Pushing The Rope:...When All Reporters Can Do Is Work The Phones...Roger Ortiz Goes Mum...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - There's something wildly hilarious when reading a string of mildly-serious stories in a newspaper that long-ago ceded its right to raise Hell. The local daily here is a prime example. It gets its hair in a frizz from time to time, only its history of doing little creeps up on its sudden angst.

In the ongoing bungalow saga that is the vote count in the county judge contest, The Brownsville Herald, in no way connected to the New York Times, flashes a bit of drama when its two reporters, Emma Perez-Trevino (shown in photo wearing hat) and Laura B. Martinez, agree on the following line in their bylined story published in today's edition.

"Elections Administrator Roger Ortiz has failed to return numerous telephone calls from The Brownsville Herald as to what action he will take on the recount of ballots in the election for county judge."

It would be something to ask Ortiz about, him being a public servant, but the relationship between The Herald and local government, from City Hall to the county operation, is such that these people largely ignore the newspaper. Numerous phone calls? Numerous phone calls, they wrote!!!

Where have these numerous phone calls been all along, Emma? Laura, my dear? (Shown at right)

Their newsroom complaint rings damned hollow. Phone calls? Phone calls! Why not get your lovely butts over to Roger's office and camp out there until the man has to talk to you. Yell at him if you have to. Numerous phone calls. Oh, boy.

It reminds me of the editor of an Arkansas newspaper who arrived at a newspapering convention to crow about his reporting staff's investigative work on a bad neighborhood in his town. But he blew it when he said, "When my reporters made a drive-through the ghetto..." A drive-through? Yeah, same thing as numerous phone calls. The press expecting officialdom to be at its immediate disposal just because it says so and demands it is....yeah, laughable. Roger Ortiz likely knows The Herald is the least of his problems.

In a Macho world such as is lived in Brownsville, the newspaper holds no higher standing than the first-day mailman. The Herald should blame itself for the rude dismissal it gets from the town's leadership. Now, if it could rustle-up some crackerjack investigative reporting that would clear-up a few of the local governmental messes, well...then it could be as demanding as it seems to want to be in this case.

Two skirts chasing me for comment would get short shrift, absolutely.

The problem in Brownsville is not Roger Ortiz, although he may be part of it. At present, he's just the latest public servant to get a bit of the spotlight. It'll pass for Jolly Roger, as it has eventually passed for all the others who came before him and who also declined to take the newspaper reporter's telephone calls.

This recount is a mess, and it will play out a bit longer, but let's see how what The Herald offers in the way of journalism that comes from going to the scene of the mess and not from the eyes of an air-conditioned bystander...

- 30 -

The Undefeated:...Elections Honcho Roger Ortiz Holds County Judge Job In His Hands...Will it be The Lady or The Tiger, Or Cascos or Wood?...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - So, we're at another of those border impasses, the Ol' Mexican Standoff. Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos, fresh off a stunning defeat at the hands of a recount, sits on his Republican cloth couch, awaiting finality. Lucky challenger John Wood, the surprise winner of the job Cascos has held in recent years, suddenly looms as the benefactor of something or another. How did it ever come to this?

Not with Roger Ortiz ramrodding the vote count! Roger Ortiz?

We remember Ortiz from our days - that lost year - at The Herald, when City Hall was our Beat and Ortiz our source at the tax appraiser's office he oversaw. At the time, I was dating his secretary, a woman named Ruth, and aside from being superb evening company, she often spoke about doings in the tax office. Ortiz, she would say, was a straight-up guy, a person averse to wrongdoing, to, say, cooking the books in favor of some taxpayer. I'd been working on a story about tax scofflaws at the time, which is why she and I spent a post-coital minute or two discussing it.

Part of the mess concerning the vote count in the Cascos-Wood fray will likely land on Ortiz's lap. Already, bloggers side with the idea that he surely must be at the center of a conspiracy that has former County Judge Gilberto Hinojosa pulling his strings, angling Ortiz this & that way, prodding him. Persuading him, so that, in the end, Democrat Wood will come out on top against the affable, but not as sharp Cascos. In Brownsville, where the count took place, and where the voting will be officially canvassed on Thursday, one move always leads to another - in sex, and in politics.

And so we shall wait.

If my former friend from that Winter of 1981 was correct in assessing Roger Ortiz as a man of high morals, well, the tabulation is on the up & up. But, then, it's been a few winters since '81. And perhaps Roger has been melded by the politics he has endured in the ensuing decades. It'll all shake out.

Ruth isn't around to give me an update, is what I hear. Too bad, for Ortiz and for me. All I know is that she seemed to be a nice Catholic girl who dressed well, loved her red lipstick and stayed in shape. I used to spread an American flag across my bed in those crazy days. For some reason, the imagery of that bedroom scene popped-up in my brain as I thought about her in the context of Ortiz's current perceived predicament.

I'd like to think that Roger did the right thing, yes...

- 30 -        

High Noon in Brownsville:...Vote Count in Race For County Judge Gives Job To Democrat John Wood...Some Are Incredulous...Some Just Laugh...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Politician Carlos Cascos cannot be faulted if he takes a head-first leap into his medicine cabinet and drowns himself in bottle after bottle after bottle of Pepto-Bismol. That race he thought he won Nov. 2nd for sure now has him in the spot Mexicans know well as, "Madre, que pedo?!"

And who could blame the guy?

The last few days - Weekend of the Recount - had Cascos doing electoral somersaults. One day, he had confirmation of a victory and the realization that he would continue to serve as Cameron County Judge; the next he didn't. No doubt it's been a rough two days for the Republican not known for public brawling. Will he take the latest tally that has opponent John Wood winnning the office by 5 votes calmly and simply walk away? Five votes! Wood, 20,576; Cascos, 20,571.

Already, the sound of cracking knuckles moves across Brownsville like a moving cantina punch-out. Someone, it is being said, will soon face the full-fury of the scorned Republican. That someone could be Cameron County Elections Administrator Roger Ortiz, the man who delivered the bad news to Cascos yesterday, as nice and cool a day as the Rio Grande Valley of Texas has enjoyed lately.

Said Mssr. Ortiz in the wake of the tally, "All I can tell you is that the only thing that matters is the integrity of the election — whichever way it goes."

Odd, that "integrity" thing. Around here, it is sprinkled liberally in post-elections commentary, especially by the cornered bureaucrats and the winners. The losers forever have another word they like, and that one is, yeah - Bullshit.

