Obamaspeak on Honduras

The New Neo Posted on by

I was curious to learn exactly and precisely what Obama said on Honduras. So here it is, for your perusal:

Note, despite the length of Obama’s statement, his omission of the most salient facts leading to what he refers to as a “coup” that “was not legal”—facts that would, if told, bolster the argument that it was neither a coup nor illegal. Zelaya’s removal was a response to his planned unconstitutional overreach in order to grab more power, and the actions by the other branches of the Honduran government (legislative and judiciary, with the army merely enforcing their rulings when Zelaya defied them) were designed to remove him before he accomplished his goal and it was too late to stop him.

In other words, Obama left out all the reasons why the so-called “coup” was engineered, and the ways in which it differed from the classic “coup” where the military is trying to gain power, and was actually more “legal” than Zelaya’s actions prior to it.

If I were a news reporter, I would ask Obama the following questions: if an executive is determined to grab power illegally, and it will be happening soon (the illegal referendum was to start in a few hours), and he has shown that he will not abide by the rulings of the Supreme Court of his own country and is ordering the military to do his bidding and defy the court, how else could the rule of law be enforced? Must there not be some sort of body to enforce the constitutional requirements of the government, and wouldn’t that have to be some military or police acting at the behest of the court?

Note also, Mr. Obama, that every other aspect of the Honduran government has remained in place—and the legislature itself, in accordance with the Honduran constitution, has chosen Zelaya’s successor. What say you? Why have you supported Zelaya, and why did you leave out those facts when you spoke? Why not stop meddling and let matters take their course, and allow Honduras to decide these things for itself?

Well, I don’t get to ask the question, so we won’t hear Obama’s answer. My hunch is that he’d obfuscate and end up not answering the questions anyway.

So I’ll try to do so for him. There are only two possible explanations for Obama’s omissions: he is utterly ignorant of events in Honduras, or he is distorting them for his own purposes and hoping the American people will remain ignorant of the truth. I think the latter explanation is by far the more likely, although neither explanation is very reassuring.

Assuming Obama is not merely ignorant, here are his possible motivations (which are not mutually exclusive):

(1) He is determined to do whatever Bush would not have done. Therefore, for example, since Bush supported a movement against Chavez, he wil do the opposite for Zelaya.

(2) Although Obama is certainly unafraid of taking drastic action in the domestic and economic spheres, he is generally afraid to act in the international sphere, so he tends to support the status quo. Zelaya would be the status quo.

(3) He wants the US to do whatever the consensus is and show support for “international” solutions, and therefore his position is in line with that of the OAS (he mentions the OAS position a few times in his statement).

(4) He is against any use of the military, including (or perhaps especially?) to remove a person who would be dictator.

(5) He supports Leftist governments around the world and especially in Latin America, and does not want them to topple.

(6) He supports the concept of pure democracy with a powerful executive rather than a separation of powers and checks and balances, or following the constitution. If an executive wishes to go straight to the people to enhance his power, then “power to the people”—or, rather, from the people—it is.

(6) He is planning a similar power grab here and wants to go on record as being against any forces that would oppose it.

That’s about covers it for me at the moment, but I’m sure you can think of a few more.

[ADDENDUM: There’s much, much more of interest on the Honduran situation at Fausta’s, as well as here.]

[ADDENDUM II: Think Acorn. Think Alice Palmer.]

Mrs. Madoff finally makes a statement

The New Neo Posted on by

And here it is.

Too little, too late? Why the big delay? And, as many point out (see, for instance, the comments section here), if she’s so distraught over the victims’ loss, why keep the 2.5 million she’s fought for? Why not give it to them?

Perhaps Ruth is guilty as the day is long. Perhaps she belongs in prison with her hubby, as do their children. And if they’re guilty, I hope that’s exactly where they go.

So far, though, there’s no evidence to pin on her (or them), despite the feelings of many people that she must have known, had to have known.

But let’s just hypothesize for the sake of a thought experiment that she and the family are innocent (I’ve done so before, and offered my reasoning here and here, despite howls of commenter disagreement). If so, then they would in some ways have been Madoff’s biggest victims, although previously they were his biggest beneficiaries.

I know this may sound absurd and even offensive. And believe me, I say this not through any lack of empathy for his clearly innocent victims, the other investors (several of whom I happen to know personally).

