Friday, July 31, 2009

Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Must be all that global warming.....


The National Weather Service says 2009 has seen the coldest July since the official recording station was moved away from the lakefront in 1942. The average temperature this month in Chicago has been a mere 68.9 degrees.

Even in the years before 1942, when the National Weather Service recorded temperatures at the cooler lakefront, there are only three years that had colder Julys through the 26th.

There have also been far more days than usual with high temperatures less than 80 degrees this year. In 2009, there were 13 days where the temperature did not exceed 80 degrees. Only three Julys in the past 67 years have had more days in Chicago with highs less than 80 – there were 18 such days in 1992, and 14 in 1996 and 2000.

We have also failed to reach 90 degrees at any time this month.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Oh, sweet feathery Jeebus




I usually like girls with a little more meat on thier bones, but this one looks just fine as is.

Monday, July 27, 2009

interesting CNN story....





-- In promoting his health-care agenda, President Obama has repeatedly reassured Americans that they can keep their existing health plans -- and that the benefits and access they prize will be enhanced through reform.

A close reading of the two main bills, one backed by Democrats in the House and the other issued by Sen. Edward Kennedy's Health committee, contradict the President's assurances. To be sure, it isn't easy to comb through their 2,000 pages of tortured legal language. But page by page, the bills reveal a web of restrictions, fines, and mandates that would radically change your health-care coverage.

If you prize choosing your own cardiologist or urologist under your company's Preferred Provider Organization plan (PPO), if your employer rewards your non-smoking, healthy lifestyle with reduced premiums, if you love the bargain Health Savings Account (HSA) that insures you just for the essentials, or if you simply take comfort in the freedom to spend your own money for a policy that covers the newest drugs and diagnostic tests -- you may be shocked to learn that you could lose all of those good things under the rules proposed in the two bills that herald a health-care revolution.

In short, the Obama platform would mandate extremely full, expensive, and highly subsidized coverage -- including a lot of benefits people would never pay for with their own money -- but deliver it through a highly restrictive, HMO-style plan that will determine what care and tests you can and can't have. It's a revolution, all right, but in the wrong direction.

Let's explore the five freedoms that Americans would lose under Obamacare:

1. Freedom to choose what's in your plan

The bills in both houses require that Americans purchase insurance through "qualified" plans offered by health-care "exchanges" that would be set up in each state. The rub is that the plans can't really compete based on what they offer. The reason: The federal government will impose a minimum list of benefits that each plan is required to offer.




Today, many states require these "standard benefits packages" -- and they're a major cause for the rise in health-care costs. Every group, from chiropractors to alcohol-abuse counselors, do lobbying to get included. Connecticut, for example, requires reimbursement for hair transplants, hearing aids, and in vitro fertilization.

The Senate bill would require coverage for prescription drugs, mental-health benefits, and substance-abuse services. It also requires policies to insure "children" until the age of 26. That's just the starting list. The bills would allow the Department of Health and Human Services to add to the list of required benefits, based on recommendations from a committee of experts. Americans, therefore, wouldn't even know what's in their plans and what they're required to pay for, directly or indirectly, until after the bills become law.

2. Freedom to be rewarded for healthy living, or pay your real costs

As with the previous example, the Obama plan enshrines into federal law one of the worst features of state legislation: community rating. Eleven states, ranging from New York to Oregon, have some form of community rating. In its purest form, community rating requires that all patients pay the same rates for their level of coverage regardless of their age or medical condition.

Americans with pre-existing conditions need subsidies under any plan, but community rating is a dubious way to bring fairness to health care. The reason is twofold: First, it forces young people, who typically have lower incomes than older workers, to pay far more than their actual cost, and gives older workers, who can afford to pay more, a big discount. The state laws gouging the young are a major reason so many of them have joined the ranks of uninsured.

Under the Senate plan, insurers would be barred from charging any more than twice as much for one patient vs. any other patient with the same coverage. So if a 20-year-old who costs just $800 a year to insure is forced to pay $2,500, a 62-year-old who costs $7,500 would pay no more than $5,000.

Second, the bills would ban insurers from charging differing premiums based on the health of their customers. Again, that's understandable for folks with diabetes or cancer. But the bills would bar rewarding people who pursue a healthy lifestyle of exercise or a cholesterol-conscious diet. That's hardly a formula for lower costs. It's as if car insurers had to charge the same rates to safe drivers as to chronic speeders with a history of accidents.

3. Freedom to choose high-deductible coverage

The bills threaten to eliminate the one part of the market truly driven by consumers spending their own money. That's what makes a market, and health care needs more of it, not less.

Hundreds of companies now offer Health Savings Accounts to about 5 million employees. Those workers deposit tax-free money in the accounts and get a matching contribution from their employer. They can use the funds to buy a high-deductible plan -- say for major medical costs over $12,000. Preventive care is reimbursed, but patients pay all other routine doctor visits and tests with their own money from the HSA account. As a result, HSA users are far more cost-conscious than customers who are reimbursed for the majority of their care.

The bills seriously endanger the trend toward consumer-driven care in general. By requiring minimum packages, they would prevent patients from choosing stripped-down plans that cover only major medical expenses. "The government could set extremely low deductibles that would eliminate HSAs," says John Goodman of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a free-market research group. "And they could do it after the bills are passed."

4. Freedom to keep your existing plan

This is the freedom that the President keeps emphasizing. Yet the bills appear to say otherwise. It's worth diving into the weeds -- the territory where most pundits and politicians don't seem to have ventured.

The legislation divides the insured into two main groups, and those two groups are treated differently with respect to their current plans. The first are employees covered by the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974. ERISA regulates companies that are self-insured, meaning they pay claims out of their cash flow, and don't have real insurance. Those are the GEs (GE, Fortune 500) and Time Warners (TWX, Fortune 500) and most other big companies.

The House bill states that employees covered by ERISA plans are "grandfathered." Under ERISA, the plans can do pretty much what they want -- they're exempt from standard packages and community rating and can reward employees for healthy lifestyles even in restrictive states.

But read on.

The bill gives ERISA employers a five-year grace period when they can keep offering plans free from the restrictions of the "qualified" policies offered on the exchanges. But after five years, they would have to offer only approved plans, with the myriad rules we've already discussed. So for Americans in large corporations, "keeping your own plan" has a strict deadline. In five years, like it or not, you'll get dumped into the exchange. As we'll see, it could happen a lot earlier.

The outlook is worse for the second group. It encompasses employees who aren't under ERISA but get actual insurance either on their own or through small businesses. After the legislation passes, all insurers that offer a wide range of plans to these employees will be forced to offer only "qualified" plans to new customers, via the exchanges.

