Report: Bush left White House in 1980's IT mode

[ag]

happened in Mexico City to AMLO in 2000.

Did it? I don't recall - I had just moved to Mexico City around then, but wasn't yet reading the local papers. Seems strange: he took over from his fellow PRD members: immediately before him the mayoralty was held by Rosario Robles, who took over when Cuauhtemoc Cardenas resigned to run for the presidency. As this was long before Cardenas and Lopez Obrador started major bickering, it would seem not clear why cardenistas would be out to screw Lopez in any serious way. Though, of course, I could easily believe that back at the time Cardenas didn't know what an e-mail was - he doesn't strike me as a computer geek, to put it mildly ))

[ag]

you're right, I misremembered.. I was thinking about the '97 transition to CC rule: see the chapter called "Left City" in John Ross' 'El Monstruo: Dread and Redemption in Mexico City', which I likely read on Nov 6 2010.

Well, back then it was a lot worse. Much of the city was run on all sorts of unofficial and semi-legal arrangements between the local PRI machine and whatever local group that did the job. Once the regime changed, they couldn't even pick up the garbage - the oficial procedures for that were entirely unworkable. It took a while for the machine control of the city to be re-established - probably not until Lopez Obrador himself came to power (he, of course, is a machine politician par excellence).