Interestingly, Wood had conceded the race a bit earlier yesterday, given it up in a congratulatory telephone call to Mssr. Cascos, who, even as the supposed final count sent the contest Wood's way, boldly issued a press release saying he was going ahead with plans to continue serving the people.

It all brought back images of the mess in Florida during the 2000 presidential election, when a myriad of questionable moves by vote counters tipped the race to then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush and sent Vice-President Al Gore packing. Those thousands of Africa-Americans living the Miami area whose votes never were counted are still angry, as are the thousands of senior citizens who thought they'd voted for Gore and saw their votes recorded for Bush. It's a game, yes, but it's a game for Big Boys willing to roll in the dirt and the in mud.

So, what is no-nonsense Republican Cascos' next move? Al Gore took the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court, where a 5-4 vote sided with Bush as the winner. It was, yep, 5 Republicans voting for Bush and 4 for Gore. Bullshit? Absolutely...

- 30 -

The Year of The Swat:...How I Broke School Rules & Paid The Price...Three Swats At A Time...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - The plumpish secretary would look at me and say something like that my smile was not the smile of a kid about to be paddled by the principal. I'd say I know, I should smile more in class, but that Goddamned Mr. Stewart is such a dick that no one smiles in his history class. Who knows? Maybe it was just what a junior high school offered in the 1960s, old-fashioned teachers and swats.

The principal's name was Goelhke, a hard-ass, skinny German-American fond of pulling ears in the hallways; that or asking what it was we were saying in Spanish and following that by telling us no Spanish was allowed on school grounds. It was America's last shame, at least for me.

Anyway, Mr. Goelhke seemed to get a kick out of paddling. I say it was his hidden Nazi allegiance, but I didn't know it then. We had a pack of German educators at Travis Junior High on East Houston Street here. The head football coach was named Etnire and the assistant coach was a cruel fool named Zimmerman - two guys who would have looked just as comfortable in a Nazi death camp.

The swatting came behind closed doors. Mr. Goelhke would say some bullshit about it hurting him more than it would you. And then, he'd rear back and swing as if swinging for the Third Reich. At least he only asked you to lower your pants and not your underwear. The second swat would come with more force, and the third would push the air out of your lungs. I was - what? - 13.

He would finish me off by saying, "No more misbehaving, right?" That was followed by a killer stare of the sort Jews knew as bad news in Hitler's Germany. "Yes, sir," I'd say, throwing that fuckin' Stewart's rosy, pale face across my brain, thinking he'll pay at year's end.

And then I'd walk back to class, where I'd hand Mr. Stewart a note from the office saying I could re-join my classmates. Most of the boys - and some girls - in the room knew the swat drill. Junior high in the 1960s was one boring time, moved forward only by the arrival of the Rolling Stones and our belief that, surely, a rebellious time was coming for the entire country. It did, and it created the most ridiculous crisis for public schools - monitoring long hair, or, really, poking at boys and telling us a haircut was in order and that we risked being sent home to get one. I was sent home numerous times. For that!

Our high school leaders didn't swat as much as the junior high administrators; they simply suspended you for the silliest of reasons - kicking-in lockers, bringing a soda to class and purposely spilling it, showing a girl your tongue. My best effort along those lines was waiting for the teacher to turn her back as she went to the blackboard in Biology class and saying, loudly: "Black Power!"

She would whip around and ask the class who'd said it. I'd raise my hand and then walk myself to the principal's office to a round of applause, which she immediately shhhhed. It was high school, a time to throw a wrench into the bicycle spokes. Many of us knew the military awaited after graduation. Three swats or a three-day suspension seemed a minor price to pay for enjoying what could easily have been our last years on this God-abamdoned planet.

Mr. Goehlke and the coaches are likely dead. But the junior high school is still there. I drove by it the other day and told myself, "I can almost hear the sound of that wooden paddle smacking me in the ass."

It was a cool morning and school was in session. It struck me that the old school looked very much as it did all those years ago. I could imagine that paddle being passed-on from principal to principal as a new one took command of the school. I drove slowly, looking over as the row of classrooms moved passed me. My time there had been a bitch, one created largely by me.

I never did take the air out of Mr. Stewart's car's tires. One time, while home on leave from the Navy, I ran into a girl I'd known back then, and I'd asked her about our days at Travis Junior High. Her name is Ninfa and what she said was that she'd always thought that I'd enjoyed the paddling I'd received.

I smiled and threw out something I'd said to her many, many years earlier: "...May I see your breasts?" It would become my signature line when in college. Ninfa just stared at me and said, before walking away, "You better win the Medal of Honor if that's how you're going to live the rest of your life."

I didn't, of course.

Leaving the school behind as I rolled past it brought back a string of weird emotions. The lump in my throat would again surface on the day I walked off the U.S.S. Sperry for the last time at the submarine base in San Diego, and again when I signed my divorce papers, and again when my mother passed away three years ago.

There are friends and family members who openly believe that I should still be paddled - every day, in fact...

- 30 -           

NOBODY'S ANGEL: The Story of Leafy, The Rooster...How I Picked A Pet I Could Love...No Dogs, No Cats...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

RIO GRANDE CITY, Texas - I'm riding the long and lonely road just east of here on my way back to Hidalgo County for a meeting with my evening cup of coffee when it hits me. Sure, a rooster! That could be my pet. A battlin' rooster, out to crow me awake in the morning. A rooster who would and wouldn't need me.

He would look sharp, confident, like the rooster in the photo atop this story.

His name would be Leafy.

Leafy would run roughshod over an eventual coop full of chickens I would construct somewhere out in the county in the same manner that Marijuana growers plant and harvest their crop far from the city. Some grassy piece of land with a rise and a meadow, a home for my flock, absolutely. Leafy would keep me apprised.

I've never been one for animals as pets, thinking they, too, are born free and, so, should live free in their element - the wilds. Leafy would get no instructions from me, other than to fight to the death if a killing coyote neared the flock. And I know Leafy would do it. Poor coyote would limp back to his kind and spread the word that there was a mean rooster in rural Hidalgo County no one - no one! - should mess with, not even the chief barbarian of the coyote empire.

I think it would be cool to own a rooster. There are, it would seem if morning sounds around here are any indication, a jillion roosters in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. Indeed, I'd strike out and say there likely are a dozen roosters for every male, two dozen for every female.

