It's the freedom, stupid!

Via Dueling Barstools:





How far will we fall?

Where the fruited plain is mostly in the black

CNNMoney provides an interactive chart displaying each state's debt per capita, here.

Preview: The bluer the state, the more you owe. Not that you should do anything as rash as to draw any hard and fast conclusions from that. Just sayin'.

Not on our dime or time

It's human rights season at the U.N. and the latest idea to roll down the pike is the establishment of a gender-based rights entity. Currently there is nothing yet in place and the co-directors of AIDS-Free World released a position paper, Without Operational Capacity the New UN Entity for Women Will Not Succeed. Rough translation: if it doesn't exist, it cannot succeed. Pretty sound logic. The report makes the claim that "discrimination against women is the most widespread and intractable problem affecting humankind.”

Short of establishing this entity, the UN did itself proud on the womens' rights front by naming Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women. We won't pretend to know all the details of the machinations of UN, but this Commission would appear to be a pretty good jumping-off point for establishing an entity that would combat "discrimination against women..." Current membership excluded, of course.

But we digress, slightly...

While there are plenty of reasons to oppose the new gender super-agency at the UN, Ambassador Susan Rice, U.S. Permanent Representative to the UN, just this week reiterated the Obama Administration’s support for “advancing the broad set of women’s issues through the UN system, including through the establishment of a robust, efficient, and effective entity to advance women’s issues and women’s rights.” Instead, the U.S. should continue to uphold the human rights for men, women, and children that are enshrined in the Constitution, and work to protect the rights of all vulnerable individuals worldwide through existing human rights institutions and treaties.

That entity already exists. It is known as the U.S. military which has been liberating men, women and children and allowing basic human rights to take hold the world over since the inception of our nation.

Thinking anything constructive with respect to human rights let alone women's rights will generate from within the UN is folly. The President would be well-served on the behalf of the country and women, in general, by dropping his support of any UN gender rights entity.

Honduras update (UPDATED)

(please scroll down for update. thanks)

With all this excitement going down stateside, we don't want to forget about a neighbor to the south. Previous posts on Honduras, here.

At what point do you think the State Department might have enough egg on its face to call it quits with respect to their embarrassingly political handling of Honduras? They’re calling for another carton.

Honduras will inaugurate president-elect Porfirio Lobo this week, two months after one of the world's most recently famous little countries held a successful democratic election. So we are left to wonder why the United States State Department is still trying to hammer anyone there who dared to participate last summer in the constitutional removal of President Manuel Zelaya from office.

What’s truly amazing is that this fiasco looks to have a happy ending even after the bullying and meddling of super-powers like the U.S. and regional bad actors like Cuba and Venezuela. In a move that for this part of the globe looks damn-near Washingtonian, the interim President and member of the disgraced Zelaya’s own party, Roberto Micheletti, will step down from power so that Lobo can assume the office of president just as Micheletti promised when this whole thing blew up last June.

A smooth transfer of power should be something to be celebrated yet a spiteful State Dept. has refused to re-instate the visas of Micheletti, his cabinet and advisors and the entirety of the Honduran Supreme Court and, last week, the State Dept. continued its spite-fest by yanking even more visas from members of the interim government.

The bullying doesn’t end there as Lobo, under pressure from our government, has agreed to let Zelaya, despite the legal charges against him, go to the Dominican Republic where he will no doubt consort with the likes of Chavez and Brothers Castro to foment discontent towards and within Honduras.

What a tremendous example we have set for burgeoning and struggling deomcracies in the hemishere who will now think twice before turning to the great United States for assistance.


(UPDATE #1):Don’t think for a moment the citizens of Honduras have forgotten about this country’s attempts to interfere with that country’s ouster of Zelaya and the subsequent elections that saw a peaceful transfer of power in the executive branch to a different political party.

Mr. Zelaya's ouster, widely condemned as a coup, plunged Latin America into a diplomatic crisis. No country recognized the new government, the Organization of American States suspended Honduras, and governments and international financial institutions canceled aid. But neither sanctions nor intense diplomatic negotiations were enough to return Mr. Zelaya, a close ally of Venezuela's populist President Hugo Chávez, to power.

The crowd attending Mr. Lobo's inaugural booed mentions of the OAS, U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens, and Costa Rican President Óscar Arias, all of whom tried to arrange for Mr. Zelaya's return to power.

The Honduran crisis also created tensions between the U.S. and Brazil, Latin America's emerging heavyweight. Brazil strongly criticized what it said was U.S. reluctance to apply tougher sanctions against Honduras, which depends on U.S. trade and remittances from Hondurans living in the U.S.

(italics, ours)

Terrific. At the end of the day we wind up pissing off everybody.

The more we think about this, the more we cannot believe that with the deck stacked against Honduras as it was, this potential meltdown is going to have a happy ending. Props to the interim president, Roberto Micheletti, who stayed the course by not giving into overwhelming and near-unanimous pressure from without to re-instate Zelaya and who kept his word by holding elections and stepping down when Lobo won the election. That Washingtonian moment of holding a nation together and graciously and lawfully stepping down when the time came will represent Honduras’ finest hour.

God bless the people and country of Honduras for showing courage and a commitment to the ideals of sovereignty and democracy.

Exit thought: Iran got all the ink with respect to the administration’s handling of the two international crisis but this was far worse as the response to Iran was a sin of omission rather than the sin of commission that was Honduras.

Exit question: For the lefties that write history and love to paint America as the meddling and imperialist bad guy, how will they write the Honduras chapter? Democratic president aligning with the hemisphere’s socialist goons in order to keep another socialist goon in power and ultimately losing out when Honduras elects a conservative to the office of president. That ought to be good read.

One of these countries is not like the others...

KT provides a nice comparison of what 3 countries are doing to combat the global credit crunch and economic downturn. One is investing in a proven commodity that people around the world and within their own country will need for the foreseeable future and which will be the primary driver for their expanding economy. The second country is looking to that aforementioned country as a source of capital in order to expand the production of that commodity and the third country…. well, the third country is going to make it easier and quicker for bachelor and bachelorette parties to part with their money in Las Vegas.

Though not specifically mentioned in the bill, the bill does provide $8 billion for unspecified high-speed and intercity passenger rail projects, more than three times as much as allocated in earlier versions of the legislation.

In a town that loves to connect the dots, the funding increase raised suspicions that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who played a key role in writing the bill, pushed for it in order to promote home-state interests, namely the Anaheim-to-Las Vegas project.

A Reid spokesman said the money was not being earmarked for any specific project but would be available on a competitive basis. "This was a major priority for President Obama, and Sen. Reid as a conferee supported it," said Jon Summers.

(italics ours)

So, if there are allegedly no earmarks in porkulus, care to venture just what exactly “competitive” infers given the context?

Funny thing is, we’ve heard for years about this high-speed rail line between Southern California and Las Vegas. A lot of talk and no action. Why? Well, the project’s boosters themselves provide the answer: speed. The mag-lev train will breeze along at 300 mph and make the trip between Anaheim and Las Vegas in 86 minutes. Wow. That’s fast but still not as fast as a 45 minute plane ride from John Wayne to Vegas.

Vegas has managed to explode in growth despite the absence of any high-speed rail between itself and SoCal. Simply put: No demand.

(And somewhere “Pops” is saying, “Anaheim, Azusa, Ran-cho Cuc-a-monga”. H/T: Spike Jones)

Inauguration Day 2009

Was yesterday about and will today and all our tomorrows be about the color of one’s skin or the content of one’s character?

It's high time we find out.




May God Bless President Obama, his family and this great nation of ours.

Now, let’s get back to work.