Mistry in Festival of Lights.

Well-intentioned but so clumsily executed by Indo-Guyanese writer-director Shundell Prasad that whole scenes seem to be missing, Festival of Lights is about the plight of Indian immigrants from the South American country of Guyana in their daunting efforts to assimilate in the U.S. It opens our eyes to a subculture about which most of us know very little, but it is so unsteady in its focus that interest wanes. 

All that most Americans know about Guyana is that it’s the place where the infamous Rev. Jim Jones wiped out a cult with poisoned Kool-Aid. It’s actually an English-speaking country the size of Idaho that borders Venezuela, Brazil and the Atlantic Ocean. Most of its citizens are Hindu and Muslim survivors of the slave trade, military dictatorships and various forms of religious and political oppression. Since U.S. immigration laws were relaxed under President Jimmy Carter, more than 350,000 Indo-Guyanese citizens have settled in the Richmond Hill, Queens, section of New York City, where they have found a better way of life for their families, opening colorful native restaurants and drawing tourists to their annual “Festival of Lights” holiday, called Diwali.

This film is the story of the struggles faced by one family, divided forever by economic hardships and geopolitical realities. Meena, the mother (played with haunting beauty and genuine sincerity by Ritu Singh Pande), manages successfully to flee government thugs with her 3-year-old daughter Reshma, but Vishnu, the father (played by popular Bollywood actor Jimi Mistry) is forced to remain behind to sort out visa problems. Living with a relative in New York, mother and daughter wait patiently for Vishnu to join them, but he never arrives.

As the years pass, the hard-working Meena falls in love, marries her boss (Aidan Quinn) and has another daughter, while Reshma (played by Canadian TV star Melinda Shankar) grows into a sullen, flashy and rebellious 18-year-old with the worst characteristics of a miserable, self-centered American teenager. As a high-schooler who forges her mother’s name to fake excuses to play hooky, she has one goal in mind—to somehow get back to Guyana for a reunion with her father, who is now a political prisoner in the middle of the jungle, surrounded by a river full of anacondas and electric eels, none of which are ever shown. From here, the journey is less than riveting. Scenes are missing and years disappear as Dad is released by the prison guards and sent to New York as a mule to deliver drugs, but instead of heading back to prison, he escapes, and everyone ends up at Reshma’s wedding, where they once again celebrate the Festival of Lights.

The transitions between time-frames are awkward, and some of the writing is wooden, but the actors are meritorious enough to warrant attention, and the basic thrust of the long-winded narrative—the hurdles faced by misjudged immigrants who work hard to make America a better place for themselves as well as their new neighbors—is worth the time and effort. Ms. Prasad is a director whose previous experience has been limited to documentaries, and her limitations are obvious. Still, she’s a good enough filmmaker that we can hope she has better luck next time.

rreed@observer.com

FESTIVAL OF LIGHTS

Running Time 120 minutes

Written and Directed by Shundell Prasad

Starring Melinda Shankar, Jimi Mistry and Aidan Quinn

2/4

Mr. Obama’s decision will directly affect the lives of about 800,000 young people nationwide. The President did not offer them amnesty or a chance to regularize their status. But with the threat of deportation lifted, they will be able to work on the books, apply for driver’s licenses and other government documents, and otherwise enjoy a much-better quality of life.

The President described these immigrants as “Americans in their heart, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper.” Substitute “New Yorkers” for “Americans” and you have a fine description of thousands of people who live, work, play, and love in the five boroughs. They may have been born in Mexico, Brazil, Poland, or Thailand, but their formative years have been spent in New York. They may have a childhood memory of their native land, but for them, “home” means an apartment in Jackson Heights, a playground in Sunset Park, a school on the Lower East Side.

They are New Yorkers.

Freudenberger. (David Jacobs)

One of the more recent entries in the annals of literary hype that threatens to overshadow actual achievement is Nell Freudenberger. Back in 2001, when the recent Harvard grad was an editorial assistant at The New Yorker, her short story “Lucky Girls” was published in the magazine, and she soon became known, both in New York publishing circles and beyond, as a wunderkind. She happened to be attractive. “Too young, too pretty, too successful” said the title of an article by Curtis Sittenfeld, in Salon. But then came a well-received first novel, The Dissidents, and a short story, “An Arranged Marriage,” in The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40 Fiction issue, in 2010, and awards, like the PEN/Malamud. And now with her second novel, Newlyweds (Knopf, 352 pp., $25.95), an extended version of “An Arranged Marriage,” comes her most successful effort yet, one that shows a more mature voice and the true triumph of her talent over her hype.