I say it because, if the family members actually are innocent, they’ve not only lost much of the wealth to which they’d grown accustomed (like the rest of the victims), not only been betrayed in the fiduciary sense by Madoff (like the rest of the victims), but they also (once again, this is only presuming their innocence, of which I’m certainly not convinced—I merely think it is a not-insignificant possibility) would have been betrayed on the most deeply personal level of all: conned by their beloved and trusted husband and father, his whole life of supposedly great accomplishment (and, by extrapolation, theirs as well) revealed to be not only a sham but a cheat, and their good names dragged down in the dirt with his, never to be recovered. Nothing they could ever do to assert their innocence will convince people of it, even if they are exonerated in every court of law in the country.

[NOTE: By the way, if Ruth Madoff is innocent, I have no explanation for her long delay in making her statement—except perhaps shock. I must say that I find the time lag very suspicious. But as far as keeping the 2.5 million dollars goes, she probably thinks that’s the bare minimum needed for survival, compared to her previous life. Can’t say that reflects too well on her either.]

Krugman and “treason against the planet”

The New Neo Posted on by

Paul Krugman, who apparently is not only an economist but also a master of the physical sciences as well, says that those in the House who voted against cap and trade committed “treason against the planet.”

Krugman assets not only that the science of anthropogenic climate change is clear, but that he knows, just knows, that those who voted against the bill hadn’t even really considered the science. Why? Because Representative Paul Broun of Georgia called climate change a “hoax.”

Well, I happen to disagree with Broun. I don’t think it’s a hoax, but I certainly do think the science is unsettled as yet. But because belief in anthropogenic climate change has taken on the aspect of a revealed truth rather than a science, evidence to the contrary about whether it’s actually happening (and especially whether it’s human-caused) has been suppressed as heresy.

Krugman decrees the nay-sayers as hostile to “hard science.” But it’s his side that is actually hostile to science, because of its need to leap ahead to certainty where none exists, and to brand everyone who disagrees as a politically-motivated betrayer of Mother Earth.

It’s also possible—although Krugman ignores this fact—to believe in climate change (even anthropogenic climate change) and at the same time see that cap-and-trade is itself a sort of hoax, a worthless and costly bill that panders to special interest groups and denies Krugman’s beloved “hard science” by pretending that solar and wind power can replace electricity.

And isn’t it odd that those who advocate limiting electric power by cap and trade in order to save the planet aren’t promoting nuclear power as well? I might actually start to believe that Krugman is something other than a political hack himself if he were to accuse those people (such as, for example, President Obama) who oppose nuclear power plants (excepting those in Europe and Iran, of course) of being guilty of “treason against the planet,” too.

Supreme Court rules on Ricci

The New Neo Posted on by

The Supreme Court reverses the decision of the Sotomayor court on the New Haven firefighters.

I doubt this will make a difference in the Sotomayor nomination, but I think it’s the correct decision. And, as in so many of this Supreme Court’s decisions, this one came down 5-4. Isn’t it interesting how predictable most of the Justices are? Well, I guess you could call them “consistent” instead.

Here’s an excerpt:

The ruling could alter employment practices nationwide and make it harder to prove discrimination when there is no evidence it was intentional.

“Fear of litigation alone cannot justify an employer’s reliance on race to the detriment of individuals who passed the examinations and qualified for promotions,” Justice Anthony Kennedy said in his opinion for the court. He was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

In dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the white firefighters “understandably attract this court’s sympathy. But they had no vested right to promotion. Nor have other persons received promotions in preference to them.”

Justices Stephen Breyer, David Souter and John Paul Stevens signed onto Ginsburg’s dissent, which she read aloud in court Monday.

Kennedy’s opinion made only passing reference to the work of Sotomayor and the other two judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who upheld a lower court ruling in favor of New Haven.

Very sad news about commenter FredHjr

The New Neo Posted on by

I have some extremely sad news to report: I received an email from a relative of commenter FredHjr saying that he died suddenly and unexpectedly on Friday, June 26, from a concussion sustained in a fall.

Even though none of us actually met Fred in the real world, most of the regulars here knew FredHjr as I knew him—a brilliant mind containing knowledge of unusual depth and breadth, and demonstrating a rare ability to articulate his thoughts with precision, grace, and logic; a staunch patriot and passionate defender of liberty who never pulled his punches; a “changer” who had been a Marxist in his youth and held a vast storehouse of expertise on how the Left thinks and operates; a seeker of truth with an almost inexhaustible interest in the world around him; and a man of strong religious faith and great and abiding love for his family.

