Yesterday Ash or Muffy or whomever it was talked about the sweeping of leftists in Latin America.
Then this article came out today. LOL
---
NEWS ANALYSIS: Leftist Tide May Be Ebbing
- By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 6, 2006
(07-06) 16:09 PDT MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) --
Conservative Felipe Calderon's apparent victory could signal that the leftist tide sweeping Latin America has reached its high-water mark, as voters frightened by the radicalism of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez seek refuge in more mainstream ideas across the region.
That trend has emerged with Mexico's presidential vote count Thursday, the setback dealt to Bolivian President Evo Morales in a referendum Sunday, Peruvian moderate Alan Garcia's victory over Chavez ally Ollanta Humala last month and the landslide re-election of Colombian conservative Alvaro Uribe in May.
Intolerance, confrontation, messianic attitudes and stridency — once staples of Latin America's left — are proving less attractive than leaders who can provide stability and strengthen historically weak institutions, like the separation of powers, independent central banks and judiciaries.
Manuel Camacho Solis, an adviser to leftist Mexican candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said a month before the election that avoiding class polarization was the key to the campaign. Indeed, the campaign became polarized, and Lopez Obrador lost.
"More than 50 percent of Mexicans are center, or conservative, so you can't hope to have a very pure leftist government in Mexico," Camacho Solis said. "What society wants is a progressive government, a broad alliance. It doesn't want a class-division thing."
The "leftist tide" idea likely oversimplifies by tossing Indian-rights movements, radicals and moderates into the same boat. The right hasn't exactly gained a mandate, and most of the region's leftist presidents haven't abandoned the market-oriented policies that have improved their economies, even as they assert political independence from Washington.
Lopez Obrador arguably did better than any truly leftist candidate has ever done in Mexico, an essentially conservative country. But he also lost the large lead he had early in the race, and may have scared voters with pledges to change an economic model that has brought stability and low inflation, if not much job creation or wage increases.
"Attacking some of the programs, including some of the economic strategy, was a mistake," said Ana Maria Salazar, a former U.S. defense official and Mexican political analyst. "At least part of the middle class and the lower-middle class for the first time in many decades have access to loans to buy things. ... People felt there was some benefit to them."
The right also hasn't regained the kind of power it enjoyed in the early 1990s, when government after Latin American government imposed austere budgets, dropped restrictive tariffs and embarked on wholesale privatizations.
Such policies enriched the elites and slowly expanded the middle classes but did little to alleviate poverty in the region, and widespread frustration with the Washington prescription swept a wave of left-leaning governments into power. But most have been more like European social democracies than the 1960s "red tide" of communist guerrilla movements.
"There is no such thing as a red tide today," Lopez Obrador adviser Porfirio Munoz Ledo said last week. "The social tide exists because the (conservative) model didn't work."
The specter of Chavez's quasi-socialist and confrontational rhetoric scared voters toward the middle in both Peru and Mexico. Calderon's campaign surged only after he bought television attack ads suggesting Lopez Obrador was a Chavez in the making.
The comparison is "facile and inaccurate," said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at Virginia's College of William & Mary.
And Lopez Obrador, for his part, said his proposals were as moderate as the New Deal programs former President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted to bring his nation out of the 1930s Depression.
And his pro-business rival, Felipe Calderon, pledged Thursday to "work toward a Mexico without terrible inequalities" — an acknowledgment of Latin America's fundamental challenge.
That message hasn't been lost on any of the region's leaders, be they mainstream leftists like socialist Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina and Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil or more radical ones like the Washington-bashing Chavez and his ally Morales.
Class fears have been a big factor in Bolivia, where Morales' party failed to get enough votes Sunday to push through the constitutional reforms it wants to improve the lives of that nation's poor Indian majority.
That says a lot about how much Latin America has changed since the days of Che Guevara. But if the moderate left, or the right, doesn't improve people's everyday life, Latin Americans could tire of both — and of democracy.
"People are dissatisfied, and the danger is very great," said Munoz Ledo, "because people have their doubts about whether democracy can improve their lot."
Hey, when you have a movement that can claim legitimacy for a phrase like "Fake but Accurate" this is exactly what you can expect from them.