As she did in The Dissidents, Ms. Freudenberger has again taken on a foreigner’s acclimation to life in the U.S. Newlyweds’ appealing protagonist, Amina, is a young, slender Bengali (e)mail-order bride who grew up in and around Dhaka, the only daughter of a hapless dreamer of a father and an ailing mother. The novel follows her to Rochester, N.Y., where she meets her fiancé, George, an unambitious engineer who lives in a generic three-bedroom house on a suburban cul-de-sac, learns the meaning of words like “dumbstruck” and how to shovel snow, and gets a job as a sales clerk at a local retail store called MediaWorks.

George met Amina, we learn, through the online dating service AsianEuro.com, to which he had come in the wake of personal troubles. He fell for her because “she was ‘straightforward’ and ... did not play games.” She saw an opportunity to escape her circumstances in a man who seemed honest and well-to-do.

In Rochester, Amina came face-to-face with the banal reality of what “arranged” entails, at least in the beginning—unpleasantly cordial sex and responsibilities, not to one another, but to some greater sense of the American Dream. Meanwhile, Amina attempts to keep intact her ties to her family back home, saving up what little money she earns at MediaWorks and, later, Starbucks to send to her parents, and set aside for citizenship and visa applications. Ms. Freudenberger captures how Amina’s panic at getting lost in a shopping mall on her first day of work becomes, strangely, a source of almost erotic excitement:

It was like a nightmare. She had a physical sensation of panic; if she’d had to describe it, she would’ve said it was in her stomach—although it was more like a lightness in her sexual organ, a feeling that sometimes came upon her at surprising moments (unfortunately not when she was doing that with George). She could hear her mother’s voice, Inshallah, but it wasn’t God’s presence she felt. It was her mother’s hovering beside her just as she had every day Amina visited the British Council, traveling all the way there and back with her by rickshaw so that Amina wouldn’t have to go alone.

Where Ms. Freudenberger excels, generally, in Newlyweds is in her understanding of familial love and the comical side of learning to live in a foreign land—no mean feat when you consider that she is, herself, a native New Yorker. (She was inspired by a young Bengali she met on a flight to Rochester.)

Many of Amina’s experiences in Rochester—spending time alone with manager Carl in the stockroom at MediaWorks, drinking Aunt Cathy’s sangria at family dinners, even remaining unmarried to George in her parents’ eyes (having failed to have a proper Deshi ceremony)—should have made her uncomfortable, she decides in retrospect, but she is quick to take note that “they had happened only to her American self, a person about whom her Bangladeshi self was blissfully unaware.” It is only in the latter half of the novel, when she returns to her native Bangladesh, and her family, that her new life comes in conflict with her old one. Waiting for her in Rochester is a husband whose past, uncovered, remains unresolved. In Bangladesh is Nasir, a family friend and childhood crush with whom she shares a past she was once eager to leave behind, but now  just as eagerly embraces. Amina experiences a disorientation that cuts to her very core:

You thought that you were the permanent part of your own experience, the net that held it all together—until you discovered that there were many selves, dissolving into one another so quickly over time that the buildings and the trees and even the pavement turned out to have more substance than you did.

Unlike in The Dissidents, which was criticized for spreading its focus too thinly among a cast of displaced oddballs, Ms. Freudenberger, in The Newlyweds, keeps her lens trained on Amina, and it’s a good move. Amina is unpretentious, a character who shares a common language with the reader. Her perceptions of her new life are inflected by her unfamiliarity with America and those of her past in Dhaka brought to life in an angry vividness where discontent finds anything and everything to latch onto. Ms. Freudenberger’s masterful prose makes comprehensible how someone can become a stranger in two places at once.

mwoodsmall@observer.com

But after his testimony, Colbert found himself on the defensive when Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) accused him of unpacking corn in his Colbert Report segment, "Fallback Position," rather than packing it. Or something. Colbert defended himself, but seemed uncharacteristically rattled by the interrogation—enough to put his foot in his mouth with an off-color and worse, unfunny, joke about gay Iowans. 

