Obama in Puerto Rico

The Brian Lehrer Show

Why Obama Is Visiting Puerto Rico

An Interview with Angelo Falcón

By Stephen Reader

WNYC-FM (June 13, 2011)

To listen to the Angelo Falcón interview, click here

Florida is more in play for Democrats than ever before, and this trip is a way to appeal to folks in places like Florida because there's been a lot of growth in the Puerto Rican population there.

Welcome to Politics Bites, where every afternoon at WNYC's It's A Free Country blog, we bring you the unmissable quotes from the morning's political conversations on WNYC. Today on the Brian Lehrer Show, Angelo Falcon, President and founder of the National Institute for Latino Policy, discussed the significance of President Obama's visit to Puerto Rico and the way changes in Latino demographics will impact the 2012 election.

What Puerto Rico means to Florida

Angelo Falcon noted that it seems like a strange visit for the president to make. Puerto Ricans can vote in presidential primaries, but not in the general election-so why is Obama making a fundraising excursion there, especially when Puerto Rico's governor is more a Tea Party favorite who's been slashing budgets?

The answer lies in ballooning Puerto Rican populations stateside, Falcon said.

Florida is traditionally known as a Republican stronghold. Now there are so many Puerto Ricans in the state, more than 700,000, that it's kind of changed the calculus down there politically. It's more in play for Democrats than ever before, and this trip is a way to appeal to folks in places like Florida because there's been a lot of growth in the Puerto Rican population there.

Pennsylvania is another swing state with a large Puerto Rican population. At this stage in the campaign, there's plenty of value in a visit that looks good to Latino voters.

'He's walking into a lot of issues'

Most Americans have little knowledge of Puerto Rico's problems, much less the complex workings of the Puerto Rican government. Falcon cited the issue of statehood and a pronounced, protracted economic slump that's worse than most on the mainland. How Obama addresses these concerns could have a surprisingly large impact on his reelection effort, said Falcon.

The official unemployment rate is about 16 or 17 percent. It's a major economic crisis, and a White House task force is meeting in Puerto Rico the day after the president leaves to talk about economic issues having to do with Puerto Rico. The president is going to be talking about federal stimulus money that went to Puerto Rico to highlight difference it made.

He's walking into a lot of issues which will resonate with how his presidential campaign develops. People don't vote for President in Puerto Rico, but they do raise money and they send a sizable delegation to theDemocratic convention.

President Obama Gives Mixed Messages to Muslims

President Obama recently made a trip to Turkey to tell the Muslim World that he is not at war with Muslims. The ironic thing to me is that Turkey does not represent the heart of the Muslim World. It may have over a hundred years ago, but not now. The symbolism behind Pres. Obama going to Turkey and making this statement makes me sick to the stomach. The reason I say this is because the Turkish government has shown opposition to Islam since the Young Turks came into power at the beginning of the last century. At the head of the Young Turks' movement was Ataturk the first president of the contemporary nation-state. During Pres. Obama's visit to Turkey, he paid homeage to Ataturk.

So why did Pres. Obama go to Turkey to give this message and not Egypt, Saudi Arabia, or Pakistan? These countries more represent Islam than Turkey. The vision of Turkey is one of an extreme secular Muslim state. Is this the real message that Pres. Obama is giving the Muslims? Will he tolerate the Muslims so long as we "modernize" and reinterpret our din to fit in to our nuffs (desires)? If this is the case, then I do not see any real difference in his policies towards to Muslim World and former President GW Bush's policies. The only difference may be that he is not try to all out kill Muslims to change them, and he is not tracking down American Muslims in every masjid and corner of the US. While the differences are refreshing, the similiarities are dangerous (to say the least) to Muslims.

So Mr. President, will you tolerate an Islam that is practiced according to the Quran and the Sunnah and the way that the pious predecessors of Islam practiced it? Actions speak louder than words.

Here is an article on Pres. Obama's recent trip to Turkey:

Obama tells Turkey: U.S. ‘not at war with Islam’: In parliament, president calls for greater partnership with Islamic world

The Associated Press
updated 2:19 p.m. CT, Mon., April. 6, 2009

ANKARA, Turkey - Barack Obama, making his first visit to a Muslim nation as president, declared Monday the United States “is not and will never be at war with Islam.”

Urging a greater partnership with the Islamic world in an address to the Turkish parliament, Obama called the country an important ally in many areas, including the fight against terrorism. He devoted much of his speech to urging a greater bond between Americans and Muslims, portraying terrorist groups such as al-Qaida as extremists who do not represent the vast majority of Muslims.

“Let me say this as clearly as I can,” Obama said. “The United States is not and will never be at war with Islam. In fact, our partnership with the Muslim world is critical ... in rolling back the violent ideologies that people of all faiths reject.”
The U.S. president is trying to mend fences with a Muslim world that felt it had been blamed by America for the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Arab channels carry Obama liveAt a news conference earlier with President Abdullah Gul, Obama dealt gingerly with the issue of alleged genocide committed by Turks against Armenians during World War I. He urged Turks and Armenians to continue a process “that works through the past in a way that is honest, open and constructive.”

Al Jazeera and Al Arabiyia, two of the biggest Arabic satellite channels, carried Obama’s speech live.

“America’s relationship with the Muslim community,” he said, “cannot and will not just be based upon opposition to terrorism. We seek broader engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”

“We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world, including in my own country,” he said.

