Our moral values, Latinos and Democrats, are much more similar than some would have us believe...

"And while we're talking about moral values...it's not a moral value to scapegoat undocumented immigrants. President Bush won't stand up to the anti-immigrant forces in his own Party...

The Republican leadership targets minorities to advance their own party agenda, but in elections they look for ways to divide us. It was African-Americans in 2002, gays in 2004, and it's going be immigrants in 2006, you wait and see. There's no place for discrimination in America. Democrats will never divide Americans to win elections.

Of course, the apologist Democrat in us will say that Radnofsky is only trying to appease the voters in the "center" by "talking tough."

Hasta este fin de semana, las posiciones al interior del tribunal hablaban de cuatro magistrados a favor de la validación de la elección y, por lo tanto, del triunfo de Felipe Calderón Hinojosa: Alejandro Luna Ramos, Eloy Fuentes Cerda, Alfonsina Berta Navarro y Mauro Miguel Reyes Zapata; en tanto que los tres magistrados restantes -el presidente, Leonel Castillo, Fernando Ojesto Martínez Porcayo y José de Jesús Orozco Enríquez, argumentan que hay elementos "suficientes" para no declarar válida la elección.

Until this past weekend, the position inside the court, only four magistrates were in favor of the validating the election. Those who were in favor of Felipe Calderón Hinojosa were Alejandro Luna Ramos, Eloy Fuentes Cerda, Alfonsina Berta Navarro y Mauro Miguel Reyes Zapata. The three remaining magistrates [in favor of AMLO] - the president, Leonel Castillo, Fernando Ojesto Martínez Porcayo y José de Jesús Orozco Enríquez, argued that there were "sufficient" elements not to validate the election.

• In 3,074 precincts (29 percent of those recounted), 45,890 illegal votes, above the number of voters who cast ballots in each polling place, were found stuffed inside the ballot boxes (an average of 15 for each of these precincts, primarily in strongholds of the National Action Party, known as the PAN, of President Vicente Fox and his candidate, Felipe Calderón).
• In 4,368 precincts (41 percent of those recounted), 80,392 ballots of citizens who did vote are missing (an average of 18 votes in each of these precincts).
• Together, these 7,442 precincts contain about 70 percent of the ballots recounted. The total amount of ballots either stolen or forged adds up to 126,282 votes altered.

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This site was publicly launched on October 12, 2005, Día de la Raza (Día de la Hispanidad) by Blogs Media, a company specializing in nanopublications, blog services and blog consulting.

"There is a clear winner, Mr. Felipe Calderón and that will soon be confirmed," Fox said.

"And there is a last chapter to the process and that is the opportunity for candidates and parties to present complaints," he continued. "There is a party and a candidate that presented their complaints, and they are being reviewed."

Today, however, Mexico may be on the brink of undoing a generation of hard-won political reform.

"Amid the inevitable legal arcana that surround election challenges, the greater fear is political -- that the tribunal will bend beneath Mexico's notoriously backward-looking pressures.

Mr. López Obrador's street mobs are one kind of threat. They have barricaded miles of one of the city's most important boulevards for weeks, blocked entry to the offices of foreign banks, caused days of lost income for thousands of Mexican workers and twice burst into the Cathedral to interrupt Sunday Mass. Mr. López Obrador has pledged that this is going to continue until he gets his way.

The tribunal's decision is a crucial test for Mexican modernity. Mexicans who had reason to believe that their country was evolving toward a pluralistic democracy supported by strong independent institutions are right to be worried, along with foreign investors and international creditors.

When we have an election in the United States and the individual who gets the most votes, we refer to them as the president elect.

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The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee as now just come up with their ad campaign "Secure" to try to do one-up-manship on the Republican Party. In a Pete "I Hate Meskins" Wilson style attack ad, the DSCC potraits Hispanics as terrorist and the Bush administration has failed to combat it. All of a sudden the message that Bush let in "millions more illegal immigrants" rolls by.