Here it is: 

MORE > 7 Ways the Koch Brothers Benefit from Corporate Welfare

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Contact: Aaron Gell / @aarongell

The San Francisco Fed compared states with different numbers of immigrants and found that, far from draining resources away from those born in the U.S.A., newcomers to our country boost job prospects. "[T]he economy absorbs immigrants by expanding job opportunities rather than by displacing workers born in the United States," the report says.

Over the long run ... a net inflow of immigrants equal to 1% of employment increases income per worker by 0.6% to 0.9%. This implies that total immigration to the United States from 1990 to 2007 was associated with a 6.6% to 9.9% increase in real income per worker. That equals an increase of about $5,100 in the yearly income of the average U.S. worker in constant 2005 dollars. Such a gain equals 20% to 25% of the total real increase in average yearly income per worker registered in the United States between 1990 and 2007.

How is this possible? The economists say that, as one might expect, immigrants and U.S.-born people have different skill sets. Less-educated Americans become miners or manufacturers, whereas their immigrant brethren work on farms or "personal services." Those with more education split along different lines: U.S.-born nerds go into teaching, management and nursing; immigrants go into engineering, science and medicine. And, as would please Robert Torrens, specialization and comparative advantage do the rest.

If anyone were to take this piece of research seriously from a policy perspective, the U.S. economy's prospects might improve dramatically. But we're not holding our breath for that.

New York Post: The first great big summer blockbuster is here! And though this morning is a little springy for it, Lou Lumenick was getting pretty hot yesterday as he wrote his review. The Post gives the movie a banner over the top of its front page this morning heralding its review. There's a strange choice here, one that is special to tabloids: The font they've chosen for the headline mimics the font used on posters advertising the movie. It isn't nefarious—but we wonder whether the designers ever debate whether there is anything compromising about abandoning the newspaper's own traditional fonts for a font that might make the banner look like an actual advertisement for the movie. The headline reads: "WOLVERINE HOWLS," and then a red box directs readers to the review in the Pulse section. Wait a minute: "howls?" I mean, we get it: It's the cry of a dog or wolf. But it is also, according to the Random House dictionary, "a loud, scornful laugh or yell," or even "something that causes a laugh or a scornful yell, as a joke or funny or embarrassing situation." As in a howler. Perhaps it's a sign of how powerful the use of the movie-promotion font that one does not question that Mr. Lumenick's review is a good one: After all, only really good or really bad reviews for big, big movies get front-page treatment.

One of the great things about the Post is their willingness to turn the letter "S" into a dollar sign, to convey that a story is about pricing without having to waste words on the concept in the main headline. But it takes work! The slabby font the Post uses normally is so bold that a line through the "S" would actually fill all of the interior space of the letter, making it an illegible blob; you can actually see a slight color differentiation where the designers added little squares to the top and bottom of the letter to convey the dollar symbol without messing it up, if you look at the digital image they send over to the fantastic "Today's Front Pages" compendium over at newseum.org (on which Wood War depends every morning!). Sorry, nerddom! The text says "YANKEE CLIPPER$" (we still can't help reading these dollar signs with a lisp for some reason, somewhat reducing the effectiveness, but I think we're alone in that). "Bombers slash ticket prices" is the subhead, and out of the lower left-hand corner a pair of hands is holding out four fanned-out Yankee Stadium tickets. What is the story they're selling here? Actually they picked it up from the Associated Press newswire: "Team officials acknowledged they struck out by charging astronomical prices for the best seats in the brand-new Stadium -- so yesterday, they slashed those prices in half, and offered discounts and extra tickets to fans who had already bought the field-level seats." In other words, it's not the cheap seats that are getting cheaper, but those astronomically priced field-level seats that most of you weren't buying anyway. It's a big story as news, since these kinds of insane ticket prices are the economic motors of the New Stadium Philosophy, in which your seat up in the nosebleed sections is subsidized by heavies plunking down thousands of dollars to sit right on top of the playing field. But the story sticks to the facts, and besides an acknowledgement that the pricing of some of the best seats had been too aggressive, there isn't too much analysis of whether this means the stadium is going to be a flop.

Sarah Jessica Parker has birthed twins! There's a cute picture of her with husband Matthew Broderick, who is looking a bit Edwin Droodish these days (for a role), but their kids are probably going to be pretty well taken care of. "Twins for Sarah Jessica." No difficulty here.

