Category: News

Oh Wonderful….: The Economy is screwed to hell, worse than originally thought!

Hope and Change……and Unemployed:

The recent unemployment numbers have undermined confidence that we might be nearing the bottom of the recession. What we can see on the surface is disconcerting enough, but the inside numbers are just as bad.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics preliminary estimate for job losses for June is 467,000, which means 7.2 million people have lost their jobs since the start of the recession. The cumulative job losses over the last six months have been greater than for any other half year period since World War II, including the military demobilization after the war. The job losses are also now equal to the net job gains over the previous nine years, making this the only recession since the Great Depression to wipe out all job growth from the previous expansion.

Here are 10 reasons we are in even more trouble than the 9.5% unemployment rate indicates:

  • – June’s total assumed 185,000 people at work who probably were not. The government could not identify them; it made an assumption about trends. But many of the mythical jobs are in industries that have absolutely no job creation, e.g., finance. When the official numbers are adjusted over the next several months, June will look worse.
  • – More companies are asking employees to take unpaid leave. These people don’t count on the unemployment roll.
  • – No fewer than 1.4 million people wanted or were available for work in the last 12 months but were not counted. Why? Because they hadn’t searched for work in the four weeks preceding the survey.
  • – The number of workers taking part-time jobs due to the slack economy, a kind of stealth underemployment, has doubled in this recession to about nine million, or 5.8% of the work force. Add those whose hours have been cut to those who cannot find a full-time job and the total unemployed rises to 16.5%, putting the number of involuntarily idle in the range of 25 million.
  • – The average work week for rank-and-file employees in the private sector, roughly 80% of the work force, slipped to 33 hours. That’s 48 minutes a week less than before the recession began, the lowest level since the government began tracking such data 45 years ago. Full-time workers are being downgraded to part time as businesses slash labor costs to remain above water, and factories are operating at only 65% of capacity. If Americans were still clocking those extra 48 minutes a week now, the same aggregate amount of work would get done with 3.3 million fewer employees, which means that if it were not for the shorter work week the jobless rate would be 11.7%, not 9.5% (which far exceeds the 8% rate projected by the Obama administration).
  • – The average length of official unemployment increased to 24.5 weeks, the longest since government began tracking this data in 1948. The number of long-term unemployed (i.e., for 27 weeks or more) has now jumped to 4.4 million, an all-time high.
  • – The average worker saw no wage gains in June, with average compensation running flat at $18.53 an hour.
  • – The goods producing sector is losing the most jobs — 223,000 in the last report alone.
  • – The prospects for job creation are equally distressing. The likelihood is that when economic activity picks up, employers will first choose to increase hours for existing workers and bring part-time workers back to full time. Many unemployed workers looking for jobs once the recovery begins will discover that jobs as good as the ones they lost are almost impossible to find because many layoffs have been permanent. Instead of shrinking operations, companies have shut down whole business units or made sweeping structural changes in the way they conduct business. General Motors and Chrysler, closed hundreds of dealerships and reduced brands. Citigroup and Bank of America cut tens of thousands of positions and exited many parts of the world of finance.

Job losses may last well into 2010 to hit an unemployment peak close to 11%. That unemployment rate may be sustained for an extended period.

via Average length of unemployment highest since 1948. – WSJ.com.

So much for “The One” fixing the economy. Oh, right; he misread it. Looks like this Blogging gig get might be my only job for a long time to come.  The Left is now spinning saying it will never recover.

Here’s ol’ Floppy ears talking about it:

Others: Hot Air, Pajamas Media, QandO, The Strata-Sphere, Stop The ACLU and Balloon Juice

FBI is requested to assist in the investigation of the Akron Man's Beating; Al Sharpton Supports Investigation

Remember the Akron Beating that I blogged about last week?

Well, it seems that now the FBI is getting involved, and irony of all ironies; Al Sharpton’s Group supports the investigation.

The Story via the Akron Beacon Journal:

The FBI has been asked to join Akron police in investigating the attack on a white family by a group of black teens near Firestone Park.

