just asking…

For those of you who are unware of the circumstances surrounding Mr. Zelaya’s forceful removal… allow me to briefly bring you up-to-date:  Mr. Zelaya was nearing the end of his term as president.  Instead of taking the proper Constitutional measures to allow him to run for another term, he decided to bypass the law in order to maintain power (the more elaborate version of the specifics can be found here).  The Supreme Court of Honduras ruled that Mr. Zelaya was acting in violation of the Honduran Constitution and prohibited him from running for another term.   This ruling had no affect on Zelaya and he persisted in his attempt to maintain his power.  As a result, political and military leaders acting in coordination, arrested and deported Mr. Zelaya for his illegal and dictatorial tendencies.

Now, being the “on the ball” guy that he is… Obama immediately came out with a statement highly critical of the military and political leaders that had instigated the Coup.  He noted his “concern” and implored that “democratic norms” be respected.  In a short but firm statement, Obama said:  ”We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the democratically elected president there”.

This rather strange quote lead me to opine on twitter:

“Obama says the Honduran coup was “not legal”… well, by that measure, neither was the Declaration of Independence.  What’s your point?”

My point, of course, was that the whether or not a political activity is “illegal” is not the only relevant consideration we should entertain when judging foreign affairs.  Sure, coups are never legal… but they may nevertheless be justified  – and their moral justification may exceed the injustice of “illegal” activity.  But I am making the mistake of accepting Obama on his terms…  After all, was not the justification for removal because of President Zelaya’s illegal activity?  But this inconvenient fact seems to have evaded Obama.

I could not have put things better than Andy McCarthy:

What on earth makes Obama think he knows better about what is legal under the law of Honduras than the Supreme Court of Honduras and the law-writing legislature of Honduras? The Honduran military acted after Zelaya defied an order by that nation’s highest court which pronounced his coup attempt illegal; he has been replaced under a Honduran legal process by that nation’s Congress, which essentially impeached him and democratically voted in a successor. That sounds pretty legal to me. I am the first to admit I am not an expert in Honduran law, but I’d bet the Honduran Supreme Court has a better grasp on it than President Obama. On the issue of what is legal in Honduras, as between Hugo Chávez and the Honduran Supreme Court, our president has decided to go with Chávez.

It seems, Mr. Obama, that you are in dire need of a basic lesson in international diplomacy…  a lesson I like to refer to as the “serendipitous turn of events” rule.  Mr. Obama, when the world hands you a country full of democratic individuals overthrowing their oppressive and dictatorial leadership… it shouldn’t really matter how the events unfold.   In fact, how is pretty irrelevant — especially considering it has already been done and there is nothing you can do about it.  In these sort of situations, it is best to just let that country solve problems their own way… and offer whatever political, economic, and moral support you can.

In other words, don’t ‘F’ up a serendipitous change of events just because in a perfect world it might have happened differently.

Mr. Obama, believe it or not, the rest of the world does not solve all its problems the same way we the United States solve our problems.  Are you not the very same person who continually lectures the U.S. about “imposing our values” on the rest of the world?  You say this but then hold Honduras to American standards. Furthermore, given we are on the topic of your inconsistencies, wasn’t it just weeks ago in Cairo where you said:

No matter where it takes hold, government of the people and by the people sets a single standard for all who hold power: you must maintain your power through consent, not coercion; you must respect the rights of minorities, and participate with a spirit of tolerance and compromise; you must place the interests of your people and the legitimate workings of the political process above your party. Without these ingredients, elections alone do not make true democracy.

How about taking your own advice for once and just do the American thing for once — supporting those who want freedom from oppression.  Just this once… try it… you might like it.

For those who missed it (and Andy’s post doesn’t quite convey the whole story of the farrago), Rep Mike Pence started the debate yesterday morning by pointing out that the House leadership had dropped a 300-page amendment to the already 1200-ish page Waxman-Markey energy tax bill at 3:09 in the morning.  Clearly, debate started before anyone had had a chance to read it properly, but the House leadership just didn’t care.  Then, mid-afternoon, Reps Louie Goehmert (who did a splendid job all round) and Energy & Commerce Ranking Member Joe Barton (who clearly couldn’t believe what was going on) raised a series of Parliamentary Inquiries as to whether there was a copy of the amended bill anywhere in the House for members to read.  Chairman Markey was dismissive, saying there was a copy on the wesbite, which, Rep Barton pointed out, was not much help to members on the floor of the House actually, you know, debating the bill.  Eventually the Chair, who was very fair throughout the afternoon, admitted that the Clerk was in the process of integrating the amendment into the hard copy in the House.  So for most of the day the House was debating a bill that didn’t actually physically exist, never mind having had a chance to read, digest and consider it.

