to something I care about. Rain arriving wasn't that big of a deal for me this morning. What I said to this woman in the end was that she could always go ahead and water her plants even in the rain. She looked at me sort of sideways, as if wishing I hadn't said what I said, like she wanted to slap me upside the head and tell me to get back on her wavelength. I tend to drift a lot here in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, mainly because I find conversational skills are lacking in pretty much everyone I meet. The subject matter people around here select as topics of conversation is too pedestrian for me. I tend to note it quickly, and bail, which was the case at a social gathering I was invited to a few weeks back. The occasion was a fundraiser for a woman dying of cancer. I stayed maybe five minutes, after feeling as if in a coffin for the first four.

Perhaps the brain evolves into something somewhat final, a place in a life when it's damned easy to ignore, to avoid, to blow-off - a place where one decides the person, the chat, the project is simply not worth the time and attention. I have a jealous brain. It quickly and clearly tells me who needs me and who doesn't. Conversely, it always lets me know what I need and want. Such brains are rare in this part of the God-abandoned world. No, brains around here are of the Quick-To-Fuck-Up variety. Case in point: A married politician from South Padre Island, a woman at that, had a portion of her adult life splashed across the area newspapers today. The story had all to do with a messy divorce that included details of what sounded like dogged-out adultery she somewhat admitted, if admitting to date of intimacy is admission. Her alleged lover is an aging married man. Tell me, what sort of brain - a brain one would expect would know its expectations - gives the okay on something like that? But there are other examples. At the same coffee shop, I asked for a blueberry muffin to munch on while I drank my coffee. The pudgy, young clerk behind the counter instead threw a blueberry oat bar in my bag. I always get my pastry in a bag. My brain tells me that is how one should eat such things in a cheap-ass border town's coffee shop. I never did seek an explanation for the pastry foul-up. Looks of full-out stupidity piss me off even more, so why bother? But it also reminded me of an incident I'll call The Toilet Paper Caper.

That one came at a local restaurant and involved a heavyset, huge-breasted woman of about 40 who stumbled into me as I entered a men's room and she exited the adjacent women's room. The crash forced her to drop her rather large purse, and that's when the two rolls of industrial toilet paper tumbled out of the purse. I stared at her. She said, in a voice known to priests at Confessional: "Sir, I swear I got them at H.E.B." My reaction was to keep walking, to then shake my head all the while my hose directed my kidneys' contents into the stand-up urinal. What sort of brain goes out to steal a Tex-Mex cafe's toilet paper?

The Rio Grande Valley brain, with few exceptions, is pea-sized, which likely explains some of the insipid bullshit I can never quite understand...

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[EDITOR'S NOTE:..This article was initially published last Summer. Strange as it may sound, all of it still applies...]

BAD BUSINESS: Why Hispanics Should Say "Thanks, But No Thanks" To Wells Fargo Banks...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - There was a time in the Rio Grande Valley when banks advertised their services by saying, "We're your kind of people." Hispanics knew these banks were not referring to them. Their history is written with the ink of outright, blatant racism. For Hispanics, the region's largest population, loans and financing were impossible to get from those banks for the purchase of homes, vehicles and businesses. The largest portion of the banks' business went to - and drew on - the Anglo residents

The Valley has come a long way from those segregationist (some said racist) days of the 1960s, enough anyway that many banks you now see up and down Valley streets are owned by Hispanics.

One bank dead-set on maintaining its heavy foot on Hispanic necks is Wells Fargo, a member of the nation's Big Four banks that includes Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. Indeed, according to the government agency that monitors and regulates their business practices, Wells Fargo is the fourth largest bank in the US by assets. On top of that, Wells Fargo is the second largest bank in deposits, home mortgage servicing, and debit card. The Sioux Falls, South Dakota-based corporation is well-represented up and down the Valley.

Its 150-year existence has been marked by shenanigans. Last July, the State of Illinois sued Wells Fargo, alleging the bank steered Hispanics and African-Americans into high-cost, sub-prime loans of the sort that landed many such customers in deep trouble, so deep that many of them lost - or are losiong - their homes.