The funny thing is that roosters are being outlawed in communities all across the country. Dallas is one. You can have cowboys and horses and cattle standing as symbols for Big D, but no rooster. You can, however, keep them in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where they amble about backyards forever in search of frisky chickens or chicken feed. The animal world knows no more sex-starved dude than the rooster, perhaps because he is usually outnumbered 100 to one by chickens in any chicken coop. I only wish they could smile. Then, we would know, we would know exactly how sexually satisfied Leafy might be.

So, you get a little chick and you wonder whether it is a male or female (rooster or chicken). Well, you often end up with roosters unexpectedly, because it’s very hard to tell the gender of a chicken until it’s fairly old. I wish I could tell you how long a rooster can live, but I don't know.

All I know is that they hate it when a second rooster is introduced to the coop, and they will fight any would-be Lothario until only one stands. Yeah, a whole, whole lot like Valley men.

The imagery of a rooster holding court with his chickies mirrors Valley life its ownself. They'll strut about while angling in for the hook-up at courtship. Roosters are cool about their mating approach. They won't threaten, they won't attack, they won't do anything that'll surprise the target of their affection. But they'll track-in and whisper sweet nothings into the chicken's ears (Do they have ears?) and the next thing you know, well, the rooster is looking like the portrait of satisfaction.

Chicken feathers left on the ground after the mating symbolize the coupling's drama. The more feathers humped off the chicken and left behind, the rougher the sex, is what I'm told. Roosters sex chickens so they stay sexed, absolutely.

I know Leafy would be the kind of rooster who would leave them smiling. That wink of the eye as he retreated would only mean that the chicken would know that he'd be back for more, that he'd be oh-so in it for her, as he was for himself.

That's my Leafy, always the gentleman...

- 30 -

Done In By Romance:...The Life & Times Of A Pretentious Idea...Even Bad Endings Are Okay...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

PORT ISABEL, Texas - Someone once told me that any sort of writing about one's life had to be carried by the human emotion all of us know as pain. Graphic suffering, yes. And a bit of wheelhouse romance every other chapter, preferably with different lovers in different settings. Some appropriate musical soundtrack would help with the writing. Songs are something we assign to certain times in our life.

Okay, okay, I am writing.

It's going well some days and some days it sucks. But that's the trip. Words won't throw themselves on the page no matter how much you beg. It's been fun and work so far. My blogging here gets in the way, and I've tried to kill this website on two-three occasions, but my friends say it keeps them going. I do my best.

In backtracking to those earlier days, I find it is only the best memories that come back in living color. I never knew my life had been so fantastic. I suppose I've been lucky. Those of you who know of my work know of a website where most of those romantic entanglements can be found. Here it is for those of you who do not: http://www.Mainand83.blogspot.com/.

Enjoy it. I've wanted to kill that Blog, as well.

But it lives, perhaps out of some desire to see me in court someday, or maybe even to be there for the eventual Judgment Day, when someone way up there will open my ledger and wonder about allowing me into the best of whatever best could ever be. I'm feeling a bit sad these days. Maybe it's the annual end-of-the-year melancholy - an advance party for that which we know as the Holiday Blues. No, I'm not crying, just running a damaged film across the screen in my brain - trying like crazy to decide whether I've lived just-enough or too-much.

Do we ever account for ourselves and agree on punishment or praise?

Human Beings are a funny lot. Something brings out the best and worst in us, except when we go dusting the boxes that hold the facts, the details. We'll do all we can to dance away from bad memories, from things we said that we shouldn't have said, from things we did that we never should've done, from fights we staged that never should've been staged. I'm not alone in saying that as soon as I bring back the name or face of a friend I made along the way, some memory pops-up, something that will draw a frown or a smile. Regret walks in all dolled-up about here on the bad moments.

But can you ever go back and make things better? No. Life frames you and that's that. The girl you stood-up after she'd bought a new dress for that Friday night date, the old college chum abandoned without notice, the friend you burned for no reason, the love you gave freely and then pulled-back suddenly. It's not a pretty picture if you look at the canvas from side-to-side, and telling a story where you dive in and out of memories is worse than being on a doomed, low-flying cropduster caught in a sudden hailstorm. That barn you crashed into, you tell yourself as the blood drips down your face, was not supposed to be there.

Memories never censor themselves...

- 30 -      

The Man From Southmost: Journalist Juan Montoya And A Lifetime Of Brawling...He's In Jail, But That's Not His Legacy...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Perhaps Juan Montoya was born 100 years too late. Maybe he would have been a more-appreciated reporter had he offered his detailed writing about the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Juan, an old friend, is the last purist to be found along the scurrilous Texas-Mexico border.

Truth be known, we've had our differences lately. But that was about how we choose to approach our writing, how we choose to cover news here in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. I'd never do what Juan does on his Blog, RrunRrun.blogspot.com, but he'd likely say the same thing about me on The Tribune. It's a long story better suited for another time.

For now, we focus on Juan's recent jailing, this after being arrested earlier this week on charges of DWI and reckless driving. At present, we are told, he is being held in the Cameron County jail. We preface this by saying a Journalist in jail is never a good thing. Juan carved his reporting perimeter a bit wide, and that led to criticism that he was a "hired gun" for Brownsville politicians and not really the people's source for timely and dependable information. His knowledge of the local political geography can never be challenged; Juan knows his stuff.

We'd heard he'd been roughing it in town, but we hadn't seen him in a little more than a year, when he'd joined a handful of other friends at the 1-2-3 Lounge on tough 14th Street to drink a few chelas. He was the usual Juan, noting bullshit about the city's politicians as if talking about detailed baseball stats, laughing at the material in the manner that comedians laugh at their own jokes. We saw him briefly another time at a place called The Ice House on the road to the Port of Brownsville. He'd made fun of me that time, saying I still exhibited my penchant for interrupting people while they spoke and chiding me on my open contempt for the border. He was right on both counts.

An objective critic could find much to criticize Juan about. Brownsville is a low-flying town in many ways. Just as he could damn, well, those he damned always damned back. You had this idea that the scraps were a fun time for Juan. Who knows? As with most people in the cliquish Valley, he had people he liked and people he disliked. There is something to be said for a man who holds his ground, although Juan's ground was in a perpetual shake, like some mini-earthquake only he could feel there at his feet.

The jail sentence, we understand, has him incarcerated until the first days of 2011.

Something is lost. Something isn't the same. Small, insular towns can feel this readily. Brownsville without Juan Montoya is like North Fork without Lucas McCain, Virginia City without Ben Cartwright, San Francisco without Dirty Harry, Brownsville without Juan Cortina - Montoya's hero.

