Mister, we could use a man like General Arellano again.

The Honduran Legislature approved earlier this afternoon a decree that suspends five of the rights of citizens in Honduras: the inviolable right of home, the freedom of association, a person can be held more than 24 hours without a charge and freedom of movement in the country.

Sounds like the Patriot Act to me.

Good morning, pups. It’s Collins and Kristof this morning. Ms. Collins, in “An Affair to Remember,” says the folks in New York were happy to learn that Gov. Mark Sanford has been scheduling his assignations in their state. The airfare is cheaper than it is to Argentina. Plus, you can see “South Pacific.” Mr. Kristof, in “When Our Brains Short-Circuit,” says we’re brilliantly programmed to act on the risks that confronted us in the Pleistocene Age but less adept with 21st-century challenges like climate change.

Here they are.

The coffee and tea are ready, and I’ve got apple and walnut muffins today. The cold drinks are in the fridge for later. I am sooooo looking forward to a nice long weekend — I’ve got a backlog of naps I need to get to. Have a great day.

Instead of useless strongly worded speeches, Obama and Congress need to close and cut off funding forever for The School of the Americas.

Didn’t realize that FISA is a universal human aspiration. Like TARP. I guess.

Mornin’, gang -

Sorry I am to have missed WaterTiger’s post and thread last night…..have I mentioned lately how much I love this place?!!

Instead of useless strongly worded speeches, Obama and Congress need to close and cut off funding forever for The School of the Americas.

YES!

Oh yes, according to Ass Limbo of right wing radio fame, 95% of the country is in support of this military coup. Uh ha. Yeah. What Ass isn’t telling us is that the top 5% of Honduras (the wealthy) are for this move!

Makes one ask: Did any rogue elements of the CIA or the US military enable this coup to happen without presidential authorization?

The question occurs only because the righties are so primed to accept the coup.

These boots are made for walking, …

I’ve got a backlog of naps I need to get to.

Days like that – I try to get up extra early so’s I can squeeze in more naps…

Good idea! I turned my alarm clock off when I got up this morning, but I may turn it back on again so as to be able to squeeze in more naps!

Ever serve fried corn meal mush w/maple syrup. Italians would call it polenta.

Yes! I was just fantasizing about sleeping in on Saturday, but your idea is most excellent.

Better with leftover spaghetti sauce and mushrooms for breakfast. And use instant polenta mix. Morning is no time to be tethered to the stove.

Makes one ask: Did any rogue elements of the CIA or the US military enable this coup to happen without presidential authorization?

Valid question. Allegedly, the Bay of Pigs fiasco was launched by the CIA (starring Poppy Bush) behind Jack Kennedy’s back. He responded by firing the CIA chief Allan Dulles. Bad move. Dulles and his cronies (Poppy Bush) made a quick pay-back. Dulles then chaired the Warren Commission to make sure none of the truth came out. Arlen Specter launched his political career at that time, intimidating witnesses during the investigation.

Slow food is the best food.

Ever serve fried corn meal mush w/maple syrup. Italians would call it polenta.

Isn’t that called grits down south?

not with no syrup it ain’t!

grits is like cream of wheat or something, isn’t it. when i moved down here i tried it and thought it sucked.

Grits are made from hominy and are not a cereal although I’ve seen Yankees put put ‘em in a bowl with milk and sugar. Yuk. They’re usually served as a side with eggs, like hash browns, a pat of butter, some salt n’ pepper.

EPU’d, but when I was a little one my mother would take leftover grits, put them in a straight-sided glass in the fridge, and the next day unmold, slice, fry up in bacon drippings, and serve with maple syrup. I’m drooling just thinking about it.

Valid question. Given the sorry history of US behavior in/towards Latin America some cynicism is called for. And so is outrage. Mark Weisbrot at Center for Economic and Policy Research put out an interesting email yesterday suggesting that the State Department’s reluctant and tepid condemnation of the coup might indicate an effort to extract concessions from Zelaya in return for US help in facilitating his return. But as Weisbrot says: “This is not how democracy works. If Zelaya wants to negotiate a settlement with his political opponents after he returns, that is another story. But nobody has the right to extract political concession from him in exile, over the barrel of a gun.”

If he’s outside and wants help to get back in, who’s obligated to help him unconditionally?
What are those conditions other than expecting Zelaya to adhere to the constitution under which he was elected and held office?

I believe the US is morally obligated to help him unconditionally, especially given its sordid history of subverting democracy in the region,(such as: waging a dirty little contra war staged from Honduras; supporting right wing parties representing the landed oligarchs; funding and training the militaries that spawned the death squads.)

Would it be immoral to ask Zelaya to adhere to the constitution under which he holds power during his term in office?

Good post – on the way home from work yesterday, I heard a report on this coup.. the NPR interviewer (I forget what her name was) was speaking with the Honduran ambassador to the U.S. He kept insisting this was not a coup and was a legal action, following all their laws, there was never any break in constitutional chain of authority, etc., etc., etc.

And the NPR person didn’t challenge him once to explain himself – just took what he said at face value and thanked him for his time.

There was a time when I expected so much more from NPR. Now? Not so much.

As if no other country ever had a process to change its constitution? (The Honduran constitution by the way had its origins in the days when most of the country was effectively disenfranchised.) By your logic, if that famous subversive Jimmy Carter, who supported amending the US constitution so that women might have equal rights, had been run out by the military for his treachery, you would have been OK with Canada and Mexico saying sorry Jimmy we’d like to help you but you wanted to change that gosh darn sacred and unmutable constitution.