Now, Wells Fargo is refusing to re-write mortgages, even as it no doubt still recalls applying for and receiving taxpayer bailout money totaling $25 billion in 2008.

Much of the country has been clamoring for more bank regulation, citing ever-rising fees that range from cashing a check to use of its ATM machines. But now that recent times have strapped the nation's economy and forced many Americans into untenable financial straits, Wells Fargo is unwilling to ease its historically-tough collection effort. For Hispanics, Wells Fargo should represent nothing but bad news - enough anyway to force them into ending any/all business relationships with the bank.

Wells Fargo, apart from enticing Hispanics with questionable loans, is the largest investor in the GEO Group, a conglomerate that operates private prisons and immigrant detention centers across the country. Many of those prisons and detention facilities have been criticized for serious abuses of the detainees....

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Out Of Recent Candidates Debate, Harlingen Got Squat...Playing the Foolish Political Game...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - In local political circles, some saw it as a coup of sorts to see pressed-shirt Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos walk in to debate a lackluster opponent he faces in next month's election. As reported, the crowd that gathered at the city's downtown library numbered in the 130-range, with many of those departing believing Republican Cascos had won his debate with Democratic Party candidate John Wood.

But in the days following the Tuesday afternoon debate, nothing in the form of promise or action has come to this struggling community. Not that two politicians would ever solve the town's many problems, but some could dream.

As things stand, Harlingen needs jobs, perhaps more than any other city of its size in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. It also needs business to re-energize sales tax revenues. It needs its community elected officials to step up and at the very least say things will get better sometime soon. But it's not happening. The people who want change arrived at the debate and listened. They heard County Judge Cascos speak glowingly of things in the county, and they heard candidate Wood say much more needs to be done.

But nothing is glowing and nothing is being done.

This town's sole hope for survival lies in the promise of a hunting & fishing retail outlet many say is just not going to get the job done. Confidence has never had a worse home. There is no confidence in Harlingen. Residents are still marching to the local employment and welfare offices (see photo above) out of sheer desperation. Politicians can come in and beg for votes in an air-conditioned venue, but at what point do they turn around and help those in need? What can Carlos Cascos do for Harlingen residents? He should be held accountable; he should be asked to produce.

Communities can turn out for these political events and play their part, yet they rarely get any substantial help in return. Cascos and Wood presumably left the debate thinking they had won the parrying contest. But what goals do they have to do something for the people who put them in office, where they draw good paychecks and get fantastic benefits?

The hard times being endured by Harlingen are broad and diverse. Perhaps Cascos and Wood cannot solve all of the problems. Yet, it strikes us that something is wrong when these candidates get what they want, but do not necessarily feel the need to help those who put them in those cushy jobs.

In the Valley, politicians feel the love. They get the votes and the positions and everything that comes with it. But the last part of the equation - exactly what the community gets - is always missing. Harlingen played the part of audience for Cascos and Wood, yet it likely will get nothing from these two public servants.

That's the bitch in local politics - it's all for them...

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Forget Traditional Phone Calls, It's Cellular Photography Today's User Demands...

By ANGELO MARGARITA 
Special to The Tribune 

WESLACO - Another time, it was the Hula Hoop that captivated Americans. More recently, it's been "texting," the sending of messages over cellular telephones. Now comes "Sexting," the forwarding of erotic photographs once the private world of secretive lovers out to titillate each other with shots of dangling breasts and electric erections. 

"I get one almost every day," said a resident of this Mid-Valley community between McAllen and Harlingen. "Usually, they are not explicit photos as much as they are sexy pictures. My ex-girlfriend would send me photos of her breasts almost every night. It drove me wild, yes." But, as with third-fourth-and-fifth dates with the same woman, there's always more, more, more. 

"For me, it's gotta be total nudity or nothing," said a woman who would only give her first name, Josephine. "I need to see the whole package from my men. It's free and it's innocent. Why worry about it?" 

