PUERTO RICO

I'm back from Puerto Rico. The first picture is a view from my "oceanfront" hotel room, and the second is an odd scene - the first time I've ever captured a cow, a shanty, and the ocean all in one photograph. It was an interesting first trip to the island for me. Although Arecibo is not exactly a booming metropolis, it does have some of the usual sites you'd expect of any town on the US mainland - Walmart, Sears, Walgreens, fast food venues, etc. I managed to avoid mofongo (a local dish of mashed plantains mixed with some pork and shrimp and seasoned with garlic) and ate at Chili's several nights and Damon's a few nights. It is definitely a different culture there, no where more evident than in the way they drive. Although I guess it wasn't necessarily much different than New Jersey, to be honest.

On some other topics ...

I was happy to see Tom DeLay resign from the House. I wish he had resigned several months ago. Although Republicans will continue to say that he is innocent and the victim of politics, I think he has harmed the party and they should have cut ties to him. The GOP is winning elections running on a platform of "moral values" and we can not tolerate even the slightest hint of unethical behavior in the party and expect to win the "values" vote. We need to deal with people like DeLay swiftly. Time will tell whether or not he has actually committed a crime, but the fact is he engaged in behavior that is questionable - and that's enough. We should be holding ourselves to a higher standard. Conservatives seem to want to pick up the Clintonesque excuse and blame it on a vast left-wing conspiracy. We hated Clinton when he did it, yet we're now falling back on the same weak excuse. DeLay and his buddy Abramoff may be the downfall of this Republican run of success.

I was also sad to see Andy Card resign last week. I had the opportunity to meet with him while at Harvard. Most people probably don't even know who he is and would be surprised to find out he was probably one of the five most powerful men on the planet in his position of Chief of Staff. If you work at the White House, even as a Cabinet member, you've got to go through the Chief of Staff to get to the President. You don't just hop on Microsoft Outlook and check Dubya's schedule, then plan a meeting when he's got an opening. No, the Chief of Staff schedules the President's calendar, who he's going to see, where he's going to go, etc. He is the first person to meet the President EVERY morning - and they discuss the events of the upcoming day. Pretty powerful gatekeeper role, eh?

Anyway, Card had some tremendously unique perspectives because of his close proximity to the President. He also served in the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations. I won't go into any of his stories here, but recall that Card is the guy that whispered into Bush's ear on 9/11/01 that a second plane had hit the WTC. In Card's visit at Harvard, he stressed repeatedly that he served only at the pleasure of the President, and that when the pleasure was gone he would leave. I guess a combination of the botched Supreme Court nomination, the poor response to Katrina, and the ports deal were all enough to suggest that changes needed to be made. I don't have an opinion one way or the other on the new Chief, but I suspect as do many people that further changes are forthcoming.