Thousands of Thai call for ouster of PM Yingluck Shinawatra

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's a bit misleading to consider the opposition "right" and Thaksin's crew left. Thaksin's side is pretty nationalist/racist (see how much support the opposition gets amongst Muslims) and included some pretty awful people previously involved in military juntas.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Bad as the Thaksin clique might be, at least they aren't a bunch of despicable, reactionary pluto/aristocrats with a tendency toward military coups.

No actually they are. Remember that Thaksin was the richest man in Thailand and owned basically all of the media, and ran a very corrupt patronage machine. And the last election before his ouster was boycotted by ALL opposition parties because of how much election fraud he was responsible for and was obviously planning in this instance. As far as military coups go Thaksin's party put this guy in power briefly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samak_Sundaravej And in regards to being reactionary, remember the party used to be called "Thais Love Thais" and has a lot of "Thailand is for Thais!" rhetoric that if you change the nationalities could easily come from Marine Le Pen, Geert Wilders or Jorg Haider.

And the Democrat Party has historically been the backbone of opposition to previous military regimes.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Just take a look at election results in southern Thailand if you want to see the evidence of this being a nationalist and xenophobic movement. Unsurprisingly the Thaksinites aren't too popular with Muslims. That's not coincidental. As far as the King goes, while it's easy to rail against aristocrats, he doesn't seem like that bad of a guy. He worked to topple military regimes in the 70s and at one point opened up the gates of the Royal Palace to give refuge to student protesters being slaughtered by the military. I would take him any day over a thug like Samak.

Now I agree that military coups are not the right way to do things. But when you consider the Thaksinites' main way of obtaining power is widespread election fraud (hence the 2006 boycott and why earlier incarnations of the party were banned) it's not like you can hold them up as defenders of democracy either.