And it isn't just young people. "It is senior citizens, as well," said a University of Vermont professor who conducted a yearlong survey of the popular activity. "It appears sex is alive and well in America. We were surprised to find that this exchange of erotic photography has no one demographic. Kids are doing much of it, but so are adults." 

He admits to carrying "three-four shots of my wife in sexy positions." 

So, we asked: Which is the most popular photo? 

"A naked woman, for sure," he replied. "And she's always standing in front of a large mirror, the lens aimed at either her breasts or a bit lower. In men, women like what we call 'The Hang,' which says it all." 

The study also notes that most cellphone users - yes, Mom & Dad, too - carry an average of ten erotic photos...

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In Harlingen, The Debate of The Century?:...Uh...No...Not Even Close...Woman Does Laundry...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - A much-ballyhooed debate here pitting Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos and opponent John Wood yielded little of any consequence and largely was a lame replay of every other political debate hosted in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas for the past century. Neither man brought anything new to the game. The event was so attractive to this struggling community that most people stayed away, choosing to watch the Texas Rangers eliminate the Tampa Bay Rays in the ongoing Major League Baseball playoffs.

So great was the disdain for the Tea Party-sponsored debate that many Harlingenites went about the business of worrying about bills, employment, drug dealing, drug gangs, downtown murders, debt and bad marriages. Elena Davila, shown above, opted to do her laundry.

"I can go, but what will it mean to me?" she said, without laughing. "Nothing, that's what. Both Cascos and Wood will bullshit everybody and everybody will go home thinking they know these guys a little better. But they won't."

The debate arrived in name only. Points were made by each candidate and softball questions were asked by the small mob in attendance. The morning-after writing followed suit: "Likely the stickiest question of the night and most certainly the most personal was asked for Wood to answer about the now publicized event he held at the Wood office that included wine being served," wrote Local Blogging Sensation Jerry Deal on MyLeaderNews.com. "Nora Castaneda, a Cascos supporter, asked about the party that was held at the Wood office that included wine. Wood responded that it was an after hours affair and that little wine was consumed. However, Cascos replied that what was done was illegal because by law no alcoholic beverages are allowed in the county facility."

Of such heady stuff is smalltown politics made. We thought of attending, but I am hosting a woman who follows The Tribune from her home in Austin. Being with her and no one else seemed to be the night's primo attraction...

- 30 -

GIMME THE NUMBER 3: Ever-Overweight Locals Eat Way Through Problems...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ   
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, TX. - Inside the claptrap eatery, Monica Molina played with her enchiladas, sliding her fork from the clump of salad on the right side of the large plate to the left, where she poked at a small mound of Guacamole before lifting some of it to her mouth. She was enjoying her dinner, a rare solo outing thanks to her husband working late, she said.

At a table nearby, an older couple yapped away while munching on nachos that seemed steeped in cheese. The small mountain of jagged delicacies looked more like a land mine than a meal. "I don't want to trade in my van," the man kept telling the woman, and she would shake her head ahead of her reply. In the mix, a chunky waitress with a strong sense of service bopped about the dining area with a pitcher of iced tea and one of hot coffee. Her eyes scanned the dining room, feet ready to move.

She waved-in a young woman who made her way to a table along the rear wall, her face the picture of recent break-up. "Coffee, hon?" the waitress asked in a motherly voice. The woman nodded and then played with her silverware, placing the table napkin in the middle, the knife to its left and the fork to its right, a smaller salad fork to the right of that. It was a nice touch, I thought. This woman knew her table settings.

They say people here are eating too much these days. A study by a national outfit says every Brownsville resident puts away an estimated 325 tacos a year, with strips of fajitas leading the fare at somewhere between 1,500 and 3,000 offerings per adult. So, what's going on? "Bad economy," said Braulio Fanques, the cafe's owner. "People who suffer the problems of the day always get hungrier. That's what we have in town - a community of angst-disabled residents." And beyond that?

"Relationships here are always a freakin' nightmare," added the waitress, whose name was Angela, a refugee of a toxic movida herself. "They come here to cry after their dude leaves them, always in the front seat of the vehicle, which perhaps is telling. That one over there has been here many times. She'll ask for the chuleta plate, eat it like some starving lioness, then go home and cry herself to sleep."