I predicted the exact same response to a conservative win in Mexico as we had to a conservative win in the United States. Whining, lying, wild claims....has Ranty Rhodes gone into her rant on how it is possible to "reprogram the mainframe" from a voting booth to change the results? That one is a gem.
And of course the Iraqi documents put on the Web for translation are fake, too. We saw that one coming. If it denies a Leftist dogma, it's just a lie. It's the neorad fallback position, their default position on everything.
Five or six men serving on Kerry's boat in Viet Nam, who profited greatly from his friendship and largesse, said he was a hero. Two hundred and fifty or so who gained nothing, risked lawsuits, and brought the wrath of Liberalism down on their heads, losing money and in at least one case a job, to set the record straight? Well, they are ALL (all 250 of them!) LIARS!!!
Five years of military records and the testimony of commanding officers, others in command at the same time, and fellow pilots, all supporting the honorable and complete record of George W. Bush as an accomplished and skilled fighter pilot who defended his country and did so with honor, all are dismissed with the simple claim that they are all false. But an anonymous person who claims to have been a pilot and says he merely does not "remember seeing Bush around much" and a stack of proven forgeries is enough to make wild and outlandish and totally unfair accusations for years.
The Left and reality are simply never on the same page---and the Left is perfectly happy with that.
We were on Freeper last night for about 3 hours going through the election results and watching Democratic Underground and Daily Kos get totally unhinged. It was hilarious. They were screaming that the election was being stolen as their guy lost the lead minute by minute.
Of course they never bothered with the pesky facts that the northern Mexican states were counted last and are heavily PAN supporters, not PDF....oh those pesky facts.
Of course now they are threatening mobs and violence and other tantrums.
I love watching facts get in the way of someones rant. Especially if I can be the one to interrupt them and point out the fact that is going to cause the problem.
oh please. Do you really think that Bush-boy would have just conceded if he were down 500 votes in Florida on the morning after, and if the person in charge of counting the votes and certifying the election was a democrat who also happened to head Gore's election campaign in Florida, and Gore's brother was the governor?
If you believe that, I've got some swamp land I'd like to sell ya.
Aarontime...what we did expect from Gore was to have the votes of the men and women serving overseas counted...you know "EVERY VOTE MUST COUNT"
What a f'ing hypocrite he was.
Fact: Kerry was there
Fact: W was not. (I love the "great fighter pilot" line. Beautiful!)
Fact: Diebold machines did make errors. Amazingly all errors were made in W's favor.
Geez this is a slow day around here isn't it? Is this all you can post about?
Let's see...
We've got rape and murder and arrest.
Haditha seems to be hanging around. The Iraqi PM does not seem so happy with us. Yikes!
The Jongger firing off missles left and right.
Did you count the civilian death's in Iraq last month? Wow.
The two big papers write columns about the incredible mess W faces world wide
Afganistan ain't looking too good.
The price of crude jumped to over 75 bucks
W's bailed on his immigration policy. Flip/flop?
I could go on and on. Why? You knuckleheads will just spin the reality right out of it. So be it.
Really, the goo is getting deeper and deeper. We are up to our eyeballs fella's.
Keep preachin that rosey stuff. Those of you that routinely take the RED pill will not see the truth any how.
It's all good. It's better than it's ever, ever been. Put your feet up, relax. It' all OK. Watch my finger, it's all OK.
I trust this blog will get out the truth, and W will protect me from the boogey man.
There, I feel better now.
Thank you.
I agree with raker. Who cares? I check the Daily Kos, and I could not find an entry for the story, so they don't even care.
I did see a lot about DeLay forced to stay on the ballot in TX (OOPS).
As long as my trip to the Riviera Maya in Nov goes smoothly, I could give a rats arse who is president, but than again Limbaugh speaks highly of the Dominican, but I wonder if that was in relationship to that 14 year boy he took to the "driving range". If that is the case, I will stick to Mexico.
Raker....fact, you are 100% wrong about the Diebold errors. In fact in Ohio many of the errors went to John Kerry.
So please, get off the mountain of idiocy and provide some facts.
Barney...the 5th circuit will overturn that ruling so fast it will make your head spin. Of course Bob Toricelli was able to withdraw his name off the New Jersey ballot 7 days before the election but DeLay cannot? Please. That will be taken care of very quickly by the 5th circuit.
