What Democracy?

Very strange occurences rounding out these days: Congress gives Dubya a one-two cuffing, on his lust for torture and on the Patriot Act, and now this revelation that he authorizes wiretapping of American citizens, without court order or Congressional approval (give or take 14 Republicans and one Democrat from Connecticut), and would do it again, and will until he's frog-marched outta there. My questions are how is it anybody could be surprised by this, or how can it be the the New York Times has utterly abased itself yet again?

Contrarily this story in the Monitor celebrates genuine democracy as flourishing in South America, and much to the very hypocritical chagrin of the fascist Bush administration:

[I]f spreading democracy is truly the goal of US foreign policy, the United States should welcome such new approaches rather than demanding that other nations elect officials subservient to the views that currently prevail in the White House.

Historians and assorted news junkies will recall Republican administrations have long had a problem with this very kind of "flowering." The democratic election of Salvador Allende in Chile, for example, was squelched by Dick Nixon and his hatchet man Henry Kissinger in 1973, supplanting him then with an army general cum murderous dictator in Augusto Pinochet; same thing in Iran back in the 50s, when Eisenhower had Mohammed Mossadegh, the elected Prime Minister of Iran, overthrown, and for the cardinal sin of nationalizing his country's oil fields. In his place we foisted upon its people the oil favorite Shah -- and we all know how well that turned out, now don't we?

Today we cut to the chase. We send our soldiers on fools' errands, tell them lies, and get the pigs gone, or this one anyway. And just because he was sitting on the second largest oil depository in the world, well that's... just... a... coincidence. So if anybody tells you its not about the oil, Richard Cohen...

Well, they're all just blowin' smoke up your poop chute.

Goes to "pattern of criminal behavior," your honor.

Listen up! Democracy in America doesn't exist and never has. The Electoral College sees to that. And right now, we're not even a Republic. Electronic touch-screen voting, particularly that manufactured by Diebold, has been determined, by no less of an authority than the General Accounting Office, as corrupted and hence unreliable, and as such did subvert the will of the American people in at least the last three election cycles.

Consequently we have a sitting president, along with a conniving and complicit Congress, put in place by a faceless oligarchy not answerable to We The People; a president who has now admitted to criminal and most assuredly impeachable conduct.

He, and they, must be removed.

The prosecution rests.