New York Daily News: The Swine Flu! The Swine Flu! "DREAD OF THE CLASS," reads the main headline on today's News, and in fact it does seem like schools are the focus of the initial scare over swine flu. Because schools are germ festivals! Two bullet points support the main hed: "Flu spreading like wildfire through the city, " and "Officials stress it's so far just a mild illness." Hmm. Does the second point somewhat vitiate the seriousness of the first? But while the swine-flu story dominates the page typographically, the Yankees get the top of the page. "STADIUM ON SALE" reads the print. For some reason, the News decided to be tricksy with type treatment at the top of the page today, too! We can't tell why. It's yellow faux-stencil, military style, with a line-box around it that is probably supposed to make it look like a stamp. So, like, did the military decide to sell Yankee Stadium? Subhead to the rescue! "Now it'll only cost you $1,250 to sit in top seats!" By which they don't mean the seats highest up in the stadium but the best seats in the stadium. So the copy is meant to be incredulous that even after a price chop, ticket prices for premium seats at the stadium are still out of reach to YOU, OUR READER. They are statistically probably correct. But here's another one of those moments where the News brand of populism, which is almost always about money, trumps the Post brand of populism, which almost always contrasts middle-class mores to those of the decadent upper classes.

Speaking of populism! The News runs a little banner at the bottom of the page advertising "FREE CITIZENSHIP ADVICE." Those Zoni Language School–type advertisers must be getting aggressive! No, seriously, thanks News, sometimes it's good to be good on the front page.

General observations: The News is usually inclined to gloat a little more over difficulties at Yankee Stadium; we're wary of corporate conspiracy theories and Rupert Murdoch's friendship with George Steinbrenner was hardly likely to become an explicit factor in the Post newsroom's handling of the front-page Yankees story. But still, the newspaper is always a reflection of its ownership on some level, and the care with which Post headlines are written about the Yankees, the Yankees' business situation in particular, is at least notable. There is neither outrage at the astronomical prices, nor schadenfreude about the Yankees having had to slash them, nor continued outrage at the fact that the prices for the best seats remain outlandish. But that must be partly because it's a part of the Post's appeal that it has this ambiguous relationship with its readers' finances. You are interested in rich people, and you don't need to constantly be target-marketed for your middle-classdom! On the other hand, that might normally seem like a reason for the Post to play up the real financial angle on the front page. "Rich Crazies Get a Break!" is the sentiment on this theory. Anyway, "YANKEE CLIPPER$" is a decent headline, though it's not clear why cutting prices makes you like a boat. Still, "STADIUM ON SALE" is just boring. On the other hand, actually printing a dollar amount on the front page is good work: Numbers, like names, make news! This is a tough one. Let's move on to Swine Flu versus Howl. We hate everything about the Wolverine promotion at the top of the page, and also Hugh Jackman in this picture kind of looks like he's jumping out of the pool because he realized the water was full of slimy stuff and he is trying to get out of there as quick as he can. It's a little absurd. Also, Hugh Jackman in costume may get them a relatable figure on the top of the page, but not as relatable as the Derek Jeter that is fronting the News this morning. "DREAD OF THE CLASS" is sort of a nonstarter, except that everybody wants to read about swine flu every day. They could have written "GET YOUR DAILY SWINE FLU UPDATE HERE" and it would get readers. We just wish the Post had done a swine flu story this morning so that we'd have gotten a nice pun to talk about. And, good work for the immigrants, Daily News, but ... huh? We guess the SJP news beats that, but we're getting bored with celebrity children and don't have the energy to think about them anymore.

Winner: Daily News.

Assemblyman Peter Rivera was going to have a press conference this morning to announce "total opposition" to Gillibrand over her position on immigration, but it was canceled, he says, because it had "became unmanageable" (there was a conflicting press conference held by Senate Minority Leader Dean Skelos) and because Gillibrand has asked a chance to explain her positions first.

"The best thing to do is to attempt to meet with her, and then come out with a statement after it," he said. 

In Hyde Park on Monday, Gillibrand was asked about the subject as it related to agriculture in the Hudson Valley. She replied:

"My view has always been that we need to right-size immigration," she said. "We need to have the right number of visas to accommodate the right number of workers, particularly for this industry. The agriculture industry's number one concern is, we need access to legal workers, and we need our immigration system to work for our industry because there is so much talent that we need to keep in this country that are experts in all of these various industries."