The president spoke for about 25 minutes from a small white-marble-and-teak rostrum in the well of a vast, airy chamber packed with Turkish lawmakers in orange leather chairs.

Except for a few instances of polite applause, the room was quiet during his speech. There was a more hearty ovation toward the end when Obama said the U.S. supports the Turkish government’s battle against PKK, which both nations consider a terrorist group, and again when he said America was not at war with Islam. Lawmakers also applauded when Obama said the United States supports Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.

Touching on Turkey-Armenian tensionsEarlier, Obama said he stood by his 2008 assertion that Ottoman Turks had carried out widespread killings of Armenians early in the 20th century, but he stopped short of repeating the word “genocide.”

Gul said many Turkish Muslims were killed during the same period. Historians, not politicians, Gul said, should decide how to label the events of those times.
In his 2008 campaign, Obama said “the Armenian genocide is not an allegation,” but rather “a widely documented fact supported by an overwhelming body of historical evidence.”

Now that he is president, the genocide question may not be Obama’s best issue for taking a tough stand that antagonizes an ally. It is important in U.S. communities with large numbers of Armenian-Americans, but it has a low profile elsewhere.

In his speech to the parliament Monday, Obama said the United States strongly supports the full normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia. He also noted that the United States “still struggles with the legacies of slavery and segregation, the past treatment of Native Americans.”

The president also urged Turkey to help Israel and Palestine live “side by side in peace and security.”

Obama’s visit is being closely watched by an Islamic world that harbored deep distrust of his predecessor, George W. Bush.

In talks with Gul, and Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Obama hoped to sell his strategy for melding U.S. troop increases with civilian efforts to better the lives of people in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

After meeting later in the day with Erdogan, Obama said: “Turkey is a critical strategic partner with the United States, not just in combating terrorism, but in developing the kind of economic links, cultural links and political links that will allow both countries to prosper and I truly believe the entire region and the world to prosper.”

Obama recognized past tensions in the U.S.-Turkey relationship, but said things were on the right track now because both countries share common interests and are diverse nations. “We do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation,” he said at the news conference. “We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.”

He said he believes that “modern Turkey was founded with a similar set of principles.”

Obama’s trip to Turkey, his final scheduled country visit, ties together themes of earlier stops. He attended the Group of 20 economic summit in London, celebrated NATO’s 60th anniversary in Strasbourg, France, and on Saturday visited the Czech Republic, which included a summit of European Union leaders in Prague.

Turkey opposed the war in Iraq in 2003 and U.S. forces were not allowed to go through Turkey to attack Iraq. Now, however, since Obama is withdrawing troops, Turkey has become more cooperative. It will be a key country after the U.S. withdrawal in maintaining stability, although it has long had problems with Kurdish militants in north Iraq.

Turkey maintains a small military force in Afghanistan, part of the NATO contingent working with U.S. troops to beat back the resurgent Taliban and deny al-Qaida a safe haven along the largely lawless territory that straddles Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan. Turkey’s participation in fighting Islamic extremism carries enormous symbolic importance to the Muslim world, and Turkey has diplomatic leverage with Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30065504/

On the Obama Victory
By, Khalil Al-Puerto Rikani


First, I would like to congratulate President-Elect, Senator Barack Hussein Obama for running an excellent campaign and winning the presidency. I guess hope did win over fear this time. Secondly, I wrote these comments down a few days after the election, but due to the demand in my live (including taking graduate level classes) I was not able to get this out sooner. Since the time I have jotted down these ideas until now, I seen that many of the things I am talking about are starting to be answered. I also think there are some issues there that no one else has talked about – such as the first point and the second. Dr. Ali Mazrui, a Kenyan professor of political science (and one of my teachers) who teaches at my alma mater, SUNY-Binghamton has just published something the other day making a very similar claims to my second point. However, we came to our conclusions independently of each other. The third point here was thought of before Ayman Al-Zawahiri (as the media calls him) made his statement about Obama. Another case in point, is point number five. At this point in time, he is setting up of a centrist-conservative goverment as opposed a leftist government. Therefore, it seems like he is not moving back to the left

US Blacks v. Black Immigrants
Obama is not an African-American but an American African. (Prof Ali Mazrui has used this distinction in some of his books). His roots are not in the African-American experience. A point to keep in mind is that not all Blacks are African-Americans. It was only about a little less than midway through the primaries when African-Americans started to accept him as one of their own. There are definitely many distinct differences in beliefs and values among Blacks from the US and those from the Caribbean, Latin America, or Africa.

Non-practicing Muslim or An Opening for Muslims
It seems that the only type of Muslim that is acceptable to mainstream America is the one who does not really practice Islam. Obama represents one who has Muslim roots yet does not practice Islam. Is this the only acceptable type of “Muslim”? On the other side of the coin, could this be the opening up of the door for there to one day be a practicing Muslim in the office of the president. I think this is what trully scared right-wingers, the Chistian right, neo-cons, and Muslim haters. It was not that they really believed that Obama was some sort of Muslim in the closet (at least the leaders of these movements did not really believe this; it was propaganda for the masses). Their fear was more based upon the breaking down of Islamophobia and Americans actually coming to terms with Muslims and perhaps electing one some day in the future. This potential is scarier to them than the reality of Obama’s Islamic roots.