In a letter to the FBI dated today, Mayor Don Plusquellic asks the federal agency’s local office to help determine whether any civil-rights violations or hate crimes occurred during the attack last month on Marty Marshall and his family.

The investigation is being supported by civil-rights activist the Rev. Al Sharpton.

”Accounts from the victim have indicated his assailants prefaced the attack with statements that could indicate a racial motivation to the crime,” Plusquellic wrote in his letter.

”Our priority is the same as it is with every crime: to find justice for the victims. But, it is also important that we carefully examine the motivation behind this attack and address that if necessary.”

Marshall, 39, spent five days in Akron General Medical Center after a group of black teens attacked him, his wife, two children and two adult male friends.

Akron police have confirmed from witnesses that the attack by 30 to 50 teens was unprovoked and that no words were exchanged before the attack.

The victims say the group shouted, ”This is our world,” during the assault. Marshall says he also heard chants of, ”This is a black world.”

The assault, in which Marshall suffered extensive head injuries from repeated kicks and punches to his skull, has not yet been ruled a hate crime by Akron police.

Police told the Marshalls this week that they were unaware of the chants until reading about them in the newspaper.

The National Action Network, headed up by Al Sharpton; is supporting  the FBI investigation:

”These teens need to be punished as much as any dumb redneck in white sheets,” said Richard Jones, a Sharpton spokesman based in Cleveland. ”Nobody should be attacked like this, whether they are black or white. These young men who are responsible need to be brought to justice.”

Plusquellic would not comment beyond the letter and a written statement, spokesman Mark Williamson said.

In the statement, the mayor said the investigation into the attack will try to determine whether it ”falls under the category of a violation of civil-rights protection and should, consequently, be considered a ‘hate crime.’

”This ruling must, by law, be made by federal authorities, and therefore we are asking for their assistance in this matter. Make no mistake, most important is that the perpetrators are caught and brought to justice. I know that our police department is doing everything it can to aggressively pursue the investigation into this horrible incident.

”I ask our citizens to not confuse the technical/legal issue of a federally designated ‘hate crime’ with the fact that our police department is taking all necessary steps to solve this crime.’

I would like to personally commend Rev. Al Sharpton for allowing his group to support this. Because hatred; no matter if it is White on Black or Black on White, is morally wrong and should be dealt with in the most harsh of manners.

I will continue to follow this and I will be blogging on whatever the outcome is.

John Stossel takes on Liberal Propagandist Michael Moore

I happen to like John Stossel; because he dares to take on the Liberals. Not in a mean or nasty way. But by simply stating the truth.

He writes about Michael Moore’s latest Movie:

Michael Moore has been working on another documentary.  This time, he’s taking on capitalism:

“The wealthy, at some point, decided they didn’t have enough wealth. They wanted more — a lot more. So they systematically set about to fleece the American people out of their hard-earned money.”

How ridiculous is that?  The wealthy, and everyone else, almost always decide that they don’t have enough wealth.  People ask their bosses for raises.  We invest in stocks hoping for bigger returns than Treasury Bonds bring.  “Greed” is a constant.  The beauty of free markets, when government doesn’t meddle in them, is that they turn this greed into a phenomenal force for good.  The way to win big money is to serve your customers well.  Profit-seeking entrepreneurs have given us better products, shorter work days, extended lives, and more opportunities to write the script of our own life.

He goes on…:

Moore also fails to understand is that it was not “capitalism” run amok that caused today’s financial problems.   In reality, it was a combination of ill-conceived government policies and an overzealous Federal Reserve artificially lowering interest rates to fuel a bubble in the housing market.  Then it was government that took money from taxpayers and forced banks to accept it.

Moore ought to understand that, because he makes a good point when he says his movie will be about “the biggest robbery in the history of this country – the massive transfer of U.S. taxpayer money to private financial institutions.”

That is indeed robbery.  It sure doesn’t sound like capitalism.

Nope, sounds more like socialized Healthcare or simply Socialism in general; to me.

Mike Tennant writing over at Lew Rockwell’s Blog chimes in:

According to the press release you linked, Chris, “Moore has made three of the top six highest-grossing documentaries of all time,” which presumably means he has accumulated a great deal of wealth.  Apparently, since he continues to foist his so-called documentaries on an unsuspecting public, Moore has decided that he doesn’t have enough wealth.  He wants more–a lot more.

