The New Americans: Hopped-Up City of Palms Readies Its Next Electoral Deguello...It's Cabeza De Vaca, II...Hola, Mexico!...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - By now, it is well-understood that this bright-lights city has embraced war-torn Mexico like a bordello customer embraces its offerings, always warmly, but never with the full investment of serious emotions. Mexico is still Mexico, is how the locals look at the historical relationship, especially now as the other side of the Rio Grande struggles to fend-off a raging drug-fueled war. Things have been changing.

McAllen, the City of Palms, has largely looked the other way when wondering about the killings in neighboring Mexico, choosing to believe that any and all money coming across by way of shoppers and investors is clean money. It isn't, but that's a story for another day. Suffice it to say that McAllen grows by leaps and bounds under Mayor Richard Cortez (shown at right), even as the larger majority of its neighbor communities do battle against high unemployment, lackadaisical government and economic ennui. Life goes on for McAllen's suburbs, like spinning 45-rpm vinyl records grooving a stuck-needle tune. Imagine Harlingen about here.

But now comes the next election season, and races are being framed. Three city commissioners are up for election, and all three are posturing themselves one more time - all of them saying it is their recent service that has propelled McAllen to its current place as the beacon of the Rio Grande Valley. Life is good here, although it comes more and more with a distinct Mexico-taste. A drive around the city quickly throws that image at you, from restaurants with roots in the Mexican bordertown of Reynosa, to subdivisions where the Mexican wealthy have come to settle and separate themselves from the killings across the river.

Jim Darling is one of the commissioners facing opposition. The former city attorney here has a fight against local party boy Jose Cabeza De Vaca, better known as Pepe (shown in photo at left with State Rep. Veronica Gonzales). He publishes a magazine focused on vanity; that is, it is largely a collection of photographs to do with the night life, often pictures of attractive young women with drinks in their hands and come-on action on their faces.

 The 62-year-old Darling, general counsel at Doctors Hospital at Renaissance in Edinburg (shown at right), has been in office since 2007. Among his accomplishments are spearheading the city-county deal to transform part of the Palmer Pavilion property into Curtis Park, and pushing McAllen’s new anti-texting ordinance. Darling represents district six.

Cabeza de Vaca is 37. Aside from publishing Social Life Magazine, he serves as vice chairman of McAllen’s Planning and Zoning Board. Cabeza challenged Darling in 2007 and lost by 115 votes.

Who knows what this particular campaign portends, but Cabeza De Vaca (Spanish for Cowhead) is said to have strong connections in Reynosa, Mexico, the bordertown directly across the river from McAllen. In terms of local involvement, he has much less connection with the city than does Darling. His candidacy is being seen as a looksee of sorts at involvement of a new sort of resident - one who came from Mexico and gained citizenship, unlike the usual candidates that come from lifelong residency.

Some say he may be the future of a region that, like Miami of the late 1950s and 60s, is steadily turning power over to newcomers. In Southern Florida, the Cuban population that fled the Castro Revolution, quickly set down roots in all aspects of social life, eventually gaining political power and winning high office. It has been decades since Miami had a non-Cuban mayor.

The RGV is closer tied to Mexico by way of ethnicity. Where Miami's whites fled north to Boca Raton and Fort Lauderdale, Valleyites don't have the resources or desire to leave their native lands. That real estate is being sold to cash-ladened Mexicans, especially in McAllen, so the inevitability of involvement is already clear.

What the Mexicans seem to be doing here is creating residential enclaves and their own economy. The Mexican-owned businesses are just the visual part of that reality. Banks grow fat with Mexican deposits, car dealers import foreign cars and high-dollar stores seem to arrive as if on schedule. Not that it's all bad for less-wealthy locals; they at least get a taste of the Mexican highlife, goes the line.

Cabeza De Vaca may or may not ever find acceptance in government politics, but his stab at it definitely has a Mexican flavor to it - much like the initial efforts by Cubans in Miami all those years ago. Will McAllen hand over the reins of leadership to such New Americans?

Everything points to the conclusion that it already has...

- 30 -

[Editor's Note: This story was originally posted here last February. The elections in the City of Palms mentioned above take place tomorrow...]

Pocketbook Issues:...When You Want It, Does It Matter What It Costs?...Mostly, You Get It...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - It used to amuse me to find that when I bought a cup of regular coffee in New York, it would cost me one dollar more than the same cup cost in Texas. I laughed it off, mainly because it was only a  dollar and, well, what's a dollar get you anywhere anymore? A good pair of blue jeans will tap you for $80 in Texas, but you can find some in New York and Paris and London that will set you back $700, especially if you're looking for a pair or two for your daughter and she wants jeans that offer a pocket for her cellular telephone. They're out there.