What affect will this have on Arab racism?
How will racism among Arabs have them react towards Blacks? I think we are already starting to see this with Ayman Azh-Zhawahiri Al-Khariji At-Takfiri’s statement about Obama being an ‘`abeedul-bait’ (house Negro or literally ‘a house slave). The fact that a Black man has won the highest seat in the world is a huge blow to Arab racism, and I do not know if this point and its ramifications are well understood yet? Arab leaders will now have to be “subservient” to a Black president. They can no longer claim that Blacks are inferior. Or perhaps maybe this may motivate them to stop kissing the US’s butt?

President that the world can look up to like JFK
We saw that the world was ecstatic when Obama won the presidency. Simply put, people want an America that they can look up to. As the old cliché goes, “you win more bees with honey.” Bush’s cowboy politics only helped to galvanize the world and help to breed more terrorists. This (in addition to racism) is why Ayman Azh-Zhawahir Al-Khariji At-Takfiri really hates Obama.

Will he move to the left?
Now that the general campaign is over will Obama be moving back to the left? General election campaigns are known for presidential candidates moving to the center; as opposed to primaries where each side is trying to appeal to its base and are more leftist or rightist (depending on which side their party represents).

Rhetoric on War
I hope all that “tough guy” talk about Afghanistan and Pakistan was just that – talk. I hope he was just trying to appeal to the right. For me, I cannot help support anymore wars in the world; especially, when these wars have a devastating effect on the Muslims.

Racism in the US is not over.
Definitely, racism is not over. I am sure there are many out there who would like to believe it is. They want to forget that racism ever existed and sweep it under the rug. They can now condone racism or turn a blind eye to it, by saying, “How could there be racism in the US when we have a Black president?”

Is neoconservatism over?
This election was a victory for religious progressives over the religious right who like to tell religious practicing people that they should vote for nuts like Bush because he is anti-abortion, for example. While issues of family values are very important to me and I am strongly opposed to things like abortion and homosexuality, I will not vote for a war-mongering, racist, Muslim-hater just because he/she shares these values on family with me. The fact that Obama is a religious man (as are most Black folk) also means that we, as American, are strongly opposed to atheism and extreme forms of secularism. I am sure there are many secularist humanists who would prefer a president who wants religion to play no part in politics. For them, I guess, Obama was just a lesser of two evils if this is a main concern for them.

McKinney or Obama? Don't Waste Your Vote!!

This is an article that I recieved a few week ago from NYC activist Ronald B. McGuire. It has an interesting take on such issues as progressive politics, third party candidates, wasting a vote, and de-imperializing America. The position taken by this author I feel should be seriously considered by those progressives in those states that he mentions. I think he make a pretty convincing argument.

McKinney or Obama? Don't Waste Your Vote!!
By, Ronald B. McGuire

Youngbloods, Elders and Friends:

Why should we vote for Cynthia McKinney and Rosa Clemente? One good reason is that your vote for Obama will be wasted if you live in New York, California, New Jersey, Connecticut, Oregon, Washington State, Washington D.C., Vermont or Illinois, where most of the folks on my list live. Obama will win all those states by landslides with or without our votes. The Democrats easily carried New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont and Illinois in the last four presidential elections. In New York and all the other states listed, it has been at least 20 years since the Republicans carried those states.

All of us would rather have Obama as President than McCain. But most of us recognize that the Democratic Party and the Republican Party both represent the same corporate interests that have made the United States the enemy of people seeking freedom and self-determination throughout the world. Obama is pledged to continue those evil policies. Even Obama's so-called opposition to the Iraq war is really a promise to redeploy troops from Iraq to Afghanistan and possibly Iran and to continue the U.S. war against "radical Islam." The war against "radical Islam" is actually a euphemism for American and Israeli opposition to self-determination in the Middle East and the rest of the Third World.

We need to build an alternative to the two headed one party system. We need a party that offers us more than a choice between two evil imperialist candidates every four years.

During the Democratic convention Cynthia McKinney attended a rally opposing the occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and North America where the U.S. continues to violate treaties with the Native Americans. Obama wants to redeploy U.S. troops from Iraq to Afghanistan, and possibly Iran. He supports the Zionist occupation of Palestine. Obama calls for the overthrow of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and Cynthia supports Mugabe's land reform program to return to Native Zimbabweans land forcibly stolen by European settlers.

Cynthia and Rosa have consistently supported a foreign policy based on peace and justice. They support reparations to the victims of American imperialism in the United States (slavery reparations) and abroad. They support free public college education, child care, health care and worker rights.

Cynthia and Rosa won't be elected this year. But they are both young enough to be elected in 12 to 20 years.

It took 400 years for this country to develop into the imperialist empire that the United States is today. It will take us more than 4 years to create an alternative.

Cynthia and Rosa need to get as many votes they can in order to show the Democrats that there are people in this country who will not buy the lie that Obama is the most progressive alternative we can hope for. A vote for Obama in New York or any of the other state where he is guaranteed to win by landslides, won't help him defeat McCain.

On the other hand, every vote for Cynthia and Rosa will do two things. First, it will show the Democrats (and Republicans) that there is a growing number of people who won't accept the fact that Obama is the most progressive alternative we can expect.

Second, your vote for Cynthia and Rosa will help build an alternative we can believe in. If the Green Party gets 5% of the national vote, the Party will qualify for millions of dollars of taxpayer matching funds in 2012. That would change the nature of the political process since it would end the two party system. The Democrats would have to negotiate with the Greens or else face the possibility of a third party continuing to grow and eventually contend for power.