The days of this cooler season will arrive and roll-off all of us. Few will have Juan in mind when Thanksgiving comes along, when Christmas nears. He helped a slew of local politicians, such as hated former City Commissioner Ernie Hernandez and recently defeated Cameron County Judge candidate John Wood.

It'll be interesting to see if any of these politicos he helped across the line step up to help him. Knowing a bit about Brownsville, I'd find it novel if they did. A man behind bars is easily shunned aside.

Juan Montoya reminds me of another Journalist who danced across the border and lived his last days in Brownsville. Chuck Schwanitz was his name. Chuck was not the writer Juan became, but, like Juan, he liked to tip a cold one very now and then. It comes with the territory, he'd say back in the early 1980s, when Chuck's office was a back-wall table at La Palma Lounge, when his most powerful, across-the-bar utterance was, "Otro round!"

Let's believe that Juan Montoya can serve his time and make that turn toward a little better life. He's 56 and, as The Beatles sang in Sgt. Pepper's, "...it's getting very near the end..."

- 30 -

In Troubled Harlingen, More Trouble...Rumor of Dishonest Blogging...The Recalcitrant Commissioner Keeps Whining...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - Man, it's been a vicious year for this small town in desperate need of help, help from anybody. Residents will tell you they get nothing from paralyzed City Hall these days, zip from the comatose newspaper, nada from the Heavens. If a town can be properly portrayed in accurate colors, it would be India ink and bistre-wash for this despair-white outpost midway between McAllen and Brownsville.

Now come two more killer uppercuts.

One concerns high-maintenance City Commissioner Kori Marra. The other is perhaps a bigger shock, namely reports that Editor Jerry Deal has been playing with his comments number on his popular Blog, MyLeaderNews.com. In a way, Ms. Marra's problems rather entertain this town of 74,000 success-starved souls. She's either the sure-shot Annie Oakley to some, or the ditzy Goldie Hawn to the others.

This week, she burst from the comfort of the world of Real Estate to lash Blogger Jerry Deal after MyLeaderNews.com posted a story about her troubles with the State of California involving a traffic violation. Ms. Marra, a single mother, did not take it lying down. She loaded her cannon and lobbed a terse note to Deal, demanding an explanation as to why MyLeaderNews.com considered that newsworthy.

Deal, however, saw it as a scoop in the highly-charged world of Blogging in Harlingen. About Ms. Marra's public angst, he wrote: "She also asks if she should be concerned, being on Facebook, where this publication got the ticket informaton. She claims concerns about putting photos she oks of her and her children on Facebook, wondering if she should be aware that that someone who hates her would do her or family great harm."

Nevermind that the world knows Facebook is no place to go hide.

And so Deal, unaccustomed to friendly fire, begs-off the complaint, writing, "Ok, come on Kori, you were already on Facebook and I do not believe a little article about a minor ticket is going to change your life or your children’s lives."

Of course not. The Commissioner has a knack for acting oddly. Her public service history is a wagon train of woe. As an elected official, she is subject to being written-about on matters she may feel are private or minute. As Lois Lane might say about here, "Honey, that is something the media decides, not you." Still, the idea that she is open to criticism has to register with her at some point. This, mind you, is a mature woman, in years anyway.

Jerry Deal's horrible problem, which he has yet to address on MyLeaderNews, is a survey undertaken by the critical HarlingenBlogs.com, which reports Deal may be inflating his "comments" numbers by - egads! - padding his blogger visitors with names he may be inventing himself.

The revelation, if true, is no small plate of refried beans in town. Jerry Deal recently crowed loudly about MyLeaderNews.com being the best online publication in the area. In claiming the lofty perch, Deal cited a review of local websites by unnamed journalists, adding that he also receives many more comments to his site than any other area blog. The investigation by HarlingenBlogs.com is damning. Deal's decision to ignore the information does not bode well for his effort, for his claim.

There is a mountain of problems that stall this city's progress. Word filters out this morning that a mysterious group is launching a recall election against City Commissioner Robert Leftwich. To that we say: Go ahead and kill yourself, Harlingen.

What else is left?...

- 30 -

HAIL, MARY: The Total Ruination of A Once-Good Catholic Boy...Excerpt...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - She was one of those flighty girls who learned to play hard-to-get at an early age. I met her when she was nine. Esther Escamilla would bowl me over for an entire summer and I would never forget much of the pain she put me through. I was ten, not exactly in need of hot love, but already interested in the fairer sex. Esther lived a few blocks from my house here.

How we met I can no longer remember, except that all the kids in the neighborhood would somehow get wind of a party at somebody's house and there we would go. I'd see Esther every time, Esther in her loose-fitting clothes, her dancing skirts, her dusty saddleback shoes, her frizzy hair in the evening breeze. I was taken by her from the very beginning, no doubt imagining wildness of some sort or another. Kids are like that, forever creating stuff in their minds, even when it's not really there.

At those parties, Esther and I would dance as soon as the host parent would set records on the old turntable placed atop a chair. I recall we would dance to a song by Chris Montez (see Tribune Lounge sidebar), and Esther would move like a champ. I can still see her thin arms flailing away as the song played-on, her body in full-sway, skinny legs and all, her lips pursed, eyes ablaze. I suppose I liked Esther a lot, 'cause when the parties ended I would chase her all the way to her house. Why that happened, I stilll have no idea, but perhaps Esther had instructions from her parents that she was not to be walked home by a boy who couldn't afford a haircut.

I don't know what became of Esther. I don't believe she went to our neighborhood junior high school. One day, it just ended and I never saw her again, although I do know that her house was later the home of some other family. She nonetheless remains as my unofficial first girlfriend, one of those rare unconsummated affairs that lived on genuine flirtation and, I suppose, a little of love's very beginnings.

The other day, I drove by that same old neighborhood. It's changed dramatically, but you can still see little boys and girls out and about, walking, playing, being kids uninterested in great fashion or who's watching, maybe plotting their own stabs at romance. There was that time Esther came to my house and I recall my mother answered the knocking to tell her I was sick and could not come out to play. From my window, I saw Esther walk toward the street and then angle off onto the street that would take her to the little park where we'd played.

She was running beautifully as she moved up the inclined street, like a doe, her crazy hair splayed as she gained speed, her feet propelling her away from me. That was the year I lost my voice and the doctors couldn't tell us why. Esther might have helped.