It isn't as if you haven't noticed, but the price of everything is going up.

Gasoline nears the $4-per-gallon range in Austin this morning. And they said that drop in the price of crude oil the press ballyhooed last week would mean less at the pump. Really? Those greedy oil companies going soft? Don't bet on it. They spend millions lobbying Congress and funding re-elections to get silly at this point.

But we live in a capitalistic society, where money talks. It isn't just us anymore; the world is going full-retail from Beijing to Madrid to Lima to El Paso. We can get it, only it's going to cost us. Want a Corona in the Big Apple? Prepare to unfold $12 a bottle. Big T-bone dinner in Fort Worth? Something like $75, for one. Easy. Baked potato is extra, as are grilled beans and dinner rolls.

We understand that thing about wanting it real bad, and, what the Hell, paying for it. That's nothing new. Still, look around. Prices are skyrocketing. A loaf of bread that used to cost $1.29 now goes for almost $2. A bag of chips? Try $3.98. In Brownsville, where it is something of an aphrodisiac, hamburger meat sells like crazy, even as the price has almost doubled in the past decade.

I know, I know. The list is endless.

The killer for me was a business story I read in yesterday's edition of The Wall Street Journal. It seems American retailer Abercrombie & Fitch has gone to Hong Kong, where money is what air is most everywhere else. The retailer's move spoke of competition for the fast-emerging global market. Gap is already there, as is American Eagle Outfitter - all popular brands these days.

Well, A&F needed space, so it went after a lease along the city's downtown district. You doubt there's Big Money in casual clothing?

A&F is paying $901,000 a month to rent space for its store...

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Border Lore: The Genius Of Minutiae...Tony Zavaleta Dreams Himself Into The Final Chapter...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - There was a time when upstate reporters who found themselves working a story on the Texas-Mexico border always looked for one man. Upon finding him, they'd pepper the guy with questions and angles and theories and rumors to do with wanting to explain either a horrible local crime or the essence of the region's unique culture. They'd sit in his office at the local college or in the living room of his home. The word he issued would spread as if the absolute truth, the incontrovertible fact.

That man is Dr. Tony Zavaleta, recognized as a walking treasure trove of border info.

Now, for some reason he wants to be a city commissioner and has struck-out in political District 4 as the candidate arriving with the, he crows in colorful signs and posterboards pasted across town, needed experience. It would be a charm to label him the Shaman Candidate, because he can speak about that world for hours. But he also could be called the candidate who came just because he had nothing else to do. Zavaleta's gig with the college, where he served in a senior level administrative position, ended a few weeks back. Some say he looked at things in his home's garage, found no golf clubs or fishing gear, and decided politics might not be a bad flirtation.

It is a flirtation, if for no other reason than that Zavaleta's life has been one of looking for and finding the smallest of fact, the tiniest tidbit, the wildly-insignificant scant evidence of something or another in area anthropology. Life as a city commissioner here is anything, but that. Those who study it see it as no different than sitting at the end of a pier and watching the seagulls flutter-about. Zavaleta's life has been a bit more serious than that. What would he opine on funding an airline that's never owned an airplane, or what would he say about the antics of the other, less-cerebral city commissioners?

Looked at as retirement play, it might work for Zavaleta. Lord knows he'd be humbled horribly at the golf course. Ambling into City Hall to bullshit with the likes of City Commissioner Charlie Atkinson would no doubt bring wild laughter to Zavaleta, the jokes coming from Atkinson's lifelong desire to belong, to shed that inferiority complex he places on display at every opportunity.

Zavaleta might find spark in chatting-up Commissioner Melissa Zamora. She's a graduate of the college that employed him. What would Zavaleta say when she'd quiz him on the city's plastic grocery store bag ban? That's a quirky one in Brownsville, a town where men carry the purse strings and generally don't give a damn about the environment. Plastic bags, Tony?

The election is this Saturday.

Zavaleta will be there on the wait, looking for results he hopes gets him that ticket to the main political stage. Issues abound here. No shoes, no shirt, no service has become What shoes,what shirt, what service? This is the Rio Grande Valley's Bizarro Town, the place where things are skewed, often ass-backwards, but nevertheless understood. Zavaleta may find that his former life of border expert has become a life petty jealousies, inane spoutings and strange hair-pullings. How to interpret all of that?

He may wish for a return to that old assignment of explaining away a beloved curandero, or why those mystic Mexicans across the river boiled the Spring Breaker kid's head that one crazy year, or why the tire-sole huarache never made a comeback with local men, or why Hispanics like to wear suits and ties in the town's tropical weather, or why the moon here always looks so damned cold and mineral...

