Conexión Miami / PortMiami Tunnel is inaugurated

Four years of work and about $1 billion — a bargain — is the cost of the tunnel between Watson and Dodge Islands, through which highway traffic can reach the Port of Miami nonstop. Better yet, the large freight trucks that normally drive through the center of town will move under Biscayne Bay.

Although ordinary vehicles won’t travel through the tunnel for another two weeks, the inauguration ceremony already took place, with the participation of Governor Rick Scott and state and local officials.

Let us pay attention to the words of Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado: “I think that this demonstrates that private-public partnership works.” We ask: Why does he call the tunnel project “public-private” when the money came out of the taxpayers’ pockets?

Ah, there are many critics of this project who say that it is a tunnel that most of the people who paid for it will never use. We imagine that “the private side” the mayor is talking about is the money going into the pockets of the private entrepreneurs who lent the money that funded the tunnel.

Twitter is really to blame

Barack Obama has just tweeted: “Watch: @WValderrama believes in the American dream. http://ofa.bo/jgP ” If you click on the electronic address given by the president, you’ll read an interview (http://goo.gl/hHzMmJ) in which a certain Venezuelan actor, Wilmer Valderrama, supports immigration reform citing his personal experience.

Obama’s tweet, let’s say it plainly, is one of history’s briefest sarcasms, a singular and ironic statement delivered in 74 characters. If we give Obama the benefit of the doubt, Twitter’s technological mandate — only 140 characters — kept him from saying more, saying what the whole world knows and what Obama likely had on the tip of his tongue: So far in my administration, begun on Jan. 20, 2009, the government has deported almost 2 million undocumented immigrants, the largest number in U.S. history. It wasn’t my fault; it was Congress’.

Charlie Crist’s political conversion

It has happened before. Today, you’re judge; tomorrow — because of suspicion, irony, a wrong look — you’re the defendant. Judge and defendant, ying and yang, Quixote and Sancho, you can be whatever you want to be. Charlie Crist, a Republican until 2011, arrived last Saturday as a Democrat to his campaign headquarter in Little Havana, where he made two things perfectly clear: (1) he wants to visit Cuba and (2) the embargo policy, a failure after half a century, is outdated and ineffective.

It was to be expected that the former Republican governor’s harangue (he’s running again, as a Democrat) would not convince the Cubans on the opposite side of the street. Former Congressman Lincoln Díaz-Balart was “shocked” as he described Crist’s attitude as one of “total superficiality and lack of sensitivity for the Cuban issue.” I don’t know what Díaz-Balart and the others want for the future of Cuba, but I do know what they DON’T want. They don’t want a future for it, period.

Elephants, etc.

Todd Unbehagen is just a lucky man who saw an elephant on the beach. The pachyderm (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BnmJdQo16JM) stands stiffly by the shore in Pinellas County, Fla., where presumably it was brought to entertain the guests at a private party. Unbehagen’s family took a selfie with the elephant, natch.

Speaking Spanish, a must for Carlos López-Cantera

Carlos López-Cantera, vice governor of Florida, has the peculiar accent of someone who wants to speak not Spanish but Cuban — unsuccessfully. Well, he can’t because he was born in Madrid, not in Havana. (And let’s not talk about his eyes, which make him look like a cat who’s plotting something.)

His latest misstep in the language of Cervantes occurred last Saturday, when commenting on Charlie Crist’s travel plans to Cuba — Crist being, in a way, his political rival. Standing before the TV cameras, his hair combed definitely to the right in a political statement, López-Cantera said:

“What Charlie said shows that, in reality, he doesn’t know the issue of Cuba, what’s happening in Cuba, the suffering being felt in Cuba, and if he travels there, the money that he spends in Cuba, every dollar he spends will go to help the government of Castro in Cuba — and also the government of Moduro in Venezuela.”

Note that he said “the government of Moduro in Venezuela.” Still, his listeners applauded.