The Mexican Elections... a step to the left, or two steps back?

***UPDATE BELOW*** As I write, Mexico is making final preparations for the presidential elections to be held tomorrow, July 1st.. The country seems as divided as the United States politically as roughly the same percentage of voters favor left leaning candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador of the PRD and Enrique Peña Nieto of the PRI. The third major candidate, Josefina Vazquez Mota of the PAN Party, has virtually no chance as polls show her trailing the top two candidates badly. Whoever wins, the election is going to have major consequences for the United States. Both Peña Nieto and Lopez Obrador are advocating policies in the drug war, which has claimed over 50,000 victims over the last 6 years, that would basically allow the free flow of drugs to the United States. Mexico is asking whether it is worth the cost in money and lives to fight a war over a product that is essentially passing through the country on the way to the wealthy drug users. Let me put it another way. Why should Mexican citizens die in a futile attempt to curtail an insatiable addiction of another country?  After all, Mexico is not a major player when it comes to drug use, rather, it is more of a transit route. Peña Nieto has said his administration will focus on crimes that directly affect the Mexican people.  That includes things like extortion, kidnapping and murder.  Lopez Obrador, in classic leftist rhetoric is saying he will take the military off the streets in six months and put his focus jobs for the millions of underemployed young people in the country. Notice that neither candidate is saying he will continue the war on drugs that was undertaken six years ago by current President, Felipe Calderone. As I listen to everyday people on the street, here is what I am sensing. It is time to return to the days of the PRI, the party that ruled Mexico for 70 years before finally losing in 2000 to PAN candidate Vicente Fox. I was in Mexico on the night he was elected and all I can say is that the country was ecstatic.  They had finally done it, had finally declawed the dinosaur.  And now, just 12 years later, they are ready to give that dinosaur life again. That is the view of the establishment.   Young people, the type that were partly responsible for the Arab Spring across the Middle East, are all in for Lopez Obrador.  But I do not think they have the numbers to make the difference. I believe Lopez Obrador dashed his own hopes to win the presidency by acting like a spoiled brat after he narrowly lost to Felipe Calderone in 2006.  If, after that election he had accepted defeat gracefully, rather than crying fraud and trying to set up a shadow government in exile, the people would have backed him heavily this time around. I will be in Oaxaca City all morning and the rural areas in the afternoon trying to get a sense of what is happening.  We are being told that a winner will be announced by midnight. Soon we will have a new President-Elect in Mexico and a new policy towards the United States.  Who can say where this will lead, except that it seems certain that whoever wins will be looking for a way to curtail the violence that has led to more deaths in Mexico in 6 years than we saw in the entire Vietnam War that so consumed our country. Want to read more? From the Washington Post From John Ackerman in The Nation AmericasMexico Blog Update As expected, Enrique Peña Nieto was elected the new president of Mexico.  His margin of victory however was much less than the polls showed.  In pre-election polling, he was leading Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador [AMLO] by over 10%.  His margin of victory will end up about 5%. AMLO has, like he did when he lost in 2006, cried fraud, although his supporters have turned up nothing that could even remotely change the final tally, even if everything he alleges were true. Mexico has worked hard to reform their system and for a majority of the country, there is a feeling that AMLO just cannot, or will not accept that he lost. I am sure this will lead to some protests around the country starting tomorrow when the official tallies are released.   Now we will wait for the upcoming changes in the war on drugs that has claimed so many lives...

Immigration, Health Care and the Supremes... dancing around the real world issues...

I'm not a lawyer. I don't claim to fully understand all the nuances of even a traffic stop, much less the legalese that many are seeming to enjoy parsing after this weeks Supreme Court rulings. I know the US has an enormous deficit and that there are limits to what a society will turn over to a central government in both taxes and control. But I also know that people with no hope in the future get discouraged, give up and can easily be cast aside by a system that fails to take into account the personal side of political and legal decisions. That is part of what Justice Antonin Scalia was saying in his dissent Monday regarding SB 1070, popularly known as the Arizona Immigration Bill. He was trying to speak for the ranchers and farmers in Arizona who are feeling overwhelmed by what they see as rampant illegal immigration into their state. Many of those farmer and ranchers are at ground zero in the immigration wars.  With isolated plots of land, they have been surprised upon many a night to see someone using their out buildings as a camp, or makeshift home. Why they ask, has the federal government, across many administrations seemingly turned a blind eye to their struggle to feel safe and secure in their own homes? It is a good question... but it's not the only question worth pondering as we close out one of the most watched Supreme Court sessions in years. We should also ask if government has a role in making sure all Americans have access, not theoretical, but real access to quality health care in this country. Seemingly, both Presidential contenders agree.  Even though he disagrees with the route President Obama took, Mitt Romney's plan is to repeal and replace.  Clearly that says he too sees some role for the federal government in this area. There are millions of us who would love to buy health insurance.  And I say us because, like many, my family is uninsured. Because of a doctor approved procedure done 25 years ago, my wife is unable to get insurance in the private market.  She has a preexisting condition.  And with that, few, if any companies will offer her insurance at a rate we can afford. The current health care act gives people like us hope.  Hope that we will not have to forever lie awake at night wondering if we are just a little achy, or if something is seriously wrong inside the wonderful bodies that God gave us. We have hope that one day soon, when the entire law takes effect, that we will finally be able to gain real access to some of the best health care in the world.  At a cost that will not bankrupt us. Justice Scalia said the citizens of Arizona were feeling "under seige" against the effects of illegal immigration. Many of us have also felt under siege against the effects of having to live with a health care system that seems built to do everything possible to maximize profits and minimize access to all but the approved. The Supreme Court has given us lots to think about this week.  I hope we can move past the political rhetoric and seek some real solutions that are designed to both protect and serve the all of the American people.

