Showing posts with label ethnic politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ethnic politics. Show all posts

Monday, July 6, 2015

From political cipher and unknown to possible successor to Marco Rubio in the U.S. Senate in no time at all, there are a myriad of legal & political choices confronting Florida Lt. Governor Carlos Lopez-Cantera, as he seeks to define himself to Floridians before rivals pounce and do it for him. @LopezCantera





Tampa Bay Times

Eyeing Senate bid, Lt. Gov. Lopez-Cantera must decide whether to stay or go
By Steve Bousquet, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
Saturday, July 4, 2015 6:00am

TALLAHASSEE — After 18 months in Gov. Rick Scott's shadow, Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera has to make his first big decision.


Before he enters Florida's wide-open race for the U.S. Senate, he'll reach a political crossroads as the state's No. 2 executive: Should he stay or go?


Lopez-Cantera won't say, and the public probably would not notice the difference


Read the rest of the article at:

http://www.tampabay.com/news/politics/legislature/eyeing-senate-bid-lt-gov-lopez-canteras-must-decide-whether-to-stay-or-go/2236092

Roll Call
The Mystery of a Possible Florida Senate Candidate
By Stuart Rothenberg

Posted at 4 p.m. on April 21


A handful of Republicans are currently being mentioned as possible Senate candidates for the Florida seat being vacated by Marco Rubio, who is running for the GOP presidential nomination.

Former Rep. Bill McCollum, who has run repeatedly (and often unsuccessfully) for statewide office, is mentioned, as are a handful of House members, including Rep. Ron DeSantis, a tea party favorite.

Perhaps the most interesting, or at least unusual, candidate for the Republican nomination is the state’s current lieutenant governor, Carlos Lopez-Cantera, a former Florida House member (and majority leader) and Miami-Dade County property appraiser.

What makes Lopez-Cantera, who was appointed to his current post in January 2014 by Republican Gov. Rick Scott, so unusual is that he is a Cuban-American Jew who was born in Madrid

Read the rest of the article at:

Nearly everyone I know and respect in South Florida who knew Carlos Lopez-Cantera when he first decided to run for the not-exactly-sexy position of Miami-Dade Appraiser -in an area of the country we know from experience is NOT exactly known for accuracy and truthfulness about tax dollars or numbers- told me that their take was that he was merely biding his time, waiting for a larger opportunity.


According to them, perhaps a run for the position of Miami-Dade County Mayor AFTER he'd been in office as Appraiser for about 6-10 years, and had actually acquired some reasonable amount of name recognition and power, to say nothing of perhaps even making some tangible improvements in his office that he could tout to what would surely be legions of skeptics.

Well, they're just as surprised as anyone that someone whom just three years ago, most South Florida political junkies and reporters had either never heard of or ever met him before in person, might now be 1 of 100 votes in Washington in just 18 months time.
I know because I'm one of those surprised people.


There's no higher-ranking politician in Florida whom I -and most people I know- actually know less about. than Carlos Lopez-Cantera.
That fact is abetted by South Florida's current lackluster crop of print/TV reporters and columnists, most of whom can be charitably described as apathetic and sleepwalking zombies in the best of times. And this is clearly NOT the best of times for serious new consumers in Florida.

Dave
Twitter: @hbbtruth, https://twitter.com/hbbtruth
https://twitter.com/hbbtruth/with_replies
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/
http://www.youtube.com/user/HallandaleBeachBlog

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Calling all Carpetbaggers! Repeat after me, "Requirements, what residency requirements?" Carpetbaggers in South Florida have it easy compared to their cousins in Calif. due to the lack of serious reporters here, but in both places, carpetbagging and ethnic identity politics often go hand-in-hand; LA Times: "Does this man live in San Gabriel or not? A residency challenge prompts council members to hold their own hearing -with sworn witnesses- to decide if the No. 2 vote-getter should be seated"; Is that a preview of things to come in North Miami Beach, where a Miramar resident named Dargenson is running for NMB City Commission, and thinks she'll win -largely because she's Haitian-American?

Calling all Carpetbaggers! Repeat after me, "Requirements, what residency requirements?" Carpetbaggers in South Florida have it easy compared to their cousins in Calif., but in both places, carpetbagging and ethnic identity politics often go hand-in-hand; LA Times: "Does this man live in San Gabriel or not? A residency challenge prompts council members to hold their own hearing -with sworn witnesses- to decide if the No. 2 vote-getter should be seated"; Is that a preview of things to come in North Miami Beach, where a Miramar resident is running for NMB City Commission and thinks she'll win -largely because she's Haitian-American?
If you ask me, it's too bad for South Florida's continually-beleaguered citizenry that FL state House Reps Frank Artiles, Joe Gibbons and Perry Thurston and FL state Senator Maria Sachs have never been forced by the powers-that-be in Tallahassee to publicly explain themselves and their very curious living situations.
Under oath 
In public.

Unlike Council candidate Chin Ho Liao in San Gabriel, CA, who was actually elected but not seated.
Oh, the great questions we'd all have all loved to have peppered our local political miscreants under oath with!