The employees who got their coverage before the law goes into effect can keep their plans, but once again, there's a catch. If the plan changes in any way -- by altering co-pays, deductibles, or even switching coverage for this or that drug -- the employee must drop out and shop through the exchange. Since these plans generally change their policies every year, it's likely that millions of employees will lose their plans in 12 months.

5. Freedom to choose your doctors

The Senate bill requires that Americans buying through the exchanges -- and as we've seen, that will soon be most Americans -- must get their care through something called "medical home." Medical home is similar to an HMO. You're assigned a primary care doctor, and the doctor controls your access to specialists. The primary care physicians will decide which services, like MRIs and other diagnostic scans, are best for you, and will decide when you really need to see a cardiologists or orthopedists.

Under the proposals, the gatekeepers would theoretically guide patients to tests and treatments that have proved most cost-effective. The danger is that doctors will be financially rewarded for denying care, as were HMO physicians more than a decade ago. It was consumer outrage over despotic gatekeepers that made the HMOs so unpopular, and killed what was billed as the solution to America's health-care cost explosion.

The bills do not specifically rule out fee-for-service plans as options to be offered through the exchanges. But remember, those plans -- if they exist -- would be barred from charging sick or elderly patients more than young and healthy ones. So patients would be inclined to game the system, staying in the HMO while they're healthy and switching to fee-for-service when they become seriously ill. "That would kill fee-for-service in a hurry," says Goodman.

In reality, the flexible, employer-based plans that now dominate the landscape, and that Americans so cherish, could disappear far faster than the 5 year "grace period" that's barely being discussed.

Companies would have the option of paying an 8% payroll tax into a fund that pays for coverage for Americans who aren't covered by their employers. It won't happen right away -- large companies must wait a couple of years before they opt out. But it will happen, since it's likely that the tax will rise a lot more slowly than corporate health-care costs, especially since they'll be lobbying Washington to keep the tax under control in the righteous name of job creation.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

WTF, Honduran style.....




I just dont get it.

Im America: we have presidential term limits. They were a bipartisian response to FDR. 2 terms is all you can get, even though there are still some politicians that would seek to destroy this important 22 amendment.

So, imagine if W Bush or Obama in 2011 propose having a 'referendum' ( meaning a vote that could be easily messed with )that could mean they could run forever and possibly win. Can you imagine the outcry? Hell, even Washington and Jefferson ( those evil white slave owners )knew better :"if some termination to the services of the chief Magistrate be not fixed by the Constitution, or supplied by practice, his office, nominally four years, will in fact become for life."

Can we all agree that it's well and good for presidential term limits? It is a bulwark against tyranny.

Well, from what I gather after chatting with my buddy who lives down there in Uraguay, something really wierd is going on.

First, the Honduran 'el presidente' Zelaya proposes a 'referendum' asking the voters if they should change thier Constitution, even though it says right in there that any attempt to do so is a violation of thier laws, and the 'dictator in waiting' ( I.E. Hugo Chaves, anyone? )must be immediately removed from office. But, he plows ahead with tacit approval from Castro, Chavez, and the OAS: proposes the election, which starts a firestorm of debate that goes all the way to thier Supreme Court ( dangling Ocho Stinko's?). Then, the Supreme Court says, 'no way,Jose'.

Enter the villian,and the new Micheletti’s government which gets the guy in the dark of night and transports him physically on a jet chartered by Citgo ( hmmm )to Costa Rica and installs a new POH. Now, I admit, this sounds alittle harsh. They should have made him step down and impeach him, but that's just not how it works down there. At least he didn't get the usual treatment, which maybe JFK could help 'splain


Mr. Zelaya was ousted for trying to rewrite the presidential term limits clause, and even considering that option can be considered treasonous in Honduras. Zelaya has a lot in common with Chavez and his buddies: Bolivia’s Evo Morales won a referendum allowing him to overturn a ban on re-election; Ecuador’s Rafael Correa unconstitutionally changed the constitution and overrode the term limit stipulations; and Chavez, under tremendous protests from the people of Venezuela changed the country’s constitution and says he will stay in office until “2019, 2021 or 2030.” We know the story in Cuba. And in Nicaragua, the American-hating Sandinista Marxist thug Daniel Ortega told Sir David Frost in a March 2009 interview that he would like to change the constitution to allow him to run again for president.

Central and South American dictators have a long history, and since the people of any country do not want to be “ruled,” rather than governed, “dictators” are not popular. You can’t run for office as a dictator and get elected. So it’s all about deceiving the people. In the case of Manuel Zelaya, he was elected as a “centrist” four years ago, and has moved rapidly to the Left. Zelaya took an out-sized stetson hat and cowboy boots as his signature apparel, and grinned and waved his way to the Left and a fast friendship with Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. In an attempt to appease the poor, of which Honduras has plenty, Zelaya cut a deal with Chavez for cheap oil. Unless oil is cheap around the world, oil is not cheap, and of course there had to be a pay-back to Chavez for his generosity. Zelaya joined-in with Bolivia, Cuba, Ecuador and Nicaragua to participate in Chavez’ “regional trade and political pact.”

Outside of the Chavez pact members:

San Salvador just elected Maurico Funes of the Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN)- named for Farabundo Marti, the Communist leader and social activist. His election ended nearly 50-years of conservative control that fought against the FMLN movement seeking a Communist revolution. Funes wants good relations with the U.S., he vowed to restore relations with Cuba and is opening an embassy there. Standby to see how far Left San Salvador leans.

Uruguay’s ruling coalition party proposed reforming the Uruguayan constitution to allow an immediate reelection of the president, Tabare Vazquez. It didn’t happen and sources say it is not likely to happen as the constitution forbids it. Vazquez is considered a conservative.

South of the equator, history demonstrates that it hard to hold on to the very constitutional ideals designed to keep executive branches from becoming absolutists.


So, I checked out my friends blog, which is about an Ex Pat living in Uraguay, and here's what he posted just after the 'coup' happened:


Mel Zelaya was elected 3 ½ years ago with an underwhelming 49% of
the vote. He was seen as a fairly conservative member of the liberal party.
The general feeling when he was elected was that he wasn’t the greatest
pick, but his background as a wealthy logger and rancher coupled with his
more liberal social policies would probably be OK.