Some of us want to move the Democratic Party to the left and others of us want to move out of the Democratic Party to create a new alternative. If you support either of these two goals and you vote in New York, California or another "Blue landslide" state, the best way to support your goal is to vote for Cynthia and Rosa.

Nothing can change the fact that Obama is going to win New York, California and most of the other "Blue" states by landslides. But if we vote for Cynthia and Rosa we can change the future. Our votes can't help Obama win those states. But our votes for Cynthia and Rosa will show the next President that there is a growing third party movement which the two headed Republican/Democratic Party must consider.

Your vote for Cynthia and Rosa will help send a wake-up call to the Democratic Party. If the Democratic Party refuses to wake up, then those votes will build an alternative to the two party system that is leading the United States and the world to more suffering, war and barbarism.

Vote for the future!
Vote for change we can believe in!
Vote for Cynthia and Rosa!

Ronald B. McGuire

An 'Idiot Wind'John McCain's latest attempt to link Barack Obama to extremism

Friday, October 31, 2008; A18

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/10/30/AR2008103003244.html

WITH THE presidential campaign clock ticking down, Sen. John McCain has suddenly discovered a new boogeyman to link to Sen. Barack Obama: a sometimes controversial but widely respected Middle East scholar named Rashid Khalidi. In the past couple of days, Mr. McCain and his running mate, Gov. Sarah Palin, have likened Mr. Khalidi, the director of a Middle East institute at Columbia University, to neo-Nazis; called him "a PLO spokesman"; and suggested that the Los Angeles Times is hiding something sinister by refusing to release a videotape of a 2003 dinner in honor of Mr. Khalidi at which Mr. Obama spoke. Mr. McCain even threw former Weatherman Bill Ayers into the mix, suggesting that the tape might reveal that Mr. Ayers -- a terrorist-turned-professor who also has been an Obama acquaintance -- was at the dinner.

For the record, Mr. Khalidi is an American born in New York who graduated from Yale a couple of years after George W. Bush. For much of his long academic career, he taught at the University of Chicago, where he and his wife became friends with Barack and Michelle Obama. In the early 1990s, he worked as an adviser to the Palestinian delegation at peace talks in Madrid and Washington sponsored by the first Bush administration. We don't agree with a lot of what Mr. Khalidi has had to say about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict over the years, and Mr. Obama has made clear that he doesn't, either. But to compare the professor to neo-Nazis -- or even to Mr. Ayers -- is a vile smear.

Perhaps unsurprising for a member of academia, Mr. Khalidi holds complex views. In an article published this year in the Nation magazine, he scathingly denounced Israeli practices in the West Bank and Gaza Strip and U.S. Middle East policy but also condemned Palestinians for failing to embrace a nonviolent strategy. He said that the two-state solution favored by the Bush administration (and Mr. Obama) was "deeply flawed" but conceded there were also "flaws in the alternatives." Listening to Mr. Khalidi can be challenging -- as Mr. Obama put it in the dinner toast recorded on the 2003 tape and reported by the Times in a detailed account of the event last April, he "offers constant reminders to me of my own blind spots and my own biases."

It's fair to question why Mr. Obama felt as comfortable as he apparently did during his Chicago days in the company of men whose views diverge sharply from what the presidential candidate espouses. Our sense is that Mr. Obama is a man of considerable intellectual curiosity who can hear out a smart, if militant, advocate for the Palestinians without compromising his own position. To suggest, as Mr. McCain has, that there is something reprehensible about associating with Mr. Khalidi is itself condemnable -- especially during a campaign in which Arab ancestry has been the subject of insults. To further argue that the Times, which obtained the tape from a source in exchange for a promise not to publicly release it, is trying to hide something is simply ludicrous, as Mr. McCain surely knows.

Which reminds us: We did ask Mr. Khalidi whether he wanted to respond to the campaign charges against him. He answered, via e-mail, that "I will stick to my policy of letting this idiot wind blow over." That's good advice for anyone still listening to the McCain campaign's increasingly reckless ad hominem attacks. Sadly, that wind is likely to keep blowing for four more days.

Puerto Rico...Obama Island?

Being that Senators Obama and Clinton are spending their Memorial day weekend on the island, I felt it appropriate to post something on the primary and Puerto Rico. Actually, I want to refer you all to a great article a read on the topic. Click on the link below.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/5/21/75834/3293/165/519524

Why Hillary Lost My Daughter and Me

By, Mona Gable

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mona-gable/why-hillary-lost-my-daugh_b_101567.html

This morning I asked my 15-year-old daughter what she didn't like about Hillary Clinton.

"I mean at the beginning, before she started going negative and attacking Barack Obama," I said, trying to rewind history.

My daughter was sitting at the kitchen table, where thousands of impassioned conversations in America have taken place last year about the historic possibility of the first female president. She didn't have much trouble answering. Not simply because she's a thoughtful young woman, an unabashed feminist, who relishes a good political argument as much as her mother.

Compared with that other historic candidate, for her there was no contest. "I didn't find her inspirational at all," she said flatly of Clinton.

As for Barack Obama, she heard in his soothing voice, his brilliant speeches, his very demeanor, the language of her generation. The language of inclusion and hope. "He talks about change, and I believe him," my daughter said, her face lighting up.