Speaking of carpetbaggers, if you haven't already been reading what straight-talking blogger Stephanie Kienzle has been saying with real vigor and much-deserved anger the past few weeks about North Miami Beach's faux City Commission candidate, Yvenoline “Yves” Dargenson -a woman who lives in Miramar, i.e. Broward County!- please do yourself a big favor and do so today via her blog, http://www.votersopinion.com/

You won't regret it because Stephanie gives you a very clear look at the corruption and illegality that passes for "normal" in South Florida politics and government these days, where far too many candidates and elected officials can seemingly break clear-cut rules about their prescribed conduct and behavior with relative impunity.

And the existing legal institutions that are supposed to keep people within the clearly-defined parameters of the law, instead, seem content to just shrug their shoulders and to let THEM dictate what the rules are to the public, putting everything upside-down.

Dargenson is the Broward County resident who running for a City Commission seat in a Miami-Dade city, and to both Stephanie and myself, she's someone who has a lot to to answer for publicly after the M-D Supervisor of Elections ruled that she lives in the City of Miramar.

But but based on what I'm hearing and reading, a Miami-Dade judge, Darrin P. Gayles, did
what M-D circuit court judges have been doing a lot of ever since my family first moved to Miami in 1968 -making bad decisions for the community and letting guilty parties walk.
Or, in this case with Dargenson, run for office in a county she does NOT live in.
No, it seems to have very little to do with upholding the state's laws or with getting justice for NMB's voters, to say nothing of actually adhering to Florida's Constitution.

Even more than usual, Stephanie has lots of great nuggets in her recent blog posts about the longstanding culture of corruption in NMB and North Miami, and actually makes the case that it's actually threatening to grow exponentially in NMB as a result of all the unethical goings-on in next-door North Miami that local and state law enforcement have been ignoring.

Ignoring it, it seems to me, in part at least, because so many of the people engaging in this
unethical political behavior in Northeast Dade are Haitian-Americans, a rapidly-growing voter bloc now compared to Non-Hispanic Whites in Miami-Dade County, and a demographic that is courted by candidates in ways that were not imaginable even thirty years ago, just a few years after I graduated from NMB High School, followed three years later bv my sister.

Perhaps nobody exemplified this cultural change as much as North Miami's oft-charged but never-convicted-thus-far incumbent mayor, Andre Pierre, though there are others on both sides of the border who are nearly as brazen.

Seriously, did you really expect the political crooks and their cronies in NMB not to notice the fact that nobody was being prosecuted in North Miami for what they do, no matter how self-evident?

Out in San Gabriel, California, you have the cancers of ethnic identity politics and carpetbagging at work, but with a Chinese-American patina, and a town that wants to go old-style New England and make the person accused of wrong-doing convince them that they have not broken the spirit and letter of the law.

Meanwhile in North Miami and North Miami Beach you just have... oh, right -the same things, just with Haitian-Americanss, instead.
Plus, thinly-disguised Black racism and grievance politics as both the facts-on-the-ground and reader comments to this piece make clear.

Los Angeles Times
San Gabriel council deems itself judge over election results
By Frank Shyong, Los Angeles Times
April 27, 2013, 8:45 p.m.
San Gabriel Councilman-elect Chin Ho Liao was the second highest vote-getter in the city's March elections, but his first time on the council dais last week was as a witness under cross-examination.
The City Council voted not to seat Liao after resident Fred Paine filed a complaint alleging that Liao's true residence is outside of the city's borders. Though Liao has filed suit in Los Angeles Superior Court to contest the council's vote, the city has also created its own hearing process to determine Liao's residency.
Read the rest of the article at:

I can't help but wonder if this is what the good residents of North Miami Beach can look forward to dealing with in the coming weeks if a sufficient number of Haitian-American voters there are prepared to simply cast common sense and the facts aside, and vote for a woman who doesn't even live in their city, simply because Dargenson is Haitian-American, too.

Well, it's not like local Miami TV stations have spent any real time covering what's been going on there, now is it?
No, today, two days before the May 7th election, CBS4, NBC6, 7News and Local10 are all guilty of NOT doing a single story on Yvenoline Dargenson.

Seriously, given what this woman is attempting to do by blowing a hole in even the most basic requirement for candidate eligibility, how can that be so?
How can every single English-language TV station news operation in Miami just ignore this?
That, my friends, is the low level to which South Florida journalism has sunk to -a complete lack of curiosity.

It's as if they're waiting for her to win before covering it, no?

For more on the very curious and perhaps even unethical living arrangements of FL House Reps Gibbons and Thurston and FL state Senator Sachs, please see an archive of Tom Lauder's recent pieces on residency requirements at Florida Media Trackers
http://florida.mediatrackers.org/author/toml/

It makes for interesting reading, and the fact that the Broward County Property Appraiser's Office has gotten involved so many times in these cases -esp. with Gibbbons, who clearly didn't comply with the law- only shows how egregious the lack of serious reporting on this subject has been in South Florida over the years.
These pols have positively dared reporters to say what is right in front of us.