Like most anti-capitalists, Moore has no problem personally profiting from his own endeavors while demonizing other successful persons and attempting to have them dispossessed of their wealth.  The good news is that Moore ultimately has to answer to the marketplace and thus may find himself begging for work from the very people he now condemns if enough of his audience members wake up to the fact that he’s a charlatan and stop shelling out their increasingly scarce cash for his celluloid propaganda.

Mike is right on point; that is exactly how the socialists in America are. The Socialist left wants to preach to America, how evil, rotten, nasty and no good the evil capitalist system is; all the whole pocketing a profit from their lectures, Movies and the books that they just happen to make a profit at.  It is more of that “Yea for me, but Nay for thee”, type of mentality and outright hypocritical nonsense that the Far Socialist left is known for.

The troubling thing about it, is this; these knuckle-headed socialists basically control the Democratic Party and it’s message.  Hence my reasoning for not wanting anything to do with them or their Party any longer.

Give me Capitalism, Freedom and Liberty or Give Me Death!

Others: Wake up America

Unbelievable: Eric Holder Considering Prosecuting Bush Administration officials; for keeping America safe

This piece of sorry news comes from NewsWeek:

It’s the morning after Independence Day, and Eric Holder Jr. is feeling the weight of history. The night before, he’d stood on the roof of the White House alongside the president of the United States, leaning over a railing to watch fireworks burst over the Mall, the monuments to Lincoln and Washington aglow at either end. “I was so struck by the fact that for the first time in history an African-American was presiding over this celebration of what our nation is all about,” he says. Now, sitting at his kitchen table in wtcattack1jeans and a gray polo shirt, as his 11-year-old son, Buddy, dashes in and out of the room, Holder is reflecting on his own role. He doesn’t dwell on the fact that he’s the country’s first black attorney general. He is focused instead on the tension that the best of his predecessors have confronted: how does one faithfully serve both the law and the president?

Alone among cabinet officers, attorneys general are partisan appointees expected to rise above partisanship. All struggle to find a happy medium between loyalty and independence. Few succeed. At one extreme looms Alberto Gonzales, who allowed the Justice Department to be run like Tammany Hall. At the other is Janet Reno, whose righteousness and folksy eccentricities marginalized her within the Clinton administration. Lean too far one way and you corrupt the office, too far the other way and you render yourself impotent. Mindful of history, Holder is trying to get the balance right. “You have the responsibility of enforcing the nation’s laws, and you have to be seen as neutral, detached, and nonpartisan in that effort,” Holder says. “But the reality of being A.G. is that I’m also part of the president’s team. I want the president to succeed; I campaigned for him. I share his world view and values.”

These are not just the philosophical musings of a new attorney general. Holder, 58, may be on the verge of asserting his independence in a profound way. Four knowledgeable sources tell NEWSWEEK that he is now leaning toward appointing a prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s brutal interrogation practices, something the president has been reluctant to do. While no final decision has been made, an wtcattack2announcement could come in a matter of weeks, say these sources, who decline to be identified discussing a sensitive law-enforcement matter. Such a decision would roil the country, would likely plunge Washington into a new round of partisan warfare, and could even imperil Obama’s domestic priorities, including health care and energy reform. Holder knows all this, and he has been wrestling with the question for months. “I hope that whatever decision I make would not have a negative impact on the president’s agenda,” he says. “But that can’t be a part of my decision.”

[….]

Holder began to review those policies in April. As he pored over reports and listened to briefings, he became increasingly troubled. There were startling indications that some interrogators had gone far beyond what had been authorized in the legal opinions issued by the Justice Department, which were themselves controversial. He told one intimate that what he saw “turned my stomach.”