Email the DSCC and tell them to stop the racism: info@dscc.org.

Update 10AM: A visit to the DSCC front page finds the ad removed. Earlier, the link to the ad wasn't working, but it seems to be back online. Again, Chuck Schumer's phone number is 202-224-2447.

What? Do they think we don't know computers?

Harris County Democrats denounced their own party Tuesday after joining the national outcry over a political ad they said equates Hispanic immigrants with terrorists like Osama bin Laden.

What began as an attempt to wrestle the traditionally Republican-dominated issue of security away during a hotly contested election year, instead risks driving Hispanic voters away from the Democratic Party, said Houston Councilwoman Carol Alvarado.

"You cannot compare people who come over for economic opportunities to people who are coming over to terrorize our country," she said. "They should not be in the same message, same video or even in the same conversation."

A Democratic political ad is under fire from Hispanics who say it unfairly compares Latino immigrants to terrorists.

Pedro Celis, chairman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly, said in a statement Tuesday that the DSCC should remove the ad because it vilifies illegal Hispanic immigrants and is "appalling."

Houston City Councilwoman Carol Alvarado, a Democrat, sent a letter to DSCC Chairman Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting record) of New York asking that the ad be pulled. She said it could alienate Latino voters.

"To liken Latino immigrants to bazooka-toting terrorists not only undermines the positive relationship our party has with this community, but also lowers us to a despicable level as breeders of unfounded fear and hatred," Alvarado wrote.

"This is the same kind of fear mongering we condemn in the extreme media and now we are seeing it at the DSCC," said Lisa Navarrete, spokeswoman for the National Council of La Raza. "It's appalling."

What I find amusing is how people on the left cherry pick the articles to blast la raza. These are the same people who will cry out on the mountain tops saying that the MSM is a tool of the corporatist and they lie about anything. But when it comes to minorities and la raza from South of border, they take what the MSM says as the gospel truth. What is worse, no matter what WE say, will always be looked at as questionable. And if we espeak Espanish berry well, pues forget, its not good enough, we must not know what we are talking about.

True leftists dont fit your model.

Don't shit on those who really love you.

Perceptions of Discrimination
82% - say that discrimination is a problem that is preventing Hispanics from succeeding in the US.

58% - say that discrimination is a "major" problem, compared with 44% in the 2002.

54% - say that the debate over immigration policy has made it more of a problem.

Among sub-groups of the Hispanic population, 51% of the foreign born see the debates as the cause of more discrimination, compared with 57% of the native born.

In examining the responses by generation of nativity confirms that Hispanics far removed from the immigrant experience in their family histories perceive the debate as a source of greater discrimination every bit as much as the most recent arrivals. Among the different generations, 51% of the foreign born see the debates as the cause of more discrimination, compared with 47% of the second generation, and 60% of the third-plus generations.

Political Repercussions
Regarding party identification, a majority of (42%) Hispanics still identify themselves as Democrats, however, this has droped from 49% in 2002.

When it comes to which party has more concern for Hispanics/Latinos Issues
37% - say that the Democratic Party has more concern for Hispanic issues
9% - say that the Republican Party has more concern for Hispanic issues
37% - say that the neither the Democrat and Republican Party has any concern for Hispanic issues

But an examination of the performance of students in Houston by The New York Times raises serious doubts about the magnitude of those gains. Scores on a national exam that Houston students took alongside the Texas exam from 1999 to 2002 showed much smaller gains and falling scores in high school reading.

Compared with the rest of the country, Houston's gains on the national exam, the Stanford Achievement Test, were modest. The improvements in middle and elementary school were a fraction of those depicted by the Texas test and were similar to those posted on the Stanford test by students in Los Angeles.

Over all, a comparison of the performance of Houston students who took the Stanford exam in 2002 and in 1999 showed most did not advance in relation to their counterparts across the nation. More than half of them either remained in the same place or lost ground in reading and math.