- 30 -

For Brownsville Mayor Pat Ahumada, A Walk Into The Sunrise...Re-election Is At Hand...Don't Blink...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The entire town is waiting on it, as if something momentous is now at hand, something new and different to forget the old and the past. Life is funny that way in this drowsy bordertown home to 140,000 legal and illegal folks. Each one carries big dreams and bigger ideas about what could come next, come tomorrow. Suffering, they will all tell you, is not the final verdict.

Saturday will be one of those seminal days in town. That is Election Day here, and up for judging is popular Mayor Pat Ahumada, he of the rough, tough fight against the ugly federal border wall, and he of the DWI charge he's yet to face in court, and he of the bizarre self-deposit of that $26,000 City of Brownsville check originaly made out to a vendor. As they say in college basketball, "This is it, the waiting is over..."

A summary of this town's existence would be to say that political whippings have come often. A summary of Pat Ahumada's years as mayor - he's won election, lost them, and won again - would require spending a few hours at a 14th Street cantina in the company of conjoined regulars used to thinking about how shitty things are in town and then chasing the bad news with a bottle of Bohemia. The mayor has fed that gutter novella for years, with gusto, disdain and a rolling philosophy that says today is for acting and tomorrow is for directing. One bad frame follows a good one. That works for him. Smile, and the world smiles with you. When I drink, everybody drinks. And when I pay, everybody pays.

His Milagro Beanfield War dance across the harsh local geography has been a happy one. Ahumada lives as if no grudge will inject smoke or disgust into his life. That thickening squalid give-up atmosphere in Brownsville is not his doing. Blame the mental masturbators for that. No one man could ever transmute the dross of existence into gold. The community, he'd likely say, plays the game at a very low level. One Blog entry is never the real picture. One thousand Blog entries are never the real picture. You would need a shovel the size of a skyscraper to clear the land and start over. No one wants to do that. Brownsville rots because Brownsville knows how to rot. Buying an expensive Charro outfit for that annual celebration won't do it. Working on the Grito won't do it. That's play, the mayor would say, laughing.

If he loses, and there is a good chance that he will, Ahumada may not go away.

His tireless act on the local scene is now that of a leading man, not a supporting slob. The contrast between Ahumada and those who seek to replace him is startling. One cannot see lawyer Tony Martinez, the favorite in the contest, fighting for new backyard fencing in town, much less the federal government on its project. City Commissioner Edward Camarillo couldn't get a DWI charge even if his healthy body allowed it. And not one of the mayor's challengers could've pulled-off that crazy-check-in-my-bank-account trick the mayor took to the courtroom and won. And won!

Best for Brownsville would be to re-elect Ahumada, to send the old cowboy back to ungovernable City Hall with a resounding victory, a massive landslide. Anything less and all the city will get is just another ride on the same Ol' Merry-Go-Round it's known for all these years...

- 30 -  

Tiger Shark: In Deep South Texas, It Is The Politics Of The Sea...The Bigger Bite Always Wins...

By RICARDO KLEMENT

Special to The Tribune

HARLINGEN, Texas - Grudges are a huge part of the local social tapestry, and nowhere does it manifest itself more than in the world of politics. It is a strange and killing mix of cojones-swaggering and mind-blowing paybacks. You just don't go against a Rio Grande Valley politician if that same geography is your geography, if the other politician is still in office, especially.

Someone called Joe Santiago "Jim" Solis after that bizarre court appearance in which Solis admitted his guilt in bribing disgraced former 404th District Court Judge Abel Limas and told him local State Sen. Eddie Lucio was going to rid the landscape of anything Solis. Lucio, shown in photo at right, was said to be livid that Solis had engaged in the bribing, but others said the move came as a result of petty rivalry digs each had lobbed at the other when Solis had served a portion of this county as state representative.

Now, Lucio was coming after Solis by filing a bill in the State Legislature to remove the name of Jim Solis from the South Texas Health Care System building in Harlingen. It was at once both payback and a chance to flex a bit of political muscle. Lucio was still in office; Solis was awaiting sentencing.

In the world of Valley politics, such a move is predictable and expected. Emotions rule the day. Words are said and exchanged. Feelings are ruffled. Mothers are damned. It is part of the sport. The concept of Top Dog is ingrained in the local game. State senator trumps state representative. Solis, shown in photo below with his wife, is said to have shrugged his shoulders at hearing of Lucio's move, perhaps seeing it as lesser of a worry than the very distinct possibility that he is going to jail later this summer.

