What If Democracy Died...

...and nobody came to the funeral?

Convening in a downtown plaza in a session that resembled a political rally, lawmakers unanimously gave Chavez sweeping powers to legislate by decree and impose his radical vision of a more egalitarian socialist state.

"Long live the sovereign people! Long live President Hugo Chavez! Long live socialism!" said National Assembly President Cilia Flores as she proclaimed the "enabling law" approved by a show of hands. "Fatherland, socialism or death! We will prevail!"

The part they leave out, literally, from the entire piece is the power to dissolve the national assembly of Venezuela.

Some idiot from the US State Department said:

But the top U.S. diplomat for Latin America, Thomas Shannon, said the enabling law isn't anything new in Venezuela.

"It's something valid under the constitution," said Shannon, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, told reporters in Colombia. "As with any tool of democracy, it depends how it is used," he added. "At the end of the day, it's not a question for the United States or for other countries, but for Venezuela."

So, we can go to Iraq and install Democracy, but when a Democracy in our hemisphere is in it's death throws, we give the equivelent of, "dude, it's not my job"?

Maybe the Mad Dog of Iran got some pointers from Hugo on tossing out, what now appears to be the "restraining" hand, of the Khomeinists.

As seen at the Castle