It was soon clear to Holder that he might have to launch an investigation to determine whether crimes were committed under the Bush administration and prosecutions warranted. The obstacles were obvious. For a new administration to reach back and 911firefightersmemorialinvestigate its predecessor is rare, if not unprecedented. After having been deeply involved in the decision to authorize Ken Starr to investigate Bill Clinton’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, Holder well knew how politicized things could get. He worried about the impact on the CIA, whose operatives would be at the center of any probe. And he could clearly read the signals coming out of the White House. President Obama had already deflected the left wing of his party and human-rights organizations by saying, “We should be looking forward and not backwards” when it came to Bush-era abuses.

Still, Holder couldn’t shake what he had learned in reports about the treatment of prisoners at the CIA’s “black sites.” If the public knew the details, he and his aides figured, there would be a groundswell of support for an independent probe. He raised with his staff the possibility of appointing a prosecutor. According to three sources familiar with the911attack process, they discussed several potential choices and the criteria for such a sensitive investigation. Holder was looking for someone with “gravitas and grit,” according to one of these sources, all of whom declined to be named. At one point, an aide joked that Holder might need to clone Patrick Fitzgerald, the hard-charging, independent-minded U.S. attorney who had prosecuted Scooter Libby in the Plamegate affair. In the end, Holder asked for a list of 10 candidates, five from within the Justice Department and five from outside.

[…]

The next few weeks, though, could test Holder’s confidence. After the prospect of torture investigations seemed to lose momentum in April, the attorney general and his aides 911attackfirefightersturned to other pressing issues. They were preoccupied with Gitmo, developing a hugely complex new set of detention and prosecution policies, and putting out the daily fires that go along with running a 110,000-person department. The regular meetings Holder’s team had been having on the torture question died down. Some aides began to wonder whether the idea of appointing a prosecutor was off the table.

But in late June Holder asked an aide for a copy of the CIA inspector general’s thick classified report on interrogation abuses. He cleared his schedule and, over two days, holed up alone in his Justice Depart ment office, immersed himself in what Dick Cheney once referred to as “the dark side.” He read the report twice, the first time as a lawyer, looking for evidence and instances of transgressions that might call for prosecution. The second time, he started to absorb what he was reading at a more emotional level. He was “shocked and saddened,” he told a friend, by what government servants were alleged to have done in America’s name. When he was done he stood at his window for a long time, staring at Constitution Avenue.

I hope that if and when Mr. Holder decides to appoint this special prosecutor; that he keeps the follow items in mind: (H/T to The Corner)

*  Alberto Gonzales did not attempt to mislead Congress in 2007 when he testified that the controversy that erupted at the Justice Department in 2004 was not over what was popularly known as the “terrorist surveillance program” (i.e., the NSA’s warrantless surveillance program to intercept suspected terrorist communications that crossed U.S. borders — the effort the Left smeared as “domestic spying”).  In fact, as Gonzales told the Senate judiciary Committee, the controversy was about other intelligence activities.

*  When congressional Democrats rolled their eyes, suggested that Gonzales was lying, and groused that a special prosecutor should be appointed, they well knew he wasn’t lying — but they also knew he couldn’t discuss the intellligence activities at the center of the controversy because those activities were (and remain) highly classified. That is, they knowingly badgered the Attorney General of the United States at a hearing in a calculated effort to make him look dishonest and to intimate something they knew to be untrue: namely, that the dispute at DOJ arose because senior officials believed warrantless surveillance was illegal.

*  Before Gonzales and President Bush’s then chief-of-staff, Andy Card, went to see Attorney General Ashcroft in the hospital (where he was being treated for pancreatitis), President Bush directed his administration to meet with top congressional Democrats and Republicans (Senate leaders Frist and Daschle, Speaker Hastert and House minority leader Pelosi, Roberts and Rockefeller from Senate Intel, and Goss and Harman from House Intel) to alert them that Ashcroft’s deputy, Jim Comey, had refused to sign off on intelligence activities that Ashcroft had previously approved.  Advised of the problem, the Gang of Eight did not agree to a quick legislative fix but, according to Gonzales’s contemporaneous notes, agreed that the intelligence activities should continue.  (Three years later, after Gonzales’s testimony, Pelosi, Rockefeller and Daschle claimed that they hadn’t agreed.)