Life is tough in every other aspect of life along the scurrilous Texas-Mexico border.

The threat - and follow-thru - that came from Eddie Lucio, Jr. will now be logged in that Great Book of Border Politics, a tome that perhaps awaits a similar entry to do with his own name at a date yet to be announced. In the meantime, Lucio swims proud.

The deep end of the ocean is his...

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On Mother's Day, A Bit Of Yesteryear...What To Say?...Where To Begin?...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - A long time ago, when my life was that of a child, it was always my mother's view of the world that framed my days. This is Mother's Day weekend, the third one I observe without her. And although my Life is a nice Life these days, I'd trade it in a jiffy to once again be eight years old, or nine, or ten, once more in her care, in her comfort and in her world.

My big-hearted mother no doubt was no different than other mothers who raised their kids in the Rio Grande Valley of the 1950s and 1960s - a time when drugs did not ruin the young, but also a time when the struggle was no less easier. We didn't have much back then. My stepfather worked as  butcher at a local grocery store. He did his job without complaint that I remember, and he provided for a family of six, only one his own. Those days came slow, or so it seemed. School claimed its spot on my mind. I always liked school, even the after-school marches with the Catholic nuns from elementary school for those seemingly endless Bible classes in the basement of the then new Sacred Heart Church downtown. It was during the two-three years before I started playing Little League baseball for, of all teams, the Hidalgo Lions, which had selected me after a few groundballs during player tryouts. Third base was my position. I played it like Gil McDougal of the NY Yankees played it, dirtying my uniform at every opportunity, diving at grounders that needed no diving.

It was a kid being a kid. My older brother had bought a glove for me in between punch-outs he administered just because that's what older brothers do. These days, he lives in Pharr and when we talk about those days he likes to laugh about the horseplay. I don't tell him to remember the times I was left beaten to a pulp on the floor and the severe scolding he would get from my mother. That, too, is likely shared by anyone who's had a big brother. I'm okay with it now. Perhaps those punch-outs being clear in my mind help me get back to my youth.

When my mother passed away three years ago last April, we all finally got together after years of being apart. My kid sisters moved west, to Colorado and Southern California and my younger brother to Minneapolis. It was a sad occasion, but we managed a few familial conversations. The eulogy I gave for my mother at the same Sacred Heart church where I'd studied the Bible centered on the many things she did for her children. I spoke about the time she bought me a shiny, new Baltimore Colts football helmet I would throw over my head when I took to the street in front of our house to play football with the neighborhood kids. And then one Christmas, she bought me a a sawed-off rifle used by the actor Nick Adams in a TV western whose name I forget. Who knows what happened to it.

There would be more of that over the years. Mothers are like that. They go out of their way to do the little things for their kids, to get them toys they want, clothes they want, snacks they want, even as Dad openly wonders about the why. Mothers get it. They have their priorities straight. They can hear the latest request from a child and maybe not tend to it right away, but they'll get around to it sooner or later. It's more than just parental joy; its the very essence of motherhood - perhaps the most under-appreciated human trait, the most just-expected behavior. Mothers can take crap from Dads forever when defending a child. And for that child, it is the sole saving grace when wondering what Dad will do next after that window's been broken, that furniture damaged, that bad word thrown out at the dinner table.

Thank God for mothers.

My life went places when I grew up, into the military, to the university, to a writing career in newspapers, magazines and books. My life today is another life, more comfortable, more flexible, more expensive.

I would trade it all for one day with my mother. You would, too.

Happy Mother's Day...

- 30 -

The Age Of Rage And Ruin: A Time For Unmasking...Of Space And Reflection...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - The other day, my youngest daughter asked me about life in this part of the country. She also did it when I lived in the Rio Grande Valley, and, before that, when I lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I know it's a daughter-dad thing, but I have been wondering about it, yes. Exactly where am I supposed to be? It's a question everybody asks themselves, I'm sure. Is it something to worry about, or merely something to roll with, Life being eventually measured by the passing of days?

Who knows?

What's real is that there comes a certain time in everybody's Life when questions loom where questions never loomed. I'm not worried. I'm here today, and that's okay. There are plans. Intriguing Nebraska in early-June; lovely New York later this year. And a few other lesser outings before, after and in-between. I'm not special or anything; I'm just part of the herd. The planet groans, is what Paul Simon sang a few years back, noting the ever-crowded conditions we live in. You think about it a little and then you go on with your day. Left in the rear-view mirror are the usual annoyances, people or things that forever get in the way, people you kinda bring into your Life as a way to give back and those same people simply deciding to slime you just because that's all they can do. I'm not alone in describing such flies; everybody has one or two or three of those. It, too, is part of the universe's mortal script. You get the bad with the good at every turn, and then you do your best to rid yourself of them. But this particular world spins to the sounds of the new. It is those sounds I follow.