We've heard a lot about the power of inspiration during this long heated race. From the beginning Hillary was roundly dismissive of such talk. Oh, those naïve young people! she condescended. Those starry-eyed kids drinking the Obama punch! Maybe if she had been less tone-deaf, less a political weathervane changing her message and her campaign staff (remember Clinton loyalist Patti Solis Doyle?) almost as often as her suits, Hillary might not have caused such angst and handwringing among feminists. Even as older women and feminists icons like Gloria Steinem rallied to her, many young women found her stuffy, rigid, imperious -- a throwback to establishment politics.

As Obama supporter Courtney Martin wrote on Glamour magazine's blog last month about part of her discomfort with Hillary: "She reminds me of being scolded by my mother."

Obama's ability to inspire young people is precisely what has energized my daughter, whose enduring memory of the presidency has been the nightmarish Bush years. She doesn't feel conflicted in the least. And it's hard for me to blame her. This is why the daughters of Caroline Kennedy and Claire McCaskill -- hardly feminist "traitors" as Hillary defectors have been so absurdly called -- were able to persuade their politically savvy mothers to come out for Obama. His promise of change.

Unlike my daughter, part of me feels sad for Clinton as her campaign sputters to an end. Part of me wanted her to succeed. Not because I believed her to be "ready on Day One" to use her embarrassingly hackneyed claim. Or because of her tireless efforts to reform health care, another tragic failure of the Bush years. Or because she embodied for me all the times I had seen women earn less for doing the same job as men. A reality that continues to afflict working women in this country with little progress in sight. My reasons are purely emotional. I have friends who believed in Hillary. I understand their disappointment.

If only she had been the right woman at the right time. And this is what it comes down to, not only for my daughter but for millions of young, middle-aged and older women in America. They placed their faith in Clinton's candidacy, only to find her wanting. Perhaps it was partly our fault. We saw in her defeat in Iowa, in her victories in New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, and now tonight surely in West Virginia, a symbol of what women had fought for - -the right to not just sit at the table but to actually lead.

But mostly I feel sad for her female supporters, the ones I saw last night standing behind her at a rally in West Virginia. The elderly women gamely waving their Hillary signs before the TV cameras cut away. Trying to put on a good front. Knowing that their dream is about to die.

Will Puerto Rico Have the Final Say in Obama Vs. Clinton?

Compiled by the DiversityInc staff.

Date Posted: February 20, 2008

http://www.diversityinc.com/public/3099.cfm

With 10 consecutive wins, presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama claimed victory in Wisconsin's and Hawaii's Democratic presidential primaries yesterday. Obama handed Sen. Hillary Clinton her latest defeat as the pair barrel toward critical upcoming contests in Texas and Ohio.

Yet while Obama is on a decisive winning streak now, if the race tightens up in the final days, the most unlikely of territories could in up playing a critical factor in selecting the Democratic nominee: Puerto Rico.

That's right. Once thought to be a mere afterthought in the primary process, the tiny island of 4 million, with its 63 delegates, may very well end up having a crucial say. Puerto Rico will hold the last caucus on June 7. Its delegate count is actually larger than that of several states, including Connecticut (60) South Carolina (54) and Oklahoma (45).

Many political pundits had already tossed Puerto Rico in the Clinton camp. But that was cast in doubt last week when Puerto Rico Gov. Anibal Acevdeo Vila endorsed Obama.

The residents of Puerto Rico find themselves in a peculiar scenario. They cannot actually cast a vote for president, but they are able to participate in primaries and send delegations to national party conventions, reports Angelo Falcón, president and founder of the National Institute for Latino Policy.

U.S. News & World Report columnist Michael Barone questions how the country at large would react to Puerto Rico having the final say.

"My guess is that most American voters, no matter how many times they are reminded that Puerto Ricans are our fellow citizens and that Puerto Rican volunteers in disproportionate numbers have shed their blood for their and our country, would consider it absurd for Puerto Rico to determine the presidential nominee of a major party," he notes.

Adds Falcón, "If this colonial delegation winds up determining the outcome, then this raises serious questions about the importance of holding the first primaries (the fight in 2012 might be which state will hold the last primary!) and the delicious irony of a people who cannot vote for U.S. president possibly determining who that person will be!"

Obama Wins Wis. for 9th Straight Triumph

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent

Associated Press

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CAMPAIGN_RDP?SITE=MIDTN&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama cruised past a fading Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Wisconsin primary Tuesday night, gaining the upper hand in a Democratic presidential race for the ages. It was Obama's ninth straight victory over the past three weeks, and left the former first lady in desperate need of a comeback in a race she long commanded as front-runner.

"The change we seek is still months and miles away," Obama told a boisterous crowd in Houston.
He cut deeply into Clinton's political bedrock in Wisconsin, splitting the support of white women in Wisconsin almost evenly with the former first lady and running well among working class voters in the blue collar battleground, according to polling place interviews.

The economy and trade were key issues in the race, and seven in 10 voters said international trade has resulted in lost jobs in Wisconsin. Fewer than one in five said trade has created more jobs than it has lost.

Clinton made no mention of her defeat, and showed no sign of surrender in an appearance in Youngstown, Ohio.

"Both Senator Obama and I would make history," the former first lady said. "But only one of us is ready on day one to be commander in chief, ready to manage our economy, and ready to defeat the Republicans. Only one of us has spent 35 years being a doer, a fighter and a champion for those who need a voice."

In a clear sign of their standing in the race, most cable television networks abruptly cut away from coverage of Clinton's rally when Obama began to speak in Texas.