· Almost from day 1, Mel started shifting Honduras policies to the
left.

o Remember when he tried to nationalize the oil industry – forcing all
fuel distributors to buy from 1 company so that Mel could control the price?
The US rightfully reminded Mel that the US oil companies had a lot invested
here and the confiscating of those assets would not be a good thing. Mel
changed his mind a couple of days later.

o Mel gave away the fishing rights to an area that Honduras has been
fishing for decades if not a hundred years. He gave those rights to
Nicaragua for nothing – or at least nothing that was ever publicly reported.
Mel forgot to mention this transaction to anyone in the country, let alone
the fisherman. Guess how the fishermen found out? The Nicaraguan Navy
confiscated several boats over a period of a few weeks. The crews on these
boats were detained from a few days to a few weeks. Some of the boats were
eventually returned to the rightful owners – after paying “fines”. Some of
the boats even had the electronics and gear still on board when they were
returned to the owners. The Honduran government did absolutely nothing to
repatriate these boats.

o Mel wanted Honduras to join ALBA – a collection of countries that was
formed by Cuba and Venezuela to counteract NAFTA/CAFTA from the US. When
this was announced, there was a lot of concern – especially from the
business community. I was in a meeting with the local congressman less than
a week before it was ratified. The message being sent was that this was just
a way to get cheap oil from Venezuela. The congress wouldn’t consider
ratifying this treaty for 6 or 8 months and by then Mel would have the oil
that he was after. Again, less than a week later Mel got the treaty was
ratified by the congress.

o Not too long ago, the minimum wage was raised from L. 3,500 per month to
L. 5,500. That’s about a 60% increase. I’m not saying that the minimum wage
didn’t need to be raised, but this huge increase was 3 times more than the
labor unions were requesting (20%) and 6 times more than the business
organizations had offered (10%). These increases caused tremendous layoffs
on the mainland. Many maquillas (garment factories) began to move to
Nicaragua because the cost of business in Honduras had gotten too high. This
was another huge drop in jobs. I’ve not seen the actual number of jobs lost
because of the 60% increase in minimum wage, but it was staggering.

o The Honduran constitution says that each year the President presents the
annual budget to congress for approval. If the approval is not obtained by a
specific date (I think it’s the end of January, but am not 100% sure) the
budget from last year will be used until the new budget is approved by
congress.

§ Mel never submitted a budget for 2009, hence the Congress can’t approve
it so Honduras is operating in 2009 on 2008’s budget.

§ Now, why would a President not submit a budget? Who knows for sure but
one of the possibilities is that 2009 is an election year. Mel would like to
stay in power past 2009. The budget in 2008 didn’t include an election, so
in essence there is NO money available for the 2009 election because we’re
operating on 2008’s budget. There are other theories about hiding graft and
corruption, but I would assume that anyone that becomes President in
Honduras wouldn’t be concerned about hiding corruption and theft in the
budget – he certainly didn’t mind doing it the previous 3 years!

· Somewhere along the way, Mel decided to take a lesson from his
mentor (Chavez) and arrange it so that he could remain in power for as long
as he wanted. There was a little problem with this. The Honduran
constitution, enacted in 1982, has 378 articles. 6 of these articles are
“cast in stone”, meaning that they can NOT be changed. These 6 articles deal
with defining the type of government, territory claims, and presidential
term limits. They are the basis of the Honduran democracy.

o One other tidbit from the constitution – Article 42, Section 5 says that
anyone who is found to “incite, promote, or aid in the continuation or
re-election of the President” would face loss of citizenship. Remember this
one later on in this saga.

· To further complicate things for Zelaya, ANY changes to the
constitution have to be initiated by the legislative branch. The congress
has to convene a constituent assembly. That’s basically a group of people
selected by the congress to analyze any proposed changes and form those
ideas into the new constitution. After the proposed changes are formulated,
the congress would approve them to be put to a national referendum. The
executive branch (the President) has nothing to do with that process.

· Mel didn’t think that the congress would go along with his ideas
of staying in power so he decided he’d call his own referendum. He doesn’t
have the authority to do that – remember that constitutional changes can
only be done by the legislature AND the term limits are one of the articles
cast in stone – but he goes ahead and calls one anyway.

· The Honduran Supreme Court says “Sorry Mel, you can’t do a
referendum. That’s not within your power as president”.

· Mel, or more probably one of his advisors, figures out that if a
referendum can’t be done, we could probably do a survey or a poll instead!
Great idea – nobody will figure out that the poll that we’re now going to do
is exactly the same thing as we were going to do with the referendum.

· Damn those people on the Supreme Court! They figured out the ruse!
They ruled unanimously that regardless of what you call it, if it acts like
a referendum the president can’t do it. If it looks like a duck, and walks
like a duck, and quacks like a duck . . . .

· Mel continues to talk of doing the poll on June 28 regardless of
the Supreme Court

· The Congress looks at the poll that Mel wants to do and gives an
opinion that the poll would be illegal and they will not support it.
Remember that Mel’s own political party is in control of the congress.

· The Attorney General also analyzes the poll and determines that it
is illegal. Over the course of the weeks leading to June 28, the AG
reiterates many times that the poll is illegal and anyone participating in
the poll would be committing a crime and could be arrested.

· Mel runs into another logistical snafu. He needs some ballots
printed. The entire political structure of Honduras (except him) has ruled
that the poll is illegal. It’s a pretty sure bet that he can’t get the
government to print the ballots for an illegal referendum so he asks his
buddy Hugo Chavez to print the ballots. Of course Hugo says “No Problem
Commrade!”

· The rhetoric in the 2 weeks before the “poll” gets tense. Every
legal opinion in Honduras says that the poll is illegal. The Supreme Court
reaffirms its ruling that the poll is illegal. The Attorney General keeps
saying that the poll is illegal and that anyone participating is committing
a crime. Mel’s own political party says that the poll is illegal. There
literally is not one legitimate group in the country that is siding with Mel
about the poll.

· Traditionally the military handles the distribution of the ballots
and voting materials. The head of the military, Romeo Vasquez Velasquez says
that the military will not participate in the poll because the Supreme Court
is the entity that determines what is legal and what is illegal in Honduras.
The Supreme Court has determined that the poll is illegal, so the military
will not participate.

· Mel Zelaya promptly fired Romeo Vasquez. The other heads of
military (Navy and Air Force) as well as the Minister of Defense resigned in
support of Vasquez.

· The next day the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Vasquez was
fired without reason and demanded his reinstatement. Zelaya refused.

· The ballots arrive in Honduras (from Venezuela on a Venezuelan
flagged plane). The Attorney General demands that the ballots be confiscated
and held at a military installation.

· Mel decides that if the military won’t distribute the ballots,
he’ll get his own people to distribute them

· Mel gets a couple of busses and a few cars full of supporters.
They drive to the Air Force installation that was holding the ballots. They
forcibly entered the installation and took the ballots. Not only was this
“breaking and entering” it was a complete betrayal of a lawful order of the
Attorney General

· The Attorney General says that the President has committed treason
and asks for him to be removed from office. The congress created a
commission to examine Zelaya’s actions and determine if removal from office
is appropriate.