The news of his extremely untimely and tragic death comes as a great shock. It’s also a reminder that people here can become an important part of our lives; we feel as though we know them, even though our knowledge of them is only of the virtual sort. But minds meeting minds is a very powerful thing nonetheless.

FredHjr will be very sorely missed in this blog community, although that seems a small thing compared to the enormous and almost unfathomable grief his loving family must feel. Please join me in offering prayers, remembrances, and condolences for Fred and his family.

Honduras and democracy

The New Neo Posted on by

Fausta’s been on top of the situation in Honduras as news breaks. And here’s a big article on the subject in the WSJ.

A couple of things become clear on reading the WSJ article. The first is that the reason for the coup was to stop deposed President Zelaya from accomplishing an unconstitutional usurption of power:

Mr. Zelaya, a frequent critic of the U.S., has been locked in a growing confrontation with his country’s Congress, courts, and military over his plans for the referendum — planned for Sunday — that would have asked voters whether they want to scrap the constitution, which the president says benefits the country’s elites.

The Supreme Court had ruled the vote was illegal because it flouted the constitution’s own ban on such referendums within six months of elections. The military had refused to take its usual role of distributing ballots. But Mr. Zelaya fired the chief of the army last week and pledged to press ahead.

The second is that our own president, despite his original refusal to “meddle” in the affairs of Iran, has attempted to meddle mightily in Honduran affairs in order to save Zelaya. The manner in which Obama tried to interfere highlights both his own hubris and his misplaced faith in the power of “dialogue”:

The Obama administration and members of the Organization of American States had worked for weeks to try to avert any moves to overthrow President Zelaya, said senior U.S. officials. Washington’s ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sought to facilitate a dialogue between the president’s office, the Honduran parliament and the military.

The efforts accelerated over the weekend, as Washington grew increasingly alarmed. “The players decided, in the end, not to listen to our message,” said one U.S. official involved in the diplomacy. On Sunday, the U.S. embassy here tried repeatedly to contact the Honduran military directly, but was rebuffed. Washington called the removal of President Zelaya a coup and said it wouldn’t recognize any other leader.

And then there’s the following [emphasis mine]:

The U.S. stand was unpopular with Honduran deputies. One congressman, Toribio Aguilera, got prolonged applause from his colleagues when he urged the U.S. ambassador to reconsider. Mr. Aguilera said the U.S. didn’t understand the danger that Mr. Zelaya and his friendships with Mr. Chavez and Cuba’s Fidel Castro posed.

Retired Honduran Gen. Daniel Lé³pez Carballo justified the move against the president, telling CNN that if the military hadn’t acted, Mr. Ché¡vez would eventually be running Honduras by proxy.

A year ago I might have considered the statement I’m about to make to be a slide into tinfoil hat territory. But now I believe that Mr. Aguilera may be giving Obama way too much credit. I suspect that Obama understands exactly what dangers Chavez and Castro pose, and that he either doesn’t care or that he actually approves.

Obama has said that he is “deeply concerned” by the news of the removal of Zelaya and that he calls on “all political and social actors in Honduras to respect democratic norms, the rule of law and the tenets of the Inter-American Democratic Charter.” So far it seems, however, that it was actually Zelaya who was violating those rules of law. It also sounds as though Obama’s definition of “democratic norms” might include “one person, one vote, one time.”

Zelaya was determined that Honduras follow in the footsteps of that stellar democracy, Venezuela, which not long ago (see this) paved the way, in a similar referendum, for Hugo Chavez to become president for life.

A democracy can vote for tyranny—but that’s what constitutions are designed to prevent. As I wrote back then:

…[O]ur government is “of the people, by the people, for the people.” But the overwhelming power the people would wield in a pure democracy is limited by the powers and balances among the three branches, the fact that we have a representative republican form of government rather than a pure democracy, and by the aforementioned difficulty of amending the constitution.

Without these guarantees, democracy can mean “one person, one vote, one time.” The Ayatollah Khomeini was given dictatorial powers in a process that began, after the fall of the Shah and the Ayatollah’s triumphant return, with a nationwide referendum that was passed with an extraordinary 92.8% percent of the vote. This established the theocratic dictatorship that exists to this day, with the constitution of Iran being totally rewritten shortly afterwards.