But perhaps my inability to speak would have led me to do something else, like maybe kiss her...

- 30 - 

Nibbling On Enchiladas: One Man's Travels Through The Heart Of A Lovely Land...The $2.99 Breakfast...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

PORT ISABEL, Texas - Away from here, much is made of the Rio Grande Valley's lifestyle. Often, it is a roundhouse denigrating that spans all aspects of local culture. If it isn't some yokel downing the region's rich, Mexican food, it's some other idiot calling out local men for being abusive, adulterous and what productive people elsewhere would call ten-percenters. Valley women, it is said in those circles, ask for little and take the spousal abuse without a fight. Welcome to Hellhole, goes the line.

It's all a stereotype, of course.

The Valley is its own place, offering what it offers nicely, however slow it may be to an outtsider used to a hurry-up lifestyle. I wonder about it here, because I'm soon to be off to another place for the holidays and I'll have to acclimate myself to another social environment - a not too-difficult undertaking for me, but one that can bring its own aggravation and annoyances.

I have been critical of the Valley on a variety of fronts, from politics, to the local diet, to the manner in which public servants serve. It's a low-rent, low-flying game they play, although it can easily be ignored. Issues bounce in and out of the Valley. Where other communities in the U.S. focus on perhaps larger things, the Valley ambles along as if on a slower clock. That is both good & bad.

It is my feeling that you can leave the Valley for five/ten years and then come back to find nothing's changed. The taqueria's name may be different and there may be a few more vehicles on the roads, but it's largely the same - a land that time forgets, a land that allows for mediocrity and laggards.

Not that it is bad. Still, this do-nothing attitude lives as the face of the Valley. And perhaps that is because Valleyites forever settle for things, demanding little because they believe themselves to be powerless, to be unable to dream the impossible dream, to be okay with being led by the nose.

It's easy to feel comfortable in the Valley. Breakfast can be had for $2.99, and who will complain about that? Most creature comforts have now come to the Valley, except for those poor pockets of residents still lower on the social strata, also known as the Colonia dwellers, the parachutists who arrive to stake their claim to some dream that is slow to unfurl.

So, is time different here? Yes, it is. It's still 60 minutes to the hour, but it's long minutes, time elongated by the adopted realization that after 60 minutes, well, there'll be 60 more, and 60 more after that. No one's in a hurry to do anything, leading me to conclude that the Valley is very much like South Vietnam, like rural West Texas, like the bad side of ugly Bangkok, like a load of places in rough-edged Mexico.

It should be a country all its own, and not part of two very different countries...

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When All The Laughter Turned To Sorrow...Family Doings...Morning At A Tex-Mex Cafe...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - Back when I was a young boy, when laughter filled my days, it was always the cooking hour at our home that drew the most attention, that created a familial noise I've not enjoyed in years. My mother would fire-up the old natural gas stove without announcement and it was the jingle-jangle of kitchenware that signaled something was up, that told us the ensuing gorgeous aroma would soon be another of her fantastic meals.

This is the time of the year when families get together to break bread, to catch-up, to become one again. Everybody drives or flies in, each bringing news of recent occurrences within their families. It is Life its ownself. Memories abound. My older sister laughing and then saying, "Remember when you used to like cheese?" That segued into something else. I'm good at remembering. It is the only talent my God threw into my soul, sparing no expense, it would seem.

And so the tamales would be prepared and the music coming off the radio my mother plugged into a kitchen electrical outlet would offer a neat soundtrack of traditional Mexican music. She would ask about everybody, and then about me, pulling info from my brothers and sister I would never share with her, such as stuff about my illnesses, my marriage, my work as a wandering Journalist, which for some reason she thought was dangerous work. I'd walk-in, knowing what she was doing, and she would change the subject, drawing that huge, loving smile from me. And I'd say, "Ask me. I'll tell you about all my problems..." But she wouldn't, and I suspected correctly that she didn't want to know that I was suffering or dealing with things she did not want associated with her favorite son. And that could be everything. Mothers know, of course.

So these days, it's all about remembering my dear mother. She passed away three years ago and I recall she summoned me to her hospital bed the day before she died and asked me to try and reconcile with my ex-wife. I told her I would do it. I called the mother of my two beautiful daughters and said, "Do you want to get back together?" She said, "No," and I said, "Well, I promised my Mom I'd ask you."

The book closes and we try to forget, is what Phil Collins sings in one of his songs. Yes, we try. Only, when this time of the year rolls around, it is human nature to want to think that one more family gathering is all-too-possible.

But it isn't. Everybody's got plans taking them elsewhere. My sisters in California and Colorado. My brother in Minneapolis. Life marches on, like some old movie film moving through a projector's sprockets unwilling to stop on any one single photo frame, moving to the tale's end. It's something to think about.

Yesterday, I joined an old friend and his wife here for breakfast at a Tex-Mex restaurant called Picosito's on busy North 23rd Street. It was late in the morning and the well-dressed church crowd was angling in. Tables soon filled and the sounds of family chatter sailed across the dining area, mixing nicely with the soft mariachi music spilling out of the speakers overhead. The larger portion of the customers were Hispanic, and it was good to again be amongst so many, to see happy-looking fathers with families in tow, to see fresh-faced kiddoes arriving with the idea of putting away a plate of tacos, ready to ask for drinks and then for re-fills until Mom said no more.

I stared across the restaurant, wishing like crazy that I could be one of those kids and that the attractive middle-aged mother would be my Mom. A sip of coffee chased that imagery.

And then I told myself I could never be that kid because his hair was cut too-short and that the mother could never be my Mom because my Mom was much-prettier...

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The Mind Of The Mexican: How An American Bordertown Ignored A Bloody, Bloody War Next Door...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The most popular myth about this town and its failure to progress has it that someone buried the Grand Plan deep along a harsh piece of ground, left some mish-mash of a map and then, laughing, beat feet out of town. Apparently, it would take a giant shovel to dig down far enough to find it. Brownsville stumbles along, dependent on who knows what for fuel and without an idea of where it's going or how to even prepare for the momentous - if it ever comes.

The war raging in neighboring Matamoros, Mexico is the latest example of how Brownsville hopscotches across broken glass it could easily help gather to smooth out the journey at hand. But it doesn't. Brownsville's collective brain is such that to simply sit around and wonder about the flying bullets is enough of an activity to say it knows Waz Zappenin' in the 'Hood.