Sen. John McCain won the Republican primary with ease, dispatching former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and edging closer to the 1,191 delegates he needs to clinch the GOP nomination at the party convention in St. Paul, Minn. next summer.

In scarcely veiled criticism of Obama, the Republican nominee-in-waiting said, "I will fight every moment of every day in this campaign to make sure that Americans are not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change."

McCain's nomination has been assured since Super Tuesday three weeks ago, as first one, then another of his former rivals has dropped out and the party establishment has closed ranks behind him.

Not so in the Democratic race, where Obama and Clinton campaign seven days a week, he the strongest black presidential candidate in history, she bidding to become the first woman to sit in the White House.

Ohio and Texas vote next on March 4 — 370 convention delegates in all — and even some of Clinton's supporters concede she must win one, and possibly both, to remain competitive.

Wisconsin independents cast about one-quarter of the ballots in the race between Obama and Clinton, and roughly 15 percent of the electorate were first-time voters, the survey at polling places said. Obama has run strongly among independents in earlier primaries, and among younger voters, and cited their support as evidence that he would make a stronger general election candidate in the fall.

With the votes counted in nearly one-quarter of the state's precincts, Obama was winning 56 percent of the vote, to 43 percent for Clinton.

Wisconsin offered 74 national convention delegates. There were 20 delegates at stake in caucuses in Hawaii, where Obama spent part of his youth.

Obama's victory allowed him to expand his delegate edge over Clinton.

He had 1,294, and Clinton had 1,218 in The Associated Press count, with most of Wisconsin's delegates still to be allocated. It takes 2,025 to win the nomination at the party's national convention in Denver.

Obama began the evening with eight straight primary and caucus victories, a remarkable run that has propelled him past Clinton in the overall delegate race and enabled him to chip away at her advantage among elected officials within the party who will have convention votes as superdelegates.

The Democrats' focus on trade was certain to intensify, with primaries in Ohio in two weeks and in Pennsylvania on April 22.

Obama's campaign has already distributed mass mailings critical of Clinton on the issue in Ohio. "Bad trade deals like NAFTA hit Ohio harder than most states. Only Barack Obama consistently opposed NAFTA," it said.

Obama was in Texas, which has primaries and caucuses on March 4, and Clinton was in Ohio as the votes were counted in Wisconsin.

Clinton's aides initially signaled she would virtually concede Wisconsin, and the former first lady spent less time in the state than Obama.

Even so, she ran a television ad that accused her rival of ducking a debate in the state and added that she had the only health care plan that would cover all Americans and the only economic plan to stop home foreclosures. "Maybe he'd prefer to give speeches than have to answer questions" the commercial said.

Obama countered with an ad of his own, saying his health care plan would cover more people.

The campaign grew increasingly testy over the weekend, when Clinton's aides accused Obama of plagiarism for delivering a speech that included words that had first been uttered by Deval Patrick, the Massachusetts governor and a friend of Obama.

"I really don't think this is too big of a deal," Obama said, eager to lay the issue to rest quickly. He said Clinton had used his slogans, too.

Even before the votes were tallied in one state, the campaigners were looking ahead.

Unlike the Democratic race, McCain was assured of the Republican nomination and concentrated on turning his primary campaign into a general election candidacy.

Huckabee parried occasional suggestions — none of them by McCain — that he quit the race. In a move that was unorthodox if not unprecedented for a presidential contender, he left the country in recent days to make a paid speech in the Grand Cayman Islands.

McCain picked up endorsements in the days before the primary from former President George H.W. Bush and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a campaign dropout who urged his 280 delegates to swing behind the party's nominee-to-be.

Obama Sets Record Straight on His Religion: Presidential Candidate Battles Misconception That He's a Muslim

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22767392/

COLUMBIA, S.C. - Barack Obama is stepping up his effort to correct the misconception that he's a Muslim now that the presidential campaign has hit the Bible Belt.

At a rally to kick off a weeklong campaign for the South Carolina primary, Obama tried to set the record straight from an attack circulating widely on the Internet that is designed to play into prejudices against Muslims and fears of terrorism.

"I've been to the same church _ the same Christian church _ for almost 20 years," Obama said, stressing the word Christian and drawing cheers from the faithful in reply. "I was sworn in with my hand on the family Bible. Whenever I'm in the United States Senate, I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. So if you get some silly e-mail ... send it back to whoever sent it and tell them this is all crazy. Educate."

Obama is referring to a debunked chain e-mail circulating widely on the Internet that suggests he is hiding his Islamic roots and may be a terrorist in disguise. It says he was sworn into the Senate on the Quran and turns his back on the flag during the pledge.

Some facts, some misstatementsThere are some truths in the e-mail's details. Obama's middle name is Hussein. His father and stepfather were Muslim. And he spent part of his childhood in Indonesia, a largely Muslim country. But he attended secular and Catholic schools, not a radical madrassa.

His campaign has been pushing back against the false rumors all year. His aides decried an incorrect news report that Obama was educated in a Muslim madrassa and a section of his Web site is devoted to correct that and other false rumors circulating on the Internet.

But they are stepping up the effort now that the campaign has hit South Carolina and soon turns to other southern states where religion is so important to voters. The campaign distributed an open letter from seven Jewish senators this weekend condemning the attacks; aides are planning an event this week to respond directly to the e-mails; and campaign representatives blanketed South Carolina churches Sunday with literature that touted Obama's Christian faith.