If Congressmen were kept to the same standards of lawyers, they would be guilty of malpractice.

via Just Read The Bill, Already – The Corner

GREENSBORO — A buck-a-day — that’s the incentive being offered to young girls to keep them from getting pregnant.

The group College-Bound Sisters was founded at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro by Hazel Brown, a maternity nurse who thought too many teens were having babies.

Brown said she hopes the program, which pays $1 each day to 12-to-18-year-old girls, will keep them from getting pregnant. In addition to remaining pregnancy-free, the girls must also attend weekly meetings.

The program is funded by a four-year grant from the state.

“Our three goals are that they avoid pregnancy, graduate from high school and enroll in college,” Brown said.

Under the program, $7 is deposited into an interest-bearing college fund that the girls can collect once they graduate high school.

Program director Laurie Smith said those aspirations are more achievable because of the incentives the program provides and the friendships it helps create.

Smith said nearly 100 percent of the girls who finish the program have gone on to graduate college.

If a girl drops out or gets pregnant, her money is divided among the other girls still in the program.

Something tells me this program needs a bit more in the incentive area…

via Program Pays Girls $1 Per Day To Not Get Pregnant – Health News Story – WXII The Triad.

The results are clear: Since 1970 — even without the prescription drug benefit — Medicare’s costs have risen 34% more, per patient, than the combined costs of all health care in America apart from Medicare and Medicaid, the vast majority of which is purchased through the private sector.

What more of a tease do you want!  Read the whole thing (time allowing)

The binary oppressor/victim narrative goes something like this: the United States for the last half-century—through its embrace of neocolonialism and imperialism, and then again through its birthing of globalized capitalism—is at fault for most of the mess outside the West.

We as the bad guys impose, dictate, exploit, ignore, and manipulate the more noble Other to such a degree that he is forced to lash out in understandable, though often dangerous ways.

This is a sort of all-inclusive worldview that in postmodern fashion pits those with “power” against those without it. And in such a simplistic bipolar world, only a few gifted Western elite intellectuals, of superior intelligence, empathy, and insight, can reach across the divide, understand the Other, and find common ground, by accommodating the West to alternate paradigms of politics, culture, and economic and social life…

Then something messy comes along that doesn’t fit the neat paradigm like the purple-finger elections in Iraq, Tiananmen Square, or the most recent democracy demonstrations in Iran that confound that easy calculus. Just when you are singularly prepared, in bold face-to-face diplomacy, to understand the historic grievances of an unshaved, Nehru-coated Ahmadinejad, and to make the necessary apologies and accommodations, thousands of Iranians hit the street in Levis, with English-lettered protest signs, hitting their cell-phones and chanting Western-like protests again indigenous Iranian theocratic fascism.

So how can it be, that anyone would wish to model their politics after Western-style free speech and consensual government, given our culpability for so many global pathologies? The even weirder result that follows is that we become skeptical of the pro-Western Columbian, Israeli, Iraqi—and Iranian—as somehow less “authentic” by the very fact of his good will to, and admiration of, us (contrary to everything one has been taught in post-colonial classes).

In that vein, Obama is almost more at ease with virulent anti-Westerners, whose grievances Obama has long studied (and perhaps in large part entertained), and whose estrangement alone offers opportunity for Obama’s sophisticated multicultural insight and singular narcissistic magnanimity.

via Again, Why the Diffidence? – Victor Davis Hanson – The Corner on National Review Online.

AP:

Obama said Monday, addressing the American Medical Association. “If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

He didn’t let up.

“If you like what you’re getting, keep it,” Obama said. “Nobody is forcing you to shift.” . . .

White House officials suggest the president’s rhetoric shouldn’t be taken literally: What Obama really means is that government isn’t about to barge in and force people to change insurance.

Right: It will just set in motion a chain of events that will cause you to lose your current insurance. Nothing to worry about.

via You Might Not ‘Literally’ Keep Your Coverage – Ramesh Ponnuru – The Corner on National Review Online.

Supervisors suggest putting unemployed parents to work caring for their own children as part of proposed changes to CalWorks and other state government aid programs.

via L.A. County officials offer a novel idea to save millions – Los Angeles Times.

The truth is that Barack Obama has a penchant for these narratives and yet an inclination to rise above them. Two grand but antithetical stories about the same problem, awaiting him and his Olympian skill for the discovery of “common ground”: That is Obama’s favorite script. He regards himself as a kind of unprecedented referee between histories and philosophies. He likes to think that he can see what others cannot see and that, therefore, they must come to him if they wish to live in peace and with meaning. He did this with race in the Philadelphia speech, articulating what blacks see from their end of the periscope and what whites see from theirs. (Until, that is, he had to dump his minister from the campaign truck as a matter of survival. “Common ground” is sometimes not discovered so much as invented, or imposed.) A man of not especially discriminate empathy, he sees himself in the Whitmanesque sense of containing multitudes.