Blarney...you couldn't find a story about the Mexican elections on Daily Kos...you ain't trying son. Try again. The DUmpster also has many of them as they were on suicide watch last night...it was great to see.
Yes, Mark, no liberal anywhere has ever lost an election without claiming it was stolen. Two incidents prove the case!
Election fraud? Its a democrat tradition.
Remember how Kennedy was elected by Mayor Daley Sr. in Chicago b his stuffing the ballot box?
Seems they haven't forgotten how to do that. Here is the latest on election fraud in Chicago:
(AP) — A former top aide to Mayor Richard M. Daley (Jr) and three other onetime city workers were convicted on Thursday in a scheme to load the city payroll with campaign workers in defiance
of a federal court order.
* For complete coverage, go to
ChicagoBusiness.com
War, I guess you will have to send me the link, because I just looked again (DKos) and nothing?
Ah Blarney, come on. You disappoint me
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2006/7/5/174825/1587
Over 500 comments on this thread alone on Daily Kos and it's not the only one on the subject.
Yesterday Ash or Muffy or whomever it was talked about the sweeping of leftists in Latin America.
Then this article came out today. LOL
---
NEWS ANALYSIS: Leftist Tide May Be Ebbing
- By MARK STEVENSON, Associated Press Writer
Thursday, July 6, 2006
(07-06) 16:09 PDT MEXICO CITY, Mexico (AP) --
Conservative Felipe Calderon's apparent victory could signal that the leftist tide sweeping Latin America has reached its high-water mark, as voters frightened by the radicalism of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez seek refuge in more mainstream ideas across the region.
That trend has emerged with Mexico's presidential vote count Thursday, the setback dealt to Bolivian President Evo Morales in a referendum Sunday, Peruvian moderate Alan Garcia's victory over Chavez ally Ollanta Humala last month and the landslide re-election of Colombian conservative Alvaro Uribe in May.
Intolerance, confrontation, messianic attitudes and stridency — once staples of Latin America's left — are proving less attractive than leaders who can provide stability and strengthen historically weak institutions, like the separation of powers, independent central banks and judiciaries.
Manuel Camacho Solis, an adviser to leftist Mexican candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, said a month before the election that avoiding class polarization was the key to the campaign. Indeed, the campaign became polarized, and Lopez Obrador lost.
"More than 50 percent of Mexicans are center, or conservative, so you can't hope to have a very pure leftist government in Mexico," Camacho Solis said. "What society wants is a progressive government, a broad alliance. It doesn't want a class-division thing."
The "leftist tide" idea likely oversimplifies by tossing Indian-rights movements, radicals and moderates into the same boat. The right hasn't exactly gained a mandate, and most of the region's leftist presidents haven't abandoned the market-oriented policies that have improved their economies, even as they assert political independence from Washington.
Lopez Obrador arguably did better than any truly leftist candidate has ever done in Mexico, an essentially conservative country. But he also lost the large lead he had early in the race, and may have scared voters with pledges to change an economic model that has brought stability and low inflation, if not much job creation or wage increases.
"Attacking some of the programs, including some of the economic strategy, was a mistake," said Ana Maria Salazar, a former U.S. defense official and Mexican political analyst. "At least part of the middle class and the lower-middle class for the first time in many decades have access to loans to buy things. ... People felt there was some benefit to them."
The right also hasn't regained the kind of power it enjoyed in the early 1990s, when government after Latin American government imposed austere budgets, dropped restrictive tariffs and embarked on wholesale privatizations.
Such policies enriched the elites and slowly expanded the middle classes but did little to alleviate poverty in the region, and widespread frustration with the Washington prescription swept a wave of left-leaning governments into power. But most have been more like European social democracies than the 1960s "red tide" of communist guerrilla movements.
"There is no such thing as a red tide today," Lopez Obrador adviser Porfirio Munoz Ledo said last week. "The social tide exists because the (conservative) model didn't work."
The specter of Chavez's quasi-socialist and confrontational rhetoric scared voters toward the middle in both Peru and Mexico. Calderon's campaign surged only after he bought television attack ads suggesting Lopez Obrador was a Chavez in the making.