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The Needy Candidates:...Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos and Opponent John Wood Bend-Over For The Racist Tea Party Crowd...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - The photo shown above is that of a woman who arrived at a recent rally for President Barack Obama. She is old and she is white, so absolutely she identified herself as a member of the group calling itself the Tea Party. "Liar!" she would yell from the bottom of her ancient lungs with every word the president uttered. "Liar! Liar!" It went on and on and on, until, we hope, she keeled over and died, passing onto the country's racist past. Oh, well.

Tonight, this town's version of the Tea Party, a smaller, yet equally divisive group of far-right wingers, will host a debate at the city library here pitting Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos, a Republican, against his electoral opponent, County Commissioner John Wood - a Democrat.

Why these two candidates agreed to the Tea Party gathering is the $64,000 question.

The Tea Party stands for thing no self-respecting politician would endorse. Is Carlos Cascos anti-Gay? Is John Wood? Do they support the silliness espoused by the national Tea Party? It is a party out to move the country farther to the right than even Ronald Reagan ever dreamed of doing. This is the party that is fronting candidates elsewhere such as the idiot Carl Paladino in New York, the moron Sharron Angle in Nevada and the admitted-witch Christine O'Donnell in Delaware.

Yeah, what are Cascos, shown above, and Wood, shown below, doing here?

Have they lost their minds? In race-whipped Harlingen, this splinter version of the national Tea Party may as well be the Ku Klux Klan. Anyone studying the Tea Party agenda would readily see that it is not a party for anyone residing in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Yes, there is a need for something else in our national political arena. But it is not these hate-filled people. Teabaggers stand for things no Valleyite would ever side by, endorse, or wish to know about.

So, we wonder what went through these candidates' minds when they agreed to this debate. Perhaps they just wish to tussle against each other ahead of the November 2nd election. It's been a quiet race with little media fanfare. Maybe that's why these two agreed to meet this evening at the city library here. We can't imagine either of them seeing things as do the racist Teabaggers.

But it should be an interesting night, especially if Cascos arrives in a Nazi uniform and Wood in a black face. We cannot imagine anything good coming out of this mess. The Tea Party in the Valley? The Tea Party in a land largely inhabited by Hispanics who have seen firsthand the bigotry and racism Teabaggers roundly favor? Naaaah. Not here.

This Tea Party is so anti-government that we wonder why these local Teabaggers would use a community library for their silliness. But that's par for these losers - they'll rant against Medicaid and Medicare, but they'll apply for it; they'll rage against unemployment, but they'll take it; they'll scream against the government bailouts, but they'll avail of it.

What the Hell are Carlos Cascos and John Wood doing with these ten-percenters?...

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The Comedy Of Mexico:...Government Apparently Plucks Two Thugs Off The Streets and Blames Them For Hartley Killing...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

FALCON LAKE, Texas - A funny thing happened last Friday after days of turgid high-publicity in the U.S.: stoic Mexican authorities announced the capture of two young thugs officials said were behind the alleged murder of American jet-ski aficionado David Hartley. No one is buying the news.

Hartley, a native of Colorado who had been working in Reynosa, Mexico and later living in McAllen just east of here, was reportedly gunned down earlier this month by "Mexican pirates" while on a recreational outing with his wife, Tiffany. Hartley's body and jet-ski have yet to be found, according to local authorities.

Mexico's response to the allegations came slowly. Cries for quick justice by the victim's grieving wife have been blared over American television screens for days, from CNN to excitable Fox. Suspicions surfaced early-on, however. Was this just another American involved in a drug deal gone wrong? Had David Hartley simply befriended the wrong Mexicans? Tiffany Hartley has said little about their activities in Mexico or in South Texas. At last report, Texas officials had taken possession of a life vest worn by Tiffany at the time of the alleged gunfight for testing of blood splatterings.

According to Tiffany Hartley, she and her husband were enjoying a day on the lake when out of the blue came a flotilla of Mexicans firing assault weapons in a scene that must have been remarkably like attacks on American PBRs along the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. It's a brain-freezer, but the tale of David Hartley's mysterious killing has yet to fully unfold.

