Booted

Roscoe Gordon - Booted

'Jack, man have you ever been booted?' -- 'You sayin booted?' -- 'Yeah man, booted.'

Seems like the last authoritarian leader of Western Europe - for now only of course - has finally been booted. Am not going to go into him refusing to acknowledge his defeat here too much, would only like to point the not all that flattering comparison to a certain German politician this provokes (to the future energy kingpin). I would like to make my worthy readers aware of one current theme though. It seems as if a lot of the more recent elections shared the fact that they were unusually close. The US in 2000, Germany in 2005, Italy just now. I believe the Spanish elections two or three years ago were quite close as well. Wonder whether there is anykind of explanation for this out there. Cursory one would expect elections in times of dwindling party affiliations to produce clear results based on fads and trends. Anybody have an explanation - or another example - please venture forth.

Just noticed that I hadn't even mentioned whom I was talking about in the beginning of that paragraph. I was, of course, referring to Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister (is that capitalized in English?). The epitome of everything that can go wrong in a democracy in the modern capitalistic world. An authoritarian leader with no ideals - neither left or right - but only the desire to secure his position (economically but also to prevent himself from being sent where he belongs - jail). The amazing thing about this really is that - luckily I might add only - nearly 50% of the Italian population - the voting part that is, which actually is supposed to be educated better than the average anyway - still voted for a man who repeatedly brought into effect laws that were tailored to keep judges from holding trial over him and ruined his countries economy while his companies were flourishing, also his family directly benefited from decisions made by his government - the sale of digital TV-receivers is one example that I know of. But then Germans voted Hitler into office so I guess I shouldn't complain.