Hitler came to power without ever winning a majority vote for his party, but the German government had another weakness””under its constitution, it was relatively easy to suspend civil liberties and establish a dictatorship. This did not even require the vote of its people, merely a two-thirds majority of its legislature. Therefore it was done by republican means; the Reichstag obligingly voted to abolish itself, although not without the “persuasion” of Hitler’s storm troopers surrounding the building with cries of ““Full powers””or else! We want the bill””or fire and murder!”

And recent less dramatic, but similar and still worrisome, events by which Venezuelan dictator Chavez has seized power with the full cooperation of the Venezuelan legislature””which, as in Germany of old, can amend the constitution by a mere 2/3 vote””demonstrate once again that there are not only “democratic” ways to seize power, but “republican” ones as well (and please note the small “d” and the small “r”).

One has only to look at the makeup of our own Congress, with its power-hungry politics-playing on both sides, to understand that we would by no means be immune from such a vulnerability if our own Constitution were similarly written.

Perhaps Honduran Congressman Toribio Aguilera, the man who said Obama doesn’t understand the danger of Chavez and Castro, could patiently explain all of this to our current president. But my guess is that Obama already knows these things. And if Obama is defending the sort of “democracy” practiced by Zelaya, it’s a very ominous sign indeed.

[ADDENDUM: And note what the once-reputable news organization (and now usefully idiotic Leftist tool) Reuters has to say about the whole thing. In an article showcasing the ranting of Chavez and his accusations that the whole thing was a US plot (as well as Obama’s hasty reassurances that it was not, and that he supports Zelaya), all Reuters can manage to write about the motivation for Zelaya’s removal was the following single sentence: “The Honduran army ousted Zelaya and exiled him in Central America’s first military coup since the Cold War, after he upset the army by trying to win re-election.”]

Health insurance reform: as Massachusetts goes…

The New Neo Posted on by

…so goes the nation?

Actually, the Massachusetts plan for health insurance reform, which passed in 2006 with bipartisan support and required everyone in the state to have health insurance or face penalties, seems almost modest compared to some of the things Obama and the current Congress are cooking up for us. The huge flaw it shares with Obamacare is an utter failure to account for where the money would be coming from to subsidize coverage for the then-uninsured [emphasis mine]:

In Massachusetts, the numbers never added up, as everyone involved in crafting the new law understood. But for a variety of reasons, ranging from Romney’s presidential aspirations to Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s longstanding commitment to healthcare reform, everyone smiled for the cameras and hoped for the best out of this noble experiment…

“They decoupled the access issue from the cost issue,’’ said Philip Johnston, chairman of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, which played a key role in expanding healthcare coverage here. “The lesson is, there needs to be a dedicated revenue source to support health reform.’’

Well, surprise, surprise, the funds haven’t magically dropped from the skies in the three years since the bill became law.

Are our politicians that stupid, or that naive, or that focused on votes and that contemptuous of the public’s ability to put two and two together? Or all of the above (except for the naivete)?

Joan Vennochi, who wrote the Globe op-ed I’ve been quoting here, has the following advice for Obama:

The president insists he can overhaul the healthcare system without adding to the deficit.

He should take this final lesson out of Massachusetts: Be honest about cost in the good times and make sure you can cover it in the bad.

This presumes that if Obama fails to do so he is either stupid or naive. I think he’s neither; I believe he knows full well what he’s doing and not doing, and has no intention of taking any lesson from Massachusetts—except, perhaps, for the one that says you can fool most of the people most of the time.

But Obama already knows that; he doesn’t need Massachusetts to tell him.

Why liberals support cap and trade

The New Neo Posted on by

If I were to ask most of my friends about cap and trade, my guess is that many of them would draw a blank or be only vaguely familiar with it. It’s too detailed and too technical, and at any rate it’s being passed by the Democratic Congress and it means to help our environment, so what’s not to like?

But if I were to try and explain the bill and its probable negative effects, I think they still would be heartily in favor of it. Here’s a summary of the reasons why:

(1) Complete and total belief in not only the possibility, but the certainty of human-caused global warming, as well as its enormous danger and imminence. Also a belief that we know the science that can fix it. All these things are in the nature of revealed truth in the liberal/Left mindset, and anyone who questions them is a fool or a maniac or perhaps both—case closed.

(2) The idea that doing something about it is always better than doing nothing.

(3) That our Democratic (large “D”) representatives in Congress have the brains, information, and the will to pass a bill to tackle it.