I'm sorry to say it, but it also appears from the all the available evidence that some local African-American reporters, columnists and editors down here have been very easy on both Gibbons and Thurston for reasons that have nothing to do with journalism, but everything to do with either shared political ideology or friendship.
(Whatever happened to the proscribed arms-length relationship between reporters and subjects?)

I've commented on it here before, because otherwise, how do you reasonably explain the fact that the Sun-Sentinel's Douglas Lyons has scrupulously avoided mentioning this obvious residency issue for years, despite how often he has mentioned Thurston and Gibbons, quoted them and interviewed them?
What is his excuse, anyway?

Trust me, despite whatever it says on their resumes, Lyons and other reporters at the Sun-Sentinel and the Herald  don't think they have to answer to readers, and I know about him because I've given him plenty of opportunities over the past few years and all he's done is nothing but sit there like a bump on a log.
That's who he is, you shouldn't count on suddenly getting any candor from him that you can have any faith in.
Lyons considers his refusal to ask reasonable questions, esp. of them, a dead issue.

Just another reason that I hope the Sun-Sentinel is sold very soon and that there's a great house-cleaning/bloodletting there to make that newspaper something it hasn't been in years -relevant and worth reading.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

BUSTED! Breitbart's Matthew Boyle reports that Sen. Marco Rubio was "outed" by a constituent over Rubio's lack of personal effort to meet with LEOs BEFORE the Gang of Eight released their very-flawed immigration bill; Daily Caller's Byron York on the deluge of angry anti-immigration bill email into Sen. Rubio's office; The shiny, new toy that is Rubio is now not-so shiny; audio of Rubio's interviews with Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin


Right Scoop YouTube Channel video: FULL INTERVIEW: Nationally-syndicated radio show host Rush Limbaugh, the most-listened-to personality on American radio, discusses the Gang of Eight's immigration bill and its possible consequences with Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Uploaded April 18, 2013. http://youtu.be/dJjDbj6M16M 
BUSTED! Breitbart's Matthew Boyle reports that Sen. Marco Rubio was "outed" by a constituent over Rubio's lack of personal effort to meet with LEOs BEFORE the Gang of Eight released their very-flawed immigration bill; Daily Caller's Byron York on the deluge of angry anti-immigration bill email into Sen.  Rubio's office; The shiny, new toy that is Rubio is now not- so shiny; audio of Rubio's interviews with Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin
BUSTED! Late Friday night we learned via Breitbart's Matthew Boyle that Sen. Marco Rubio was outed by a constituent over Rubio's lack of personal effort to meet with law enforcement officers, especially ICE agents, BEFORE the Gang of Eight released their very-flawed immigration bill. 

The bill was made public the day after Sen. Rubio met with the union head of ICE agents -for ONE HOUR!- and after Rubio and the others had secretly been meeting with pro-amnesty & GOP business establishment groups in Washington and elsewhere for MANY, MANY WEEKS

Personally, as a Rubio supporter, someone who was for him in 2009 when the Florida news media had already pretty-well handed the 2010 GOP U.S. Senate nomination to Florida Governor Charlie Crist, I think this public miscue is one that WILL haunt Rubio for a long time, since it is both symbolic and TRUE.

I think it directly undercuts his claim to both "authenticity" and being an honest broker on this issue, one that many Republicans had perhaps too willingly given him lots of latitude on, assuming that he would be someone who could take a public role larger than his two years in the Senate warranted, and meet with groups that had something tangible to add to the mix on border security before the bill was finalized.

And important because it reveals Rubio's blind spot, which is that he sometimes believes what he says about himself too much -not enough hubris!

I also think that much more than any of the Florida-based reporters or columnists or "experts" know or will acknowledge, this effort of Rubio to finesse something very important, will likely prove to some within the GOP's national rank-and-file that just like other American pols, though perhaps less frequently than most, there's what Rubio says, and then there's what he actually does when nobody is looking. 

For people who want border security first, and are not willing to compromise on that, for good reason, people like me, the upshot is that this mis-step proves to some of them that he is NOT yet someone to be implicitly trusted.

Especially in light of how little he has actually accomplished in Washington his first two years, outside of drawing attention to himself and the Syria issue, where he has been miles and miles ahead of both President Obama, Hillary Clinton and the U.S. Mainstream Media, as I've noted frequently on these pages.






Rubio's inability or unwillingness to meet with people weeks ago whom he SHOULD HAVE, people with a real tangible insight into the immigration issue from a first-hand perspective, makes him appear to be what he is on this issue -NOT as tough or fair-minded as he advertises himself.

I honestly believe that because this issue is so important to many rank-and-file Republicans in parts of the country where they don't have a news media that is SO easily cowed by the professional amnesty and immigration rights groups the way they are routinely here in Florida
-esp. here in Miami and South Florida as I've documented dozens of times over the years here on the blog- where the groups practically hand reporters a script and the reporters dutifully read their lines as written.
On this issue, it's NOT journalism, it's public relations.

No place in the country is more skittish and less-honest in reporting truthfully on the negative effect of runaway illegal immigration, or unwilling to ask tough questions, than South Florida's news media, especially the Miami Herald.

