President Barack Obama, who was so reluctant to “meddle” in the affairs of Iran during its people’s protest over a fraudulent election, immediately leaped into action after receiving word of a “coup” in Honduras. 

Obama, along with 33 other countries including Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela, condemned the coup as “illegal” and demanded that the ousted president, Manual Zelaya, to be re-instated into power within 72 hours (of the coup), or face suspension from the Organization of American States, which is based in Washington.

Obama stated that “We believe that the coup was not legal and that President Zelaya remains the democratically elected president there. It would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition rather than democratic elections.”

I guess Obama missed the part where Zelaya was trying to amend the Honduras Constitution to influence the next election in his favor.

It should be noted that Zelaya is an extreme leftist, who gained his office by pandering to the “poor and less fortunate”, much the same way Obama did. That could at least partially explain Obama’s solidarity with him (and his reluctance to state any type of solidarity to the protesting Iranians).   

Here is the story behind the coup, as I understand it so far…

Manual Zelaya wanted to run for another term of office as president. His current term ends this year. However, under the terms of the constitution of Honduras, he is ineligible, as presidents are only allowed a single, 4-year term.

Zelaya, wanting to follow the example of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, decided that he wanted to call a convention to amend the constitution for the purpose of allowing himself the chance to serve unlimited terms (this is disputed, as he claims that he intended to step down when his term is over. Then again, he’s not the first politician to claim that). 

He decided to call a referendum (popular, public vote, as opposed to a legislative vote) to arrange the convention. However, the congress has outlawed the referendum, as the president does not have that power.

Not only did the Congress outlaw the referendum, but so did the Supreme Court and the electoral tribunal. When he tried to force the military to distribute the ballots to vote for the referendum (which are believed to have been provided by Hugo Chavez), the military, under the command of armed forces chief General Romeo Vasquez, refused, as they knew that his actions were illegal. Zelaya fired Vasquez, which resulted in top military officials, as well as the defense minister, to resign in protest. Orders by the court to re-instate Vasquez were refused. Zelaya later led a mob of his supporters over to an air force base to collect and distribute the ballots themselves. 

The Honduras military, presumably under orders to protect the constitutional law that Zelaya was breaking, finally arrested him, at home in his pajamas, and exiled him to Costa Rica.  The Congress has since temporarily instated congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as interim (temporary) president, until the next election can be held.

While the Congress has stated that it has voted to accept a letter of resignation from Zelaya, the ousted president claims that he’s never written such a letter.  Note that the Congress says that it votedto accept a letter; it never claimed that it received one.

And that, ladies and gentleman, are the events behind the coup to the best of my knowledge. I won’t claim that it’s 100% accurate, but as I’m doing all this research myself in one day, I wouldn’t be surprised if I missed a few details.

Now we come to the real questions…

Obama, as well as the United Nations, have called this an “illegal, military coup”. 

Is it really?   True, the military arrested Zelaya, but it was under the pretense that he was breaking Constitutional law. How is the arrest illegal? 

Also, the phrase “military coup” implies that the military has taken over the government. The problem is that they didn’t. Once Zelaya was arrested and deported (he is allowed to return to Honduras, but only as an ordinary citizen, which in my view, is pretty generous), the congressional chief replaced him as a temporary president until the next elections could be held this November.

Another question; has the government of Honduras actually changed? Not that I can tell. I’ve seen no reports so far of Roberto Micheletti’s policies being really any different from Zelaya’s or the Congress, so how has the government changed?

This would be like President Obama attempting to pull the same stunt as Zelaya, getting arrested by our military, and being replaced by Joe Biden, with Nancy Pelosi taking Biden’s place.

Now, would our government have really changed? Biden and Pelosi’s policies almost mirror that of Obama’s. Congress is the same. Both the House and the Senate remain the same. They’re still controlled by left-wing Democrats. The Supreme Court justices would remain the same. There’s no real reason for Biden to change anything, after all. What would really be different, other than the fact that we have a president that’s not so suave and charming anymore?  

This isn’t as if John McCain got the military under his command, had them arrest Obama, threw out Biden as well as all the other major offices and replaced them with people loyal to him. That’s a real coup.

Assuming that the information is accurate, personally, I commend the Hondurans for having the backbone to take the actions that they did.  It should be noted that Zaleya’s popularity was only 25% out of 18 regional leaders. His only real support, as mentioned before, came from the “poor and less fortunate”, who bought into the usual leftist promise that he’d “fight for the people”.   

On an end note, any politician that uses the “fight for the people” phrase should raise a red flag with you. These are the ones who promise you everything, yet rarely deliver, and the few times they do, it’s always at the expense of a targeted “hated” class, usually the wealthy. There are a lot of dictators out there, past and present, who were fond of that phrase. It’s too bad they don’t set themselves up for ousting as easily as Zaleya did.