In addressing American intelligence and security professionals at the National Archives, the president again aimed at bridging differences by showing that apparent contradictions are not contradictions at all and that everything will go together, if only for as long as he is speaking. National security that never compromises national values? No problem. National values that guarantee national security? Say it and it will be done. Yes, we have values that elevate and restrict us at once, the ideal of free men and women that procedurally protects also the guilty and the wicked–and never mind that, absent energetic domestic and international defenses, these principles would be outmaneuvered and outclassed on both fronts. And again at Notre Dame, the same above-it-all structure of rhetorical conciliation was applied by Obama to the subject of abortion. “Open hearts. Open minds. Fair-minded words.” Nice enough. But the debate on abortion will not be so tidily retired. All of this is rising above but not really reconciling.

via Narrative Dissonance.

I highly suggest you watch the complete series here:

[T]he Sotomayor nomination shows that Mr. Obama has no idea what a post-racial society would look like. In selling himself as a candidate to the American public he is a gifted bargainer beautifully turned out in post-racial impressionism. But in the real world of Supreme Court nominations, where there is a chance to actually bring some of that idealism down to earth, he chooses a hardened, divisive and race-focused veteran of the culture wars he claims to transcend.

I have called Mr. Obama a bound man because he cannot win white support without bargaining and he cannot maintain minority support without playing the very identity politics that injure him with whites. The latter form of politics is grounded in being what I call a challenger — i.e., someone who presumes that whites are racist until they prove otherwise by granting preferences of some kind to minorities.

via Sotomayor and the Politics of Race – WSJ.com.

*If you get the Arrested Development joke in the title… good for you.  You are one of the smartest and most psophisticated people on the planet.  For those of you who DIDN’T get the joke… why don’t you just go buy the first season on DVD already! (it’s only $12 for a used copy… you can afford it… no excuses.)

“Much has been made of the fact that an African-American with the name Barack Hussein Obama could be elected President. But my personal story is not so unique,” he said in the Grand Hall of Cairo University.

Woh… wait… is personal story is NOT unique?  The first (and only) African-American man to become president of the United States is “NOT UNIQUE”?  You’re kidding me, right?  I suppose Obama may have intended to appear humble with that statement, but it just comes across as ignorant.  He continued:

“The dream of opportunity for all people has not come true for everyone in America, but its promise exists for all who come to our shores.”

So… let me get this straight… the promise of the dream of opportunity (whatever that means) is there for all our immigrants… but not for our own citizens?  Really! I guess this begs the question: What do you mean by “the dream of the opportunity for all”?  Do you mean opportunity that must be taken advantage of… or opportunity that must be PROVIDED by a government program?   Because last I checked… there were lots of opportunities out there for those willing to work hard… even in this economy.   Show me one person who doesn’t have opportunity  and I’ll show you a person demoralized by a government program.

Obama went on to discuss wars and conflict:

“It’s easier to start wars than to end them” he said.

Duuuuhh.  Tell me something I didn’t know.

“It’s easier to blame others than to look inward;

Your continual criticisms of the “previous administration” are proof of this…

“[it is easier] to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path”

But… wouldn’t it have just been EASIER to just let Saddam and his sons continue to rule Iraq with impunity?

There is one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. [Applause] This truth transcends nations and peoples.”

Um… this is called the “golden rule”… a saying often confused with scripture and biblical teaching.  Maybe if you wouldn’t have missed so many of Reverend Wright’s sermons… you might have picked up on this.

Later in the Speech Obama discussed his role as President:

“I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.

What about fighting against the negative stereotypes of Republicans?  You know, the ones about being racists, sexists, bigots, and homophobes… do you have a greater responsibility as the president of the UNITED STATES to fight against negative stereotypes of your fellow Americans or muslims?  I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on that, President Obama.

Finally, he got around to women’s rights:

“I know there is debate about this issue. I reject the view of some in the West that a woman who chooses to cover her hair is somehow less equal, but I do believe that a woman who is denied an education is denied equality.

Who in the west have THIS view?  “some”?  Like who?   I shouldn’t have to remind you, Mr. President, that IT IS MUSLIMS WHO FORCE women to wear burkas and it is MUSLIMS who treat women as inferior…NOT those of us in the west.  This is perhaps your weakest ’straw man’ you have ever used in a speech… and that’s really saying something.

Mr. Obama… it is EASY.. VERY EASY to refrain from criticizing the shameful practices of many muslims in the middle east… and it is much easier to be loved and adored than it is to be respected.  For someone who cautions others against taking the easy route… you certainly don’t seem to lead by example.

quotes via POLITICO.com.