(Even new young reporters to this market, like a certain new female reporter at WFOR-TV I could name, seem to absorb by osmosis the general understanding that seldom is heard a discouraging word on immigration, and thus they routinely do segments that are completely one-sided, and don't even think to ask questions that should be asked, but which here in Miami are never, ever asked for fear of what, being fired? 
Those of you who don't live here can't fully appreciate it, but reporting honestly on immigration is the Third Rail of South Florida, talked about in the abstract, perhaps, mostly here on this blog, but never ever actually seen on-the-air or in-print.)

So begins the first serious patch of political mis-steps, bad headlines and obvious displays of tone-deafness by Sen. Rubio, as his lofty abstract ideas about public policy get held up to their proper scrutiny and he is found wanting. 
It'll be interesting to see how he responds to this.
Will he adapt, evolve or double-down on what he's been doing and think he can ride it out.
While he'll probably be able to do the latter here in Florida, in the rest of the country, I wouldn't be so sanguine.

I believe that his personal reputation is about to get roughed-up but good by sincere and caring people outside of Florida who don't have to just grin-and-bear it like they do here in Florida.

I further believe that 2013 will prove to be the year where Rubio's sometimes patronizing myopia and faulty antennae will lead to him making some SERIOUS political enemies among fellow national Republicans and their supporters at the state and county levels.

And based on conversations with people and reading certain things I have, some of that antipathy and disregard he earns will last the rest of his political career, and cost him in ways that he can't even imagine now, because those people who are upset are mostly below the media's radar right now.
But by 2016, they'll be County party chairs in Iowa... and they'll be quoted in 2015 by the New York Times and by Politico and The National Journal...

People who never pass on an opportunity to make Rubio and his staffers suffer in small ways, or make him work much-harder than he needs to simply because they don't like the way that he's handled an issue that they care passionately about, and see Rubio as someone who didn't fight hard enough and long enough.

In short, someone who was too willing to work with Democrats to give them what they wanted, which is not enough attention to border security. 
Really.

You'll see.

The South Florida news media is, of course, completely under-reporting this issue, just as they do so many other issues that ought to be getting attention but don't.

They'll wait for someone else in another city to do that particular story, and then act like they were always working on it themselves, which is the usual excuse given when you talk to local reporters in-person and ask why real political news is NOT appearing in-print or on-air immediately like it would in other parts of the country, but instead, put in a freezer whjere they can report it when it's no longer relevant.

And it'll all be his own fault, too, since he's now starting to be viewed more realistically -as someone who perhaps prefers the spotlight a little TOO MUCH, prefers to go-along to actually standing strong against the GOP's Beltway/Chamber of Commerce Establishment that was, for decades, more-than-willing to take advantage of illegal immigrants, esp. in the agricultural sector.. 

Marco Rubio's charmed existence in the U.S. Senate so far is about to get some much-overdue and, it would seem to me, much-deserved turbulence.
But it will have little to do with anything any FL-based reporters or columnists say or write or uncover, but rather everything to do with his own bad choices and myopia, especially on the issue of immigration and its consequences.

The shiny, new toy is now not so shiny.
And will be less so by the end of the year.

RUBIO TOUTS TALK WITH ICE OFFICIAL WHICH SPURRED NO CHANGES TO IMMIGRATION BILL
by Matthew Boyle
27 Apr 2013, 12:58 AM PDT
http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Government/2013/04/26/Rubio-struggles-to-explain-to-constituents-why-ICE-agents-had-no-real-prior-input-into-immigration-bill




Right Scoop YouTube Channel video: Nationally-syndicated radio show host Mark Levine discusses the immigration bill and its possible consequences with Florida Senator Marco Rubio. Uploaded April 17, 2013. http://youtu.be/USG2SLWbKew
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http://www.therightscoop.com

Monday, September 17, 2012

re Fouad Ajami's Washington Post essay: Why is the Muslim world so easily offended?; What Muslim "moderates"?; Målmo as the European canary-in-the-coal-mine doesn't auger well for the success of Muslim "moderates" or assimilation efforts; #MUSLIMRAGE


IkoIko video: A 2006 Fox News Channel segment by reporter Steve Harrigan on immigration strife in Sweden and ethnic violence caused in the Rosengård area of Målmo by Muslim immigrants. Uploaded April 17, 2006. http://youtu.be/whWgCOE56K8

Despite all the changes that have taken place since it first came out, Prof. Fouad Ajami's 1982 book, The Arab Predicament, which I first read in school, still remains a go-to
book for those who need to make sense of the current Mid-East reality and how we got to this point, for better and worse, as well as an insightful look at Arab sensitivities and sensibilities (and ultra-sensitivities) to being seen as the outlier. My comments follow the essay.