Sources:

Honduran President Ousted by Military: Carin Zissis, 6/28/09

President of Honduras: Wikipedia

Support for Ousted Honduran President Raises Questions About ‘Democratic Leadership’: Stephen Clark, Foxnews.com 06/30/09

Obama’s Swift Stand on Honduras Coup: Associated Press, 06/30/09

A pair of twin “Autobots” has been getting hit hard with a lot of flak lately, and it’s not just coming from those evil “Decepticons”.

Offended movie fans have been criticizing the “gangsta wanna-be” twins (Skids and Mudflap, who disguise themselves as Chevy compact hatchbacks), for portraying negative black racial caricatures. They talk in “street slang”, fight each other constantly and use crude language. One of them even sports a gold tooth. The twins are unable to read; with their excuse being that they’re too busy “kickin’ butt”.   Actually, they don’t use the word “butt”… I’m not allowed to use that other word here, but you get the idea. 

Michael Bay, the director of the movie “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”, insists that the twins were meant as comic relief, and that the twin’s mannerisms actually came from the voice actors, one of whom is black. 

Reno Wilson, the black voice actor behind “Mudflap”, stated that he “never imagined that the twins would be considered as racial caricatures”.   When he accepted the role, he was told that the twins had downloaded their information about human culture from the web, and that they had focused on the “gangsta rap” culture.   Therefore, that’s how they turned out. Reno took Mudflap’s personality in that direction, and his fellow voice actor, Tom Kenny (who is white, and voices “Skids”), followed his lead.

“If he (Mudflap) had downloaded country music, he would have come out like that” said Reno.

Don’t try convincing Tasha Robinson, associate editor of “The Onion” of that, however.

“They only exist to talk in bad ebonics, beat each other up, and talk about how stupid each other is (sic)”.  

Ms. Robinson also complained that the twins do not play a major part in the story, and “disappear” when the action heats up in the end.

That’s like going to a restaurant, complaining that the food is horrible, and then whining that the portions are too small.

At any rate, I disagree. The twins, despite their shenanigans, actually do a good job of protecting their human charges. One of them even plays a role in heavily damaging a huge Decepticon near the end of the movie (named “Devastator”, which is a combination of several evil “Constructicon” robots that fuse together to form one monster robot), which resulted in saving the lives of his brother and human charges.   I won’t say how, in order to prevent more of a spoiler than I may have given already, but I just wanted to point out that the twins were more than just “bad ebonics”. 

On a sidenote, I suspect that those blacks (as well as white, liberal apologists) who were offended by the twins may have also been somewhat negatively influenced by the movie’s pro-military, pro-America, and, worst of all (for them), anti-Obama undercurrent, even going out of its way to say his name during a CNN newscast, just to make sure that the audience knew who the president running the show was. At one point, the camera goes out of its way to get a shot of a war room soldier sporting a “McCain” name tag on his uniform answering a phone (you’ll have to watch for it. If you blink, you’ll miss it).   

It probably didn’t help much when an Obama lackey named “Galloway”, who keeps insisting to the soldiers that they must, by direct order of the president, observe a policy of “diplomacy, negotiation and sound military strategy” in order to deal with the aggressive Decepticons.  The annoyed soldiers finally get rid of him in a (in my opinion) hilarious manner. I’m going to assume that Michael Bay is not an “Obamamaniac”.

Getting back to the “gangsta twins”, let’s assume, just for the sake of argument, that Michael Bay deliberately went out of his way to create this negative caricature of blacks with the twins. Let me ask you this… who could he have possibly gotten the idea from? 

Who was it that embraced the hip-hop and “gangsta” rap style (and the gold teeth, crude language, and tendency for violent behavior that came with it)?  

Who was it that made it a point to be proud of being “street smart”, and not “book smart”, up to the point of belittling those of their race who acted intelligent, even accusing them of “acting white”?

I bet you thought I was going to place all the blame on the blacks. I’m going to surprise you and say that this isn’t actually a “black” thing. Being black has absolutely nothing to do with embracing the “gangsta” lifestyle. It’s more of a cultural thing. It just so happens that the majority of the people in the public eye who embrace this particular culture are blacks, though it should be noted that average American blacks do not approve of this type of culture, so I suspect that they cringe and inadvertently lash out whenever they see caricatures of this type, pretty much the way I cringe and mumble under my breath when I see some shaven-headed, tattooed, white kid with facial piercings acting like he’s the next Eminem. 

Who knows? Maybe for his next Transformers film, Michael Bay will have a couple of redneck Decepticons shooting beer cans off the top of each other’s heads… and one aims a bit too low.   That should bring a few laughs, by blacks and whites.

Sources:

Are ‘Transformers’ Robots Racist?: Associated Press, 06/26/09