Yesterday was a good day here. Both of my daughters sent me an Email with a few words, words I cherish to the point that they have no idea how much they mean to me. One told me she's coming in late-June and the other one said "Looking good, Dad!" when I sent her a photo of cadaverous Keith Richards and added it was the latest picture of me.

That helped, as did reading my daily edition of The New York Times, where I read a neat column by conservative David Brooks. Brooks is not a writer I follow, but he did a magnificent job of portraying terrorist Osama Bin Laden as being a bit more than what is generally known about him.

Brooks wrote about Bin Laden's youth, about how he inherited a fortune and about how he actually was something of a pacifist who disdained violence. Bin Laden, the villain, wasn't the type to kill anyone, merely fund a killing he desired. He was educated in private schools where his teachers were from western countries, and his grades were excellent. Brooks went on and on about how things would have been different had Bin Laden sought the better path, become benevolent and made a positive difference. It was all there, was the point.

And it is in most humans. Everybody makes that choice, to be good or to be bad.

Judges do it. Politicians do it. Criminals do it. Everybody does it.

But history tells us it always takes the bigger man to do the right thing. It is the small one who finds shelter in making a mess, in creating chaos, in destroying what most of us would say is the best of Life. Osama Bin Laden was a smart man, so, in the end, what he did was something he decided to do. No one can write him into being something he turned his back on. Brooks should be applauded for his column, but it is simply another slice of a Life spent badly...

- 30 -

Making Friends: Tony Gray And The Temple Of Doom...Singing For The Plump Partridge...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Special to The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - They meet every now and then in an unmarked building downtown, a loose affiliation of journalists and gadflies with only one thing in mind: clean up this drowsy bordertown. And even rarer are the gains they make in advancing progress here. Topics come up and beer is bucketed on the battered tabletops, remnants of another era in local furniture.

The South Texas Independent Journalists Association (STIJA) does not suffer fools. Harlingen bloggers, for example could never be members. As founder Dr. G.F. McHale put it the other day, "You need to have worked for a newspaper or been jailed or been divorced. Not everybody gets admission."

One of those chartered fellows was almost bumped-out last week, when McHale hinted that Tony Gray, who once wrote for The Brownsville Herald and now serves as loyal aide to State Rep. Rene "The Plump Partridge" Oliveira, might be kicked out of the organization. The reason? Oliveira's decision to side by the president of the local university in a lingering fight that centers on the junior college splitting from the four-year school.

STIJA saw that as betrayal. Oliveira, it seems, has been one of those darlings protected by the association in recent years. The usually unflappable Gray has said nothing about the school controversy or his tenuous membership in the respected association. Will he? Not likely.

Will McHale continue to torch him via his Blog, Brownsville Literary Review? No question.

Friends are the easiest of chumps to beat up on the Internet. One knows more about friends than strangers, so material looms as if an endless supply of arrows for the bow. The well-fed Gray has a long tapeworm of a story trailing him related to boozing and debauchery in general when in the company of STIJA members. He has, as they say in good westerns, taken the stagecoach's reins a time or two as it barreled toward the cliffs of errant romance and wanton adultery. Life in this town is funny that way. One day you're King of the anthill, the next you're the anthill itself. Sing a song for Tony Gray. Something by Petula Clark or Rigo Tovar.

We're sort of indifferent to most of it. Gray's membership in STIJA was sealed a long time ago in that midnight This-is-where-we-slice-your-wrist ritual the organization requires. So, he's going nowhere.

But I will take this opportunity to say The Plumpster needs to go. He has served his pals and himself for too long. STIJA needs to come out against this lifetime abuser of the public trough...

- 30 -

No Fiery Bluster, No Wild West Bravado: President Obama Merely Gets The Job Done...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - Perhaps President Barack Obama is just too gracious when dealing with the opposition. No, not Al-Qaeda. I mean the Republican Party and its collection of selfish Americans who cannot see that the country belongs to all, not just to them.

Obama, a Democrat, will be in New York City tomorrow to visit Ground Zero, hallowed ground where once the city's Twin Towers stood as iconic symbols to the greatness of this nation, and a place where more than 3,000 innocent Americans died in the devastating early-morning airliner attack on Sept. 11, 2001. How gracious is Obama?