The Washington Post
Why is the Muslim world so easily offended?
By Fouad Ajami
Published: September 14, 2012
Modernity requires the willingness to be offended. And as anti-American violence across the Middle East and beyond shows, that willingness is something the Arab world, the heartland of Islam, still lacks.
Time and again in recent years, as the outside world has battered the walls of Muslim lands and as Muslims have left their places of birth in search of greater opportunities in the Western world, modernity — with its sometimes distasteful but ultimately benign criticism of Islam — has sparked fatal protests. To understand why violence keeps erupting and to seek to prevent it, we must discern what fuels this sense of grievance.

Responses to the Ajami essay, which I sent out via email early on Saturday evening, consisted largely of "Maybe because the lunatic religious fanatics are running the show?" and even a link to Google Maps of the Middle East and questions about where are those Moderate Muslims that the Mainstream Media so adores, anyway?
Where are they hiding, exactly?

Well, actually, they're not hiding, per se, rather it's just that a disproportionate number of them live far from the field of battle and the negotiating table, living as so many of them do in New York, London, Paris and Berlin among many other places, which is why reporters there have no problem finding them - THERE.

This, of course, is a self-fulfilling prophecy in a sense in that having so many educated "moderates" in Western cities -a problem the MSM never sees or brings up- means that there's less actual resistance to tenets of radicalism in those countries.
Radicalism fills the vacuum, not reasonableness.

As for the rest of his essay, I do have an important correction for those of you who will perhaps not see it yourselves, and it actually touches on a subject that I've been wanting to write about and update since my last post on it, which netted me many interesting emails, though not all positive, since there's always someone who prefers butt-kissing to honesty.

In the middle of his essay, Prof. Ajami says something that with just a slight bit of word substitution could just as easily be said is true of large swaths of current-day Miami, "You can live in Stockholm and be sustained by a diet of al-Jazeera television."
(Just substitute "Spanish-language programming"for al-Jazeera.)

While that is factually true about Stockholm as much as it is true of dozens of other large and dynamic Western cities, as I've stated previously here on the blog, a better yet more troubling example of what he speaks about is in Målmo, on Sweden's west coast, opposite Denmark's capital, Copenhagen.

See my January 6, 2011 post titled, 
Uh-oh! Upcoming BBC World Service 'Open Eyes' segment on racial tensions in Malmö. Hmm-m...; Swedish immigration policy costs borne by local residents

Unfortunately for Målmo, owing to both past immigration patterns, geography, and familial ties, it's now home to not only an area that soon will be 50% Muslim, but also home to a large percentage of Muslim immigrants in the Rosengård area who, in many cases, make little effort to even try to assimilate Swedish values and norms.


No, Malmö, despite an avalanche of internal and external Political Correctness regularly sprinkled on the city and its inhabitants by a very PC and often patronizing national and European news media, is also the home to what all reasonable parties acknowledge is a very big long-term problem: a large percentage of all the Muslim immigrants in Sweden who fail to fully appreciate Sweden's freedoms, liberties and culture and incorporate that into their daily lives, people who actively fight assimilation, live right there

And many of the people who don't feel they should need to change are cocky and uncivil and don't care what you think about them being so publicly ungrateful.
And they aren't afraid of using violence, either, as the video at the top makes clear.

When you attack firemen trying to put out a fire in YOUR neighborhood... you DON'T get the benefit of the doubt.


But it's a lot more than just a PR problem to be solved, since the things that have happened there the past ten years have ranged from very negative to extremely dangerous and even deadly, and have been well-documented by the Swedish news media.
Everyone knows what has happened there.
Because of this extensive coverage, the rest of the country has largely started to develop negative feelings about Målmo as a whole because of what they view, essentially, as a policy of appeasement.

No, even worse from the point of view of Swedes who don't like what they see with a small but not insignificant number of immigrants taking advantage of their good nature and willingness to help, they see far too many people who won't even pretend that they're trying to assimilate, which, if you didn't know, is the one thing that educated Swedes of all political persuasions DO rather INSIST upon -immigrants actually trying to assimilate.

And that includes learning enough Swedish to at least get by, not consciously going out of your way to cause offense by intentionally NOT speaking Swedish in public or govt. interactions, just to make others uncomfortable.

That tension and anger felt by a majority of Swedes is largely due to not only the natural resentment of knowing that you're being taken advantage of by others, but also, frankly,  knowing for a fact that there are many more would-be immigrants in other countries who would only be too happy to do what little is expected of them if they could legally move to Sweden.
People who'd be happy to try their best to fit in without having to be asked or reminded, and who would contribute something positive to society.
That's who they want more of!


There are some positive things going on in Rosengård, thanks to the hard work of some very dedicated people who want to show Sweden and the rest of the world that there are lots of immigrants who are, indeed, grateful for their new lives in Sweden, and the myriad opportunities that they and their families now have.

No, not every immigrant has a chip on their shoulder -or a rock in their hand.
Some DO take pride in their area, and are well-adjusted, including the kids shown in this mittomrade video, which got posted to YouTube last week.


mittomrade video: Sophästen på Rosengård. Ivan Varga of "Ivan's Wagon Trail" and his horse, Bango, paid a trip recently to the Rosengård area of Malmö and proved an instant hit. Uploaded September 14, 2012. http://youtu.be/gAw1r4DJ_6Y

http://www.mittomrade.nu

http://www.aventyrsarken.se/


I didn't mention it before but among the many aspects of the failed immigration policy that causes people heartburn is the not-insignificant matter of all that taxpayer money being spent on all these social programs and activities, which contrary to what you may think in the U.S., actually comes more from local government, not from the national government.
Which means that something locally that might've done some good, was not funded because something for immigrants was. 