It is a community out of place in the universe, a town believing it exists in the same plane as, say, McAllen to the west. Brownsville is more Matamoros that it is willing to admit. Its people and Matamoros people often are one and the same, yet those living on the northern side of the Rio Grande cavalierly ignore the horrible plight of their border cousins. For years, that relationship was another. Not now. Today, Brownsville would rather turn its back on much-whipped Matamoros, rather say Mexico's problems belong to Mexicans, rather sit back like some overweight taco-eater blaming his fat belly for the inaction.

Brownsville could be called a pathetic town. Its leaders worry much more about others elsewhere. Earlier this year, those same leaders adopted a resolution against an anti-immigrant law in far-off Arizona. Yet, there has been not one peep about Matamoros and the strangling it is enduring at the hands of the vicious regional drug cartels. Why not say something? Why not go on record as saying you stand by the neighbor's desire for peace? Nothing, nothing is Brownsville's response.

You would think that at least one resident would rise against the violence, would be brave enough to say that Matamoros is a member of the neighborhood, would scream damnations at the killers, perhaps drawing them into some sort of area battle. Things won't change anytime soon for Matamoros, and we all know that Brownsville apparently is fine with that. Its history is heavy with outsiders coming in and stealing lands, building monuments and writing its more-dramatic border tales.

Brownsville disappoints right & left. It is mostly Mexicans who call it home and it is barely yards from the fray, yet it turns its back. Marriages bind both towns, as do adulterous relationships, yet Brownsville drops its head and stares at its feet, defeated by its very inaction.

It's a thoroughly Mexican thing.

Not my fight, so...

Not my family, so...

Not my street, so...

Not my children, so...

The Mexican brain, slowed by maize and queso, will not respond. It can't, 'cause it won't. This is the proverbial yearlong Siesta in town. We suspect that the biggest worry for its residents at present is when and where to buy that frozen turkey for the Thanksgiving Dinner.

How anyone in Brownsville could ever believe that they have the right to give thanks is the mind-blower. Of course, everyone also knows that cowards can blow-off a whole lot and still sit down at the dinner table for a plate of tamales, even as the wife is out submitting an application for a second job, even as the kids ask about new shoes, even as the boss says, "Hey, Julio, come on back to work..."

At some point, Brownsville will have to engage in some form or fashion.

Until then, it remains the so-called Coward Of the County...

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You May Be A Gorgeous Dame, But that Skeleton Of Yours Turns Me Off...One Man's Battles With The Human Design...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - Is it just me, or do all of us have a fight with the human body's perplexing design? Do you stop and ask yourself what you'd think of your woman companion if you could see - and hold - her tailbone? Meatless, it looks very much like the skeletal ribs of a small bird, like those of a young crow or a fattened parakeet - not attractive at all. Bones. Why bones?

It is said that a human being needs those bones - his chasis - to stand erect, to wrap muscles around it and help propel it, say, from the bedroom to the bathroom. Those who say that are not lying; that's exactly the function of the skeleton. But why not a high-tech design, if we can borrow a word from manufacturing. Why would the Creator go with the ugly skeleton? It is ugly. Bones are never pretty, not those of a baby, nor those of the most beautiful actress. Bones are strictly utilitarian; that is, they do a job, and they do it under cover of outer skin.

Anatomy tells us there are 206 bones in the adult human skeleton, although that number may change as one ages for a variety of healthy reasons. Newborn babies count more than 270 bones, some of which later fuse together. Studies show that the human skeleton takes 20 years before it is fully developed. By the age of 40 in women and roughly 45 in men, those bones begin their slide into something akin to rusting in automobiles. The older a human being, the worse the bones function. Those Old Geezers walking into Luby's Cafeteria at odd angles are not doing it because they want to. Their bones have simply aged to the point of stiffness. It happens steadily and is unforgiving. Loss of bone marrow leads to brittleness, in some cases breaking in older people in the course of, say, taking a step or reaching for a bath towel.

So, why would anyone design such a cheap contraption for the Human body? I can't answer that, and neither can anyone except for biologists who will tell you we are made of flesh and bones and that it is your DNA that defines your skeleton's ability to sustain you into old age. Think of skeletons as automobile models: some people have Fords and some have Cadillacs.

I hate the idea of my skeleton, really because I see it as someone else in there under my skin, some lousy stick figure who should get the Hell out and leave me alone. But alone then would be a mass of muscle and skin and tissue piled on my bedroom floor. I need a Goddamned skeleton; I just hate to admit it.

The other day, at my favorite coffee shop, I looked at people I see most mornings with the skeleton in mind and decided skin is very much like clothes. There are quite a few customers at this particular Starbucks I'd not want to see naked, and there were as many whose skeletons likely would have been just as scary.

There was the young school librarian who could use a few pounds. Her skeleton no doubt would look even skinnier. There was the fat guy who walks in and asks for a grande cup of coffee and three/four pastries. His skeleton has to be just as fat as he is, bones that'll test an army of maggots when they finally bury his ass. It's funny. You can do that all damned day.

I'm just glad that the best body parts in a woman are not boney.

The creator of such loveliness was on the ball, is my feeling...

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The Killing Tamales:...They're Tasty...But One Tamale Takes 30 Seconds Off Your Life Expectancy...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - Eating is fun here along the Texas-Mexico border. You can find generous helpings of a variety of fat-rich Mexican food. Eat and be happy, yes, but watch out for those tamales.

Nutritionists will tell you that you risk losing 30 seconds of your lifetime span with every tamale you eat. The reason? Lard.

Lard build-up is the silent killer in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. One tamale contains enough lard to cook a dozen eggs, say those who know about such things. And you say you eat an order of six every time you sit down to scarf a plate of pork or beef or bean tamales? Well, sock away some cash for the early gravesite.

Americans are living longer these days. The average life expectancy of U.S. males today is 80.8 years, according to the World Health Organization. American women can expect to live about 75.6 years on average. That's not bad, but Japanese men live to the ripe age of 82.2 and Japanese women to age 79.4.

Mexico's males on average live to age 76.2 and Mexican woman to age 73.7.

The RGV residents, perhaps because they gleefully chase the maize-rich Mexican diet likely live to ages closer to Mexico than to their U.S. counterparts. It's something to think about this food-heavy Holiday Season, a time of the year when tamales fill the dinner tables in homes from one end of the Valley to the other.

Tamales are delicious; they just bite you at life's end.

Eating a dozen tamales will take six minutes off your life. How many have you eaten to this point?...