· A side note here about removal from office. I’m in no way a
Honduran constitutional expert, but from what I understand, there’s not a
clear means to impeach a sitting president. In a lot of constitutions, the
impeachment of a president would be done by the legislative branch. In
Honduras, there’s no such structure. There could be criminal charges brought
against the president and the trial would be handled by the judicial branch.
Not much different than anyone else accused of a crime. I’ve not heard of
any provision to temporarily remove a president from office until the
criminal charges were adjudicated. What would you do? Let a man accused of
treason remain as the sitting president until the trial was completed? That
would be insane, but that may be the only choice.

· On Saturday, June 27, Mel got most, if not all, of the ballots
distributed around the country. The polls were set to open at 7am on Sunday.

· The Supreme Court voted to remove Zelaya. The Congress decided to
remove Zelaya. The Attorney General stated many times that Zelaya was
committing illegal acts and in fact committing treason. The military
determined that the poll was illegal and that their responsibility was to
uphold the constitution as opposed to supporting the president.

· Early Sunday morning, about 6am, the military went to the
president’s house and removed him from the building. He was put on a plane
to Costa Rica. This was done to enforce the ruling from the Supreme Court.

· This is where Article 42 of the constitution comes into play. The
way that I read that article, Zelaya should have lost his Honduran
citizenship at this point.

· Once Mel had been removed, the President of the Congress (Roberto
Micheletti) was sworn in as the new President of Honduras. This was exactly
the person that is indicated by the constitution. It was a proper and legal
succession of the presidency. The first thing that Micheletti did was
confirm that the regularly scheduled elections would be held in November.
His post is temporary until the new President was duly elected.

· It’s been said all over the press that Mel was arrested in his
pajamas. I personally don’t believe that. In an hour he would have been at
some polling place to vote and also to motivate those that showed up. This
was the biggest day of his life. I’d be amazed if he slept at all – I know I
wouldn’t be able to. There was one report that Mel was actually in suit
pants and a crisply ironed white shirt when he was arrested and he asked to
change into other clothes. Quite frankly, I see this as more likely.

I believe that this is an accurate depiction of the events that led to
Zelaya’s expulsion on Sunday. If I’m wrong on a any points, I don’t think
I’m off by much. The salient points are certainly accurate.

I personally think that it would have been better to arrest Zelaya and hold
him somewhere in the country. He was removed from Honduras in the interest
of public safety. The feeling at the time was that if he was held within
Honduras, his supporters would take violent actions to release him from
captivity. It would be a difficult decision and I’m sure the powers that be
did what they thought was best.

I have been disgusted at the world reaction to these events. It’s like they
only looked at what happened on Sunday morning and ignored what events led
to that day. I don’t understand how the removal of Zelaya was anything less
than a small country demanding that their country remain democratic. Their
constitutional process worked exactly right to remove a rogue president with
an agenda that was detrimental to the Honduran constitution and society.
Call me crazy,quite simply if you find yourself aligned with Castro,
Chavez, and Ortega
– you should REALLY look at where you’re standing!



Tuesday, July 21, 2009

It's good to be The King...

William Jablonski, a regular busker on the Vegas strip, claims he has been harassed by officers who have repeatedly cited him for obstructing the pavement, disorderly conduct and being a public nuisance.

Mr Jablonski, who signs autographs, poses for tourists and once performed for a televised Elvis tribute at the MGM Grand, is taking police to court to prove that impersonating "The King" is a constitutional right.

The street performer claims that he has been wrongfully hounded by officers.

He stopped performing in public after he was cited for obstructing the pavement in 2007.

A year later, having donned his velvet suit again, he was confronted as he sang in front of the Paris Hotel & Casino by a Las Vegas police officer who told him not to have his picture taken with tourists or accept tips.

His act was stopped again twice within the next fortnight, including on one occasion when Mr Jablonski claims he was approached by a group of no fewer than five officers, who said they saw him accept a dollar.

The Elvis fan has joined forces with a busking guitarist, Suzette Banasik, and the American Civil Liverties Union to fight for their right to perform.

They have filed a suit in the US District Court in Las Vegas against Clark County, along with District Attorney David Roger, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto.

The performers' are challenging statutes and codes they say "violate free speech" and amount to "unconstitutional restraints on personal speech and expression.''

Spokesmen for both Clark County and the police declined comment.

here's more:

- An Elvis impersonator and his guitar-playing accompanist say impersonating "The King" is a constitutional right, and the ACLU agrees. They claim the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department harassed the performers on a slew of bogus charges to prevent them from exercising that right.
Guitarist Suzette Banasik and William Jablonski are regular faces on the Strip, where tourists have themselves photographed alongside the latter-day Elvis.
Banasik and Jablonski claim Vegas cops harass them by accusing them of operating without a license, storing materials on a public sidewalk, begging, obstructing the sidewalk, disorderly conduct, and being a public nuisance.
Banasik and Jablonski want those Clark County ordinances enjoined as unconstitutional.
Jablonski, who performed for a nationally televised Elvis tribute at the MGM Grand in 2006, says he stopped impersonating Elvis in public in Las Vegas after he was cited for obstructing the sidewalk in 2007.
A year later, however, he read about the ACLU's victory in a similar case, ACLU et al. v City of Las Vegas. Emboldened by this, Jablonski says he returned to the velvet suit, and was being Elvis in front of the Paris Hotel & Casino on April 23 when a Las Vegas police officer told him he could not have his picture taken with tourists and accept tips.
Jablonski challenged that statement, and claims that the officer, who had threatened him with jail, decided not to issue him a citation.
It was a short-lived victory. Seven days, he says, the Paris casino's security guards, accompanied by the same police officer, told him he was on the resort's property and was not allowed to be there.
Undaunted, Jablonski whipped out a copy of ACLU of Nevada et al. v City of Las Vegas. After a brief discussion, the officers told Jablonski he could stay, but he had to stay 3 feet from the curb and could not accept tips.
After that, Jablonski says, he tried to get a license, but was told he was doing something illegal and could not get one.
A few weeks later, Jablonski says, he was approached by no fewer than five Metro officers, who said they saw him accept a dollar from a tourist and that he could not be there. Jablonski says a discussion ensued, in which two officers "voted" that he should not be issued a citation, but three voted in favor of it. But a sergeant said his higher rank gave his vote more weight, so Jablonski would not get the ticket.
Jablonski says that none of the officers in this legal conclave identified themselves.
Banasik was arrested on March 12 while performing on a walkway between Bally's Hotel and Casino and Bill's Gamblin' Hall & Saloon. She says that for the third time in as many months Metro officers told her to leave the area because she was obstructing the sidewalk.
As she took pictures to show that she was not obstructing anything, Banasik says, she found herself in handcuffs. She was arrested for operating a business without a license and obstructing the sidewalk.
The buskers seek a declaratory judgment and injunctive relief. They are represented by Judy Cox with the ACLU of Nevada.
Courthouse News Service


Plaintiffs: Suzette Banasik and William Jablonski
Defendants: Clark County, David Roger, Douglas Gillespie, Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, Officer Contreras, Officer Goris, Officer Hanigan and Catherine Cortez Masto

Case Number: 2:2009cv01242
Filed: July 9, 2009

Court: Nevada District Court
Office: Las Vegas Office [ Court Info ]
County: Clark
Presiding Judge: Judge Lloyd D. George
Referring Judge: Magistrate Judge George Foley Jr.