Still, Mexico's quick detention of two young Mexicans seems awfully convenient and damned funny.

We ask: Did the troubled government to the south merely pluck a pair of shoeless thugs off the street and blame them for the killing? Just to please bellicose Americans?

We're not buying any of it...

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THE SOFT TACO: A Sort Of Never-Ending Rio Grande Valley Love Story...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Consuelo had taken a job at a Tex-Mex cafe in Harlingen and so every day she would get up early, bathe, dress and hit the road in her battered 1978 VW. Behind, she left her boyfriend and father of her last two children. The fight about him getting a job had ended - what? - a year earlier. He was in bed as the day's first light cleared the bottom-half of their cracked bedroom window. She combed her hair into place, looked in the old mirror in the bathroom and turned to walk out. The front door needed new hinges and paint, but it kept the loose dogs out at night.

"Bye," she said in the direction of her man and got nothing in return.

By noon, she had worked most of her shift, and as the lunch crowd arrived, Consuelo thought it was great to be employed, to work, to have something to do. She had no idea how a man like her boyfriend, Emilio, could do nothing day after day after day. There was no way he was going to help around the house. He'd taken the kids to her mother's house and likely had the old lady make his breakfast. Emilio was one of several thousand Brownsville men doing nothing. "Huevones," is what the church called them. Consuelo's brothers called Emilio worse names, not that he gave a damn.

"I'm on unemployment, Mama," the uncouth Emilio would say to Consuelo. "I make more money than you by doing nothing!" He was right. A woman in a neighboring town had long-ago stopped trying to collect child-support from him. Emilio looked like the quintessential Mexican, fat and stocky, bearded, his cleanest dirty shirt always worn like some prideful ethnic flag.

At work, Consuelo again felt the glances from one of the cooks, a man some 15 years older who seemed to be a nice person. He'd said he was divorced and living alone. Once, she remembered, he'd made what she thought was a pass at her. But Consuelo had blown it off, thinking it best not to think about it. Here, he was bringing her a soda and a soft taco.

And then he'd said something about getting together after work for a drink. Consuelo had shaken her head. It had been years since she'd been asked out for a drink. This man seemed so nice. She smiled and said nothing. The cook went back to work and Consuelo floated out into the dining room to wait on an arriving couple. It was work. She felt good doing it. She enjoyed her job. Consuelo had not had a week off in 15 years. She took the couple's order and walked back to submit it. The cook smiled at her again. Well, she thought.

At shift's end, she walked out toward her car in the employee parking spaces behind the eatery and spotted the cook waiting by his car, which was alongside hers. "So," he said in a friendly voice, "...do we go?"

Consuelo said yes...

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THAT GIRL:...The Education of Melissa Zamora...Politics Is Painless...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Perhaps it was that tidbit we read in one of this city's second-row Blogs, the bit about local City Commissioner Melissa Zamora being a tragic figure - sad and graceless. Then someone sent us an Email saying she had left her Brownsville residence in favor of something called Arroyo City and that she would soon resign her position. This was followed by news, or rumors of news, that she had allied with Cameron County Judge candidate John Wood in his Quixotic bid against rock-solid incumbent Carlos Cascos.

Someone else noted that the alliance carried a certain irony, in that Zamora had once backed Cascos, and wasn't it Cascos who'd hired her early-on in his administration?

It was enough RGV "celebrity politics" to get us interested in wondering about a few things. The Texas-Mexico border does that to us every so often. If it isn't throwing us up against killer tacos at yet another taqueria, it's forcing us into another tale of low-rent border politics gone nutty. Zamora and John Wood? Isn't that sort of like Cher leaving Sonny for Jerry McHale? We've met Melissa Zamora, but we do not profess to know her. Once, we thought she would bring change to Brownsvile. But that feeling has passed, and now that we hear about her tie-in with aging John Wood, well, we are led to conclude that her reasons are likely too-personal and not at all to do with helping her community.