Chung-Wha Hong, head of the New York Immigration Coalition, was happy to see that softening.

"I believe a lot of people have gotten her that message, that she needs to reconsider her positions, and I think that's why her rhetoric is softening," she said. Her group also blasted Gillibrand's selection. "I would recommend to her that she doesn't draw out this process, and have a slow and messy discussion, but rather to come out clearly and quickly with a pro-active and comprehensive position. We are eager to help her do that."

Rivera also said he would give her a chance to clear the air, and refused to say if any one issue was a "deal-breaker."

"If I'm not satisfied with her answers, then the war goes on," he said.

But today is a day for the promise of the American dream. This is a day for the racism that remains a shameful part of our heritage to take a seat in the back of the bus, replaced by the hope and tolerance that is at the heart of who we are.  This country is changing, and this unimaginable election is proof of that change. As former New York City Mayor David Dinkins once said, we are not a melting pot, but a gorgeous mosaic. Each tile or community has its own distinct characteristics, but when one steps back, a beautiful picture emerges.

The great strength of the American experiment has been its tolerance of people from other parts of the world. Never perfect, this is now threatened by a post 9/11 fear of immigration and immigrants. There is this idea that immigrants take American jobs and somehow damage American traditions. Of course, as immigrant families like the Kennedys of Boston and the Obamas of Hawaii and Chicago demonstrate, the power of the American dream has long been its ability to absorb those who come to this shore. People are not assimilated, but immigrants are changed by America and change America as well. My family is a long way from its roots in Eastern Europe, and we are now truly Americans, but this is not the America my grandparents came to. It is a better place than that. The talents and historic memories of all of the people of this planet have managed to make their way to this country – this amazing experiment that was once called the new world. That is of course, the greatness of America.

With a global economy, instant communications, and an emerging world youth culture, we are poised for an American century based on the fact that America is a place that can continue to attract the world’s talents. Economic growth is based on the ability to develop and deploy brainpower. While our education system is not doing all it needs to develop brainpower, this country still attracts people from all over the world and puts them to work. In New York City, 40% of the people who live here were born in other nations. There is no place in the world that can say that and truly lay claim to being the center of the modern world.

Judging by the look of the line I stood in Tuesday, Barak Obama was clearly the president of Morningside Heights. By 11:00pm Tuesday night, he had become president of the rest of this nation, if not the world. Like many of my contemporaries, the news that Barak would soon be President Obama brought tears to my eyes and joy to my heart.  Listening to him on election eve, and seeing his family join with the Biden family was like watching a movie or a dream. President-Elect Obama is correct of course: It is not a dream. It is a challenge to public service and a call to create a true national community. Just like the movies though, it has come in the nick of time.

McCain and his conservative critics learned different lessons from the ill-fated attempt in 2007 to create a comprehensive immigration reform scheme. Conservative opponents of immigration reform interpreted the defeat of the Bush immigration plan as proof certain that opposition to legalization for illegal immigrants was a winning argument and that the public had embraced a border-security-only plan.

But McCain saw it differently. He survived a near-political death experience and then came back from the political grave to win the nomination of the G.O.P., a party supposedly dominated by anti-immigration reform conservatives. How did he do it? Not by renouncing his support for immigration reform, but by recognizing political realities. His formulation: border security first, but then comprehensive reform.

For months the argument was theoretical. Conservatives took pride in sinking comprehensive reform while McCain reveled in his reputation as a maverick who had defied his party and at least tried to construct a real solution to a knotty problem.

But now the fight has resurfaced. With each speech before a Hispanic group, the gap between McCain and his base becomes more apparent. No matter how often McCain promises that he has learned the lesson of achieving border security first, the conservative chorus rolls its eyes in disbelief. His talk about immigration reform is simply, as one activist put it, “a code word for amnesty.”

As for illegal immigrants already here, loud conservative voices either insist that they will never reward “law-breakers,” or they set the standard for border security and attrition of illegal immigrants already here so ridiculously high that it amounts to the same result: no legalized status for illegal immigrants.

McCain can talk all day about border security measures and employer verification but his critics aren’t listening. Anti-immigration reform conservatives accuse McCain of double talk and of planning an amnesty bonanza. They give him no points for having given it the college try with Ted Kennedy. Rather, it reminds them of all the things they don’t like about McCain – maverick, deal-maker, and compromiser.