Nature of Suit: Civil Rights - Other Civil Rights
Cause: 28:1331 Federal Question: Other Civil Rights
Jurisdiction: Federal Question
Jury Demanded By: Plaintiff

Monday, July 20, 2009

Vick, the Sick Dick back again




http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/news?slug=ms-thegameface071709&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Here is my buddy Pudge's take on the reinstation of VTSD (see the title ):


I'm biased, but if I was in Goodell's shoes, then I wouldn't really trust anything Vick said, which is why I wouldn't be liable to just reinstate him this year. If I'm Goodell, then I have the "Prove It Clause" which is:

I suspend you for this season. And in that time, I'm looking to see some if not all of these things:

1) No arrests. No DUIs, no speeding tickets, not even a jayhawking citation.
2) Pass a number of drug tests.
3) Do you PSAs and some charity work
4) Do your hour long specials on Oprah and the Dog Whisperer
5) Go to gamblers anonymous

And if you can do those things between now and February, then I'll reinstate you.

At this point, my belief has got to be Vick's biggest motivator is money.

As Mr. Silver says, this has the chance to blow up in Goodell's face. After the Pacman Jones incident, I think Goodell has to be choosier now about who he lets back into the league. I know others think that his going to jail was all the proving he needs to do, but I disagree. If I'm an employer and one of my valued employees gets thrown in prison, and then gets out and comes to me looking for his old job back. I'm not going to be able to just give it back to him just because he says he's changed. I'm going to ask him to prove it. Give him 30 days or whatever, to keep his nose clean. Now, it's going to be really hard for him to do that if he's jobless for 30 days. But IMO, if he passes that test, then he proved it. It's messed up, and it's a test designed for him to fail, but that's how you can measure people's true character.

Friday, July 17, 2009

Club Med

A few thoughts on Club Med.

I understand this is a 'french' based company, and the entire philosophy was based upon that. But, as someone who has travelled extensively and stayed at many resorts, it was.....interesting.

My first thought is the young folks they get to work there are pretty engaging. They take certain parts of thier jobs seriously. All the G.O's have to perform in the shows at night, so there are alot of European dancers working during the day in the kids club, on the course, etc...And while the shows are cute, Paul only did one day of the kids club, because he did not dig it.

The shows themselves were cute. On Pirate night, they staged a maritime battle between Pirate crews. Of course at the end, the mermaids Pirates and various players all made nicey nice.



Even the 'race' was a tie. Paul got a medal, though.



They even make the kids go to the disco and pretend to be interested in the drunken caterwaulings of guests and the 'band in the box':



Paul loved it.



I kept in touch by recording some local shows during the day, and popping on the phones at night when the kid was sleeping.



It's all about Paul.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

Boy Named Sue

Boys growing up with popular names such as Michael, Joshua and Christopher have a good chance of leading law-abiding lives - but those named Kareem, Walter or Ivan could find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

That's according to a United States study that claims the more unpopular, uncommon or feminine a boy's first name, the greater the chance he will end up behind bars.

Shippensburg University professor David Kalist's report in Social Science Quarterly shows that "unpopular names are likely not the cause of crime", but he explains that factors often associated with those names can "increase the tendency toward juvenile delinquency".

Boys with uncommon names are often ridiculed by peers, come from families of low socioeconomic status and face discrimination in the workforce, according to the study.

The top 10 bad-boy names in the United States - Alec, Ernest, Garland, Ivan, Kareem, Luke, Malcolm, Preston, Tyrell and Walter.

- AP

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The Non Apology Apology



"A non-apology apology is a statement in the form of an apology that is nothing of the sort, a common gambit in politics and public relations. It most commonly entails the speaker saying that he or she is sorry not for a behavior, statement or misdeed, but rather is sorry only because a person who has been aggrieved is requesting the apology, expressing a grievance, or is threatening some form of retribution or retaliation.

An example of a non-apology apology would be to say "I'm sorry if you were offended by my remarks" to someone who has been offended by a statement. This apology does not admit that there was anything wrong with the remarks made, and, additionally, it subtly insinuates that the person taking offense was excessively thin-skinned or irrational in taking offense at the remarks in the first place."


Now look: here is what David Letterman said after getting his ass whomoed by Palin:

"I would like to apologize especially to the two daughters involved, Bristol and Willow, and also to the Governor and her family and everybody else who was outraged by the joke. I'm sorry about it and I'll try to do better in the future".


Now of course, this is not the apology he first offered. His first was a snarky, sarcastic 'I'm sorry if your offended, I didn't mean it' kind of apology that got Gov Palin to ask Matt Lauer if he was nuts. The, she went for the jugular and as soon as sponsors died off, he came up with a sincere sounding 'apology', which Palin graciously accepted. Of course, I postulated this was the wrong thing to do, and I feel I was right. However, I can look at the situation and see that it appeared Letterman was sincere in his 2nd apology.

This doesn't excuse those idiots that are still protesting @ firedavidletterman.com.
Good Lord, it's 'over'.

The guy admitted he screwed up and will try to do better.

There are enough jerks out there that will only proffer the Non Apology Apology, when there seems to be a legit Mea Cupla, it behooves the rest of us to accept it.

So Mote It Be

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Here we go again....

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124752187967935029.html


--A group of minority broadcasters asked Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Monday for financial assistance akin to the aid that has been extended to the financial and auto industries.

"Minority-owned broadcasters are close to becoming an extinct species," the letter said. "Even in better economic times, minority broadcasters have historically had difficulties accessing the capital markets."

The broadcasters told Mr. Geithner they can bounce back if they are given some temporary assistance while the credit markets are slow. "Unlike the auto business, broadcasting has been healthy for many years," their letter said.

The broadcasters appeal follows a proposal sent in May to Mr. Geithner by a group of influential House members asking for a minority broadcaster support program, bridge funding, or government-backed loans.