"You're expected to cheat there," said Donna Garner, a former teacher at Wesley who said her fellow teachers instructed her on how to give students answers while administering tests. "There's no way those scores are real."

Translation provided by el cid's diary at dkos.

The coalition Por el Bien de Todos assured that in the recount of 4,238 ballot packets -- of which 6,566 had been counted through yesterday -- there exist 132,206 "altered" votes, not only because in a bit more than half of the polling stations there were found more votes recorded than paper ballots stored, but because the remainder had been removed [illegally accessed through the seal?].

But Germán Martínez of the National Action Party (PAN) put the number of polling sites with altered vote counts at 25 percent. And those with errors involving five or more votes totaled only 3 percent, he said.

Duarte, who like Martínez is his party´s liaison to the Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), said even his rival´s figures would be significant. "The PAN is saying that the changes aren´t important," Duarte told reporters Friday. "But we have to remember that the difference in the IFE vote count comes to only 1.8 votes per polling station."

Recounting Our Way to Democracy

NOT since 1910, when another controversial election sparked a revolution, has Mexico been so fraught with political tension.

The largest demonstrations in our history are daily proof that millions of Mexicans want a full accounting of last month’s presidential election. My opponent, Felipe Calderón, currently holds a razor-thin lead of 243,000 votes out of 41 million cast, but Mexicans are still waiting for a president to be declared.

Unfortunately, the electoral tribunal responsible for ratifying the election results thwarted the wishes of many Mexicans and refused to approve a nationwide recount. Instead, their narrow ruling last Saturday allows for ballot boxes in only about 9 percent of polling places to be opened and reviewed.

This is simply insufficient for a national election where the margin was less than one percentage point — and where the tribunal itself acknowledged evidence of arithmetic mistakes and fraud, noting that there were errors at nearly 12,000 polling stations in 26 states.

It’s worth reviewing the history of this election. For months, voters were subjected to a campaign of fear. President Vicente Fox, who backed Mr. Calderón, told Mexicans to change the rider, but not the horse — a clear rebuke to the social policies to help the poor and disenfranchised that were at the heart of my campaign. Business groups spent millions of dollars in television and radio advertising that warned of an economic crisis were I to win.

It’s my contention that government programs were directed toward key states in the hope of garnering votes for Mr. Calderón. The United Nations Development Program went so far as to warn that such actions could improperly influence voters. Where support for my coalition was strong, applicants for government assistance were reportedly required to surrender their voter registration cards, thereby leaving them disenfranchised.

And then came the election. Final pre-election polls showed my coalition in the lead or tied with Mr. Calderón’s National Action Party. I believe that on election day there was direct manipulation of votes and tally sheets. Irregularities were apparent in tens of thousands of tally sheets. Without a crystal-clear recount, Mexico will have a president who lacks the moral authority to govern.

Public opinion backs this diagnosis. Polls show that at least a third of Mexican voters believe the election was fraudulent and nearly half support a full recount.

And yet the electoral tribunal has ordered an inexplicably restrictive recount. This defies comprehension, for if tally sheet alterations were widespread, the outcome could change with a handful of votes per station.

Our tribunals — unlike those in the United States — have been traditionally subordinated to political power. Mexico has a history of corrupt elections where the will of the people has been subverted by the wealthy and powerful. Grievances have now accumulated in the national consciousness, and this time we are not walking away from the problem. The citizens gathered with me in peaceful protest in the Zócalo, the capital’s grand central plaza, speak loudly and clearly: Enough is enough.

In the spirit of Gandhi and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., we seek to make our voices heard. We lack millions for advertising to make our case. We can only communicate our demand to count all the votes by peaceful protest.

After all, our aim is to strengthen, not damage, Mexico's institutions, to force them to adopt greater transparency. Mexico’s credibility in the world will only increase if we clarify the results of this election.

We need the goodwill and support of those in the international community with a personal, philosophical or commercial interest in Mexico to encourage it to do the right thing and allow a full recount that will show, once and for all, that democracy is alive and well in this republic.