He invited former Republican President George W. Bush to join him. Bush demurred, saying through a spokesman that he wished to stay out of the spotlight. The response is a rare example of any GOP member crediting Obama with accomplishing anything since taking office two years ago. Bush knows this is not his moment. He was invited, but he is right in not accepting. He knows he did enough damage to the red, white and blue. His fellow Republicans have not taken Obama's moment well, either. Most went conveniently silent following Sunday's killing of Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, and the few comments they issued were ridiculously steeped toward thanking the military and not the commander-in-chief. The military goes into this sort of action only when ordered by the president.

Texas' ever-seceding Gov. Rick Perry's statement to the press praised the U.S. Navy Seals who stormed Bin Laden's compound in Northern Pakistan, but did not mention the president.

So-called 2012 GOP presidential frontrunner Sarah Palin, speaking to a gathering in Colorado on Monday, thanked "President Bush." It is that smallness always at the ready for Republican that brands them as being separatists, as being uninterested in helping the president right the national economic ship. It must be noted that when Bush, Jr. took office after the 2000 elections, he walked into the Oval Office carrying a U.S. Treasury surplus left behind by outgoing President Bill Clinton. The surplus is now a whopping deficit thanks to Bush's "Wild West" plan for invading Iraq and ousting Saddam Hussein, a dictator, yes, but not the man responsible for the attacks of 2001.

It would be the classy thing to do to be gracious, but the GOP simply won't bring itself to do it. Examples of how the GOP goes contrarian on President Obama could fill a library. It's been no-no-no-no-no from these guys since Obama took office. Votes in Congress, with few exceptions, have followed the strict party line, even as Wall Street threatened to collapse and America's social tapestry loomed as ragged as its been since the Great Depression of the late-1930s.

Bin Laden is gone and they say Obama's popularity ratings have gone up a bit. That never really matters to most Americans, many still fighting their own wars with debt and unemployment.

What matters is that this was a special moment in America - one that should have rallied every citizen from coast to coast. This was a time to celebrate justice, to remember the many who died that fateful day, to again believe this country is of and for the whole.

Too bad the Republicans, ever the graceless losers, couldn't buck up this one time for America...

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For Bush & Perry, It Was A Day Of Back-Handed Praise...Osama Was Dead And They Had Nothing To Do With It...So They Pouted...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

DALLAS, Texas - In the wealthy Preston Hollow neighborhood where George W. Bush lives, some semblance of gratitude came in the form of flower bouquets left at his property's gate, left to wither in the cold, early Monday rain. Reports had it as many as 12 people arrived to thank Bush for his service to the country. Bush was president on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked the World Trade Center's twin towers in New York and the Pentagon in the nation's capital.

Yesterday, Bush was reservedly gracious in complimenting President Barack Obama and the American military for their starring roles in the killing of terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden late Sunday afternoon at his home in northern Pakistan.

Republican Bush didn't tread on comments he'd made in 2007, when he said Bin Laden was not important to him, labeling the outlaw as living on the fringe and being "out of my mind." Bush left office with the man he'd said he wanted "dead or alive" running free, living the good life in the shadows of what serves as Pakistan's West Point, the country's military training center. Pakistan, our supposed ally.

Worse came from Republican Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

He praised the military operation in a press release, but did not mention President Obama.

It speaks badly of these two so-called leaders. A bit of grace under pressure is the mark of an educated man. Neither man displayed much of it. Bush is Texan in name only, having been born in Connecticut. Perry has never shown himself to be a full American. He plays to the racist, separatist fringe of the state's population.

Obama, meanwhile, is the essence of true leadership. Pettiness has not been part of his administration. His vice-president is not the moron Dick Cheney was, and remains. And they say Perry, a 2.1 GPA graduate of Texas A&M University, has presidential aspirations. Really?

For the delusional, every road leads to Oz.

Cornpone Perry has peaked. He has no shot at being president. True justice in his case would be if Alaskan Moron Sarah Palin picked him as her vice-presidential running mate. That would not only be funny, it would be expected and punishment for both. Perry is the quintessential Peter Principle poster boy - a guy who rose to his level of incompetence.

The country is rejoicing in Bin Laden's death.

People like Bush and Perry should stay the Hell out of the way...

- 30 -           

Death Of A World Villain: U.S. Forces Find & Execute Osama Bin Laden...Shot In The Head...Saudi Buried At Sea...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

AUSTIN, Texas - It came almost a decade after he boldly masterminded the airliner attack that downed the iconic World Trade Center's twin towers in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. Late yesterday afternoon, Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden died from a gunshot to the head after a U.S. Navy Seals team stormed his mountain compound in northern Pakistan and briefly engaged his security forces before felling the world's Number One terrorist.