*  Only after this meeting with the bipartisan congressional leaders, and with the prior 45-day authorization for all the program’s activities about to expire, did Gonzales and Card go to the hospital to visit the ailing Ashcroft — at the direction of President Bush.

*  Between the time the time the collection intelligence activities that came to be known as the “Terrorist Surveillance Program” was first authorized after the 9/11 attacks until the warrantless surveillance aspect of the program was exposed by the New York Times in December 2005, the Bush administration briefed the bipartisan leadership of the congressional intelligence committees 17 times about the activities involved in the program.

In sum, congressional Democrats knew about the program and knew that the dissent of the Justice Department’s senior leadership in 2004 was not about warrantless surveillance. They knew that if they postured that the dissent was about warrantless surveillance, Gonzales — not an adept communicator — would not be able to rebut them in a public hearing because the details of the dispute were classified.  Congressional Democrats also knew that President Bush agreed to make changes in the program in March 2004 to assuage DOJ’s concerns, and they knew that the program activities continued thereafter for a year-and-a-half (i.e., until the Times blew part of the program) without incident and with bipartisan congressional leadership continuing to be briefed.

The point I am trying to make is this, that the so-called “torture”; which was approved by Congress, prevented attacks on Los Angeles and various cities around the country.  It also saves lives and gets people to talk. It is also used to train our Military as well.

My advice to Holder is this; if you want to tear this Country apart, again, after a long eight years of it being sharply divided; go right ahead. If you want to tear down the Democratic Party; you know; the one of your own boss? The go right ahead and do this. If you want ruin the chances of America ever defending itself from another terrorist attack, then go right ahead and do this.  If you want to make a mockery of yourself and the entire polical system in America, go right Mr. Holder and do what you must do. It will be on your hands, what becomes of this Country.

I dread the next coming months.

Others: Gateway Pundit, Atlas Shrugs,

Facepalm of the day….

First up this via Salon:

And this via HotAir:

But on a happy note:

and This:

The banning has caused so much controversy that U.S. Senator Arlen Specter (D-Pa.) plans to launch an investigation into the discrimination claim.

“The allegations against the swim club as they are reported are extremely disturbing,” Specter said in a statement. “I am reaching out to the parties involved to ascertain the facts. Racial discrimination has no place in America today.”

Senator Specter has caught much grief for his switching of parties. But I will say publicly that this was quite the good move on his part. Racial discrimination is illegal, and if this company did discriminate on the basis of race, they should be ran out of business.

How’s that stimulus working out for you Barry?

Apparently not too well it seems.

The Washington Post (!) Reports:

Five months after Congress approved a massive package of spending and tax cuts aimed at reviving an ailing economy, the jobless rate is still climbing and the White House is scrambling to reassure an anxious public that President Obama’s prescription for economic recovery is on the right track.

Yesterday, Obama took time out of his first presidential trip to Moscow to defend the $787 billion stimulus package, arguing that the measure was the right medicine at the right time. “There’s nothing that we would have done differently,” he told ABC News

So, beings the Democratic Party’s proverbial teeth chattering session, where they realize, “Uh-Oh, we messed up! Now how do we fix it?”

Back in Washington, senior Democrats on Capitol Hill were nervously contemplating whether additional government stimulus spending may be needed to pull the nation out of the worst recession since the 1930s. Senior administration officials acknowledged that the effects of the stimulus package have been overshadowed by an unexpectedly sharp drop-off in employment since the measure passed in February. But they reported that only about $100 billion has so far been spent and that as increasingly large sums flow out of Washington, the program is on pace to save or create 600,000 jobs over the next 100 days.

“It is clear from the data that there needs to be more fiscal stimulus in the second half of the year than there was in the first half of the year,” White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers said. “Fortunately, the stimulus program designed by the president and passed by Congress provides exactly that.”

Leading economists agree that the most powerful effects of the stimulus package have yet to be felt. But even if the measure lives up to Obama’s expectations, it would barely offset the 433,000 jobs the nation lost last month alone, and the resulting employment would represent a drop in the bucket compared with the 6.5 million jobs lost since the recession began in December 2007.