Time will tell.

For now, it's wait & see with Melissa Zamora.

But, then, it's always been that way with this daughter of Pleasanton. We can only hope that there remains an ounce of goodness in her public service. So, yeah, who really knows? We have not spoken with her in months, and likely never will again. Border politics tends to do that to its practitioners - force them under turtle shells, into holes only the ostrich can ever know.

John Wood, Melissa? John Wood!

Madre de Dios...

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Incident At Falcon Lake:...Was David Hartley Really Offed By Mexican Thugs?...Wonder Of Wonders...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

FALCON LAKE, Texas - It doesn't take very long once you near this lake before one gets the idea that, hey, something sure smells fishy. Tasty, fresh-water Bass draw many an angler out this far west of Rio Grande City, and many of them are day-outing people who often grill their catch right there on the banks of the expansive lake's many crooks and crannies. The aroma moves from campsite to campsite. It is an outdoor delicacy that comes largely free-of-charge. All you need is a fishing license.

But that allows you permission to fish on the U.S. side of the lake. The equally-bountiful Mexican side is something else altogether. Americans have long fished wherever they wanted to on this lake. Fish wardens patroll only the U.S. parks, dropping-in on people in the middle of a grilling to ask for fishing licenses. The Mexican side of the lake requires no official authorization, although other things come into play over there.

Apparently, a man named David Hartley found out the hard way that the Mexican side of Falcon Lake brings risk other than some gung-ho game warden pulling you over to ask for something or another. Hartley was reportedly jet-skiiing last week with his wife, Tiffany, when, as she tells it, the pair was attacked by Mexicans on speedboats firing automatic weapons. According to his wife, David Hartley was shot in the head and presumably killed. His body has not been found, nor has his jet ski.

It's an odd story. Much of it sounds believable, but much of it does not.

Tiffany Hartley, shown in photo above, says she managed to speed away from her attackers, that she heard and saw bullets splashing all around her, that blood coming from David's exploding head splattered on her life vest. That blood is now being analyzed, although, as any private investigator will tell you, it'll only matter if the blood of Tiffany's vest came from Hartley, and if someone can prove that it is as fresh as his killling - the latter being a bitch to prove.

As could have been expected, the Hartley family and a boatload of supporters have now damned border law enforcement - on both sides of the Rio Grande - while giving little info as to how Tiffany could have escaped the clutches of so-called heartless and cruel thugs not used to, well, letting witnesses go free. And, as someone else noted, where is that jet ski?

"Tiffany Hartley said she was seeing bullets hitting close to her in the water and realized that her husband had been hit behind the head," Zapata County Sheriff Sigifredo Gonzalez Jr. told ABC News at week's end. "She went back trying to find, trying to help him. She went in the water trying to load up her husband to her Jet Ski ... trying to get his body and Jet Ski back to the U.S. side. She was being shot at so she finally had to let go of the body, climb back in her Jet Ski and head back over here to the United States."

If things did happen as Tiffany Hartley alleges they happened, well, that bloody jet ski is now in the hands of some teen cartel hooligan using it to impress chicks on some lake in the Mexican interior.

And if past history is any indication, David Hartley's body was recovered by the Mexicans and placed head-first inside a 55-gallon drum full of acid...

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Plunging Standards: In County Judge Race, It's The Pseudo-Republican Against The Most Boring Democrat Ever...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ

Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, TX - There was a time in Cameron County when the phrase "political experience" actually meant something, like accomplishment, progress and social betterment. These days, it doesn't mean squat, is what many here are saying openly and doing it loudly.

The race for Cameron County Judge is one often seen as being the maker-breaker for anyone having any sort of ambition. You win that job and you're the next kingmaker. In the hunt for that office are two men who really offer precious little in the way of differentiation. Incumbent incumbent Carlos Cascos says he's a Republican, but likely laughs deep inside every time he says it or hears it. Democratic opponent John Wood is a party loyalist from the Lyndon Baines Johnson era of glad-handing. How do we know? We believe he lived it.

Lackluster fits both of these guys as the operative adjective.

