A New Southpaw

Here's a toast that I hope we won't regret: to Evo Morales, new President of Bolivia. Anyone who wants to change the rules of engagement in the failed "war on drugs" and describes himself as the Bush administration's "nightmare" can't be all bad. And of course he's a friend of Lula's, Hugo's, and (gasp) Fidel's, who obstinately refused to sit still and let us overthrow or kill him, the rude bastard. Nothing is funnier than listening to the media gasp in horror at the "leftists" who have won recent elections in Argentina, Uruguay, and elsewhere.

OK, Fidel is a scumbag who ran out of ideas in 1963, and Hugo is no democrat. But the people of Latin America have had a gutful of "free trade" and conservative military governments servicing US multinationals and filling their own pockets while they napalm the peasantry. Let's let the left have its chance to prove its incompetence - and I'm willing to predict there won't be quite as many desaparecidos as the generals produced.