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The Time of Times:...Comes A Day To Be Civil...Politics Is Only One Game We Play...Thank God For Year's End...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - And so we're near the end of another year. There, in ragged images still clear in our minds, is that silly string of sad photography that speaks mostly to our selfishness, our prejudices, our inability to be united, our bigotry, our desire to lash and not embrace. It's been yet another doozy.

But we're on the lip of the Holiday Season.

Slowly, but surely, we will make the turn toward believing in our fellow man, in all that is good during a time that has been, well, bad. We were thinking about this when the cool breezes arrived yesterday and when we ventured out into the community and caught glimpses of the annual celebration that is our way of being grateful and thankful and our way of acknowledging our creator.

There will be time again next year for bad politics, for bad politicians, for screaming, for damning, for playing the horrible game of tearing each other apart, for bullshit. We are blessed to live in this country, a land where we absolutely can lob inanities at each other at will. We are free to blast the neighbor for his disdain of the lawnmower. We are free to think thoughts about the low-rent eateries around here some believe ought to be shut down by the authorities. We are free to create and to destroy. We are free to be idiots and naysayers and do-nothings and morons and abusive. There is no real talent required to be an American. We are free to act out our fantasies and our stupidities as if we're all on television.

And that's okay. It makes for a colorful existence. We are of many stripes and I suspect that most of us, even here in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, wouldn't like to live in a  country where it was only Egyptians, only Japanese, only Czechs, only Germans, only Brits, only Mexicans to be seen in one's community.

We are free. Celebrate it in some shape or form daily. Yeah, somewhere in between your yelling at that city commissioner you loathe, that governor you think is a fool, that neighbor whose wife is more attractive than your own. It's okay to breathe...freely...

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Elections 2010:...So, Now What?...The Ground Moved, But It Always Moves In Our National Politics...Nobody Died...We Beat Onward...

"Buy the ticket, take the ride..." - Hunter S. Thompson

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - American politics always has been a cheap carnival ride full of fools, idiots, thugs, criminals, and, when we're lucky, a few smart people. Yesterday's mid-term elections brought the usual characters and the expected results. As theater, it was an Off-Broadway play where the witch and the porno freak did not make it to the last act and the kid from out west came from behind to get the gal.

In between the best and worst scenes, the fast-ragging country got a helicopter camera shot of exactly where its mood is these days. Like a newly-divorced woman, it wants change and it wants it now. Not big change, cause the Democrats still hold the White House and the U.S. Senate, but just enough to set a different tone. The GOP awakes today knowing it now has control of the House of Representatives, and that ballsy Speaker of the House, Democrat Nancy Pelosi, will be replaced by Republican Congressman John Boehner of Ohio (shown grimacing in photo). In early commentary, pundits are saying the House will flex its subpoena powers and tackle such burning issues as President Barack Obama's birthplace (many Republicans insist he was born in Kenya and, thus, ineligible to hold the office). Will they repeal the health care reform passed under the previous Congress? Not likely, although they will chip-away at certain aspects of it, none major.

As expected by the more insightful, Republican Christine O'Donnell's witchy Tea Party bid failed in Delaware, as did the GOP's Sharron Angle's in Nevada and crazy Republican Carl "Porno Freak" Paladino's in New York. In Florida, Republican Marco Rubio beat party-changer Charlie Crist for the governorship, and, in Texas, Republican Rick Perry beat Democrat Bill White. Still in play was the crucial governor's race in California and the U.S. Senate contest in Alaska.

So, what does it mean?

Not much. History shows mid-term elections as being contests during which the party in power loses its pants. It happened to George W. Bush in 2006 and likely will happen again in 2014. What it tends to do is rally the losing party into gearing up for the ensuing national election, which in this case will be the presidential race in 2012.

In looking at how this election unfolded, one could see the noise come to life in a handful of contests that went full-dramatic. The tugging was vigorous, but the thread nonetheless held. America plays a rough game of political musical chairs. That is what gives rise to people such as Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich and Richard M. Nixon and, now, the ever-slurring, always tanned John Boehner, a Speaker of the House who will bring us antics often seen at the circus.

The ticket was handed to you the day you were born into this great land. It's a wild roller-coaster, a runaway bus, a battered Conestoga wagon, a muddy pickup, a shiny SUV, a rusting PT Cruiser, a usedVolvo, a rolling 18-wheeler.

Take the ride, absolutely...

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The Blogger's Confession:...It's As We'd Imagined...Just Another Urchin...We're Not Interested, Lad...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - We're pretty loose here at The Tribune. Often, we allow some sort of questionable commenter to have his silly say. It's called allowing for Life and the noise it brings, so perhaps that's why we're doing this. As most of you who follow local Blogs know, we have an old man posing as our resident cyber-urchin. Jake is his preferred moniker on MyHarlingenNews.com and on MyLeaderNews.com and a few other Blogs, although he also arrives as Ren and Renolds and Ralphy. He is one of those despicable dudes likely tied to his home computer and no doubt waiting on his poor wife to come home from work.

Well, Jake sent us an overnight Email.

Here it is, verbatim: "Say DPM, your comment to TCs (Ed. Note: Tony Chapa's MyHarlingenNews.com) blog directed to me was deleted. It pissed me off because it happened immediately after I had posted a response. But I'm going along with it. It reminds me of my old job. Where many times my work was ignored because some "supervisor" thought best of it. I'm sure I've already told you that I'm retired from ICE, right? I'm not a geezer like Deal or even TC, although I don't know how old TC really is. Even though he does act like some kind of senior citizen. But by the photo on his blog, I'm either just a few years younger or around the same age. I'm 55. Anyway, I'm going to stick by TC for the time being. But it is conceivable that I may lose it and go totally against him. We'll see. Oh, and DPM, no hard feelings, alright? - Jake."

Okay. Must be some sort of self-chased mental therapy for this guy. We've ignored him lately, but are of the opinion that he needs help. If his ceaseless comments are any indication, Jake is apparently obssessed with this writer and with homosexuality. What he wrote above is all we know about him, although his Email came from phy15@hotmail.com and he identifies himself as Ralph Garcia.
 
I know no one named Ralph Garcia and have never seen that Email address.
 
We do wish to rid ourselves of this slimeball, however, and hope that he sticks to posting his childish bullshit elsewhere. We've said it many times before, but you know what they say about bureaucratic brains. You simply have to keep pumping it into those lazy noggins over and over again.
 
