monday, monday ....

Got something almost ready for tomorrow. A little overwhelmed about stuff today.

Here's a shit-assed piece of "journalism" mocking the leftist Mexican presidential candidate, Lopez Obrador (who was most certainly robbed of his victory in that country's last presidential election): http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/world/4935025.html

MEXICO CITY — A year ago, he was the presidential front-runner. Today, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is the head of a near-penniless "shadow" government and the star of a low-rated TV show that airs in the wee hours.

But the self-proclaimed "legitimate president of Mexico" is criss-crossing the country, working crowds in towns and villages, making sure he doesn't disappear from the public eye. Today, the former leftist mayor of Mexico City is planning to preside over a "victory" rally in the capital to mark the first anniversary of the July 2 elections.

He also will launch his new book, The Mafia Robbed Us of the Presidency. It promises to provide new proof of what he claims was a right-wing conspiracy to steal the election, which Lopez Obrador lost by half a percentage point to conservative Felipe Calderon.

"We're going to commemorate the anniversary of our triumph because we won this election," Lopez Obrador, 53, declared on this week's broadcast of La Verdad Sea Dicha.

The TV program, whose name roughly translates to "The Truth Be Told," airs at 1 a.m. Tuesdays — the only time slot he could afford.

A blend of political satire and straight-faced propaganda, it provides a forum for the former candidate to lambaste Calderon's government and to rehash allegations of fraud. That is, if anyone's watching.

Oh-ha-ha! Zing! Pow!

Actually, this is the sort of hackery one would expect of a newspaper from Texas. If that state's failure to abandon "[p]resident" george w ["w" stands for "why do i keep drinking my watery, alcoholic's beer-shit from the toilet with a spoon?"] bush is any indication of their moral and intellectual integrity.

So, it's certain that Obrador lost that election is it? And the"Weapons of Mass Destruction" are going to turn up any day now, right? (They're in now Damascus, and/or north, south, west, and east from there, I hear.)

It would be nice if we didn't have to argue with a political movement that has no credibility to establish the fact that they have no credibility. It would be nice if whatever thoughts the current pack of liars and jerk-offs at newspapers like this were just simply, totally, completely irrelevant, because the world was a sane place, where justice reigned. Alas.

Anyway, here's the election results that so clearly showed Obrador's razor-thin loss that didn't require a recount:

There's something rotten in Mexico. And it smells like Florida. The ruling party, the Washington-friendly National Action Party (Pan), proclaimed yesterday their victory in the presidential race, albeit tortilla thin, was Mexico's first "clean" election. But that requires we close our eyes to some very dodgy doings in the vote count that are far too reminiscent of the games played in Florida in 2000 by the Bush family. And indeed, evidence suggests that Team Bush had a hand in what may be another presidential election heist.

...

And so it is in Mexico. The Calderón "victory" is based on a gross addition of tabulation sheets. His party, the Pan, and its election officials are refusing López Obrador's call for a hand recount of each ballot which would be sure to fill in those blanks.

Blank ballots are rarely random. In Florida in 2000, 88% of the supposedly blank ballots came from African-American voting districts - that is, they were cast by Democratic voters. In Mexico, the supposed empty or unreadable ballots come from the poorer districts where the challenger's Party of the Democratic Revolution (PDR) is strongest.

There's an echo of the US non-count in the south-of-the-border tally. It's called "negative drop-off". In a surprising number of districts in Mexico, the federal electoral commission logged lots of negative drop-off: more votes for lower offices than for president. Did López Obrador supporters, en masse, forget to punch in their choice?

Indeed. But perhaps we're being unfair. Surely, robbing the left of a legitimate electoral victory has never happened before in Mexico, right?

Oops.

Far from seeking democratic reform, Salinas adamantly resists opposition demands for independent electoral authorities and for removal of the governability clause. Instead, the new electoral law approved by the Chamber of Deputies on July 14 enables the president to appoint members of the electoral commission without regard for balance and criminalizes peaceful protests against the commission’s determinations. To forestall opposition alliances such as those that triumphed in Chile and Nicaragua, it also prohibits joint candidacies.

Salinas’ actions betray his campaign premise of “clean elections.” In hindsight, it seems he misjudged Mexican voters by believing he could win the 1988 presidential election fairly. Indeed, Salinas intended to dramatize his commitment to modernize Mexican politics through live broadcast of returns on election night.

Things did not, however, go according to plan. As opposition leader Cuauhtemoc Cardenas surged ahead in the early count, the computers tabulating votes suspiciously went “down.” While the opposition produced returns from 55 percent of precincts showing Cardenas maintaining his lead, the government stalled. A week later it announced its victory, but refused to disclose results from remaining precincts. According to a Los Angeles Times poll conducted last summer, less than one in four Mexicans believe Salinas was legitimately elected president of Mexico.

In other words, the people of Mexico have twice had their democratic rights stolen from them. But for this newspaper in Texas, this is all a joke. This is all just sour grapes. Coming from a country with such farcical elections, this is rich.

Of course, for sterling right-wing champions of democracy, such blatant violations of the electoral process are just fine if they happen to the left. What claim will they have to "fairness" and "legitimacy" and "democracy" should the situation ever be reversed?

They will have none.

Which won't stop them from hypocritically bleating. But galling hypocrisy is second nature to these people.

Of course, it won't be necessary. The Mexican left has won two elections. It possesses the electoral strength to win a third. If only this time, the Mexican people show the will to take their victory when they win it.

The Democrats (as pathetic and loathsome as they are) won two presidential elections. bush II has never been elected president. The left has the electoral strength. It can, and does win elections. "Leftist" and whining pseudo-leftist politicians should reflect on the significance of this.

And we should also reflect on the contempt that our enemies have for genuine democracy, and reflect on the significance of that as well.