News From The Front: Of Ron Paul, RGV Politics And Awful Minor League Baseball...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - There are those who say history repeats itself, in politics, sports, culture and everything else Man has his hands on. That is true. You can leave the comfort of your living room couch, take in dinner and a movie and come back to find little has changed. We are on the lip of something we've had or tasted before, already fully digested. Life is daily, the sun followed by the moon.

1.) National Politics - We like him cause he dissed Hollywood Republican Ronald Reagan enough to make us believe him on that front, but U.S. Rep. Ron Paul is simply not presidential material. The Texas Libertarian-Republican won the Republican Leadership Conference's straw poll over the weekend in New Orleans. It is, to be sure, only the latest poll, but the 75-year-old Paul keeps shaking the GOP's branches. We laud his presidential-aspiration efforts, which began as far back as 1988, but something about the lanky, high-throated Paul bothers us. He publishes a variety of political newsletters in which he damns much of what serves as our federal government. In one of those controversial newsletters, he wrote this: "Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day." That's bush league politics, and something we cannot overcome when thinking about his chances. Ron Paul speaks a lot of common sense. It just strikes us as being nothing more than self-serving noise. His true beliefs, whatever they are, are something to really worry about.

2.) Local Politics - In Brownsville, it is The Day of The Woman. And we don't mean in the sack, which is where they've been Queens for eons. No, this time, women now own the majority of the seats on the Brownsville City Commission following Saturday's run-off elections. Their names are not yet important; it is their deeds to come that will serve as gender grade. For too long, however, the poverty-stricken city at the end of the Rio Grande has lived a Stoned Macho existence, fending off an endless shower of political corruption, lack of brains and an environment that said chasing booze and broads was the order of the day at City Hall. This election's results are a major leap forward, perhaps allowing some residents to think the town has plunged into the 1980s.

3.) RGV Politics - Nothing entertains like a smalltown mayoral election. In tiny, dusty Donna along the Mexican border, it is as if a new shipment of khaki pants has hit town. Saturday's battle for the mayorship here had the incumbent, an Hispanic by the name of David Simmons, shown in photo above, treating his opponent, former Mayor Hector Casiano, as if a fly circling his beloved Guacamole. Casiano was said to be "Old School" in a part of the Rio Grande Valley where few go to school. He got off to a bad start, okaying a campaign poster with a misspelled word. Not that it was the reason he lost, because he lost handily. It was, says this observer, a good result if doing away with the past is a sign of progress. Too often, in the luckless Valley, residents are buffaloed by "names" of families who do little for the community, but act as if the Cartwrights on the Ponderosa. Casiano needed to be whipped, and, well, he was. Hopefully, it turns the page on poor Donna's patron past. Oddly, another former Mayor of Donna, one Rick Morales, is being ballyhooed as a potential candidate for mayor of Harlingen in that town's next election. Morales has had his shot. In western movies, he's the guy who should ride out of town at sunset, leaving the stage gracefully and not hanging on as if some punch-drunk boxer unable to reach for his laxative.

4.) Minor League Baseball - So, whatever became of the delinquent $40,000 utility bill owed to the City of Harlingen by the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings baseball team? The new season is underway and, already, the taco-fat players are getting fatter with every pitch in the dirt, fans are staying away in droves and nothing out of the ordinary has exhibited itself on the ballfield. If this is baseball, well, bring on softball. Minor league baseball always has been a crapshoot. The major leagues are underway and fights for the pennant are again exciting the nation. Minor league ball is the equivalent of, say, nine guys buying a big tent and then believing they can bring a circus to town. Things have been so mediocre for the North American Baseball League fronting this charade that, in Yuma, the team celebrated Memorial Day by hosting a Lady Gaga Night. In the Valley, teams from Edinburg, McAllen and Harlingen take turns beating the brains out of each other so often that it's easy to say all of these players are simply not very good players. Scoring 12, 14, 15 runs a game tells you the pitching is not up to par. Perhaps the concessions - soda, beer, hot dogs - are better this season. Let's hope the mustard and relish are free.

Paz out...

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