The House letter was signed by House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D., S.C.) and a group of key committee chairmen, including Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (D., Mass.) Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel (D., N.Y.) and Oversight Committee Chairman Edolphus Towns, (D., N.Y.).

At a hearing last week, National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters President James Winston told lawmakers that advertisers have severely cut investments in minority audiences at the same time minority broadcasters are having difficulty negotiating loan terms with banks.

Research from the Internet advocacy group Free Press says minorities own just 7.7% of full power commercial radio stations and 3.2% of full power commercial TV stations.

Minority broadcast ownership also is an issue important to Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Michael Copps, who was acting chairman of the agency earlier this year.

Companies and groups that signed on to the Geithner letter included the National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters, the Inner City Broadcasting Coalition, the Spanish Broadcasting System, Taxi Productions Inc., and Carter Broadcast Group, Inc.

now for some real minority broadcasting. Straight White Guys from Decatur:

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

where is Tippy?

Paglia and the lot


This woman 'gets it' She is the only true feminist I know:

.... Palin's shock resignation as governor of Alaska on the past Fourth of July weekend. I assume that family priorities -- personal as well as financial -- had become all-consuming. Given her success with finalizing the massive Alaska pipeline project, I think Palin should have stuck it out, but of course she is master of her own fate. What certainly was blameworthy was the chaotic and rushed statement itself. Something so politically consequential needed more careful composition and rehearsal. Why provide more fodder for the vultures and harpies of the Northeastern media?

Unfortunately, it's pretty obvious that Palin still lacks that cadre of trusted pros who are the invisible elves behind every successful national politician -- the assistants who gather and vet material and who filter proposals and plan logistics. In a way, this is part of her virtues -- her complete freedom from routine micromanagement and business as usual. She does her own thing with seat-of-the-pants gusto. It's why she remains hugely popular with the Republican grass-roots base -- as I know from listening to talk radio. Callers coming fresh from her rallies are always heady with infectious enthusiasm.

Of course you'd never know that from reading hit jobs like Todd Purdum's sepulchral piece on Palin in the current Vanity Fair. Scurrying around Alaska with his notepad, Purdum still managed to find comically little to indict her with. Anyone with a gripe is given the floor; fans are shut out. This exercise in faux objectivity is exposed at key points such as Purdum's failure to identify the actual instigator of Palin's extravagant clothing bills (a crazed, credit-card-abusing stylist appointed by the McCain campaign) and his prissy characterization of Palin's performance at the vice-presidential debate as merely "adequate." Hey, wake up -- Palin cleaned Biden's clock! By the end, Biden was sighing and itching to split.

Whether Palin has a national future or not will depend on her willingness to hit the books at some point and absorb more information about international history and politics than she has needed to know in her role as governor. She also needs a shrewder, cooler take on the mainstream media, with its preening bullies, cackling witches, twisted cynics and pompous windbags. The Northeastern media establishment is in decline, and everyone knows it. Palin should not have gotten into a slanging match with David Letterman or anyone else who has been obsessively defaming her or her family. Let surrogates do that stuff.

The vicious double standard is pretty obvious. Only the tabloids, for example, ran the photos of a piss-drunk Chelsea Clinton, panties exposed, falling into her car outside London clubs a few years ago. If Chelsea had been the scion of Republican bigwigs, those tacky scenes would have been trumpeted from pillar to post in the U.S. as signals of parental failures or turmoil in clan Clinton. As a Democrat, I detest the partisan machinations that have become standard in Northeastern news management and that are detectable in editorial decisions at major metropolitan newspapers nationwide. It's why I, like a host of others, have shifted my news gathering to the Web.



WOW

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/07/08/reader_letters/

Now check this out:

Fellow Americans,

Please know: I am black; I grew up in the segregated South. I did not vote for Barack Obama; I wrote in Ron Paul's name as my choice for president. Most importantly, I am not race conscious. I do not require a black president to know that I am a person of worth, and that life is worth living. I do not require a black president to love the ideal of America.

I cannot join you in your celebration. I feel no elation. There is no smile on my face. I am not jumping with joy. There are no tears of triumph in my eyes. For such emotions and behavior to come from me, I would have to deny all that I know about the requirements of human flourishing and survival - all that I know about the history of the United States of America, all that I know about American race relations, and all that I know about Barack Obama as a politician. I would have to deny the nature of the "change" that Obama asserts has come to America. Most importantly, I would have to abnegate my certain understanding that you have chosen to sprint down the road to serfdom that we have been on for over a century. I would have to pretend that individual liberty has no value for the success of a human life. I would have to evade your rejection of the slender reed of capitalism on which your success and mine depend. I would have to think it somehow rational that 94 percent of the 12 million blacks in this country voted for a man because he looks like them (that blacks are permitted to play the race card), and that they were joined by self-declared "progressive" whites who voted for him because he doesn't look like them. I would have to be wipe my mind clean of all that I know about the kind of people who have advised and taught Barack Obama and will fill posts in his administration - political intellectuals like my former colleagues at the Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

I would have to believe that "fairness" is equivalent of justice. I would have to believe that man who asks me to "go forward in a new spirit of service, in a new service of sacrifice" is speaking in my interest. I would have to accept the premise of a man that economic prosperity comes from the "bottom up," and who arrogantly believes that he can will it into existence by the use of government force. I would have to admire a man who thinks the standard of living of the masses can be improved by destroying the most productive and the generators of wealth.

Finally, Americans, I would have to erase from my consciousness the scene of 125,000 screaming, crying, cheering people in Grant Park, Chicago irrationally chanting "Yes We Can!" Finally, I would have to wipe all memory of all the times I have heard politicians, pundits, journalists, editorialists, bloggers and intellectuals declare that capitalism is dead - and no one, including especially Alan Greenspan, objected to their assumption that the particular version of the anti-capitalistic mentality that they want to replace with their own version of anti-capitalism is anything remotely equivalent to capitalism.

So you have made history, Americans. You and your children have elected a black man to the office of the president of the United States, the wounded giant of the world. The battle between John Wayne and Jane Fonda is over - and that Fonda won. Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern must be very happy men. Jimmie Carter, too. And the Kennedys have at last gotten their Kennedy look-a-like. The self-righteous welfare statists in the suburbs can feel warm moments of satisfaction for having elected a black person. So, toast yourselves: 60s countercultural radicals, 80s yuppies and 90s bourgeois bohemians. Toast yourselves, Black America. Shout your glee Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Duke, Stanford, and Berkeley. You have elected not an individual who is qualified to be president, but a black man who, like the pragmatist Franklin Roosevelt, promises to - Do Something! You now have someone who has picked up the baton of Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. But you have also foolishly traded your freedom and mine - what little there is left - for the chance to feel good. There is nothing in me that can share your happy obliviousness.