President Obama Drones On... profiling his way to a lower civilian body count in the Middle East...

President Barack Obama, channeling all the insipidness of the Bush Administration foreign policy, has himself adopted a policy of engagement, that when done by domestic law-enforcement agencies, is tantamount to profiling. Now this might not be such a big deal if the Obama Administration was not in the middle of chastising the State of Arizona for what they believe is a policy that will lead to racial profiling. Here's the background... As many are aware, the US is increasingly relying on drone strikes to kill terrorists in the Middle East.  The problem is that, like any bombing plan, sometimes things do not always go as planned. That has led to numerous civilian deaths as those drones kill everyone in sight, even when they hit their exact target. Except the Obama Administration has decided that those civilian deaths are not really civilian deaths when the dead are men of military age. President Obama has decided that any military age men killed when we are bombing known terrorists are also to be classified as terrorists and not innocent civilians.  And here is his logic.  You are known by the company you keep. You read that right.  Here, from an article by Chris Woods, is what has been discovered about the Obama Administration's views on enemy combatants. President Obama and his administration have adopted a policy that calls people terrorists simply because they were in contact with, or in the same general vicinity of a known terrorist, even though there may be no evidence whatsoever to make that charge. I call that profiling.  As have Democratic lawmakers for years, who now are choosing for some reason to quietly ignore the reality of the situation. I am not sure what the President and his team of advisers call it, but it does seem to be keeping the civilian death numbers down, which was the objective. I cannot imagine a more cynical way of changing the metrics of a discussion then this. President Obama, whose campaign pushed back vehemently against the charge that he was complicit with the ideas of known domestic terrorist Bill Ayers clearly is holding men of the Middle East to a different standard. President Obama, clearly would fight back against police forces around the country if they tried to use the very same strategy in communities where they risk their lives on a daily basis. Eric Holder. Attorney General of the United States argued that the Arizona statute, SB 1070, which calls for checking the immigration status of people suspected of committing other crimes, would lead to profiling. Making matters worse, the only way a family can clear the name of a dead relative, who just may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, is by posthumously presenting contrary evidence. I bet that will make people feel better. At least in Arizona, if someone is profiled and mistakenly arrested, they can present their evidence personally and not have to rely on a posthumous finding. President Obama, you should be ashamed, and so should the rest of Congress for working to avoid accountability for a growing number of civilian deaths worldwide as a result of our actions in this so called war on terrorism.

notes on a ballot... quick takes on the news...

Allan Malamud used to write a sports column in the old Los Angeles Herald Examiner.  He called it "notes on a scorecard" and it was series of thoughts you might write on your scorecard as you were watching a game. I think I'll call mine notes on a ballot... I saw recently that Democrats favor jeeps as their car of choice and the GOP, BMW's... since I drive a Hyundai, i asked my wife what that makes us... she said poor... If I am backed into a corner, I'd say the odds of President Obama winning a second term are less that 50%... There is something wrong when a presidential election comes down to just the few states that are not totally politically decided already... Las Vegas got some good news recently... we are now only the third worst state in the foreclosure debacle... News of even more dalliances coming to light makes it clear that there is a reason it is called secret service... Please tell me how it is that i can usually read about a US covert program on the front page of a newspaper... Why is it Dems support states rights when they like the issue, but oppose them when the disagree... and for that matter, the GOP too... This mess in Syria is horrible... but is it our responsibility to fix it? When will we be seeing a time when US forces are not active in combat? Finally, I know everyone thinks they have the solution to what ails us a country... but until we can agree on the problem, we'll never get to the best solution... I'm just sayin...

Reagan, Bush the Elder, Obama, and our Federal Debt... why our country is upside down financially...

Bruce Bartlett, a man who held senior policy roles in the administrations of Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, as well as serving on the staff of noted tax cutting supply side economics Congressman Jack Kemp, explains why our federal budget is so out of whack in this article from the New York Times. Republicans assert that Barack Obama assumed sole responsibility for the budget on Jan. 20, 2009. From that date, all increases in the debt or deficit are his responsibility and no one else’s, they say. This is, of course, nonsense – and the American people know it... As I documented in a previous post, even today 43 percent of them hold George W. Bush responsible for the current budget deficit versus only 14 percent who blame Mr. Obama. The American people are right; Mr. Bush is more responsible, as a new report from the Congressional Budget Office documents. In January 2001, the office projected that the federal government would run a total budget surplus of $3.5 trillion through 2008 if policy was unchanged and the economy continued according to forecast. In fact, there was a deficit of $5.5 trillion. Read the entire article... if you dare...  Many thanks to my friend Shaw Kenawe over at Progressive Eruptions for finding this jewel in the rough.