The 54-year-old Bin Laden and his guards are said to have put up a short fight before being overwhelmed. Reports say the compound was inhabited by a small Bin Laden security force and some women and children. U.S. officials said one woman in the compound was killed when she tried to shield an Al-Qaeda security member.

No U.S. casualties were reported, although raid leaders said a malfunctioning helicopter ferrying the seals went down. Its occupants, however, were all rescued.

President Barack Obama went on television last night to relay the news to the American people. New Yorkers were seen celebrating in the streets, as did residents of Washington, D.C.

Few other details have surfaced about the operation, although it has been confirmed that the Central Intelligence Agency had obtained information about Bin Laden's travels and whereabouts as early as 2004. And it seems much of that info came from a detainee, or detainees, being held at Guantanamo. Investigators there were said to have been given the nickname of a trusted courier used  by Bin Laden. The U.S. intelligence community then spent the next 6-plus years piecing the puzzle together. President Obama approved the raid on Saturday. Details of how the raid unfolded remain murky. But the Al-Qaeda courier, his brother and one of Bin Laden's sons were killed. Senior administration officials will only say that Bin Laden "resisted." And then the man behind the worst terrorist attack on U.S. soil died from an American bullet to his head.

It was not known whether others in the million-dollar, ramshackle-like compound were taken prisoner.

The inside story is still unfolding.

Pakistan's role in the assault has not been explained, although a spokesman for that country said it had not participated. Nothing was heard from Saudi Arabia, Bin Laden's homeland.

Nothing has been said about the decision to bury the terrorist at sea. But a U.S. official said this to a British newspaper: "Finding a country willing to accept the remains of the world's most wanted terrorist would have been difficult. So the US decided to bury him at sea."

The story is fluid and details will come out little by little, as happens with most international news stories...

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For Valley Democrats, A Time For Inward Reflection...Decades Of Nothing...Years of Corruption...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

RIO GRANDE VALLEY, Texas - Most eras in any region's history come with a few ups and downs. That's to be expected with Human Beings. Good times are balanced with bad times. Progress is measured with defeat. Leaders are painted with red paint or with black. The jury is the people.

And here, in the most southern geography of the country, the political era of note has long, long belonged to the Democratic Party. The Valley's culture is said to be unique. It is at once a slice of America and one of neighboring Mexico. The cultures meld in a noisy, happy, colorful daily lifestyle that speaks to the struggle of the poor and the ever-whipped. There are some wealthy, but most residents could be said live the desperate grind of not knowing where the next meal is coming from, where the next job will surface, when the paycheck will stop stretching, when it will all come tumbling down, accompanied by a sea of sincere tears and sky-high regrets. It is a Life accepted and Life handed-over, to the hopes of religion and the schemes of the criminals.

Lately, some of the more-creative criminals have come from the leadership of the region's Democratic Party, a political umbrella with a  long, crooked handle and, again lately, a ragged sun guard. Democrats here are on the ropes in more ways than one. They have seen their flag-bearers take the wrong road, walk the path of humiliation to the courthouse and accept punishment of the sort reserved for abusers, thieves, burglars and drunks.

Perhaps it is time someone grabbed the party's reins and turned the wagon around. Or maybe it's too late. The danged thing is over the cliff. You'd think so after reading a year's worth of the local newspapers. County leaders off to prison. A macho sheriff outbound in shackles and forwarded to a prison in the South. A miserable state judge humbled like a peon caught stealing. A pathetic former state representative upbraided in front of his wife. More are said to be thisclose to taking that same perp walk. It's a Goddamned shame, but there it is in color on local television.

Nevermind the river of alcohol and the wanton adultery and the hidden fraud and the petty obfuscations that forever surface in local governance. Nevermind the lovely, golden promises made and forgotten, broken and abandoned. Nevermind the brutal pain. Leadership here is not about leading; it is about leading oneself to the kitty, to the bounty, to the treasury, to the purse. The price paid by the citizenry is progress. There is none. This Democratic Party is rotten to the core. Here, it plays as the Big Dream sold as something to be expected, desired and awaited. It is a wet dream for everyone except the leadership, the politicians. Someone is being undressed at this very moment. Someone is being taken advantage of, being raped and turned out into the cold, darkened night after a muted physical plundering. As song, it carries the lyrics of Hell. As tune, it is the worst of violins, notes stirring only in that well-known cavity of life, notes exploding but never heard, felt, but never heard, never understood.