“Just 130 days out on the adoption of a very, very major effort to get the economy moving, certainly I don’t think we can make a determination as to whether or not that’s been successful,” House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) said yesterday. But, he said, “I think we need to be open to whether or not we need additional action.”

Oh Yes! We just poured a couple generation’s worth of money into a Economic system that is basically; on it’s face, is broken and does not work. This did not work, so, we’re going to basically pour money into that same broken system and see if we can make the economy recover. Rolling Eyes

If anything this ought be a lesson for the Democratic Party that Keynesian Pump Priming, just does not work. But you think that the Democrats would learn that lesson? No. Because they’re dumb! Silly

Of course, the Republicans are a bit more smarter about this:

Republicans, meanwhile, pounced on news that the unemployment rate increased to 9.5 percent in June and accused the Democrats of sinking the nation deeper into debt to finance an economic recovery package that has failed to save American jobs. Noting that the Obama administration predicted earlier this year that stimulus spending would keep the unemployment rate under 8 percent, Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.), the No. 2 Republican in the House, said, “I think any objective measure would indicate there’s a failure when you have a commitment of nearly $800 billion in taxpayer funds and you have the type of job loss we’re experiencing.”

With many economists forecasting that the jobless rate will continue to climb — and is likely to stay above 10 percent through much of next year — Republicans vowed to make the 2010 midterm election a referendum on Obama’s stewardship of the economy. “I think they’re going to have some significant problems,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), who leads the GOP campaign operation in the Senate, “and I view those as opportunities for us.”

Hopefully, the Republicans will frame these opportunities properly. Of course, their track record here as of late, has not been too good.

Meanwhile, in the reality sector:

Despite the deepening pain of the recession, many Democrats in the White House and on Capitol Hill yesterday counseled patience. They said it would be extraordinarily difficult to win approval for more spending on the economy when Obama is pursuing a host of other expensive initiatives, including a $1 trillion expansion of the nation’s health-care system. And they argued that the current stimulus package should be given a chance to work.

The stimulus was designed to deliver a gradually stronger push to the economy through the end of next year. It contains about $499 billion in new spending and about $288 billion in tax cuts for working families, businesses, college students and first-time home buyers.

When the measure passed, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office predicted that about a quarter of the money would be spent by year’s end, and that about 75 percent would flow by the end of 2010. So far, economists said, spending appears to be on track.

According to administration estimates, about $158 billion in new spending had been committed to specific projects by the end of June, but just a fraction of that money — about $56 billion — had been delivered to struggling state governments, unemployed workers and other recipients. An additional $43 billion had been left in the pockets of individuals and businesses through uncollected taxes, much of it the result of Obama’s signature Making Work Pay tax credit for working families.

Those figures track closely with estimates by Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com, who calculates that the government made $242 billion in stimulus funds available for various purposes through the end of June and paid out about $110 billion. In a recent analysis, Zandi predicted that “the maximum contribution from the stimulus should occur in the second and third quarters of this year,” when it will add more than three percentage points to overall economic growth.

“It’s pretty much according to plan in terms of the payout and in terms of its economic impact. This is in the script,” Zandi said. The problem, he said, is that “the economy has been measurably worse than anyone expected,” with a surprisingly sharp “collapse in employment and surge in unemployment” that caught most economists off guard.

“That’s why the administration’s forecasts have been so wrong,” he said.

None of this surprises me in the least. I warned on this blog long ago that this would happen. But, of course, you have the Democrats spinning this, and very hard too:

The White House continues to predict that the stimulus package will save or create 3.5 million jobs by the end of next year. Zandi predicts it will fall short of that, producing about 2.5 million jobs — still a significant impact.

Whatever the number, Democrats are hoping it will be enough to convince voters that Obama is leading them out of the economic wilderness.

“I think the president was very clear that things were going to take a long time to turn around,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), who leads the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in charge of electing Democrats to the House. Republicans “are making the argument to the American people that doing nothing would have been the best policy. And I don’t think people will buy that. . . .

“The measures we have taken have certainly prevented things from getting much worse.”

