Brazil's President Dilma Rousseff ousted from office by Senate

[forest444]

5. Sure, Judi. And thank you for keeping all of us on DU up to date on this saga.

It's fair to say the fix was in from the start, and that Dilma Rousseff had no chance. I'd even venture to say that if the backers of this coup had struggled to reach the requisite 54 Senate votes to impeach, juicy bribes would have been made available.

Senator Acir Gurgacz practically admitted as much by conceding that Dilma had committed no crimes - but that he voted to impeach because the people of Rondônia demanded it.

This coup was, as you might expect, big news in Argentina; Brazil, besides being five times larger by population, is also Argentina's largest trading partner and both countries are each other's top source of foreign tourism.

Cristina Kirchner denounced the coup as a "novel way of violating popular sovereignty" and a "dark episode in the history of Latin America."

But true to form, Macri endorsed the coup not only by marginalizing the event as an "institutional process" (not unlike sacking a minor cabinet minister); but by describing it as Brazil's "reaffirmation of an absolute respect for human rights, democratic institutions, and international law."

You know, that - word for word - is exactly how the Videla dictatorship described itself all those years ago. Sheer coincidence, I'm sure.