November 6, 2008

Dr. Anne Wortham is the author of "The Other Side of Racism: A Philosophical Study of Black Race Consciousness". She is Associate Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and continuing Visiting Scholar at Stanford University 's Hoover Institution. She is a member of the American Sociological Association and the American Philosophical Association. Pretty strong credentials, don't you think?

In looking into Anne Wortham I also found that she is a follower of Ayn Rand. That's why I haven't heard of her before. A black university professor who is a Rand fan?

Finally, a hilarious take on why the GOP lost from a liberal, or one that at least tries to claim he is a liberal:

I Still Hate You, Sarah Palin
The Republicans bring a knife to a gunfight, and lose again.

By David Kahane

One of the most terrifying moments of my political life came last summer at the Republican convention in St. Paul. No, I don’t mean seeing John McCain careering around the Xcel Energy Center like Eyegore in Young Frankenstein, his face frozen in a Lon Chaney Sr. rictus grin as he reached across the aisle to his erstwhile friends in the media and got his hand bitten off. Rather, I’m referring to the aftermath of Sarah Palin’s outrageous acceptance speech, which whipped up the Rotary Club delegates into a frenzy of white-boy fury that not even heckling by a brave Code Pink embed could deter. Truly a fascist classic and one that sent shivers down our collectivist spines.

Even worse was the glaze of horror on the phizzes of the assembled heroes of the Mainstream Media. Andrea Mitchell — yes, the very same Andrea Mitchell, NBC News, Washington, whose employer saw no conflict of interest at all when she married then Fed pooh-bah Alan Greenspan — stood there gaping like a frog while the rest of the assembled Finemans and Matthewses and Olbermanns scurried around like roaches when the light gets turned on: What the hell just hit us? For one horrible moment, it looked as if the carefully crafted plans of David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel, George Soros, and the Second Chief Directorate, first department, of the old KGB were about to gang agley.


Not only were we offended at the sheer effrontery of McCain’s pick: How dare the Republicans proffer this déclassée piece of Wasilla trailer trash whose only claim to fame was that she didn’t exercise her right to choose? Where were her degrees from Smith or Barnard, her internships at PETA, the Brookings Institution, or the Young Pioneers? We were also outraged that the Stupid Party had just nominated a completely unqualified candidate nobody had ever heard of, a first-term governor of Alaska whose previous experience consisted of a small-town mayoralty. As opposed to our guy, Barry Soetoro of Mombasa, Djakarta, and Honolulu, a first-term senator nobody had ever heard of, whose previous experience had been as a state senator (D., Daley Machine) in Illinois. After eight long, illegitimate, lawless years of &*^%BUSH$#@! tyranny, how dare you contest this election?

And so the word went out, from that time and place: Eviscerate Sarah Palin like one of her field-dressed moose. Turn her life upside down. Attack her politics, her background, her educational history. Attack her family. Make fun of her husband, her children. Unleash the noted gynecologist Andrew Sullivan to prove that Palin’s fifth child was really her grandchild. Hit her with everything we have: Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, taking a beer-run break from her quixotic search for Mr. Right to drip venom on Sister Sarah; post-funny comic David Letterman, to joke about her and her daughters on national television; Katie Couric, the anchor nobody watches, to give this Alaskan interloper a taste of life in the big leagues; former New York Times hack Todd “Mr. Dee Dee Myers” Purdum, to act as an instrument of Graydon Carter’s wrath at Vanity Fair. Heck, we even burned her church down. Even after the teleological triumph of The One, the assault had to continue, each blow delivered with our Lefty SneerTM (viz.: Donny Deutsch yesterday on Morning Joe), until Sarah was finished.

You know what? It worked! McCain finally succumbed to his long-standing case of Stockholm Syndrome (“My friends, you have nothing to fear from an Obama presidency”), Tina Fey turned Palin into a see-Russia-from-my-house joke, “conservative” useful idiots like Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker hatched her, and finally Sarah cried No más and walked away. If we could, we’d cut off her head and mount it on a wall at Tammany Hall, except there is no more Tammany Hall unless you count Obama’s Tony Rezko–financed home in Chicago. And it took only eight months — heck, Sarah couldn't even have another kid in the time it took us to destroy her. That’s the Chicago way!

Yes, my friends, it’s once again time to quote Sean Connery’s famous speech from The Untouchables, written by David Mamet — the lecture the veteran Chicago cop gives a wet-behind-the-ears Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner, back when he was a movie star) while they sit in a church pew. “You want to get Capone? Here’s how you get him: he pulls a knife, you pull a gun, he sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way!” If you just think of us — liberal Democrats — as Capone you’ll begin to understand what we’re up to. And we just put one of yours in the morgue.

I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but maybe now you’re beginning to understand the high-stakes game we’re playing here. This ain’t John McCain’s logrolling senatorial club any more. This is a deadly serious attempt to realize the vision of the 1960s and to fundamentally transform the United States of America. This is the fusion of Communist dogma, high ideals, gangster tactics, and a stunning amount of self-loathing. For the first time in history, the patrician class is deliberately selling its own country down the river just to prove a point: that, yes, we can! This country stinks and we won’t be happy until we’ve forced you to admit it.

In other words, stop thinking of the Democratic Party as merely a political party, because it’s much more than that. We’re not just the party of slavery, segregation, secularism, and sedition. Not just the party of Aaron Burr, Boss Tweed, Richard J. Croker, Bull Connor, Chris Dodd, Richard Daley, Bill Ayers, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright, and Emperor Barack Hussein Obama II. Not just the party of Kendall “Agent 202” Myers, the State Department official recruited as a Cuban spy along with his wife during the Carter administration.

If you had any sense, you would start using our tactics against us. After all, you have a few lawyers on your side. Sue us. File frivolous ethics complaints against all our elected officials until, like Sarah, they go broke from defending themselves. (David Paterson would be a good place to start.) Challenge the constitutionality of BO2’s legion of fill-in-the-blank czars — none of whom have to be confirmed, or even pass a security check. (Come to think of it, neither did Barry.) Let slip your own journalistic dogs of war, assuming you have any, to find Barry’s birth certificate, his college transcripts, whether he applied to Occidental as a foreign student, and on which passport he traveled in 1981 to Pakistan with his friend Wahid Hamid, for starters.

You might also want to think about interviewing New York literary agent Jane Dystel, who a) contacted the totally unknown Obama in the wake of an adulatory New York Times piece in 1990 and b) got him a $125,000 advance for a memoir that c) he couldn’t write, even after a long sojourn in Bali, which d) got the contract canceled, whereupon e) Dystel got him $40,000 from another publisher, following which f) the book finally came out to glowing reviews and g) Obama fired her. Wouldn’t she have an interesting story to tell?