A majority of people in Sweden feel that thru not only their words and actions but also thru their willingness to put their money where their mouths are, and bankroll a humanitarian process that makes it easy for newcomers to become part of the dynamic modern world that is Team Sweden, they don't think it's unreasonable for the newcomers to act more civilized and think before acting, not throw-down at the smallest sign of a slight, like where they came from.

Taxpayers feel like they've shown their good intentions, and think it's not unreasonable for more immigrants to show more effort and gratitude, NOT act like they're still living in their old Mid-East country, and act publicly and privately in ways that are contrary to Sweden's customs and culture.

Yes, unfortunately for the people of Malmö, many Muslim immigrants in their part of the country have really mastered the art of bending-over-backwards to be seen publicly as the sullen "other," the outlier, and to get media attention for that.
The foreigner who publicly takes advantage of Swedish hospitality and who won't get with the program.
Is it because that's how they really feel, or because they thought they could get away with it and know that it gets them more attention? 
Probably both, but then the outlier never tells, do they?

The thing is, despite all their democratic freedoms, Sweden, like Japan, is a consensus-driven and still-largely homogeneous country, and one that does NOT like people trying to consciously go against the grain and undermine Swedish society or customs simply for the sake of doing so; as opposed to doing so because of some larger, well-intentioned principle or policy.

You can be a thirty-SOMETHING college-educated female that thinks that teenage girls in Sweden vying to be selected as the Lucia in their hometown, school or church is pretty silly in the 21st Century, and write about it on your too-cool-for-school political or fashion blog.
But that's very different than verbally attacking the teenage girls in public, or you publicly saying that the tradition should stop merely because you and your hip pals are not enthusiastic about it.






The photos above are December 13, 2010 screenshots I took of Amanda Römmesmo Diaz (as Lucia) from the 7 a.m. St. Lucia concert at Kungsholms Church in Stockholm that was nationally broadcast LIVE by SVT -and to me here in South Florida via SVT Playin an event that was officially titled, Luciamorgon i Kungsholms kyrka. © 2012 Hallandale Beach Blog, All Rights Reserved
Nobody is forcing you or your hung-over pals to get up early on December 13th and watch the national TV broadcast of the candlelight and music ceremony from some well-known church,  while you all sit on your sofa thinking and saying disparaging thoughts about people you don't even know, while eating hot crossed buns or cold pizza pulled from the fridge.
Sleep-in, it's all the same to everyone else
It's freedom of choice.

But denying others the choice to make their own personal decisions, well, that's the problem in a nutshell isn't it for the Muslim in Muslim-dominated countries today?
He or she is part of a religious culture that continues to deny personal choices and freedoms and micro-manage all aspects of someone's life.

That sort of attitude is anathema to most Swedes, who, thanks to several well-chronicled exploits of several Muslim troublemakers, have in many cases largely given up on the idea that most future Muslim immigrants will do the right thing and assimilate.
Which, logically, is why some ask, Why not just turn off the faucet to the Middle East?

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Meanwhile, over at Romesnsko.com...

NEWSWEEK’S #MUSLIMRAGE = BIG #FAIL
http://jimromenesko.com/2012/09/17/newsweeks-muslimrage-big-fail/ 

Thursday, August 30, 2012

MSNBC's coverage of RNC is a marriage-made-in-heaven of Political Correctness & Ethnic Politics. If Mainstream Media's PC Police there deem it racist to say "Chicago," what does it mean NOW if you say "Chicago deep-dish"? Or, how many times can MSNBC jump-the-shark?


Speakmymind02 video:  Paranoid political correctness runs the roost when head rooster Chris Matthews is around, clucking his wild theories that for years have become increasingly creepy and offensive.
Chris Matthews: “They keep saying Chicago, by the way, you noticed?”
John Heilemann: “Well, there’s a lot of black people in Chicago”
These sort of cringe-inspiring PC moments are painful even when you didn't see them LIVE, but then that's MSNBC's problem in a nutshell: hardly anyone's watching their RNC  coverage, as they are being whipped by not only Fox News, but even pitiful CNN, with FNC beating them by a factor of more than 4.1:1. Only the party faithful turn there -the shut-ins getting their Liberal religion via cathode ray. Uploaded August 29, 2012. http://youtu.be/BW7nPFR0Oq8

MSNBC's coverage of RNC is a marriage-made-in-heaven of Political Correctness & Ethnic Politics. If Mainstream Media's PC Police deem it racist to say "Chicago," what does it mean NOW if you say "Chicago deep-dish"? Or, how many times can MSNBC jump-the-shark?

