I collected my tweets and the audio I got and put it up over on orangepolitics. Have a look there if you’re interested.

Aaaaargh. I just got done listening to an NPR piece in which the correspondent said that (roughly quoting) “Hispanics are the single largest ethnic group in the military.” That was just one of several lines that made me cringe.

PLEASE get it through your heads that Cubans are not Guatamalans are not Salvadorans are not Peruvians are not Puerto Ricans are not Mexicans are not Spaniards! Please! I know people from different states in Mexico who have less in common with each other than they do with me!

Let’s take a quick step back and ask what “Hispanic” means. Google gives us a pleasantly mushy medley of bad definitions, some of which make language (note: language != ethnicity) the key tie, while others make shared heritage from the Iberian peninsula (the Romans dubbed it Hispania) the link. Note that both of these have serious problems. There are a significant number of people from México and parts of the Caribbean who, to many of my monolingual friends here in the US of A, would appear to be Hispanic, but Spanish is likely their second language if they speak it at all! Furthermore, various nations South of our border have been shaped by very different shifts in religion, politics and business over the last few centuries. There’s no question but that the conquest/settlement of large swaths of this hemisphere by Spaniards had an impact on the cultures of, say, Perú and México, but generalizations about the immigrants of both of those countries to the USA? If you’re going to make such generalizations, please back them up with data.

Now that I’ve just exhorted you to use data, let’s go with a couple of anecdotes. Firstly: me. Spanish is one of my two first languages and my mother is Peruvian, but I can “pass” as white easily and that other first language is English. Also, my work life involves Linux and I’ve got BS from UNC. So… am I Hispanic? Clearly yes, but… is that meaningful? Secondly: my dad. My dad is from the US. He doesn’t tan well. He learned Spanish in college. BUT he’s worked to start four different ministries that largely serve Spanish speakers (one of those is here in Chapel Hill), and he teaches English as a Second Language (ESL) at a local elementary school where many of his students are latino. My dad has far stronger and more meaningful ties to a hypothetical Hispanic community, but by what definition is he Hispanic?

Dear media outlets: please use real data and give us useful, meaningful information. Blabbering on about how both McCain and Obama are ‘courting the hispanic vote’ is making me yank out my hair. You’re talking about some vague unsettling “other” that speaks Spanish, some “average” immigrant that doesn’t exist. Please stop. Here’s a hint: are you talking about immigrants from what we call Latin America? Try the term “latino” on for size. If you’re talking about immigrants from a particular country to a particular state in our union (an even better idea!), you don’t have to cast about for terms!

After watching this youtube video, I’m suddenly wondering (again) if Bush is crazy enough to invade Iran in October. Maybe I should go back to reading my nice book and drinking my nice chamomile. I think I’ll do that.

Note specifically what Wexler and Richardson say about McCain starting at 5:15. Aren’t the Sunday shows hilarious?

“Obama Ruling Could Prove Moot, Backfire”

The article makes it clear that Obama (and surrogates) never promised that he would use public funds in the general election. Their promise was to return funds exceeding the limit if both candidates accepted public financing. Different promise. I’m sick of reading all sorts of claims that Obama lied or didn’t keep his word on public financing. His campaign hedged their bets brilliantly and made no promises they aren’t keeping. Still doesn’t look good to the casual observer.

Hundt (speaking for Obama) starts to get into his talk at just after 5:00. Video below:

Thanks to the Federalist Society for putting together the event and taping it.

Via.

Honestly I haven’t read enough of the WSJ’s editorial page to pass judgment, but this article definitely doesn’t fit the picture that had been painted for me by others. It’s a happy dissonance for me, though I do have to say that the headline is really misleading. The casual observer will not take away the same message that someone reading the entire article will.

Oh well… I left this as a draft long enough that TPM already beat me to it.

That robocall I posted about earlier also got posted on Orange Politics, where it got a lot of reads and a lot of comments fairly quickly. I started a tumblr blog to be able to easily post the audio of the robocall.

I just got a robocall from a group calling itself “Citizens for a better Orange County” that opposes the Transfer Tax. It calls the tax the “Home Tax,” which is clearly wrong on two levels. Firstly, the proposed tax is on all land sales, and secondly it is an attempt to falsely personalize this tax for local homeowners. Oh, and it fails to mention an important detail: the tax rate would be 0.4%. That’s right: four tenths of a percent. That’s one thousand dollars on a $250k hypothetical home. Sounds like too much money? Well, what are the alternatives? If this is defeated, the only two alternatives that have been seriously discussed are a sales tax (the most regressive tax possible) and a property tax increase. A property tax increase would be a home tax. Everything about the robocall was misleading and dishonest.

The call directs people to a website that I won’t link to here. The website refers to “Tom Holt” as their treasurer and “Mark Zimmerman” as their spokesperson. A bit of googling gives:

Mark Zimmerman (919) 942-9150

so that might be one way to get more info about this if anyone is interested. The website also lists a toll-free number: 866-275-1129. Also, a visit to the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine shows us that Mr. Zimmerman was chair of the Chapel Hill/Carrboro Chamber of Commerce in 2005, and is… drumroll… a realtor with Remax.

So, to recap: a realtor is the spokesperson for a shady group that is using shady tactics (including robocalls and dishonest “home tax” verbiage) to try to shoot down the Transfer Tax. A good question for Mr. Zimmerman might be, “How much money have you personally spent on trying to defeat the Transfer Tax?” Or maybe, “Why do you feel it’s necessary to resort to dishonest tactics to defeat a tax that might have a small impact on your business?”