Of course, you won’t. You’re too nice, too enamored of history and tradition to realize that the rules have changed. Remember, I live and work in a town where, “Hello, he lied,” isn’t a joke; we men of the Left are perfectly comfortable lying, cheating, and stealing — hello, Senator Franken! — in order to attain and keep political power. Not for nothing is one of our mottos, “By Any Means Necessary.” You see, we’re the good guys, and for us the ends always justify the means. We are, literally, shameless, which is why Bill Clinton is now a multi-millionaire and Eliot Spitzer is already on the comeback trail.

In Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals, “the fourth rule is: Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.” This is the book that “Reset” Rodham (what ever happened to her?) and BHO II grew up reading and continue to live by. If you don’t understand that that’s the way we see you — as the enemy — then you’re too dumb to survive. Remember that for us politics is not just an avocation, or even just a job, but our life. We literally stay awake nights thinking up ways to screw you. And one of the ways we do that is by religiously observing Alinsky’s Rule No. 4.

Did Sarah stand for “family values”? Flay her unwed-mother daughter. Did she represent probity in a notoriously corrupt, one-family state? Spread rumors about FBI investigations. Did she speak with an upper-Midwest twang? Mock it relentlessly on Saturday Night Live. Above all, don’t let her motivate the half of the country that doesn’t want His Serene Highness to bankrupt the nation, align with banana-republic Communist dictators, unilaterally dismantle our missile defenses, and set foot in more mosques than churches since he has become president. We’ve got a suicide cult to run here.

And that’s why Sarah had to go. Whether she understood it or not, she threatened us right down to our most fundamental, meretricious, elitist, sneering, snobbish, insecure, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders bones. She was, after all, a “normal” American, the kind of person (or so I’m told) you meet in flyover country. The kind that worries first about home and hearth and believes in things like motherhood and love of country the way it is, not the way she wants to remake it.

What you clowns need, in other words, is a Rules for Radical Conservatives to explain what you’re up against and teach you how to compete before it’s too late. Luckily, since I care about money even more than I care about politics, I have just such a book in the proposal stage, currently making the rounds of various publishers, assuming any of them are wise enough to take me up on it.

And, yes, this time it really is personal.

— David Kahane is pushing for a new national holiday to commemorate the destruction of Sarah Palin, and is hopeful that his senators, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, will co-sponsor it, along with Henry Waxman in the House. You can second the motion at kahanenro@gmail.com or on Facebook.

Monday, July 6, 2009

No good deed goes unpunished.

Hundreds of emails from Hondurans flooded my in-box last week after I reported on the military's arrest of President Manuel Zelaya, as ordered by the Supreme Court, and his subsequent banishment from the country.

Mr. Zelaya's violations of the rule of law in recent months were numerous. But the tipping point came 10 days ago, when he led a violent mob that stormed a military base to seize and distribute Venezuelan-printed ballots for an illegal referendum.

All but a handful of my letters pleaded for international understanding of the threat to the constitutional democracy that Mr. Zelaya presented. One phrase occurred again and again: "Please pray for us."

Hondurans have good cause for calling on divine intervention: Reason has gone AWOL in places like Turtle Bay and Foggy Bottom. Ruling the debate on Mr. Zelaya's behavior is Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chávez, who is now the reigning international authority on "democracy."

Mr. Chávez is demanding that Mr. Zelaya be reinstated and is even threatening to overthrow the new Honduran president, Roberto Micheletti. He's leading the charge from the Organization of American States (OAS). The United Nations and the Obama administration are falling in line.

Is this insane? You bet. We have fallen through the looking glass and it's time to review how hemispheric relations came to such a sad state.

The story begins in 2004, when Mr. Chávez was still an aspiring despot and the U.S. pursued a policy of appeasement toward him. Not surprisingly, that only heightened his appetite for power.

Mr. Chávez had already rewritten the Venezuelan Constitution, taken over the judiciary and the national electoral council (CNE), militarized the government, and staked out an aggressive, anti-American foreign policy promising to spread his revolution around the hemisphere.

Many Venezuelans were alarmed, and the opposition had labored to collect signatures for a presidential recall referendum permitted under the constitution. As voting day drew near, Mr. Chávez behaved as if he knew his days were numbered. The European Union refused to send an observer team, citing lack of transparency. The OAS did send observers, and in the months and weeks ahead of the vote mission chief Fernando Jaramillo complained bitterly about the state's intimidation tactics against the population. Mr. Chávez gave OAS Secretary General César Gaviria an ultimatum: Either get Mr. Jaramillo out of the country or the referendum would be quashed. Mr. Chávez was appeased. Mr. Jaramillo was withdrawn.

The Carter Center was also invited to "observe," and former President Jimmy Carter was welcomed warmly by Mr. Chávez upon his arrival in Venezuela.

A key problem, beyond the corrupted voter rolls and government intimidation, was that Mr. Chávez did not allow an audit of his electronic voting machines. Exit polls showed him losing the vote decisively. But in the middle of the night, the minority members of the CNE were kicked out of the election command center. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Chávez claimed victory. There was never a credible audit of the paper ballots against the tallies in the voting machines.

Mr. Carter's approval notwithstanding, the proper U.S. and OAS response was obvious: The process had been shrouded in state secrets and therefore it was impossible to endorse or reject the results. Venezuelan patriots begged for help from the outside world. Instead, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, Roger Noriega, and the OAS blessed the charade.

There was never any explanation for the blind endorsement, but behind the scenes there were claims that Mr. Chávez threatened to call his militia to the streets and spill blood. The oil fields were to be burned. To this day, the opposition contends that the U.S. and Mr. Gaviria made a cold calculation that caving in to Mr. Chávez would avoid violence.

Predictably, Washington's endorsement of the flawed electoral process was a green light. Mr. Chávez grew more aggressive, emboldened by his "legitimate" status. He set about using his oil money to destabilize the Bolivian and Ecuadorean democracies and to help Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega and Argentina's Cristina Kirchner get elected. Soviet-backed Fidel Castro was able to intimidate his neighbors in the 1960s and '70s, and Mr. Chávez has done the same thing in the new millennium. This has given him vast power at the OAS.

Hondurans had the courage to push back. Now Chávez-supported agitators are trying to stir up violence. Yesterday afternoon airline service was suspended in Tegucigalpa when Mr. Zelaya tried to return to the country and his plane was not permitted to land. There were reports of violence between his backers and troops.

This is a moment when the U.S. ought to be on the side of the rule of law, which the Honduran court and Congress upheld.


from the WSJ, no less!