(4) The the economic arguments against that bill are not only probably incorrect, but even if correct would be an example of unacceptable selfishness. We are a piggish nation and deserve to suffer.

(5) It would be good if we all simplified our lives and did with less. And we need to be forced into this, because people can’t and won’t do it voluntarily.

It all follows quite logically. If one accepts the first premise, no cost is too great, no sacrifice too large, in order to avoid it. That is why it has been so very necessary for the Left to make human-caused global warming a given rather than a hypothesis that can be tested and found wanting—and is doubted by a growing list of reputable scientists.

Obama Foodorama: gag me with a spoon

The New Neo Posted on by

This is a phenomenon I certainly did not foresee: a fascination with the food Obama eats.

That’s right, you heard me: the food Obama eats. Apparently, any time Obama is reported to partake of a certain dish at a certain restaurant, the place is inundated with customers who think nothing of waiting between two and four hours for a chance to dine at the place where their idol so recently supped.

Remember that Chicago pizza Obama so craved back in April? Chris Sommers, owner of the pizza place involved, says that the publicity that unsued “has been our own private stimulus package.”

And now, inevitably, there’s a blog devoted to the all-important—and apparently tres popular—topic of whatever it is that the Obamas decide to ingest into their fabulous gullets. “Obama Foodorama” Blogger Eddie Gehman Kohan states that the day after the Obamas visited trendy restaurant Blue Hill on that New York date night of theirs, her blog got—are you ready?—“millions of hits.”

Clearly, I’m in the wrong blog niche.

The race is on: Obama and cap and trade vs. the global warming skeptics

The New Neo Posted on by

Obama is in a hurry to pass his sweeping agenda without giving Congress—or the American people—time to learn properly about it and react. “Trust me” he says in that soothing baritone, “and all will be well.” House Democrats have advanced cap and trade today by a narrow win of 217-205, the first of several hurdles, including an expected fight in the Senate. How many people know or care much about it at all?

I started sounding the warning on cap and trade even before Obama’s election, here and here. I’m hardly the only one; I was merely part of a loud chorus. Go back and read my posts and see what Obama was saying about the economic effects of cap and trade back then, and then listen to the different tune he’s singing now.

And global warming? The same day that all of this is happening, the Wall Street Journal chronicles the growing skepticism among bona fide and respected scientists on the matter of global warming, which is the impetus and excuse for cap and trade. Obama and the Democrats are banking that the American public won’t get the message in time.

[ADDENDUM: Democrats say we don’t need no steenking debate.]

This is what the Iranian people are up against

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the face of the mullahs in charge of Iran, in case they hadn’t revealed it clearly enough already:

Khatami, a member of the powerful Assembly of Experts, said the judiciary should charge the leading “rioters” as “mohareb” or one who wages war against God.

“They should be punished ruthlessly and savagely,” he said. Under Iran’s Islamic law, punishment for people convicted as “mohareb” is execution.

As Orwell wrote in his dystopia 1984:

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face – forever.

That’s the mullahs’ vision for Iran—and, by extension, the expanding world of Islam someday—except perhaps for the “forever” part. Oh, it’s not that they wouldn’t be willing to perform that act more or less in perpetuity. It’s just that I believe they actually think that, once they’ve forcefully established their version of heaven on earth by eliminating all those upstart naysayers, the need to stamp on any more faces with their boots will be over.

But of course, it’s never over.

RIP Michael Jackson

The New Neo Posted on by

It seems it’s all the cable news stations can talk about right now. The demise of a mega-celebrity—especially if untimely, as so many such deaths seem to be—is treated as the story that trumps all other news of the day. After all, that’s what celebrity is all about, isn’t it?

I understand that Michael Jackson was huge, perhaps even bigger than Elvis in his time. But I was somewhat immune to the Elvis hoopla back then. The Beatles, yes. But although I appreciated some of Elvis’s music, I was neither a big fan nor a follower of his life.

The same was true of my attitude towards Michael Jackson, whose notoriety and strangeness eventually surpassed even that of his predecessor as King of Rock, whose own notoriety and strangeness was quite considerable. Jackson’s life seemed mostly sad to me, all that talent and work squeezed down to an existence that appeared in the end to have become as pinched and tormented as the face he worked so hard to perfect and ended up nearly destroying.

Did his death result from drugs he used to kill the pain, as has been widely reported but not yet confirmed? Sad sad sad sad—but hardly surprising.