Even his praise for Hispanics who served and sacrificed in the military brings groans from conservatives. Tom Tancredo went public with his outrage over McCain’s ad which celebrated the Hispanics whose names appear on the Vietnam memorial. And many conservative pundits grumbled as well. They take umbrage at the perceived insult that they can’t distinguish between legal immigrants who have served honorably and illegal immigrants. There simply is no winning for McCain with this crowd.

But McCain would be foolhardy to throw in the towel or to stop talking about this issue. After all, he won the Republican Florida primary on the strength of his support among Hispanic voters. He will need them and others in New Mexico and other western states to win in November.

Moreover, McCain has another reason for bringing up immigration which has nothing to do with Hispanics or even immigration itself. Both he and Barack Obama are trying to lay claim to independent voters who want less screaming and more problem-solving from their leaders. The very things -- immigration reform, global warming legislation, campaign finance reform and judicial nominations (i.e. the Gang of 14) -- which anger his conservative base potentially endear McCain to independents. They like politicians who know how to get things done.

That, in part, is why the McCain team was eager to pounce on Barack Obama’s recent attempts to bolster his own role in immigration reform, pointing to Obama’s votes on so-called poison pill amendments that killed the bill.

Even if his conservative critics would rather McCain forget about immigration reform and find other examples of political heresy to tout, McCain shows no sign of stopping. That may create some heartache for him in keeping conservatives in the tent and energized. But the alternative is worse: losing a powerful argument with independents and a vote-getting issue with Hispanics.

So McCain will have to grin and bear the screams from his base and resist the warnings, sometimes verging on threats, to pipe down. And he, of course, has the best evidence possible that his is the winning argument. He won the G.O.P. primary, didn’t he? He’ll need to keep that in mind and steal himself against the cries from the Right if he is to have a fighting chance in November.

1) Immigration. A Field Poll, the gold standard for California polling, released two weeks ago found that 40 percent of G.O.P. primary voters pegged illegal immigration as the top issue -- perhaps not a surprise given that California, a border state, once embraced Proposition 187, which barred state spending on illegal immigrants and their children. Romney has courted these voters relentlessly in this campaign, consistently attacking McCain for his support of comprehensive immigration reform -- or "amnesty," in the rhetoric Romney has adopted.

Even though Romney's own history on immigration (he registered no objections to McCain's plan just two years ago) invites skepticism, his strategy already worked in Florida, where he won most of the "no-amnesty" vote. But in Florida, more G.O.P. primary voters favored a less drastic approach to immigration--and those voters flocked to McCain. In California's more extreme illegal immigration political spectrum, Romney could be getting more mileage out the issue.

2) Semi-open primary. On paper, McCain should have a clear advantage in California, since independents are allowed to participate in either party's primary. But the process of doing so is cumbersome, and most casual voters don't know about it. Any independent voter who does not specifically request otherwise receives a non-partisan ballot that does not include the primary races. So while independents can vote in the G.O.P. primary, they don't do so in nearly the numbers that their counterparts in states like New Hampshire do. Plus, the national perception is that McCain has pulled away from Romney, while the Clinton-Obama race is very close, so the number of independents favoring the Democratic race may be more lopsided than it was in New Hampshire.

3) Putting the brakes on McCain. There is a well-established history in both parties of candidates breaking clear of the pack, only to be hit with a surprise defeat. In 1992, Bill Clinton seemed to wrap up the Democratic nomination with convincing wins in Illinois and Michigan. But then he suffered a shocking defeat to Jerry Brown in Connecticut, where voters seemed to be saying they weren't quite ready for Clinton's coronation. The same thing happened to Michael Dukakis in 1988, when Michigan voted overwhelmingly for Jesse Jackson, and to Ronald Reagan in 1980, when George H.W. Bush was momentarily brought back to life with a late win in Pennsylvania. All of those front-runners went on to win the nomination, but only after returning to the ring to finish off competitors they thought were finished. Perhaps California Republicans are taking it upon themselves to put the brakes on the McCain and to extend the process for a few more weeks. The Romney-talk radio tactic of raising doubts about McCain's party loyalty certainly encourages California Republicans to humble McCain, even if they aren't fully sold on Romney.