Having lived in Chicago during the mid-1980's, as well as Evanston and Wilmette, I can confirm that little bit of Breaking News knowledge imparted by jump-the-shark journo John Heilemann of New York Magazine -Chicago does indeed have many Blacks.
And many Poles, Eastern European/Russian Jews and tons of Mexicans, too.
Imagine that?

But then it IS the country's third-largest city.
It should hardly be surprising to anyone who knows America's history and especially its immigration patterns of the past 150 years.
That very mixture of cultures is another reason that I would have liked to have seen them get the Olympics in 2009 for 2016 instead of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

In case you recognized the name, yes, John Heilemann was the sub-subject of my August 22nd post, titled, Paul Ryan: Why he matters and needs to be unleashed on Obama and the Dems' treasure trove of bad ideas -he connects with smart, reasonable voters who see that under Obama, we're not just going the wrong direction on too many important issues, our margin of error is getting smaller everyday; DWS on thin ice with Obama HQ in Chicago but Sun-Sentinel is ignoring the story
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/08/paul-ryan-why-he-matters-and-needs-to.html

I lived in the Chicago area while Harold Washington, Jr. was mayor.
Yes, a Black man as mayor almost thirty years ago.
(Not that he would have gotten any votes from any members of Chris Matthews own family if they had lived there then.)
So how come they didn't mention that when they said, if you pardon the expression, "Chicago"?

Probably because mentioning something so fundamental to the city and to its recent history would've proved inconvenient, and not part of the MSNBC paranoid Talking Points narrative, since even now, when you say Chicago, people all over the world think first of Al Capone and corruption and the bears and the Cubs and pizza, not racial politics.
But, apparently, based on what he himself says and does, that's the first thing that Chris Matthews thinks of. 

Everyone who lived there at the time knows that without the White reform element in Chicago, Washington wouldn't have been elected.
Just like Tom Bradley in Los Angeles and David Dinkins in New York.
You know, many, many years after a Black man was elected mayor of a big city that was NOT  on either media-centric coast, Carl Stokes in Cleveland.
Not that it makes the fact any less important.

But who cares about that sort of common knowledge and common sense when you can get paid to sit around and make up crazy nonsense on LIVE TV and posit that saying "Chicago" is racist, and have nobody slap you in the back of the head.
So does this mean that when I say "Chicago deep-dish" I've stepped beyond the pale?

Chris Matthews and MSNBC Now Claim the Word 'Chicago' Is Racist
By Rusty Weiss 
August 30, 2012 at 12:12 a.m.
Chris Matthews was on Hardball tonight covering the Republican National Convention with guests Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post and John Heilemann of New York Magazine.  In what is seemingly the natural progression of things these days with Matthews, the subject of the 'otherization' of the President was being discussed.  Because, if you weren't aware already, Barack Obama is black, and any time a Republican chooses to discuss the failure that is his administration, the media will be there to quickly remind you that they only feel that way because of his skin color.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/08/30/chris_matthews_saying_chicago_is_racist.html

http://newsbusters.org/blogs/rusty-weiss/2012/08/30/chris-matthews-and-msnbc-now-claim-word-chicago-racist#ixzz252qumTv7



The Daily Caller
The DC Trawler with Jim Treacher blog
Another thread snaps in Chris Matthews’ frayed tether to reality
http://dailycaller.com/2012/08/30/another-thread-snaps-in-chris-matthews-frayed-tether-to-reality 

Monday, July 30, 2012

Wow! Hallandale Beach is in The Washington Post: WaPo's Jason Horowitz ponders Jewish-American voters' feelings towards Mitt Romney and President Obama's treatment of Israel thru the prism of Hallandale Beach. HB's Sage Bagel as the NEW poor man's Algonquin Round Table!



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Above, looking east from in front of the RK Sage Plaza retail strip at Hallandale Beach Blvd. (State Road 858) and S.E. 8th Avenue in Hallandale Beach, FL, home of Sage Bagel and Deli. In the distance is one of the three condo towers from The Related Group's The Beach Club on the beach and State Road A1A. Google Maps' Street View, circa 2011.
Wow! Hallandale Beach is in The Washington Post: WaPo's Jason Horowitz ponders Jewish-American voters' feelings towards Mitt Romney and President Obama's treatment of Israel thru the prism of Hallandale Beach. HB's Sage Bagel as the NEW poor man's Algonquin Round Table!
The Washington Post
Jewish voters ponder Romney
By Jason Horowitz
July 30, 8:57 PM
HALLANDALE BEACH. Fla. — Moments after Mitt Romney completed his ode to Israel in front of Jerusalem’s old stone walls on Sunday, reporters asked Sheldon Adelson, the casino mogul and a financial rabbi for the presidential campaign, whether the speech would convince Jewish voters back home to vote for the Republican.
“If they hear it,” answered Adelson, who was with Romney in Israel and has pledged tens of millions of dollars to pro-Romney super PACs. “Yes, for sure.”
Read the rest of the article at:

Hmm-m... could our very own Sage Bagel become the new Versailles, the "The World's Most Famous Cuban Restaurant" on Calle Ocho and the place where all U.S. presidential candidates and state-wide candidates are required to visit when they campaign for the first time in South Florida, for a press op, drinking café con leche?