The party's roll is well-known:  State Senator Eddie Lucio, Jr., State Rep. Rene Oliveira, former Cameron County Judge Gilberto Hinojosa, District Attorney Armando Villalobos, Sheriff Omar Lucio. All alleged leaders and none answerable to the community. You can add Republican Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos to the pile of do-nothings. He was a Democrat long before he turned Republican, and everybody knows that he is savvy on the culture of the Texas-Mexico border. Cascos has done nothing, himself, other than get elected - much like the others who seek office in the area's time-honored tradition of doing for themselves and to Hell with the populace.

Not that the poverty-stricken Valley should look to the cruel Republican Party, however. That would be taking the bitterest of medicines. The Libertarian Party is a viable option. But that particular party frowns on most government, its philosophy being that less government is better government. That goes wholehog against the Valley's "government entitlement" addiction, so...

Perhaps its time for a local convention of sorts, some mass gathering to take the Democratic Party to task, to scare the Hell out of it by way of serious threats, like outright abandondonment. It is a sick party and it will take some serious surgery to bring it back to honest life.

There are few other options. It's rage and revolution or more of the same - the same being being led down the road of perdition and that familiar video on local TV news showing your latest local official taking his priest to an arraignment and then being led to jail...

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The Rise And Fall Of Jim Solis:...A Tale Of Fast Money, Fast Justice, Fast Jets and Maybe Fast Broads...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - They say Attorney Jim Solis lived the Great Cockroach Life; that is, he believed he lived and worked with vermin, slogging through the muck of corruption like a champ, with the best of them. A state representative for the better part of his adult life, Jose Santiago "Jimmy" Solis did his best to play the "You scratch my balls, I'll scratch your balls" game at the courthouse.

He's going to prison after admitting this week to handing over Big Cash to former 404th State District Judge Abel Limas in exchange for favorable rulings on cases Solis had before the judge's bench. It's yet another local fall from lawyerly grace, the latest in a tapeworm of similar officers-of-the-court-gone-bad. Solis looked lost in court during his pleading on Friday. Accompanied by his priest, he acted as if at a pre-wedding ritual at the local Catholic Church, there in the company of his pretty wife who looked stoic, but utterly disappointed.

A priest at a pleading. You'd think that same priest would have looked much better outside the Main Gate of a state prison on the day Solis completes his jail sentence. Religion, they say, always looks like a winner when one is in trouble or behind bars. Bible verses help pass the long string of days. It's good to know them by heart, in fact. That oath a lawyer takes in which he promises loyalty to the law won't serve you behind bars. Solis is about to see the night turn darker, foreboding. Cockroaches in prison are a wilder breed.

What led him down the path of humiliating corruption only he and his lawyer know at this point. Well, maybe his wife, although, all bets would be off with her if he gets a lengthy sentence. He'll cry when she says she's leaving him, and he'll cry harder when she tells him there's another man - a free one - in the picture. It's the stuff of books and TV, and, in those, the wife left behind always seeks warmth in someone who is available, not the hubby dressed in stripes. Solis has 90 days to think about that before receiving his sentence, to wonder why he ever went wrong, to keep kicking himself in the ass for being an idiot, and to hope for the most leniency possible.

It's an interesting, serpentine case all the way around. Limas is headed for the hoosegaw, as well, as are a few other lawyers yet to be walked into local courts. All for money, because of greed, and perhaps because they believed they could get away with it in the quirky Rio Grande Valley, a region where lawyers like to think they are far enough away from civilization that they are their own law.

The next Big Question is this: What about District Attorney Armando Villalobos? Where does he stand on all of these cases that fell apart in the merry deal-making? Why did he not raise a peep when questionable rulings poured out of Limas' court like free beer at a local political pachanga? Is he in the mix? Will the Feds smoke him out? And is that death in Matamoros a month ago of Assistant D.A. Arturo Jose Iniguez related to any of this? Was the young lawyer about to burst the corruption bubble? Was his death really a suicide?

To many questions move across the local geography to allow anyone the notion of believing all the crooks have been fingered, found and arrested. Big money answers only to big money.

And, surely, there has to be a "woman angle" here. Latinos and corruption cash are only two-thirds of the equation, if history is any indication. There are broads in this story. There are topless bar expenses disguised as client conferences, escort services listed as hours-to-be-billed. This is South Texas. Women are always in the picture. Judge Limas is said to have been fond of flying out from time to time in private jets, to pro basketball games in San Antonio and Houston. A pit stop at an all-nude Gentleman's Club would have been right up his cultural alley. A long night of wanton sex with out-of-town women in some ritzy hotel would have been just another decision to be made, no biggie, no sweat. It's the mind of the criminal, see. Once you head down that road, well, you take what you need and to Hell with the law. Go out the back way, honey. Don't let anyone see you. Here's a grand, kid.

What sayeth the Feds about all that?

It's all coming out soon...

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