I've been keeping track over the last seven days about the American presidential election memes La Vanguardia has been putting out in their News section. This does not include the opinion or interview or whatever else sections, but here is the list in approximate order of frequency with which La Vanguardia mentioned them.

a) Iraq is a quagmire and it's Bush's fault
b) Bush has been a disaster for the American economy
c) Either Americans or Bush or both are Jesus freaks
d) Minorities are being disenfranchised even as we speak
e) Bush doesn't care about poor people
f) Bush will manipulate the upcoming electoral chaos
g) Israel
h) Remember how nice to Europe Bill Clinton was?
i) Either Bush or Americans or both are ignorant jackasses
j) The US press has endorsed Kerry
k) Americans are gun nuts
l) The surveys are manipulated by the Bush campaign
m) Tony Blair is Bush's lapdog
n) Abu Ghraib
o) US imperialism
p) the CIA
q) Bush's Middle East policy has been appropriate and effective (Ha! They actually did print an interview with Bernard Lewis in which he said that. That's one pro-Bush meme of eleventy-seven.)

There was an insane rant by Rafael Ramos on Friday in which he talked about the betting line according to the London bookmakers on the US election. Odds on Bush are 4 to 6 and on Kerry 10 to 11, meaning the bookies favor Bush, but Ramos isn't writing about that. Here's what he's writing about. It's in quotes.

"At this point it's impossible to win enough money for a dinner--much less get rich--by betting a modest amount on the Democrat or the Republican. Says Robert Hash, from the Ladbrokes agency, the only way to win real money is to take a few chances and risk a multiple bet. For example, that John Kerry will be elected President, he'll take Ohio and Pennsylvania, Bush will sue, the 'butterfly ballots' will be the center of attention in Florida, hundreds of thousands of blacks won't be allowed to vote, the case will go to the Supreme Court, and there will be no decision for forty days, breaking the record or chaos and bungling and uncertainty of 2000.

But that's not strange enough a situation crazy enough, it won't make you a millionaire. The winning formula will be wilder. For example, Bush wins, he becomes a model of moderation and common sense, he promotes peace in the Middle East, he pulls out of Iraq, he accepts abortion and homosexual marriage...

Not an impossible scenario. The perfect bet is somewhat simpler. The current president will win and, in his second term, he will attack Iran, authorize petroleum drilling in the national parks, use the Kyoto protocol as toilet paper, the number of Americans without health insurance will top 50 million, there will be new tax cuts for the rich, unemployment and the profits of the pharmaceutical and insurance companies...Yes, a Bush victory will mean money. But millions of Britons, against the war and neoconservatism, will have the feeling of having lost no matter what."

Now how's that for foaming-at-the-mouth hatred? Ramos really hates us, not just Bush but all of us. If he was your server at Taco Bell he'd spit in your food just for being a gringo.

Oh, that wasn't enough? OK, here's some more Rafael Ramos, from Saturday, Oct. 16.

"European Social Forum seeks alternative to US hegemony

Tens of thousands of activists have joined together this weekend in London, within the Third European Social Forum, in order to dream of a freer and more just world, where the fear of terrorism is not the pretext to give free rein to the excesses of the right, destroy civil liberties, and close frontiers to immigrants.

'Through time, philosophers have interpreted the world in many different ways; the question, however, is how to change it,' says the inscription of Karl Marx's gravestone in Highgate Cemetery, under a bouquet of wilted flowers. More than twenty thousand idealists from all over Europe have met together this weekend in London precisely in order to talk about how to change the world--and not necessarily from a Marxist viewpoint--in the era of globalization, the unbridled greed of the big corporations, and the hegemony of the United States.

Hundreds of organizations are participating in the third European Social Forum in order to lay out the shape of a better world than the one of the Iraq war, racism, desperate immigrants who die on their rafts only because they want to feed their children, cheap patriotism, the destruction of the environment, the deterioration of civil liberties, laboral precariety, hunger in Africa, discrimination at work against women, the corruption of democracy, and social injustice."

"Bush...neocons...lone superpower...Blair Bush's lapdog...relative economic well-being...the right advances...Gerry Adams...Che's daughter...the British union organizer Frances O'Grady...imperialism...hegemonic world...Washington wants the biggest piece...China will make the United States commercial dominion tremble...structural problems of an economy based on credit...politics inspired in fear...Marx...change things..."

Sorry. I sort of compressed the last part of the interview. Isn't it strange, though, how angry this guy is? He's pissed off at the society that allows him to work as an alleged journalist in London. And his rage against the United States has, I am sure, literally unbalanced his mind.