Presidential Election

Much to the chagrin of certain conservative factions, such as the Teabaggers or that other fear-mongering idiot Pat Buchanan, there is no denying that our country has become a culturally and ethnically diverse tapestry. We're living in a changing America, people! Deal with it. It is no longer in the hands of the whiter, older electorate that the GOPs have traditionally put their money on.
Younger voters and minorities went to the polls in record numbers. Worse for the GOPs, they'll continue to. This caught the GOPs off-guard. They made the assumption that their monolithic voting body would send their candidate to the White House no matter what.
Well guess what? They got drubbed. Barack Obama won re-election easily over Mitt Romney with 303 electoral votes, 33 more than he needed. That's not even including Florida, if they ever get done counting.
GOPs are face to face with the reality that President Barack Obama won the Hispanic vote by a whopping margin of 71 percent to 27 percent. That's larger than Obama's margin in 2008. Hispanics doubled their share of the total vote since 1996 and constituted 10 percent of the electorate in 2012. In the next presidential race in 2016, more than three million additional Hispanic citizens will be eligible to vote.
It might behoove the GOPs to quit alienating Hispanics, many of whom are culturally conservative.
Now let's toss in the Asian minority. Asian-Americans happen to be the highest-earning group in the U.S., out-earning whites, and they generally place enormous emphasis on family. 

You'd think that this would be a perfect fit for GOPs, yes?
No. Asians voted for Obama by 73-26; they were even more Democratic than Hispanics.
It's possible that Hispanics and Asians are more communitarian than individualistic, leading them to identify more with Democrats than Republicans.
The GOP is overwhelmingly white and insistently, at times militantly, Christian. The other problem for the GOPs is the persistence of a growing number of racists in their base and on conservative airwaves. You know who I'm talking about. The ones that want electric fences along the border with Mexico as well as the supporters of the "papers please" laws of Arizona and Alabama. 
The Democrats, by contrast, are multiracial with a laissez faire attitude toward religion and spirituality. So let me ask, if you were a black-haired Buddhist from Taipei, a brown-skinned Hindu from Bangalore, or gay or lesbian, which party would instinctively seem more comfortable?
Then there's the women's vote. To paraphrase Tina Fey, women do not want gray-faced men telling them what they can or cannot do with their bodies.
Consequently, President Obama led by 11 percentage points among women.
I'm no expert here but I'd say that this outcome reveals a big problem for the GOPs. If they don't open their eyes and appeal to the huddled masses, of all colors and genders, instead of focusing their sights on just the entitled while doing nothing about the growing hate speech, fear-mongering and bigotry coming from their right-wing extremists, they won't move forward.
Then, to add insult to injury, the right can't even say that their network won last night. This year's election coverage winner was CNN. The GOPs couldn't even get that right! It really was a bloodbath.

Domestic Violence

October is Domestic Violence Awareness month. This is only one of the reasons that a skit at a pep rally held in New York was so very disgusting and demeaning to minorities. The skit featured white students wearing black face and satirizing domestic violence.

You'd think that even the most obtuse individual would have recognized that the Waverly High School pep rally showcasing a skit performed by three white male students wearing black face, or make-up to make them appear black was wrong.
That these students were allowed to re-enact a 2009 domestic abuse incident when Chris Brown attacked his former girl friend Rihanna for laughs is unconscionable.
CNN contributor Matthew Dishler explains:
At the most recent Pep Rally for Waverly High School, located in Waverly NY, the usual fanfare of cheering for the home team to get them ready was in full swing. As the rally progressed you had your usual cheers and rally cries for the fall sports teams and the football team. It seemed to have done well, with Waverly defeating their opponent 70-21. But what happened at that pep rally went much farther than simple cheers. Three white students were to perform a skit in black face, depicting Chris Brown and Rhianna most notibly. In this skit they would display acts of domestic violence as satire to an audience that included not only students but parents, faculty, and various members of the media and community leaders. None of them stopped the skit.

A scene from the skit.

Now that people are coming together to slam the entire incident, Joseph Yelich, superintendent of the Waverly Central School District claims that district officials will be taking a closer look at what happened at the pep rally.He might want to begin with the faculty that failed to put a stop to this.
While effectively saying nothing of value, he said, "The Waverly School District is committed to creating a positive atmosphere through our activities. I will be working with our building administrators, our staff and our students to examine our current activities and develop future activities consistent with our commitment. Ultimately, our administrators are going to need to meet with the whole student body to set clear expectations for our behavior and the impact it has on all people."
Waverly, N.Y., is 72 percent white, according to the 2010 Census. Depending upon who you ask, the opinions are split over whether the Chris Brown-Rihanna skit was controversial.
Communities everywhere are taking a stand against this horrendous act which very often ends in murder, therefore all schools, grade, middle and high, should also reflect the lack of tolerance to domestic violence. The cycle of violence begins early, after all. 

Santa Maria Police Officer Shot

Here's today's lesson boys and girls: When the cops come for you, if you resist arrest, or pull a gun, you will be shot dead, even if you're a cop.
29 year old Albert Covarrubias Jr. was an officer with the Santa Maria Police Department who was the subject of an internal criminal investigation surrounding allegations of sexual misconduct with a 17-year-old girl.

Allegations are not convictions. This is quite scary. If they'll shoot a colleague, where does that leave the rest of us if we become suspects?
Officer Covarrubias was near the end of his shift at a DUI checkpoint when supervisors arrived after 1 a.m. to detain him. There was a struggle, the suspect officer drew his weapon and fired his gun; a fellow officer then shot the suspect in the chest. A four-year veteran of the department, Covarrubias was pronounced dead at Marian Medical Center after undergoing emergency surgery.
At a press conference Police Chief Danny Macagni said developments forced police to take immediate action. According to Macagni, Officer Covarrubias knew that he was under investigation, that witnesses were being intimidated, and that the public would be at risk if authorities did not take him into custody before he left his shift.

What they felt he'd go on a murderous rampage?
Macagni said, "He chose to resist. He drew his weapon. A fight ensued. He fired his weapon. And one of my officers that was there also discharged his weapon and the officer was fatally wounded."
Regarding this evidence that they had Macagni added, "Information unfolded during the time that the officer was on duty and unfolded very rapidly. It was very explicit, very specific, that indicated that the officer was involved in not only an inappropriate sexual relationship, but a very explicit one and it demanded immediate action." He declined to reveal further details about the alleged crimes.
I sincerely hope that the evidence he's referring to includes that he chain-sawed his family, the neighbors and people walking their dogs by his house, because shooting him makes no sense otherwise.
Why didn't anyone think of using a Taser? Surely the officers at the SMPD have them?
Macagni also said, "The information that we had in hand demanded that we not let him leave that scene, get in a car, drive somewhere. It would put the public at risk if he did. We just did not know what was going to happen. And we did not expect him to react the way he did."
Really? Aren't officers trained to anticipate any and all reactions. They're supposed to be able to "cool down" a situation, that's why they get to wear guns.
The police department declined to name him, but the family of Officer Cavarrubias spoke out about their loss.
His father, Albert Covarrubias Sr said, "It's going to be a great loss to me because I love all my children with all my heart and a piece of my heart has been ripped out of me now. They said they had all this information to arrest him. Why on the streets? Why there? Was it to ridicule him? My son was a beautiful person. My son was respected to everybody. My son was a hardworker."
He is demanding answers leading up to his son's death.
I'd like to know as well. I'd also like to know why a Taser wasn't used. Since he can no longer speak, they will never know the entire story. Ever.