Thursday

I was going to open by verbally dancing around about how it rained all day yesterday (and drizzled off and on today), but now I read that mudslides have killed ten people in Durango.* After John swamped Baja, he broke apart and swirled southeast, causing flooding in El Paso and Ciudad Juarez (still reeling from its last flooding). I guess a remnant of this storm ended up loosening a mountainside in northern central México as well. In other news, don't forget about the multiple governments of México: Bush called* yesterday to congratulate both Calderón for winning, and Fox for governing, a great election here below the Rio! The president-elect is beginning to get his government in place, citing US immigration reform as his cause célèbre.* AMLO, on the other hand, is eagerly awaiting the ratification of his new constitution, I guess, although local Spanish language news sources indicate there are signs of his movement weakening. Is this because of the large annual military parade scheduled through his occupied territory along the capital's Zócalo and down its main street on September sixteenth? Maybe it's just not worth striving for second place: there is already a self-deployed people's government in Oaxaca City.* The APPO, noting long ago the disappearance of any law makers or enforcement in the state capital, went ahead and themselves declared the object of their complaint, governor Ulises Ruiz Ortíz, hereby ousted, and are currently busying themselves by reopening the city to tourists and regulating the state. Local businesses who have pledged to stop paying taxes to protest the unending larger protest no longer know who they are being civilly disobedient to. Now, if the cartels would also take over their nearby state capitals, then México could disintegrate into ten different countries overnight. [Cavin, Monterrey, Country of Leon.]