Yes, more powerful than any law, it's a South Florida political and media tradition!
The mind reels at the possibilities!

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Sage Bagel and Deli
800 E. Hallandale Beach Blvd.
Hallandale Beach, FL 33009 
(954) 456-7499

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Versailles Restaurant
3555 S.W. 8th Street,
Miami, FL 33135 
(305) 444-0240

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

Can anyone save egotistical Lauderhill mayor and amateur mind-reader Richard J. Kaplan from himself? The chronic Internet crank continues showing his true colors and ignorance at BrowardBeat, and other readers have finally had enough of his twaddle, too

Can anyone save egotistical Lauderhill mayor and amateur mind-reader Richard J. Kaplan from himself? The chronic Internet crank continues showing his true colors and ignorance at BrowardBeat, and other readers have finally had enough of his twaddle, too. Or will an intervention be necessary?
I was going to send in the comment below about an hour after seeing Lauderhill Mayor Richard J. Kaplan's initial smarmy comments to attorney and frequent contributor Sam Fields ill-informed essay, but I decided to just wait. 

BrowardBeat
Mitt Romney’s Lost Lesson On Tolerance  
By Sam Fields
May 13

Good thing I did, because just like Hallandale Beach's own chronic Internet crank -whose name and multiple Internet identities I will try my best to avoid mentioning here to give him even more attention- Mr. Ego, Kaplan, couldn't help himself; he HAD to write yet again.
And again!
And yet again!


Yes, he's comment #1 -and #11 and #15 and #17.
http://www.browardbeat.com/mitt-romneys-lost-lesson-on-tolerance/#comment-698876

Here's what I know and what has already been independently confirmed -and mentioned here previously on Friday- though you would never know it by what was written in the  BrowardBeat post or by Mayor Kaplan's initial comment: the family of the individual at the center of the hair-cutting controversy, John Lauber, says that The Washington Post completely mis-characterized him and got major facts about him wrong.

His sister further says that she didn't know anything about the story, and as if more was needed, the so-called "witness" in the original WaPo, Stu White contradicted WaPo's reporting in an interview with ABC News and has since admitted that he was NEVER physically present at any such incident and did NOT know about the story UNTIL it was told to him by the WaPo
This year!

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2012/05/sister-of-alleged-romney-target-has-no-knowledge-of-any-bullying-incident/

Yet White was initially used by the newspaper to authenticate a story he was neither present for or aware of. 
A perfect snapshot of the American Mainstream Media in 2012.

Given his own inconsistency, lack of personal knowledge on the matter in question and what we all now know is his giant sense of arrogance in making claims about Gov. Romney's honesty or lack thereof, from a thousand miles away, Mayor Kaplan should cool it and accept that considering how frequently he finds the need to post at Buddy Nevins' BrowardBeat blog in ways that strike so many well-informed people as the very definition of utterly self-serving, we DON'T put any stock into what he says. 
If he said it was raining, we'd check the window to see for ourselves.

As a prominent member of Broward County's status quo I've-got-mine society, where taxpayers are always at the bottom rung, he in particular is hardly in a position of lecturing or hectoring others about matters of morality or scruples. 

(Seriously, he's been on the Broward MPO for about twenty years? No wonder transportation issues in this county are discussed at a Junior High level and taxpayers who pay attention are so f-ed with geniuses like Kaplan making policy -garbage in, garbage out, with taxpayers left holding the bag for bad ideas.

In the near future I'll have a scathing post here on the blog for you all to chew over re the clique of geniuses over at the Broward MPO that details not only how truly ineffective they are in getting their "message" out, if that's what they're calling it these days, but how completely ignored they are by anyone who pays attention, whether concerned Broward taxpayers, bloggers or the sleepwalking South Florida news media. I thought that so-called "independence" the MPO was given was actually supposed to make things better. It's NOT! 
Especially for taxpayers in Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.)

A little more hubris and a lot less self-serving comments would do real wonders for Mayor Kaplan, but I doubt it'll take with him.

He sounds remarkably like many of the well-educated and smug upper- middle class Adams Morgan liberals I met in D.C. twenty years ago, who thought that they were down with the struggle because they voted Democratic, and had a Guatamalan gardener, a Honduran housekeeper and ate at a Salvadoran restaurant.
Yes, they were like their very own Model United Nations, and were so full of their own goodness.

But in 1991, when there was a riot there shortly after a Black female Metro cop arrested a drunk Hispanic man in a public park, and the liberals saw that their political sensibilities didn't prevent their neighborhood from being damaged or looted, some at least had the common sense to take off their blinders, stopped being so cowed by their friends PC ways and tried to stop being so oblivious to their own past condescending attitudes towards others.
Which is to say, people who had different opinions than them.

Me, I bet that Mayor Kaplan can't go two entire months without writing something on Buddy Nevins' popular blog.
And I will let you know how long he goes, too.
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Updated on May 16th at 3:54 to add Kaplan's fourth comment, #17