One piece features photos of Obama praying with the words "COMMITTED CHRISTIAN" in large letters across the middle. It says Obama will be a president "guided by his Christian faith" and includes a quote from him saying, "I believe in the power of prayer."

A second piece, which like the first doesn't mention the Muslim rumor, includes photos of Obama with his family and a caption that says they are active members of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago. It explains how as a young man Obama "felt a beckoning of the spirit and accepted Jesus Christ into his life."

Fighting against ClintonsObama says he's going to fight harder against other mischaracterizations about his positions that he says are being perpetrated by rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and her husband, the former president.

"When I see Senator Clinton, President Clinton distort my words ... that is not a way to move the debate forward, that is not a way to help the American people," Obama said during his rally at the Columbia Convention Center. "I am not running for president just to become president, I'm running to help the American people. I'm not willing to say or do anything just to win an election."

The Clinton campaign suggested the former president would continue pointing out what it says are inconsistencies in Obama's record.

"President Clinton is a huge asset to our campaign and will continue talking to the American people to press the case for Senator Clinton," said Clinton spokesman Phil Singer.

Obama adviser Steve Hildebrand said the campaign has organized "truth squads" made up of South Carolina supporters ready to defend Obama's record from any attacks made by the Clintons this week.

In an interview broadcast Monday on ABC's "Good Morning America," Obama said the former president "has taken his advocacy on behalf of his wife to a level that I think is pretty troubling" by making statements that are not supported by the facts.

"This has become a habit, and one of the things that we're going to have to do is to directly confront Bill Clinton when he's making statements that are not factually accurate," Obama said.
The Clinton campaign responded to Obama's interview with ABC by posting a fact check on a campaign Web site in an effort to bolster Bill Clinton's arguments against Obama.

"We understand Senator Obama is frustrated by his loss in Nevada, but facts are facts," Singer said.

Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Obama and the Latino Vote in the NY Times

I found this interesting article over at Abdul Halim's blog Planet Grenada. http://www.planetgrenada.blogspot.com/

Obama and the Latino Vote in the NY Times

(Baseball star David Ortiz, aka "Big Papi," just one of the millions of Afro-Latinos ignored - again - by the New York Times)

http://alisavaldesrodriguez.blogspot.com/2008/01/obama-and-latino-vote-in-ny-times.html

There are many things to admire about the New York Times. A complex and nuanced understanding of the vast diversity of Latino America is not among those things.

In a story on page A1 of the Times yesterday, reporters Adam Nagourney and Jennifer Steinhauer stated that Latinos are not going to support Senator Barack Obama in his bid for the White House because, “in Obama’s pursuit of Latinos, race plays a role.” In other words, they said that Latinos would not vote for a black man, and backed it up with nothing other than a couple of anecdotal quotes from random Latinos in Los Angeles.

The sloppy, inaccurate story goes on for 32 agonizing paragraphs, using the terms “black” and “Latino” as though they were mutually exclusive – which they are not. Historians estimate that 95 percent of the African slave trade to the Americas took place in Latin America.

To this day, the vast majority of people in the African diaspora live south of the U.S. border, in Latin American countries from Brazil to Colombia to Cuba and, yes, even Mexico. The song "La Bamba," in fact, was brought to the Veracruz region of Mexico by Africans enslaved to the Spanish. The song likely has roots in the Bembe (Bantu) culture from what is now the Congo. This is only a stone's throw, geographically, from the Kenya of Obama's father's birth.

How quickly we forget in this country. How brutally we refuse to learn.

The New York Times not only ignores completely the African history of Latin America by positioning "blacks" against "Latinos" as if none of us were both. To do so is enormously irresponsible because it dissolves from public consciousness the fact that African slavery was a crime committed all across this hemisphere, by colonial Europeans who spoke English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. The story also erroneously portrays Latinos as a race unto themselves - an error egregious enough to be stated in our own census bureau's definition of Hispanic as a person "of any race". Including "black".

The miserable Times story also uses “Latino” as a synonym for “Spanish-speaking,” which is as useless and ignorant as would be the assumption that all French-Americans speak French. Most Latinos in the US do not speak Spanish well. Many pretend they can, because they are afraid of being laughed at or called pochos by all those other Latinos pretending they speak Spanish. But the truth is: Most of us cannot speak Spanish after the second generation. This assimilation pattern is no different from that of the Germans, or the Italians. It's just that the Times, like the rest of Big Media, seems to have confused "immigrant" with "Latino" - another huge error. The Times story actually says Latinos are new to the American Southwest. Did they forget "Arizona" "Nevada" "California" "Colorado" "Montana" and even the city of the story's dateline, "Las Vegas" are SPANISH WORDS? Jesus Christ. New here? C'mon. Some of us are. Some of us, clearly, are not.

It is not difficult to find information about the long history of Latinos in America, or Afro-Latinos, or even on linguistic preference among Latinos in the United States; among those who will vote (citizens) the vast majority are English-dominant and do not speak Spanish well enough to consume media in that language.

Mysteriously, the story opens with Hillary Clinton eating a taco (at King Taco, with Villaraigosa, no less) in East Los Angeles. It is one of three taco references in the story. Need we remind the Times that tacos are no ubiquitous among the nation's diverse Latinos? Or that tacos are considered mainstream American fare? Or that tacos, if you trace their ethnographic lineage, are actually Native American in origins?