Wanted to write that some other way, but perhaps Jake knows the concept of "pumping it." Still, now we know a little more about this insipid something or another. He reminds us very much of those dickless chumps in high school who just wanted, would die, to belong to the hip group.
 
Jake, we're not interested in anything you say or propose, but why don't you go get me a soda from the teacher's lounge...
 

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The Party of Exclusion: Teabaggers & The Craziest American Way...Kooks, Thugs and Crippled On Parade...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - When they arrived for their march on the nation's capital this past summer, members of the so-called Tea Party did their best to express their anger in stupid posters and signs (see photo above) that did little to bring them credibility. On the contrary, their petulance intially brought a slew of unqualified candidates and then ridicule. Today is their Waterloo.

So, what is it about this rag-tag group of racists, segregationists and unemployed psychos that delivers them on the rest of us? Can they ever be taken seriously in the main, or are they, like many fringe parties of the nation's past just another failed stab at belonging. One thing does separate Teabaggers from the earlier groups - anger.

If they're not handcuffing and detaining reporters, as happened in Alaska, they're knocking down and kicking those who protest them, or they're saying absurdities that belong in a high school election or in some country where brains are not part of the process. Will the party last beyond this election?

The odds - and history - say no.

Twenty years ago, it was Ross Perot's Reform Party that captured similar far-right Republican sentiments. And the Reform Party did shake the voter trees to the point that it cost Papa Bush (George H.W. Bush, the dad) the White House, when Reformers took many votes from him, allowing Democrat Bill Clinton to win in 1992. Heard anything about the well-financed Reform Party lately? Of course not, it's gone. So will be the Tea Party.

America knows these third parties as gatherings of a small amount of goofy, usually unemployed  citizens uninterested in doing anything for the entire country. The Tea Party's musings are not for all Americans. And that is why it will not survive any length of time. A big part of the reason is that  in our strong, two-party system, the Democrats and the Republicans are very much alike. They share more in common than they do not, in other words. Fringe groups such as the Tea Party separate themselves so much from the GOP and the Dems that a national sway will never follow them. You keep Blacks out and you're not inclusive. You keep Hispanics out and ditto. All you have to do is listen. Listen and you shall hear the midnight madness of Tea Party candidates who openly blame America's problems solely on immigrants, on Blacks, on Hispanics, on Asians, on government programs, on the president, on foreigners, on everything & everybody but themselves.

Are they Americans?

By nationality, they are, but the Tea Party's philosophy seems to apply only to a certain sector of the nation: the Sarah Palins, the Carl Paladino's, the Sharron Angles, the Christine O'Donnells. See the pattern?

It's mildly hilarious, like an audible fart at a crucial moment in lovemaking, I imagine.

But, then, most Americans share very little with the die-hard, racist Teabaggers. And the only salvation is that the obvious now comes due for them - the end of the silly flirtation. Oh, perhaps one or two will win today. But, really, win what, a seat at the country's already-entrenched political table? Perhaps it never did dawn on them that they'd be serving alongside a huge number of Democrats and Republicans who would never, ever align with their retarded approach to public service.

Carl "Porno Freak" Paladino in New York?

Sharron "No Abortions for Rape" Angle in Nevada?

Christine "I'm not a Witch" O'Donnell in Delaware?

The mother hen Sarah Palin in Alaska?

Uh, no. The noisy Reform Party postured billionaire Ross Perot in 1992 and he did not even come close to defeating the less-wealthy Bill Clinton. All he did was take votes the elder Bush needed, but never received. America is not Mexico, where fringe parties surface every other year and gain some place in that country's Congress. It seems we're a bit more sophisticated, although, because of who and what we are, we allow anybody to paste a name alongside his/her candidadcy and make perhaps too much noise...

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Election 2010: A Year of Living Stupidly...Who Will Win & Who Will Lose?...Few Novel Ideas...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Editor-In-Chief

McALLEN, Texas - As American voters march to the polls tomorrow, they will be casting votes for some well-qualified candidates and a handful of very strange wannabes. The nation's politics have never been so frayed as they are at present, but there is really nothing wrong with that. It's the system we've known for all these years.

In Delaware, Tea Party senatorial candidate Christine O'Donnell offers her debt-ridden history and flirtation with witchcraft as two principal qualifications. In Nevada, the brain-challeneged Republican Sharron Angle, also a Teabagger, arrives with idea that span use of weapons to remedy the country's problems to denying abortion even in the case of rape. They're not alone, however. In races set to be decided in Alaska and Florida and Ohio and Texas and New York, similarly-odd Americans are posting themselves for victory.

The country's problems are many, as it happens. So for these hardly-qualifed candidates (the Tea Party candidate for governor of New York, Carl Paladino, is accused of being a porno addict with stereotypical Italian sensibilities), tomorrow's vote is the day of reckoning.

We have sort of monitored many of these national contests and can only come up with one example of what we consider a positive proposal: The state of Washington's ballot initiative to, yeah, adopt a state income tax that would affect only the rich.

Who's backing that one?

You may know the name: Bill Gates. Sr.

And, for residents of the far northwest, it is something of a goldmine they'll tap into if the measure passes. Seattle counts a large number of millionaires. To his credit, the elder Gates, shown in photo above, is contributing his own money to push for the legislation, which would bring yet additional tax burdens on his ultra-millionaire son, Bill Gates, Jr. of Microsoft fame.

Aside from that, we have seen nothing as interesting in meaningful proposals offered by the candidates in this cycle, the so-called mid-term congressional elections.

Among the more interesting contests are the governorship of Texas ( a victory by Democrat Bill White over incumbent Republican Rick Perry would turn the state upside down in more ways than just redistricting of congressional districts), in New York and in California, a state where the Republican (Meg Whitman) has spent $160 million of her own money.

It'll all be something to watch, absolutely.

Pundits on the wall-to-wall cable news programs predict the Republican Party will win a majority in the House of Representatives, a development being seen as both a  plus and minus for President Barack Obama, a Democrat. A Republican takeover would see Democrat and Californian Nancy Pelosi hand over the gavel to Republican John Boehner of Ohio. That would create a new working dynamic for the White House.

For the most part, this year's contest will not bring great change to the country. Tea Party candidate for the U.S. Senate Rand Paul and others of such minds will arrive as junior senators, and history tells us that, at best, all junior members of Congress ever accomplish is raising the volume of Washington, D.C.'s regular noise.

Still, it is the American electoral system at work. Some years, we see smart, prepared  citizens posturing themselves as public servants. And other years, we see what we are seeing today...

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