The comparison is "facile and inaccurate," said George Grayson, a Mexico expert at Virginia's College of William & Mary.
And Lopez Obrador, for his part, said his proposals were as moderate as the New Deal programs former President Franklin D. Roosevelt promoted to bring his nation out of the 1930s Depression.
And his pro-business rival, Felipe Calderon, pledged Thursday to "work toward a Mexico without terrible inequalities" — an acknowledgment of Latin America's fundamental challenge.
That message hasn't been lost on any of the region's leaders, be they mainstream leftists like socialist Michelle Bachelet in Chile, Nestor Kirchner in Argentina and Luiz Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil or more radical ones like the Washington-bashing Chavez and his ally Morales.
Class fears have been a big factor in Bolivia, where Morales' party failed to get enough votes Sunday to push through the constitutional reforms it wants to improve the lives of that nation's poor Indian majority.
That says a lot about how much Latin America has changed since the days of Che Guevara. But if the moderate left, or the right, doesn't improve people's everyday life, Latin Americans could tire of both — and of democracy.
"People are dissatisfied, and the danger is very great," said Munoz Ledo, "because people have their doubts about whether democracy can improve their lot."
...but I wonder if that was in relationship to that 14 year boy he took to the "driving range".
Another typical Baloney2000 sentence, riddled with third-grade errors.
Hey Baloney, I didn't know you were 14 now--Happy Birthday, rump-ranger!!!
*Shakes his head*
I for one am not surprised at the results in Mexico. Of course he's going to raise a hissy fit because he's losing power if this goes through.
Modern day liberals are Orwellian. They are the ThoughtPolice. They deal in Doublespeak. It's scary the similarities.
War, that link was from yesterday. As I said there were no new diaries today.
Keefer, I think Rush is back on the “OC”. When he heard that the Korean missile would not go up, he sent over his unused portion of viagra. The guy is a little dopey.
"Intolerance, confrontation, messianic attitudes and stridency — once staples of Latin America's left...."
That can just read "..staples of America;s Left.." and keep it in the present tense.
Look, we've even got an AP reporter using the term 'messianic' to describe the belief system that has overtaken politics and created the Neorad Left. I've been calling it 'evangelical'---it's been a long time since I agreed with much of anything on AP.
And gee, Barney, as a genito-centric Lib, I would think that you would be eager to kneel at Rush's feet the way you have at Clinton's. Well, that might not have been the best way to say that.....
But now that you know that Rush is a dirty old man, too, he has to be rising in your estimation.
But I thought that getting some was a good thing, and getting a lot was even better. You idolized Bill for his sexual appetites and now you castigate Rush? Could it be that you are just a wee tad bit hypocritical?
................
"Kerry was there..."
Depends on where "there" was. Not Cambodia, though he does still love to fondle the Magic Hat.
Being somewhere and screwing it up is not better than not being there at all. Being "there" is not enough. You have to be "there" and do a good job and comport yourself with honor and dignity and integrity and do a good job. Just showing up is only good enough for Libs.
I didn't use the term "great fighter pilot". I said "accomplished and skilled" based on the reports of his commanding officers, both in formal reports and in conversations with friends and families. But thanks for reinforcing my point, which is that facts mean nothing to Libs---you'll cling to the Lib lies about Bush till the day you die, and die convinced that Kerry was not only competent, but a hero.
I'm expecting you to further prove my point by jumping on the "Just showing up...." that I wrote, to claim that Bush never DID show up---another favorite Lefty Lie. You just refuse to learn, don't you?
And you will steadfastly refuse to address the question of where and how Kerry served out the rest of HIS six-year tour of duty. Don't see a lot of Navy officers wearing long hair and hippy clothes and hanging out in North Viet Nam, do you? Ever come up with an explanation for that? Or for the Honorable Discharge dated in March of 2001?
No, you'll just regurgiate the Bush lies, ignoring the records, and dodging the hard questions about Kerry. Sooooo predictable.
No Blarney...that link STARTED the day before but with 500 comments it dragged on well into the next day.
Good grief....that's what we were monitoring...the idiocy of KOmmunists and the DUmpsters.