What a crock – that is the lamest apology for a right-wing coup I have heard in a long time. Not since Jesse Helms claimed the “Cuban-trained” Nicaraguans were massing at the Texas border. Give me a break…

Oh, and Michael Bloomberg just strong-armed the NYC council to end term limits so he could continue his reign. Should we send in the tanks?

Throttle back a bit. See if you can find where it was that I advocated or defended extra-legal action to remove Zelaya. You won’t find that because I don’t agree with the coup.
I also don’t agree that Zelaya has a right to subvert the constitution while in office or that any outside force is obligated to restore him to power unless he agrees to not do so.
The Honduran constitution is neither sacred nor is it immutable. I believe that it contains a provision for amendment.( (BTW, I believe that Jimmy Carter had a bit to do with the Honduran constitution).
If Zelaya wants to change the constitution, that’s fine with me. I don’t necessarily object if he wants to do it in a way prohibited by that constitution, but I have a great deal of trouble with him doing so while he holds high office under the constitution and if the change he advocates
would allow him to continue in power.

As far as I can tell, the central argument of the coup perpetrators for why Zelaya should be arrested upon his return is exactly what you just articulated. And who says Zelaya subverted the constitution by calling for a plebiscite to change it? The Honduran Supreme Court? Excuse me, but isn’t that the same Supreme Court that sanctioned the coup? Gee, I wonder why the coup happened to be on the same day that balloting was beginning on Zelaya’s non-binding referendum for constitutional change? Do you think the right-wingers were maybe a little bit nervous that the people might overwhelmingly support Zelaya’s proposed changes and deal a stunning rebuke to the Supreme Court?
Constitutions that keep people down should be changed. Military coups aimed at overthrowing popular and democratically elected officials should be condemned on principle. And people who ape (or blindly accept) the bogus claims of the coup perpetrators should be called out as apologists.

Oh, and your reminder that Jimmy Carter had a bit to do with the Honduran Constitution makes my original point about US responsibility. So the Constitution whose honor the Honduran coup leaders and the Supreme Court are defending was imposed by the Great Power to the North? How dare Zelaya suggest it might be changed by popular vote!

Flash, try to address the one simple point that I keep making. Zelaya doesn’t get to use his constitutional office to hold a referendum aimed at changing the constitution, in a manner prohibited by the constitution, and especially not when the change is designed to enable him to hold onto power.

I might be able to agree with you if we were talking about a country with strong and established democratic institutions and a constitution that sprang legitimately from the popular will. But since we all know that ain’t true, it seems a bit silly to keep raising your one simple point – especially since it is the primary self-serving argument of the coup perpetrators.

Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but the referendum that was halted by the military coup included a whole host of proposed constitutional changes. It wasn’t just about term limits,no?

I just found the ballot question translated into English on the NACLA website. https://nacla.org/node/5949

“..while many major news outlets in the US, including the Miami Herald, Wall St. Journal and Washington Post, said an impetus for the coup was specifically Zelaya’s plans for a vote to allow him to extend his term in office, the actual ballot question was to be: “Do you agree that, during the general elections of November 2009 there should be a fourth ballot to decide whether to hold a Constituent National Assembly that will approve a new political constitution?”

Flash, I would probably agree that reform is necessary and it doesn’t at all comfort me to be agreeing with the arguments of the Honduran military, but there’s no way to square up Zelaya’s referendum.

If you can find the entire terms of the referendum, I would like to see them, but as far as a know it was designed keep him in power and would have set up a new assembly to facilitate that.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/…..index.html

I was slowly typing and didn’t see your 35. Looks like there wasn’t much more to the referendum than an attempt to overturn the constitution.

Sounds like we both agree the constitution could stand a little overturnin’.

No reason not to re-examine the constitution and no reason to trust anybody in a position of power who wants to remove all institutional checks on that power.

Signing off. Thanks for the chat, Flash.

Just saw a very good article by historian Greg Grandin that came out in today’s Nation.

Here’s what Grandin says about the constitutional pretext for the coup:

“For those who presume to rule behind the scenes, Zelaya took a step too far when he began to push for the convocation of a constituent assembly in order to democratize Honduras’s notoriously exclusionary political system. Expectedly, these efforts were opposed by the national Congress and the Supreme Court, both of which are controlled by an inbred clique of career politicians and judges invested in keeping Honduran politics restricted–including members of Zelaya’s Liberal Party. For its part, the US media seem intent on reporting on events in Honduras through the prism of its obsession with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez. The New York Times, for instance, ran an op-ed by free-market ideologue Alvaro Vargas Llosa, who claimed that the most unfortunate aspect of the coup is not that it derailed Honduran democracy but–wait for it–that it has allowed Chávez to defend democracy and thus claim the “moral high ground.” Vargas Llosa describes Zelaya as a man of privilege, an “heir to the family fortune” who had “devoted decades to his agriculture and forestry enterprises” and who had run for president on a conservative platform that included supporting CAFTA. Misleadingly, Vargas Llosa attributes Zelaya’s political turn not to the absolute failure of CAFTA and the fiasco of the “war on drugs” but to Chávez’s seductions. The US media have also falsely yet unanimously presented Zelaya’s moves as a power grab, an effort to end term limits to allow him to run for re-election. But the referendum Zelaya was pushing–which prompted the coup–asked citizens only if there should be a vote on “whether to hold a Constituent National Assembly that will approve a new political Constitution.” In other words, Hondurans weren’t being asked to vote on term limits or even on revising the Constitution. They were simply being asked to vote on whether or not to have a vote on revising the Constitution, with the terms of that revision being left to an elected assembly.”