It would be something if either of these two men had the heart of struggling Cameron County in mind. Politics, it seems, won't allow for serving the good of the whole and not the party in this poverty-stricken outpost. Cascos, one of those rare lost Mexicans in the party of racist Rush Limbaugh and anti-Mexican Tom Tancredo, has not distinguished himself in office. Naming a concrete accomplishment he has delivered is a tough task. He'll talk your ear off about minor advances such as making improvements to Adolph Thomae Park, but there is nothing anywhere near spectacular on this guy's ledger. There isn't, and there isn't.

Yet, Cascos, shown in photo above, appears to be the lesser of the two evils. We mean evil in a political way, as Wood is seen as some goofy, anachronistic dreamer. Wood, shown below, is said to have enlisted the cabal known formerly as the minions of one Gilberto Hinojosa, a former Cameron County Judge hardly the model for good public service. And much is being thrown-about regarding Wood's wheeling & dealing as commissioner, such as okaying time cards for people he should have questioned and issuing ridiculous statements such as one in which he expressed shock upon learning that wine contains alcohol. Such vagaries only serve to paint him as an amateur and not a public servant.

Wood's principal weakness is this failure to forge even the thinnest of can-do reputation. And perhaps his "forever-dour look" hurts him in the arena of public perception. We were tickled to hear the story of Wood's experience with Ms. Rebecca Gomez, the third candidate in the party primary who earlier this year fell out of the running. According to Gomez, she and Wood agreed to meet on a "lunch date" to talk about her backers, i.e. the 2,400 votes she received. Wood apparently thought Gomez would funnel those voters to his camp. As is the case with women, she changed her mind and didn't make the date. Wood, spurned to the point of who knows what, then drove to Gomez's home and began playing a doorbell symphony before rapping on the home's windows when Gomez did not answer. That, we shall note, is Ms. Gomez's side of the story.

And here's what she said after throwing her support behind then-Wood opponent Eddie Trevino, the former mayor of Brownsville:  "Sure, its easy to point the finger, but when we get our feet down on the ground of reality, its the integrity and record of a person who gives us the initiative to decide whether we want to support or not that person and I did not run to be judged as to how I would respond to an invitation for a lunch date with anyone, I ran as a candidate under the Democratic Party and 2,406 voters agreed with me, which is why I am asking voters who supported me, to support my endorsement of Mr. Eddie Trevino, because in the end, experience counts and Eddie Trevino is running on his record of experience and let me be very clear with the critics too ready to point the finger."

Wow! The crippled command of language is stunning. Who'd want her support? We are of the opinion that county voters would be better off looking for a stiff drink before last call on November 2nd. Wood never was the answer, and County Judge Cascos never really was a Republican.

He merely plays one in this B-movie...

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[EDITOR'S NOTE: A version of this story was published here last March, during the party primary elections...]

RETURN OF SOMETHING OR ANOTHER:...Patrick Alcatraz Promises Nothing...It's One More Turn Around El Baile Grande...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Miss me yet? A guy can leave town for a few days, come back and find that not a goddamned thing has changed in this pitiful land of corrupt under-achievers. Yeah, we're back and say "Hell-o" to your ass, 'cause it'll be on full display here, Baby.

Take a letter, McHale. And exactly when are you going to get to the literary in the Review? Sleepy stories about Nobodies never have moved me.

And why is the town barrister Bobby Wightman-Cervantes tearing Montoya a new anus? Bobby's a savvy crafty dude compared to Pobre Juan. Too cute.

Get that caterer back online. Whoa! Howdy! Someone bring me a jumbo cup of burning black coffee. And turn that fuckin' Charro moaning on loud. I love the smell of tacos in the morning. I'm up for a little stomping across this dusty dance floor. Yeah, haste un lado, PENDEJO! We're decelerating from that great altitude out west, from somewhere better. So, yeah, I'm not all that happy about being back. Roll cameras! A-C-T-I-O-N!!

Here I am, The Most Interesting Man in Town.

Remember, we're not for everybody. But, then, you nopaleros already knew that...

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