According to what figures? Because the charts I have seen, say otherwise:

stimulus-vs-unemployment-june-proj-dots

What this chart shows is that unemployment was far higher with the stimulus plan, than it would have been, if Team Teleprompter would have just left well enough alone.

What this means to me personally is this; I will most likely be unemployed until like 2010 or longer. Thereby making myself impossible to he hired anywhere, because I haven’t worked in so long. Which is just wonderful. Rolling Eyes

Thank you President Bambi Teleprompter for ruining America, you feckless idiot! Angry

Others:  Hot Air,  

Don't believe the hype on the Coup in Honduras

That is what Octavio Sánchez is saying, and he should know; he’s there:

Tegucigalpa, Honduras – Sometimes, the whole world prefers a lie to the truth. The White House, the United Nations, the Organization of American States, and much of the media have condemned the ouster of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya this past weekend as a coup d’état.

That is nonsense.

In fact, what happened here is nothing short of the triumph of the rule of law.

[….]

Under our Constitution, what happened in Honduras this past Sunday? Soldiers arrested and sent out of the country a Honduran citizen who, the day before, through his own actions had stripped himself of the presidency.

These are the facts: On June 26, President Zelaya issued a decree ordering all government employees to take part in the “Public Opinion Poll to convene a National Constitutional Assembly.” In doing so, Zelaya triggered a constitutional provision that automatically removed him from office.

Constitutional assemblies are convened to write new constitutions. When Zelaya published that decree to initiate an “opinion poll” about the possibility of convening a national assembly, he contravened the unchangeable articles of the Constitution that deal with the prohibition of reelecting a president and of extending his term. His actions showed intent.

Our Constitution takes such intent seriously. According to Article 239: “No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform [emphasis added], as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.”

Notice that the article speaks about intent and that it also says “immediately” – as in “instant,” as in “no trial required,” as in “no impeachment needed.”

Continuismo – the tendency of heads of state to extend their rule indefinitely – has been the lifeblood of Latin America’s authoritarian tradition. The Constitution’s provision of instant sanction might sound draconian, but every Latin American democrat knows how much of a threat to our fragile democracies continuismo presents. In Latin America, chiefs of state have often been above the law. The instant sanction of the supreme law has successfully prevented the possibility of a new Honduran continuismo.

The Supreme Court and the attorney general ordered Zelaya’s arrest for disobeying several court orders compelling him to obey the Constitution. He was detained and taken to Costa Rica. Why? Congress needed time to convene and remove him from office. With him inside the country that would have been impossible. This decision was taken by the 123 (of the 128) members of Congress present that day.

Don’t believe the coup myth. The Honduran military acted entirely within the bounds of the Constitution. The military gained nothing but the respect of the nation by its actions.

via A ‘coup’ in Honduras? Nonsense. | csmonitor.com.

But yet you have idiot douche bag Communist Liberals, like Hillary Clinton, Like President Obama and the U.N. trying to tell the people in Honduras; that this man was right for doing this. I guess Senator McCarthy was right after all. The Democratic Party has been taken over by the Socialists, who are basically Communist light.  So, to this writer; is no big surprise that President Obama and his right hand lady Hillary Clinton took sides with the Communists.

Franken wins, Coleman Concedes

Well, looks like the supreme court of Minnesota has ruled in Al Franken’s favor.  Norm Coleman did the smart thing and conceded; which I personally think was quite smart, seeing that the G.O.P. has quite the image problem right now. With the revelation of Standford’s affair, I think the G.O.P. just wants to avoid any conflict.

The reaction of the far right Blogophere was muted, with some notable exceptions; not surprisingly, they have nothing to say, so, they mock. Which is about normal for that crowd.  Although, Ed Morrissey; whom is one of the more intelligent Neo-Conservative Bloggers weighs in:

Norm Coleman has conceded.  He wants to focus on fishing more than the governor’s race for now, but I think he decided to stop now to preserve his viability within the state of Minnesota.  Probably not a bad decision for him personally.

Not to mention the viability of the G.O.P.; I mean, reality has not been too kind to that party. Is it Bush’s fault? Not entirely. Although, I will not lie to you all. That is a big part of it.

As always, Memeorandum has the round up of reactions.