Tacos. Latinos. East Los Angeles. Villaraigosa. It's like a bad movie. I would laugh if it weren’t so pathetic. I wondered, and not for the first time, why it was that the New York Times chose, when writing about “Latinos,” to do so in the cliched barrio of East Los Angeles. After all, the nut-graf for the story states that Latinos will sway the primaries in California, Nevada, and New York.

New York.

Immigrants from the Dominican Republic made up the largest single immigrant block to the city of New York in the 1990s. Five out of every six Dominicans are of African descent. Many Puerto Ricans are also of African descent. There are great movements afoot in popular culture throughout the Americans to make the link between Africa and Latin America – from Grupo Niche singing of blackness in the salsa classic “Etnia,” to the Nuyorican Poets rapping about being BlackTinos.

How it is that the editors and reporters of the nation’s leading newspaper - located in the city where salsa was invented from the Afro-Caribbean beats of Puerto Rica and Cuba, where Dominican blacks have replaced American blacks in much of Harlem, where Washington Heights now goes by the name Quisqueya Heights, for the Dominican Republic, where Junot Diaz and his Afro-Dominican novelistic mojo dominated the bestseller list last year – can completely ignore the significant segment of this country’s Latino population that IS BLACK is beyond me.

Way beyond me.

The article quotes a random 20-year-old woman on the streets of Los Angeles as their only legitimate source for the headline screaming about Obama’s lack of support among Latinos, ostensibly because of his “blackness.” This is your source? Natasha Carrillo of East Los Angeles? Holy crap. Are you joking? Is this the best you can find? Why not go the CUNY, and talk to the Dominican and Puerto Rican studies experts there? Why send reporters to a freakin' taco stand in East Los Angeles? I'll tell you why: The story was written in the minds of the editors before it was reported; that's why it WAS NEVER reported. It was made up. And because it was on the front of the NY Times, you are going to have pundits from coast to coast quoting it as the gospel truth, all because Natasha Carrillo, 20, of East Los Angeles, said so.

Chinga.

I suggest the reporters and editors of the New York Times stop taking their cues on Latino identity and politics in America from the boxers on Resurrection Boulevard and other nonsense TV shows, and take the subway uptown for a spell. Walk around. Go to a bodega or two. Listen to people talk. All those “black” people you see in Washington Heights? They’re Latinos.

And many of them (us) will be voting for Obama.

You want a source on blacks and Latinos, New York Times? Call me, the Cuban woman whose father was dedicated to the Yoruba God Obatala when he was a child. Call me, who knows that the phrase “Fulano” comes from the Fulani people of Africa. Call me, who knows that the double-headed tambora drum of merengue music, the national music of the Dominican Republic, has roots in West Africa. Call me. You have my number. I'm the one who writes you an editorial every week that you ignore. I'm the one who is supposedly one of the most influential Latinos in America, but can't get your attention on this, or any other Latino issue. Yeah. Me. The one who busts all your stereotypes up into little gray flecks of newsprint.

You want to talk about blacks and Latinos? Then stop forgetting history.

Stop forgetting that millions of us are both black, and Latino. En punto, y ya.

Posted by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez at 4:52 PM

Obama says US must try talking to Iran

Associated Press

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/O/OBAMA_IRAN?SITE=NYONE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT#

Sat Nov 3, 4:32 AM ET

WASHINGTON - Sen. Barack Obama said Friday that as president he would personally negotiate with Iran, offering economic incentives and a chance for peaceful relations if Iranian leaders would forgo pursuit of nuclear weapons and support of terrorists.

Citing a long history of progress through diplomatic gestures toward China and the former Soviet Union, Obama laid out in stronger terms his call for diplomacy with Iran — a policy with greater emphasis on negotiation than the Bush administration policy and a stance that has been ridiculed by his fellow Democratic presidential candidates.

"There is the potential at least for us finding ways of peacefully resolving some of our conflicts, and that effort has not been attempted," Obama said. "And if we don't make that attempt, then we're going to find ourselves continuing on the path that Bush and Cheney have set, and we're seeing the rhetoric rise every day."

"It has consequences not only for our strategic interests, it has consequences for our troops in Iraq and it has consequences for our economy," Obama told NBC's "Today" show.

He reiterated statements in a New York Times interview, published Friday, in which he said Iran might be offered membership in the World Trade Organization and assurances that the United States would not seek "regime change" if Iranian leaders changed their ways on key issues.

"We would be very clear with Iran and say 'We don't accept your development of nuclear weapons'," Obama told NBC, saying he would also strongly reject Iran's financing of terrorist organizations and its anti-Israel rhetoric.

Republican rival Rudy Giuliani dismissed Obama's ideas.

"The idea of begging your enemy to negotiate with you is a fundamentally flawed position. You've got to have a position of strength," Giuliani said at a news conference.

Asked about suggestions from Hillary Clinton's campaign that six other Democrats, all men, unfairly piled on the only female candidate at the last debate, Obama said he had experienced similar attacks in an earlier debate in Iowa, when he talked about negotiating Iran and other rogue nations.

"We spent, I think, the first 15 minutes of the debate hitting me on various foreign policy issues and I didn't come out and say look I'm being hit on because I look different from the rest of the folks on the stage," said Obama, the son of a black father and a white mother.

"I assumed it was because there were real policy differences there," he said. "And I think that has to be the attitude that all of us take."